Gabriel Fackre

Gabriel Joseph Fackre (1926–2018) was an American theologian and Abbot Professor of Christian Theology Emeritus at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton, Massachusetts (now Andover Newton Seminary at Yale). He was on the school's faculty for 25 years before retiring in 1996. Previous to that he was Professor of Theology and Culture at Lancaster Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, teaching there from 1961 through 1970. Fackre has also served as visiting professor or held lectureships at 40 universities, colleges, and seminaries. His papers are housed in Special Collections at Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries, Princeton, New Jersey.

Personal life Fackre was born on January 25, 1926, in Jersey City, New Jersey, and raised in Brooklyn, New York City. He and his spouse, Dorothy Ashman Fackre, married in 1945, were students together at both Bucknell University and the University of Chicago Divinity School and later the parents of five children and grandparents of eight. Dorothy, also an ordained minister, served with Gabriel in congregations in the Chicago stockyards district and in the greater Pittsburgh steel mill towns of Homestead and Duquesne, Pennsylvania, for 12 years.Evangelical And Reformed Church Directories, 1951-1957; United Church of Christ Directories, 1957-1960.I Dorothy died in 2017. They were theological collaborators and wrote a number of books together.

Fackre died on January 31, 2018.

Theology, ethics, and mission

Fackre wrote in the fields of theology, ethics, and mission in thirty books and monographs, among them five volumes of a series on Christian doctrine, The Christian Story,See bibliography below. and chapters and encyclopedia entries in another ninety volumes and over three hundred articles and book reviews. He was president of the American Theological Society.See his presidential address, ‘Reorientation and Retrieval in Systematic Theology’ in The Christian Century Vol. 108, No. 20 (June 26-July 3, 1991), 653-656. Fackre was involved, often with his spouse, in various efforts in social action, beginning with their spearheading a campaign to bring Nisei students from World War II internment camps to Bucknell and taking part in a Quaker “peace caravan” in the closing year of the war.The Pittsburgh Courier, July 21, 1944, p. 2. At Chicago, Fackre and another Divinity School student led a walk-out and protest at the Quadrangle (faculty) Club, where they worked as waiters, at the refusal by the majority of its members to include in membership an African-American professor, a policy shortly thereafter overturned.“Quit U. of C. Club; Charge Race Bias,” Chicago Daily Times, June 12, 1944;”17 Students Quit U. of C. Club in Row,” Chicago Daily Sun, June 12, 1944. While at Chicago, after a summer student trip to study “The Church and the Working-Classes in Great Britain,” Fackre and his wife served a mission congregation in the back-of-the yards district, then spent a decade in a two-point mission charge in the steel mill towns of Homestead and Duquesne, Pennsylvania addressing issues of the working poor.Gabriel Fackre, The Purpose and Work of the Ministry (Philadelphia: Christian Education Press, 1959)

In the decade of the 1960s when Fackre was a professor at Lancaster Theological Seminary in the same state, they, with their children, helped to found a network of "freedom schools" for young black and white Lancastrians, and participated in demonstrations for civil rights in the city."PACE Examines Progress: Elects Cunningham Head". Daily Intelligencer-Journal, May 17, 1966. (Picture of Dorothy Fackre, previous leader) Fackre also took part in the initial civil rights demonstration in the city protesting hiring policies at downtown department stories in the summer of 1963, joined the March on Washington in 1963, and was part of a United Church of Christ contingent that assisted in the registration of black citizens in Canton, Mississippi in 1964.“NAACP March Protests Hiring Here,” Lancaster New Era, July 20, 1963; “Mississippi—‘It must be Seen,’ Lancaster Seminarians Relate Their experiences,” by Joy Owens, Intelligencer Journal, May 24, 1964. Later, the couple led in campaigns to integrate the city's de facto segregated junior high schools, helped to found a citizen's newspaper, The Lancaster Independent Press, and a coffee house, Encounter, out of which much of the foregoing activity emanated.“Fackre Family to Leave Lancaster,Lancaster Independent Press, June 11, 1970. After moving to the Boston area where Professor Fackre was called to teach systematic theology at Andover Newton Theological School, efforts at social change continued with Fackre chairing a committee that founded another citizens' newspaper, The Newton Times,The Newton Times, Vol 1, no. 1 chair of the editorial committee's introduction. and both he and his wife participated in peace and justice activities during their twenty-five years in Greater Boston. In retirement on Cape Cod, they continued to take part in advocating for the homeless, efforts in environmental amelioration, and peace concerns.

Doctrine and ecumenism

Fackre was raised a Baptist by his mother, Mary Comstock Fackre, whose husband, Toufick Fackre, was a Syriac Orthodox priest. Later, he and his Episcopalian spouse, Dorothy, sought an ecumenical denomination in which to carry out their anticipated ministry. They moved to the Evangelical and Reformed Church in 1950, the denomination of Reinhold Niebuhr, whose thought much influenced them in a journey out of an earlier pacifism to a post-war period of neo-orthodoxy.Gabriel Fackre, The Promise of Reinhold Niebuhr (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott Company, 1970; Lanham, MD: University Press of America, revised edition, 1994; Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Third Edition, 2011. In 1957, that Church merged with the Congregational Christian Churches to form the United Church of Christ, in which they both held their ministerial standing.

