Remembering Bob Marsh
A longtime champion of Theological Horizons, Rev. Dr. C. Robert Marsh believed passionately in the ministry’s “unique contribution to the moral and intellectual debates of our time.”
We celebrate his life and legacy with much gratitude.
The Rev. Dr. Charles Robert Marsh, a Southern Baptist minister who served as senior pastor at Atlanta’s Second Ponce de Leon Baptist Church from 1978 to 1993, died on December 23 while in hospice care at Lenbrook in Atlanta, Georgia. Marsh, a passionate teacher of the Bible, and a local religious leader in the desegregation of public schools in the South, was 92-years old.
Marsh began his pastoral career with a chronic stutter and fear of public speaking, but through fierce self-discipline became an eloquent and beloved preacher in an older, gentler evangelical culture. That self-discipline included long jogs through the streets of the southern towns he served with the typed manuscript of the sermon in his hand. Mile after mile, in his mismatched jersey and sweatpants, he read the text aloud until he had memorized each line and was ready to take the pulpit on Sunday mornings, where he would deliver the forty-five-minute message by heart with only his red leather King James Bible in hand.
“You and I are able to gather here in this beautiful sanctuary today only because the early church reckoned with the revolutionary ramifications of God’s amazing grace and tore down the barriers of prejudice,” Marsh said in one influential sermon on the theological necessity of ending an Alabama church’s whites-only, closed-door policy.
That sermon was the culmination of a month-long study series on the Bible and racial reconciliation, focusing on Paul’s theme of Christ the reconciler, that Marsh had convened after some white congregants objected when a Black family asked to join the 3,500-member First Baptist Church of Dothan, Alabama. The weekly studies, attended regularly by 150-200 church members, concluded with the sermon, “Amazing Grace for Every Race,” and, in turn, with the congregation’s acceptance of a Black family from Queens, New York, and a standing ovation.
“As Gentiles,” Marsh told the congregation, “You and I would never have become a member of the New Testament church, unless God, through the Holy Spirit, sent Philip to a Black man, sent Ananias to a Middle Eastern man, sent Peter to the man from Western Europe; and sent amazing grace to every race.”
The sermon marks one of many small acts of individual conscience that brought southern segregation in its extralegal forms to an end.
Charles Robert Marsh was born on July 17, 1932, in New Orleans, Louisiana, the first child of Howard and Elisabeth Marsh. When his father completed his optometry apprenticeship in the Crescent City, the family moved to Jackson, Mississippi, where Howard established a successful practice with locations downtown on Capitol Street and another on North State Street. His mother was a high-spirited woman who loved bridge and crime novels and held various positions in the Optimist Club of Jackson.
Marsh was raised in a nominally religious family that occasionally attended the Capital Street Methodist Church, but that preferred to spend Sundays fishing at the reservoir.
As a senior at Central High School, Marsh made a public profession of his faith in Jesus Christ in one of Billy Graham’s services in his 1952 crusade at the Jackson Fairgrounds. Following his born-again experience, Marsh became active in Youth for Christ ministries. On the encouragement of the group leader, matriculated as a freshman at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, the flagship school of southern fundamentalism, where it was joked, “a girl could be expelled for streaking with a hole in the knee of her bathing suit.” After receiving enough demerits to be permanently “campused” for a month – mostly for missing curfew or flunking room inspection – Marsh transferred to Baylor University where he double-majored in Bible and history.
In 1954, Marsh met the love of his life, Myra Brooks Toler, a native Jacksonian and former Miss Central High School. Bob and Myra were married in June 1955 at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, by which time Bob had been ordained as a Souther Baptist minister.
His first pastorate was at the First Baptist Church of Florence, Mississippi, just south of Jackson, which enabled Myra to continue her studies in theology and English literature at Belhaven College. On the Sunday after their honeymoon to Fort Walton Beach, Florida, the newly minted Reverend Marsh baptized his newlywed in full immersion, according to the requirements of Baptist polity.
