Kirby Page

Kirby Page (1890–1957) was an American Disciples of Christ minister, an author, and a peace activist.

In 1890 Kirby Page was born in Hamlet, Texas after which his family moved frequently. The father deserted the family when Kirby was nine years old. In 1905 his mother moved the family to Pasadena, Californian for two years and then returned to Texas. In Houston, Kirby attended a business college and succeeded in advancing in the YMCA to the position of assistant to the general secretary. He became engaged to Mary Alma Folse. In 1911 he began studies at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, focusing on Bible literature and the social sciences, the languages of Greek and German, and missionary work within Drake's Student Volunteer Movement. Following graduation as a Phi Beta Kappa, he was ordained as a minister in the Disciples of Christ.

In his continued work with the YMCA, he would become the personal secretary to Sherwood Eddy, the evangelism secretary. Together, they ministered to Allied soldiers in Britain and France and traveled on evangelistic campaigns in the Far East. In 1919, as pastor of the Brooklyn-based Ridgewood Heights Church of Christ Kirby was able to build a neighborhood community center, the plans for which he described in his article Page, Kirby. "The Challenge of New York City."

In 1921, with support from Sherwood Eddy, he began a career as an independent social evangelist for the Social Gospel at a time when "a mere fraction of clergymen felt impelled to enter the zone of controversy as spokesmen for the social ethics of our Lord." Page and Eddy led the Christian pacifist group called "Fellowship for a Christian Social Order" in 1921. This organization was later to merge with the Fellowship of Reconciliation in 1928. According to Gaustad and Noll's A Documentary History of Religion in America, after World War I,

the sentiment for peace spread ever more widely throughout American society, [and] minister after minister, church after church, lined up to issue a renunciation of war. War was "utterly destructive," entirely "nefarious," hopelessly "archaic," and totally "incompatible with the teaching and example of our Lord Jesus Christ." A Disciples of Christ minister, Kirby Page (1890-1957), proved a most effective and vigorous leader in rallying the churches behind the cause for peace. Peace was his passion, a passion manifest in hundreds of lectures and magazine articles (he even edited the important pacifist organ, The World Tomorrow, from 1926 to 1934) and more than two dozen books whose impact reached far beyond the borders of the United States. (Vol 2, pp. 134-135)

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