NEW YORK (ABP) — Robert Handy, who studied under legendary Christian scholars like Paul Tillich before becoming a prominent Baptist historian in his own right, died at a retirement community in West Caldwell, N.J., Jan. 8. He was 90.
Handy was a professor of church history at Union Theological Seminary — the ecumenical Protestant graduate school in New York — from 1950 until 1986. During that time he taught generations of pastors, missionaries, chaplains and other ministers and published works on church history and American religion that scholars still consider standards in the field.
 Robert Handy (PHOTO/Union Seminary) |
“Every one of them… knows his or her indebtedness to the lifelong scholarly career of Robert Handy,” the book’s editors wrote, praising “his strict adherence to the technical canons of historical inquiry, his sensitivity to the practical needs of Christian people, his signal labors on behalf of a sophisticated understanding of American church history, and his appreciation for the conceptual ties of history with many other disciplines.”
He was particularly known for his work on church-state relations in the United States, and attempts by some U.S. Christians in the 19th century to impose their vision of a “Christian” America.
Handy was born Jan. 30, 1918, in Rockville, Conn. He graduated from Brown University in 1940 with a bachelor’s degree in European history and earned a divinity degree from Colgate-Rochester Divinity School in 1943. He was ordained a Baptist minister that year.
While serving as pastor of an Illinois congregation, he began taking history classes at the University of Chicago Divinity School as a way of combining his interests in local-church ministry and history. After a stint as an Army chaplain, he returned to Chicago, where he earned his doctorate in 1949.
Union Seminary appointed him to a three-year contract the next year. He taught classes while assisting Tillich and another renowned Christian scholar, John McNeill, in research for their foundational works on church history.
“Little did I know that the three years would stretch into twelve times that number to the time of retirement,” he later wrote.
Handy also authored the official history of Union Seminary in 1987 as part of the school’s sesquicentennial celebration.
“We know that as a historian he loves the truth of history,” the editors of the tribute to Handy’s career wrote. “He loves as well the people who make history. Indeed, among those scholars whom we know, we know of none who better joins the love of truth to the truth of love.”
-30-
Robert Marus is managing editor and Washington bureau chief for Associated Baptist Press.