While serving full-time as the pastor of the Spring Hill Avenue Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama, 1958 -1963, and the First Baptist Church of Andalusia, Alabama, 1963-1967, Marsh continued his graduate studies in practical theology and completed his doctoral dissertation at New Orleans Baptist Seminary on “Paul’s Concept of the Person and Its Implications for Christian Education” – traveling by train on the old L&N every Tuesday from Evergreen to New Orleans and back again to Alabama late Thursday night. He graduated with a Doctorate in Education in the spring 1967.
The same year, Marsh returned to Mississippi, accepting the call of pastor of the First Baptist Church of Laurel, which occupied a multi-acre lot between a vibrant downtown and a neighborhood of stately homes. Home to the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan of Mississippi, Laurel was also a town caught in the whirlwind of the civil rights movement.
With support of several white parishioners, including Charles Pickering, who would later be named by President George H. W. Bush as a federal judge to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Marsh supported the integration of public schools, refusing to join a small group of white families that formed a private “Christian” academy. Marsh’s views on Christian responsibility in society were inspired by numerous experiences: observing one of his seminary professors in New Orleans in a segregated streetcar condemn the absurdity of the whole ordeal; and visiting L’Abri, Edith and Francis Schaeffer’s Christian commune in Huemoz, Switzerland. Marsh would say that his greatest inspiration was the example of Billy Graham, who, during his 1952 Jackson Crusade, had removed the red segregation rope that separated black and white worshippers and said: “It touches my heart when I see whites stand shoulder to shoulder with blacks at the foot of the cross.”
These years and experiences would form the narrative arc of his pastoral vision: to show how the power of the Gospel should burn through the barriers of nationality, region, and race, and how people become “ambassadors of reconciliation.”
On July 23, 1978, the search committee of Atlanta’s Second Ponce de Leon Baptist Church, chaired by Lee Burge, then the CEO of Equifax, presented their recommendation to the congregation to call Robert Marsh as the fourth pastor of the esteemed congregation on Peachtree Road. A week later, the committee introduced their new minister as Dr. C. Robert Marsh, a name he had never before used, though church members from earlier days continued to call him “Brother Bob.”
Marsh’s tenure in the influential pulpit assured him of keynote addresses at denominational events and membership on high-level boards and denominational agencies, as well as an honorary doctorate from Mercer University. In May 1980, he and author Madeleine L’Engle shared the stage at commencement ceremonies at Gordon College, in Wenham, Massachusetts. But nothing fulfilled Marsh more deeply than preaching and teaching to his congregation and going about the ordinary tasks of parish life.
Marsh’s fifteen years at “Second Ponce” were marked by success and growth amid the challenges of pastoring a prosperous southern church in a developing global city. Under Marsh’s leadership, “Second Ponce” become the denomination’s most reliable supporter of missionary activity at home and abroad, consistently leading the Georgia Baptist Convention in gifts to the Cooperative Program. “Missions was Marsh’s ‘first love,’ and an increased emphasis on missions was a natural extension of the historic focus of the identity of the church,” the historian Douglas Weaver wrote in his congregational history of the Atlanta church. Such largesse was possible because the church, during the Marsh years, reached historic levels of general budget giving – hitting the two-million-dollar mark in 1982 and three million in 1987, with an additional two million dollars raised for the proposed six and a half million-dollar Family Life Center, which was completed in 1990.
Marsh maintained a low political profile during the cataclysmic years of the Southern Baptist culture wars.
