T. T. Martin

Thomas Theodore Martin (born 1862 in Smith County, Mississippi, died May 23, 1939), was a Christian evangelist who became one of the most important figures of the anti-evolution movement in the 1920s. When the Anti-Evolution League of Minnesota founded by the dynamic William Bell Riley of the First Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, blossomed into the Anti-Evolution League of America in 1923, it was with the Kentucky preacher Dr. J. W. Porter as president and Martin as field secretary and editor of the organization's official organ, The Conflict. Martin would go on to become the secretary general of the North Carolina Anti-Evolution League and an official of the Bible Crusaders.

Life

T. T. Martin was born to a Baptist minister and college professor; he graduated from Mississippi College in 1886 and took a teaching post before studying at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky with a view to becoming a missionary. He was due to work in Brazil, but suffered food poisoning which weakened him for the rest of his life, and he stayed on in the US. Martin was married to Ivy Manning and they had five children. Martin preached until October 1938. He died on May 23, 1939, and was buried at Gloster, Mississippi. On his gravestone were carved the three Scripture texts which were the core of his ministry: John 3:16, Acts 16:31, and John 5:24.

Work

Hell and the High Schools, first published in 1923, attacked the theory of evolution and the teaching of evolution in schools. In Martin's view this was "the greatest curse that ever fell upon this earth" and was an even greater sin than when the Germans poisoned wells and gave children poisoned candy during World War I. Martin wanted parents to pressure school boards and state legislatures to take steps to stop the teaching of evolution. The following is an example of Martin's prose style from the book: