Book Review: John Byington by Brian Strayer

John Byington: First General Conference President, Circuit-Riding Preacher, and Radical Reformer by Brian E. Strayer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Arriving at the first General Conference session, John Byington wasn’t planning on becoming the denomination’s first president when he left, he was. John Byington: First General Conference President, Circuit-Riding Preacher, and Radical Reformer by Bryan Strayer shows not only the life of the relatively unknown Adventist pioneer but his family as well.

Strayer begins with a very impressive family history from its origins in Ireland and Yorkshire, but also its history during the Colonial period before arriving to Byington’s father Justus whose patriot zeal and Methodist faith rubbed off on his sons. After spending time at sea after going out on his own, Byington married and went to live in northern New York where he would live until moving to the Battle Creek area. Over 30 years, Byington raised a family, being a circuit-ring Methodist minister, and a noted area reformer for temperance and abolition. Once Byington was presented with the seventh-day Sabbath and studied it before he along with a considerable part of his family joined the fledging denomination. Once among the Adventists, he continued to be a circuit-riding preacher who from time to time shared messaged in Adventist periodicals. His presence leading various churches made the White ask him to come to Michigan were various troubles were hampering the denomination. While packing up from his very profitable farm he built up and starting new at his age could have been a breaking point, Byington saw the call from God and with a significant portion of his own family but extended family settled in Michigan where he continued his circuit-riding preaching when not farming. His surprising election and time as first General Conference president did not change his way of life as at the time, the administration of such a small denomination was not as daunting as it would become. After his tenure ended, Byington just kept on circuit-riding and running his farm until six years before his death when he and his wife moved to Battle Creek due to their age, though that did not stop Byington from doing a small circuit around the growing city up until the year before his death. Throughout the book, Strayer would give background to various elements of Byington’s world like the history of St. Lawrence county in New York where Byington was a Methodist then Adventist circuit-rider, or how Adventists were portrayed in local Battle Creek newspapers, and finally the lives of Byington’s children and descendants to show his long legacy in Adventism.

The biography of John Byington would simply have been too short if Strayer had not spent time describing the Byington family history before and after John’s life. The addition of the local newspaper coverage of Adventist was an interesting inclusion but added some context that had not been covered in previous biographies and histories of Adventism in Battle Creek that I have read. Strayer’s examination in the claim that Byington was a conductor in the Underground Railroad was well done and while not proving he was, the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming in favor. Over the course of the book, Strayer continually went over Byington’s circuit-riding itinerary that as the book went on it felt a lot like padding. What would have been welcomed was Strayer figuring out why Byington was chosen when James White refused becoming president, it might not have been ironclad historical but postulating a historical argument would have been acceptable.

The life of John Byington was both simple and complicated, but what Bryan Strayer brings to the fore was that he was Christ-center simple preacher that led many to Christ and sustained the faith of many in New York and Michigan. If you’ve ever wondered who the first General Conference president was, this book will definitely inform you.

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