He sought to illumine a third way beyond doctrinaire fundamentalism and “moderate” denominational alternatives. The third way was not always clearly delineated, and some of his non-fundamentalist colleagues wished that he would use his influence to defend the moderate camp. At the same time, he rejected the rigid doctrine of biblical inerrancy and affirmed instead the more generous doctrine of Biblical infallibility. He supported Second Ponce’s successful move to ordain women deacons, with nine women elected in 1992. He poured resources into the church’s languishing “inner city” ministries and helped reboot the church’s Vietnamese Ministry, hiring a full time pastor for the Vietnamese-speaking congregation, sponsoring ESL and job-coaching programs, and creating networks of hospitality and support for the influx of refugees arriving in Atlanta through the U.S. Political Prisoners Relocation Program. He provided office space in Second Ponce’s educational wing for Baptist scholars who had been pushed out of their teaching posts by the new fundamentalist leaders. He remained loyal to the historic Baptist separation between church and state; he did not speak publicly on abortion, school prayer, or sexual orientation. His criticisms of the U. S. preemptive invasion of Iraq were based not on liberal political views but on his sense of loyalty to the missionaries and Christian communities in the Middle East. Indeed, in Marsh’s view, loyalty to the global Body of Christ remained the only antidote against Christian nationalism.
Four decades of ministry in a changing South took their toll. “Pastoral burn-out,” sheer exhaustion, and its attendant emotional upheavals led Marsh to resign from SPDL, to the surprise of many, in March 1993. Without the consolations of the pulpit, Marsh struggled to imagine a future beyond Second Ponce.
Eventually, Marsh’s resignation would lead to the most fulfilling chapter in his seven-decade ministry.
Beginning in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1994, Bob and Myra became true co-pastors, bringing their distinctive gifts of empathy and encouragement to Christian congregations in Copenhagen, Rome, Berlin, and Stavanger, Norway, where they served in different capacities as interim ministers. They spoke at the annual European Baptist convention in Interlaken, Switzerland, in dozens of smaller gatherings in western and eastern Europe – including Macedonia and Ukraine – and visited with believers beyond Europe in Dubai, India, Liberia, South Africa, Columbia, Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, and Argentina. They developed friendships with Wycliffe Translators, Pioneer Missions, World Vision, and the European Baptist Convention. In the final ten years of his overseas ministry, Marsh entered into a generative partnership with Barnabas International that enabled financial support and oversight and opened new doors of Christian fellowship.
Letters and emails to friends and supporters back in the States conveyed the joys and discoveries of international Christian fellowship:
“Yesterday, I spent the entire afternoon at the Vienna Christian Center, speaking to a large group of women from across the city, mostly African immigrants. There was much praise, music, joy, and laughter (3 hours to be exact), as I taught from Psalm 73. Everyday has been filled with building bridges of friendship, being with people, and striving to share the love of Christ with precious people in this strategic city,” wrote Marsh sometime in the mid-90’s.
Marsh’s final chapter in ministry returned him to his first love of teaching the Bible in a local church in the South. Until shortly after his 90th birthday, he served as one of four teachers in an adult Sunday School Class of 100 – 150 members and wrote short theological essays in his “Bob’s Blog” for the Anchor website: https://anchorss.org/bobs-blog/.
Marsh is survived by his wife of 69 years, Myra Brooks, née Toler; brother Richard Scott Marsh of Florence, Mississippi; son Charles Robert Marsh, Jr., and daughter-in-law Karen Wright Marsh of Charlottesville, Virginia; and three grandchildren, Henry Brooks Marsh of Brooklyn, New York; William Toler Marsh of New Orleans, Louisiana; and Nan Elisabeth Marsh of Richmond, Virginia.
His son Charles, who holds the Commonwealth Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia, wrote in a 1999 memoir about his father as a Baptist preacher at the dawn of a new South:
“My father’s way was never to break the bonds of friendship. He remained loyal to his church, to those he was called to serve, whether he liked the person or not. He built trust with people over meat-and-twos, football games, ice cream socials, and youth camps – in the ordinariness of the New Humanity.”
A celebration of Marsh’s life will be held at Peachtree Presbyterian Church in Atlanta, Georgia, on Monday, January 13, at 2:00. In lieu of flowers, the family kindly requests that gifts be made to the C. Robert Marsh Pavilion Fund of Theological Horizons, at http://www.theologicalhorizons.org/giving. Donations may also be given through the University of Virginia, designated to Theological Horizons and made in Dr. Marsh’s memory using this same link.
