James M. Gray
Encyclopedia
Reformed Episcopal Church
The Reformed Episcopal Church is an Anglican church in the United States and Canada and a founding member of the Anglican Church in North America...
, a Bible scholar, editor, and hymn writer, and the president of Moody Bible Institute
Moody Bible Institute
Moody Bible Institute is a Christian institution of higher education and related ministries that was founded by evangelist and businessman Dwight Lyman Moody in 1886. Since its founding, MBI's main campus has been located in the Near North Side of Chicago. MBI's primary ministries are education,...
, 1904-34.
Gray was born in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
as one of the younger of eight children. His father, Hugh Gray, died shortly after his birth. James Gray was raised in the Episcopal church, and probably after attending college in New York, he began training for a career as a priest. While preparing himself for the ministry, Gray experienced an evangelical conversion (mostly likely in 1873) after reading homilies on the book of Proverbs by William Arnot. In 1870, Gray married Amanda Thorne, who died in 1875 while giving birth to their fifth child, who also died.
As Gray continued to prepare himself for the ministry in New York, the Episcopal Church was troubled by a conflict between evangelicals and Tractarians, who wished to emphasize ritualism. In 1873, Bishop George D. Cummins
George David Cummins
George David Cummins was an American bishop and founder of the Reformed Episcopal Church.-Life and career:George David Cummins was born in Delaware on 11 December 1822. He graduated from Dickinson College in 1841, and entered the Methodist ministry.In 1845 Cummins took orders in the Protestant...
resigned from the Episcopal Church and helped found the Reformed Episcopal denomination. Gray sided with the seceders.
Gray was ordained in 1877, and assumed the pastorate of the Church of the Redemption in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York for one year. He spent another year at the Church of the Cornerstone in Newburgh. In 1879, Gray was called to assist an elderly pastor at the small Reformed Episcopal Church in Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
, which prospered after his arrival and grew from a handful of worshipers to a congregation of more than 230. The Boston church also managed to establish three separate church during Gray's pastorate, all of which failed shortly after his departure.
While in Boston, he also became involved with Adoniram Judson Gordon
Adoniram Judson Gordon
Adoniram Judson Gordon was an American Baptist preacher, writer, composer, and founder of Gordon College and Gordon–Conwell Theological Seminary.-Life:...
in the founding of the Boston Bible and Missionary Training School, later Gordon Divinity School, where he was a professor from 1889 to 1904. In Boston he married Susan G. Gray, who also served on the faculty. During this period, Bates College
Bates College
Bates College is a highly selective, private liberal arts college located in Lewiston, Maine, in the United States. and was most recently ranked 21st in the nation in the 2011 US News Best Liberal Arts Colleges rankings. The college was founded in 1855 by abolitionists...
, Lewiston, Maine
Lewiston, Maine
Lewiston is a city in Androscoggin County in Maine, and the second-largest city in the state. The population was 41,592 at the 2010 census. It is one of two principal cities of and included within the Lewiston-Auburn, Maine metropolitan New England city and town area and the Lewiston-Auburn, Maine...
, conferred on Gray an honorary doctor of divinity
Doctor of Divinity
Doctor of Divinity is an advanced academic degree in divinity. Historically, it identified one who had been licensed by a university to teach Christian theology or related religious subjects....
degree.
Throughout the 1890s, Gray worked alongside D. L. Moody in the latter's evangelistic campaigns in New York, Boston, and Chicago; and Gray became connected Moody Bible Institute
Moody Bible Institute
Moody Bible Institute is a Christian institution of higher education and related ministries that was founded by evangelist and businessman Dwight Lyman Moody in 1886. Since its founding, MBI's main campus has been located in the Near North Side of Chicago. MBI's primary ministries are education,...
serving in a variety of positions from summer guest lecturer (beginning in 1892) to dean, executive secretary, and finally, president (the third, after D. L. Moody and R. A. Torrey) from 1904 to 1934. Gray also edited Moody Monthly and preached at Moody's Chicago Avenue Church (later known as the Moody Church
Moody Church
The Moody Church is a historic Protestant church in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. right|thumb|270px|-Building:...
).
On November 1, 1934, he resigned as President of MBI at the age of 83, but continued to serve as President-Emeritus. He died of a heart attack on September 21, 1935. The Torrey-Gray Auditorium at the Moody Bible Institute is named in honor of Gray and his predecessor, R. A. Torrey.
Theologically, Gray was an early fundamentalist who upheld the inspiration
Biblical inspiration
Biblical inspiration is the doctrine in Christian theology that the authors and editors of the Bible were led or influenced by God with the result that their writings many be designated in some sense the word of God.- Etymology :...
of the Bible and opposed the contemporary trend toward a social gospel
Social Gospel
The Social Gospel movement is a Protestant Christian intellectual movement that was most prominent in the early 20th century United States and Canada...
. Gray was also a dispensationalist
Dispensationalism
Dispensationalism is a nineteenth-century evangelical development based on a futurist biblical hermeneutic that sees a series of chronologically successive "dispensations" or periods in history in which God relates to human beings in different ways under different Biblical covenants.As a system,...
who believed in the premillennial, pre-tribulational
Tribulation
The Great Tribulation refers to tumultuous events that are described during the "signs of the times", first mentioned by Jesus in the Olivet discourse...
return of Jesus Christ at the Rapture
Rapture
The rapture is a reference to the "being caught up" referred to in 1 Thessalonians 4:17, when the "dead in Christ" and "we who are alive and remain" will be caught up in the clouds to meet "the Lord"....
. Personally, Gray was conservative in dress and personal habit. A reporter remarked that he "cultivated gentlemanliness as a fine art." Male students at Moody were required to wear coats and ties in the dining room, and during a hot spell in July 1908, Gray admonished faculty members for taking off their coats and vests in their offices.
Gray was one of the seven editors of the first Scofield Reference Bible
Scofield Reference Bible
The Scofield Reference Bible is a widely circulated study Bible edited and annotated by the American Bible student Cyrus I. Scofield, that popularized dispensationalism at the beginning of the 20th century...
in 1909. Gray wrote 25 books and pamphlets, some of which remain in print. He also wrote a number of hymns, perhaps the best known of which is Only a Sinner, Saved by Grace.