Robert Handy, Baptist historian, seminary professor, dies

NEW YORK (ABP) -- Robert Handy, who studied under legendary Christian scholars like Paul Tillich before becoming a prominent Baptist historian in his own right, died at a retirement community in West Caldwell, N.J., Jan. 8. He was 90. Handy was a professor of church history at Union Theological Seminary -- the ecumenical Protestant graduate school in New York -- from 1950 until 1986. During that time he taught generations of pastors, missionaries, chaplains and other ministers and published works on church history and American religion that scholars still consider standards in the field. In a tribute to Handy’s scholarship published after he retired, Altered Landscapes: Christianity in America 1935-1985, former students, colleagues and friends lauded the historian’s career. Read more…