Charles Marsh
January 6, 2025
Feast of the Epiphany
Before the Rush resources
Sorority rush begins at UVA--a process that sparks many urgent questions: Who are my friends? Where do I find my identity? Am I beautiful? How do I deal with stress and disappointment? with judgement? Where is God in all of this? These are questions that we all ask throughout our lives!
As students return to the university, we want share two precious resources: short audio talks that are just one click away. Listen to these talks from our past "Beat The Rush" events.
These talks for ALL women students--whether you are rushing a sorority, in a sorority already, not in a sorority! Like me, you are seeking love, acceptance, friendship...and struggling with insecurity, fear and doubts. It is so important to be reminded of how very beautiful and loved you are. So do yourself a favor and listen up...
The first talk is by Susan Cunningham on "Finding Your True Identity". Susan was named Best Psychologist in Charlottesville, and her words are so wise and so kind...Don't miss the truth about who YOU really are. Click HERE to listen to Susan's talk.
The second talk is by Miska Collier on "Knowing the Light and Love of God". Miska is a spiritual counselor--30 seconds into her talk you'll be hooked. Click HERE to listen to Miska's talk.
Karen Wright Marsh, Executive Director
Fall 2024 Highlight Reel!
Please enjoy this video celebrating a semester savoring the presence of God, seeking wisdom from the communion of saints, and sharing fellowship in our vibrant community. Hear students’ stories about TH’s enriching role in their lives, peek into the Bonhoeffer House during our beloved Vintage Lunches, and glimpse the fellowship at events with our board and broader community.
As we reflect on the semester, we thank God for His sustaining grace, steady guidance, and abundant blessings this fall at our gatherings in Charlottesville, across the country at Saints of the City and speaking engagements, and through cherished digital connections with friends around the world.
Filled with gratitude, we wish our whole TH family a truly joyous new year relishing the thrill of hope that Jesus infuses into the world year-round through the empowerment of the Holy Spirit in the life of His people. We eagerly await His continued guidance, provision, and inspiration in our life together in 2025, as we celebrate 25 years at the University of Virginia and look to the future with gladness.
Dear White Peacemakers | Grace Jackson ‘25
Last semester the Perkins Fellows read a book together called Dear White Peacemakers by Osheta Moore. One of the best parts of being a Perkins Fellow at UVA for multiple years is getting to read and reread some really wonderful books. In my second time reading Osheta’s book, her posture towards her white counterparts in justice work really stood out to me. My good friend and fellow Perkins Fellow, Megnot Abebe, challenged me to write my own letter to White Peacemakers. This was not a challenge I wanted to receive, but writing it was important work for my soul. As a White person myself, I often struggle to see myself as a Peacemaker or Beloved. Osheta encourages me (and hopefully you too!) to see the belovedness in every individual: my friends, my family, myself, and strangers alike. My words in this letter are honest and raw. I hope I can encourage you to be honest as well. More importantly, I hope to affirm your Belovedness.
Dear White Peacemaker,
I’m sorry for all the ways I judge you and look down on you. For assuming the worst in you. I’m sorry.
To the White lady in the kufiya screaming at the police, blocks away from where Prime Minister Netanyahu was speaking to congress: I’m sorry I turned to my liberal White friend beside me, raising my eyebrows and smirking. You scare me a little because I see myself in you. In 40 years I could be the White liberal spewing words just as hateful as what I am protesting against. I don’t want to be so tone deaf.
To my White friends who refer to any kind of service as “giving back”: I’m sorry I cringe when you say things like this. It’s just that we’re not “giving back” like this is some kind of transaction. And if it were, our ancestors have spent centuries stealing land and brutalizing bodies, minds, and souls, so we’d have to get a lot more serious if we wanted to start “giving back” what we have taken (which I am all for, but that’s a conversation for another time). I don’t want to be scared about how each of my words could be twisted, trying to be politically correct like you. I’m sorry I’m twisting your words right now and not listening to the compassion that you are trying to express.
