Andrews Professor Publishes G. I. Butler Biography

Denis Fortin’s biography of George Ide Butler (1834-1918) is the fourteenth volume in the Adventist Pioneer Series and is thus far (sixteen more biographies are scheduled to follow) among the very best.

With John Loughborough, George Butler belongs to the last of the generation of the pioneers. As a child he accompanied his parents to Millerite meetings. When he died in 1918, the Seventh-day Adventist Church was firmly established in many countries with a total membership of some 165.000 members.

Denis Fortin, a professor of historical theology at Andrews University, devotes the first three chapters of his book to sketching the background for the life story of his subject. With grandfather Ezra Butler as a governor of the state of Vermont (1826-1828) George I. Butler hails from a prominent family. Fortin describes the Butler family in some detail, and paints in broad strokes the characteristics of life in 19th century America, in particular with regard to religious trends and aspects of Sabbatarian Adventism and the earliest period of the fledgling Seventh-day Adventist Church. He pictures the somewhat chaotic community that slowly developed, and, in the words of George R. Knight in the Introduction, also gives us “a somewhat messy picture of Adventist leaders.”

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