Ecumenism was a leading commitment for both Fackres, given expression in their first book, Under the Steeple,Gabriel and Dorothy Fackre, Under the Steeple (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1957). relating the "life together" themes of the two early World Council of Churches assemblies they attended—Amsterdam in 1948 and Evanston, Illinois, in 1954—to parish life and mission. Professor Fackre was one of the representatives of the United Church of Christ in the nine-denomination Consultation on Church Union (predecessor to the current Churches of Christ Uniting) and the Lutheran-Reformed Conversation,Keith F. Nickle and Timothy F. Lull, editors, A Common Calling: The Witness of Our Reformation Churches in North America Today (Minneapolis: AugsburgFortress, 1993). the latter eventuating in the full communion agreement of 1997 of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Presbyterian Church, USA, the Reformed Church of America and the United Church of Christ. He also was engaged as an "evangelical catholic" in outreach, on one hand, to Churches in the Great Tradition as a co-founder of the Mercersburg Society and board member of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology, and on the other, to contemporary evangelicalism in a variety of conferences and book projects of the same. Kindred to the latter, he has written extensively on evangelism, seeking to wed social concern to that outreach.“Evangelism and Social Action,: Either/Or?” in Barbara Brown Zikmund and Frederick R. Trost, editors, The Living Theological Heritage of the United Church of Christ, Volume 7, United and Uniting (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2005).

The conjunction of concern about Christian doctrine and commitment to the ecumenical project led Fackre to invest himself deeply in efforts at theological renewal in his own denomination. Prominent among them have been the founding in 1984 of the annual Craigville Theological Colloquies on Cape Cod and in 1993 the Confessing Christ movement in the United Church of Christ.See websites, “Craigville Theological Colloquies” (www.craigvillecolloquy.com) and “Confessing Christ” (www.confessingchrist.org). Also after 1962, he encouraged teacher–pastor dialogue on current theological topics by launching "Theological Tabletalk" groups in both seminaries and in retirement on Cape Cod.

A Festschrift for Gabriel Fackre, with recognition as well of his close partnership in life and mission with Dorothy, appeared in 2002, edited by their daughter Skye Fackre Gibson.Skye Fackre Gibson, editor, Story Lines: Chapters in Thought, Word and Deed. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub co., 2002).

Publications

Books

The Promise of Reinhold Niebuhr, Third Edition, Eerdmans, 2011. The Christian Story, Vol. 5, The Church: Signs of the Spirit and Signs of the Times, Eerdmans, 2007. The Christian Story, Vol. 4, Christology in Context, Eerdmans, forthcoming, 2006. Believing, Caring and Doing in the United Church of Christ, Pilgrim Press, 2005. The Day After: A Retrospective on Religious Dissent in the Presidential Crisis, Eerdmans, 2000. Editor, Judgment Day at the White House, Eerdmans, 1999. Restoring the Center: Essays Evangelical and Ecumenical, InterVarsity, 1998. *Affirmations and Admonitions: Lutheran Decisions and Dialogue, co-author with Michael Root, Eerdmans, 1998. The Doctrine of Revelation: A Narrative Interpretation, University of Edinburgh Press, GB and Eerdmans, USA, 1997. The Christian Story, Vol.1, revised, third edition, Eerdmans, 1996. What About Those Who Have Never Heard?, co-author with Ronald Nash and John Sanders, InterVarsity, 1995. The Promise of Reinhold Niebuhr, revised edition, University Press of America, 1994. Ecumenical Faith in Evangelical Perspective, Eerdmans, 1993. Christian Basics: A Primer for Pilgrims, co-author with Dorothy Fackre, Eerdmans, 1991-1994, 1998, 2000(6th printing). The Christian Story, Volume 2, Authority: Scripture in the Church for the World, Eerdmans, 1987. The Christian Story, Volume 1, revised edition, Eerdmans, 1984. The Religious Right and Christian Faith, Eerdmans (hardcover, 1982; paper, 1983). Youth Ministry: The Gospel and the People, (co-author with Jan Chartier), Judson, 1979, 1980. The Christian Story: A Narrative Interpretation of Basic Christian Doctrine, Eerdmans, 978. Word In Deed: Theological Themes in Evangelism, Eerdmans, 1975. Do and Tell: Engagement Evangelism in the 70s, Eerdmans, 1973, (3 printings). Liberation in Middle America, Pilgrim, 1971. The Promise of Reinhold Niebuhr, Lippincott, 1970. Humiliation and Celebration: Post-radical Themes in Doctrine Morals and Mission, Sheed and Ward, 1969. The Rainbow Sign: Christian Futurity, Eerdmans, U.S.A. and Epworth, Great Britain, 1969. Secular Impact, Pilgrim Press, 1968. Conversation in Faith, UCC Adult Resource Book, United Church Press, 1968. The Pastor and the World, United Church Press, 1964. The Purpose and Work of the Ministry, Christian Education Press, 1959. Under the Steeple, Abingdon Press, 1957, co-author with Dorothy Fackre.

Monographs, booklets, pamphlets

“Tradition and Traditionalism,” Confessing Christ Occasional Paper, Winter, 1999-2000; Sound Doctrine in the Church, Theodore Trost Lecture, 1992. The Confessional Nature of the United Church of Christ, EKU-UCC Newsletter, 1983. *Christ's Ministry and Ours, Center for the Laity, Andover Newton, 1982. The Heritage of Faith and the Horizon of the 80s, Hooker Lecture, 1980. Conversion, Division of Homeland Ministries, Disciples of Christ, 1975. A Catechism for Today's Storytellers, Youth Magazine, 1972. Memory and Hope in a Time of Nostalgia, Council for Lay Life and Work, UCC 1972. Christian Faith and Action in the Seventies, Council for Christian Social Action, UCC 1969. Second Fronts in Metropolitan Mission, Eerdmans, 1968. What Happens in Baptism, Living Faith Series, Westminster Press, 1967. The Baptismal Encounter, Lancaster Seminary Occasional Papers, 1962.

Contributions to volumes