Harcourt W. Peck (1899)

Harcourt W. Peck will be remembered as more of an opponent of Boston University School of Theology than as a student. Specifically, he was an opponent of Dr. Hinckley G. Mitchell, an Old Testament Scholar. Mitchell used the methods of higher criticism to study scripture, which Peck found to be rather offensive.

By the time Peck was a student at Boston University School of Theology, he already made a name for himself in several fields. He was born near the Thousand Islands in Canada, and attended the Methodist University at Toronto. There, he obtained both a B.A. and an M.A. He then received two degrees from the National School of Oratory in Philadelphia. Peck’s course of study no doubt paid off, as his contemporaries remembered him as an excellent speaker.

Peck also excelled in the industrial arts. He worked with his brother manufacturing steam pumps, exhibiting their work at the Indian and Colonial Exhibition in London, England in 1886. When he returned to Canada, he earned a B.S. from the university in Toronto in 1887.

Peck went to the Hawaiian Islands the next year as vice-principal of the Royal School. He also served as secretary of the Y.M.C.A., and he took a post teaching New Testament, exegesis, and literature at Columbia College in New Westminster.

In Hawaii, Peck was a staunch advocate for Methodism. Through his oratory talent as a preacher, he gathered a small congregation of 55 people and opened a new Church. Previously, all protestants met under Congregationalist leadership.

Both an ambitious and excellent student, Peck endeavored to take two full years of study in one at Boston University School of Theology. He earned a Bachelor of Sacred Theology in 1899. He also earned an enemy.

He called Mitchell out before the General Council at Los Angeles in 1904. There, Peck and a number of his followers produced a long list of charges against Mitchell. It is worth quoting his account at length:

“We, the undersigned ministers and members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, submit the following teachings of Dr. Hinckley G. Mitchell, of Boston University School of Theology, charging that they are not in ‘agreement with out doctrinal standards,’ and are deragatory to the Person of our God and Savior Jesus Christ, and are destructive, in tendency, and in fact, of the authority and reliability of His statements, and Teachings, and those of the Word of God, and ask that an investigation be made concerning them and that ‘proper action in the premises be taken:-

“He denies; in effect and in fact, the deity of Jesus Christ, as set forth in the second article of religion of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in the word of God, and by Jesus Christ Himself.

“He deines, in effect and in fact, the reality of many of the Old Testament personages, the authority and reality of many of its plain statements of fact. He also, in effect and in fact, charges the authors of the Pentateuch and Joshua with deception and fraud in the statements they make concerning God’s Revelation through Moses of His Laws, Commandments and Statues.”

The battle between these two gentlemen can be seen as a small part of much larger theological trends of the day. It was the early 20th century, and new ideas about reading scripture were proving threatening to the old order. Over the course of the next two decades, the lines would be drawn in the sand between the modernists and the fundamentalists. While Mitchell represents the latter, Peck espoused the former.

Sources:

Hinckley Mitchell, For the Benefit of My Creditors (Boston: The Beacon Press, 1922)., 206-35.

“New Place of Worship,” Hawaiian Gazette, January 14, 1896, 2.