Where It All Begins to “Go South”

 By Al Baker - Posted at Forget None of His Benefits:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. . . God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” -Genesis 1:1,27

James Woodrow, the uncle of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States (1913-1921), was born in Carlisle, England in 1828 to Scottish Presbyterian parents. A few years later he immigrated with his parents to the United States. Five weeks after arriving in New York City, James’ mother died from an illness she contracted on board the ship to America. Woodrow’s father served as a missionary to Canada and then later as a pastor in Ohio. James was a brilliant student who received a PhD summa cum laude from Heidelberg University, and was offered a full professorship there. Woodrow declined it because he loved the South and returned there to teach at several academies in Alabama. He also taught natural science at Oglethorpe University, at that time located near Milledgeville, Georgia. One of James Woodrow’s favorite students was Sidney Lanier from Macon, Georgia who later became a much beloved southern poet.

When Charles Darwin wrote the Origin of Species in 1859 this caused a major upheaval in the church and world. To combat this Judge John Perkins who lived at The Oaks near Columbus, Mississippi endowed a chair at the Presbyterian Seminary in Columbia, South Carolina for the purpose of teaching men entering the Presbyterian ministry to understand and appreciate true science, to answer objections to religion by some scientists, and to set forth God’s revelation in the creation. James Woodrow was elected in 1861 to the Perkins Professorship of Natural Science in its Relations to Revealed Religion. When Woodrow took his oath of office at Columbia Theological Seminary he pledged his subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF), noting however, his exception to the WCF’s straightforward affirmation of the six days of creation as literal days of twenty-four hours.

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