John Roach Straton (surname rhymes with "Dayton"); born April 6, 1875, in Evansville, Indiana; died October 29, 1929, in Clifton Springs, New York) was a Baptist pastor. Straton was the son of the Reverend Henry Dundas Douglas Straton and the former Julia Rebecca Carter of Virginia. He became a Christian when he was a teenager and heard the revival preaching of James Hawthorne. Early life and education Straton graduated from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia in 1898. He also attended Southern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1902 to 1903 as well as University of Chicago and the Boston School of Oratory. Ministry Straton was ordained in 1900 and spent most of his adult life as pastor of several churches in four major cities: Second Baptist in Chicago (1905–1908), Immanuel-Seventh Baptist in Baltimore (1908–1913), First Baptist in Norfolk, Virginia (1914-1917), and most notably of the Calvary Baptist Church in New York City 1918–1929, which was the first church to operate its own radio station."Tell It From Calvary" is a radio show that the church still produces weekly; its heard on WMCA AM570. Straton was supportive of the work of Uldine Utley, an immensely popular 14-year-old child preacher in the 1920s, and invited her to preach at Calvary Church. Along with William Bell Riley of Minnesota, Dr. Straton was one of the foremost leaders of the anti-evolution campaign of the 1920s. For years Straton carried on a feud with the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, New York City because of its Hall of the Age of Man, which displayed the remains of fossilized men. Straton charged the museum with "mis-spending the taxpayers' money, and poisoning the minds of school children by false and bestial theories of evolution." From December 1923 to May 1924, Dr. Straton engaged in a series of debates with the Modernist minister Charles Francis Potter of the West Side Unitarian Church. Friendly enemies, Straton and Potter debated the following subjects: (1) "Resolved, that the Bible is the infallible word of God"; (2) "Resolved, that the world and man came by creation of a living God and not by evolution"; (3) "Resolved, that the miraculous virgin birth of Jesus Christ is an essential Christian doctrine"; (4) "Resolved, that Jesus Christ is the Divine Son of God"; and (5) "Resolved, that Jesus Christ will return in bodily presence to this earth and establish the reign of universal peace and righteousness."