Over the past few months I’ve been collecting the full text of some of J. Gresham Machen’s letters to the editor from the 1920s and 30s.

The collection spans a critical decade in Machen’s life: from his battles at Princeton Seminary against theological liberalism in the early 1920s, through the fundamentalist-modernist controversy and the formation of Westminster Seminary in 1929, to the final years before his suspension from the PCUSA ministry. During these same years when he was fighting modernism in the church, he was equally engaged fighting statism in the public square.

• Urging repeal of New York’s Lusk anti-sedition laws (1923)
• Opposing a federal department of education (1926)—perhaps his most famous letter, arguing such a department would create “a tyranny over the mind”
• Against the proposed child labor amendment (1924), which he saw as dangerous federal intrusion into family life
• Opposing alien enrollment requirements (1925)
• Protesting compulsory fingerprinting and registration schemes (1933)