Thursday, August 09, 2012

Gordon McNeill Poteat (1891-1986)


Gordon Poteat was born on April 11, 1891. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut but grew up in Greenville, South Carolina. He graduated from Furman University in 1910, and went on to receive his Master’s degree from Wake Forest College and completed his theological training at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Poteat left for Kaifeng, China in 1915 to be a missionary of the Foreign Missionary Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, and he remained there for four years. He left Kaifeng in 1921 to become a professor of New Testament and Ethics at the University of Shanghai.

Poteat returned to the United States in 1927 and worked for a year as educational secretary for the Student Volunteer Movement and editor of its monthly magazine. He left for Denver to become pastor of City Park Baptist Church for two years before returning to the University of Shanghai as a representative of the Northern Baptist Convention. In 1937, he left Shanghai for the States, and became a Professor of Social Ethics and Homiletics at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania. Poteat wrote several books regarding missionary work and China.

Poteat married Helen Anne Carruthers, and they had at least two children: Anne Poteat Rose (1917) and Wallace Bagby (January 28, 1923). He died in November 1986 in Florida.

Source: Furman University Special Collections.


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