To my White friends who study cultures, languages, races, and traditions from which you do not come, but spend every waking moment with your White friends, White families, White coworkers, and White boyfriends: I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you say you care about the same things I do, but commit to such a homogenous community. I am sorry for judging you based on who you spend time with; I should not judge a person’s commitment to justice (At all! Full stop.) … by the perceived Whiteness and richness of their circles.
To my White friends who don’t engage at all: I won’t lie, I understand you the least. But I know your apathy doesn’t come from a lack of goodness, mercy, love, and justice. Even if that last word scares you, I know it’s because you’re scared to say the wrong thing or cause more division. I’m sorry that I am angry and impatient with you.
White Peacemaker, I lay before you my honest confessions because, honestly, I have been you and I am still you. I have fit into each of these above categories before, and I’m sure I will continue to land in each one as I stumble along this path we call life. I easily become the raging White liberal, but I am also inclined to letting apathy or fear immobilize me. In each of us, there are strengths to celebrate and weaknesses we can hold each other accountable for.
In my journey to resist White supremacy culture, be in relationship with people across all lines of difference, and reject a lifestyle of homogeneity and complacency, I can so easily reject you, White Peacemaker. And, in a way, reject myself too. I’m sorry. And I want to grow beyond this false binary I put myself in.
White Peacemaker, it is hard for me to write this letter because I see myself in each of you. I see each of my own flaws magnified, so I lash out with sharp words against you and me both. I don’t want to end here, in frustration, as I too often do. In the spirit of Osheta Moore, I want to end by affirming your (our) Belovedness, and thanking you for being you.
To the furious friends: I see you. I’m sorry you are filled with such rage. Thank you for taking your anger to the streets.
To the “giving back” friends: I see you. I’m sorry nobody has taught you that your pursuit of justice is not about what you can accomplish but that our flourishing is collective and deeply intertwined with all of humanity, rooted in our universal Belovedness as children of God. Thank you for your hard work.
To the studious friends: I see you. I’m sorry for judging you. Thank you for allowing your mind and degree and career to be shaped by what is true and right and just.
To the quiet friends: I am trying to see you. I’m sorry for giving up trying to talk to you about the deeper things of life. Thank you for your sensitive heart.
White Peacemaker, I believe there is more in you. I say this because time and time again, Peacemakers of all races have seen my brokenness, affirmed my Belovedness, and have called me to higher. In my own expressions of rage, ignorance, fear, and apathy, I have been seen, fully. I have been forgiven, somehow. I have been thanked for the good despite it all. And I have been invited into this kingdom work. White Peacemaker, will you join me in building? There is room for the loud dismantlers, careful carpenters, and timid painters alike. And I’ll tell you a secret: you don’t have to be perfect to pick up a hammer.
With love,
Grace Jackson
A fellow White Peacemaker
Fionette King ‘26 | Reflections on Hope
“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” - Romans 15:13
The Bible reminds us that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. In this world that we face, through pain and struggle, the most important thing for us to remember is the hope we have in Jesus for a brighter tomorrow. As life throws challenges at us that test our faith and resilience, let us rest in the knowledge that we are more thanconquerors, and that Jesus is our living hope.
Prior to becoming a Perkins Fellow, I did not yet grasp how deeply I would come to care about fostering change and building healthier, more just communities. Over time, my journey has opened my eyes to the incredible work being done, both on grand scales and in small, often unseen ways. Every day, I am struck by the resilience and creativity of people working tirelessly to plant seeds of transformation. Yet, as I reflect on this, I am convinced that such efforts are rooted in something far greater: the hope that God places within us, coupled with our willingness to act on that hope. Without this divine gift, our capacity to envision and work toward a better future would falter.
It is easy to become discouraged when we see all of the pain and strife that takes place around the world. The weight of injustice can lead us to despair, threatening to extinguish our drive to pursue a more compassionate society. In all this, scripture always reassures us. Isaiah 40:31 states, “But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” As fallen humans, hope is not something we can retain in our own power. Naturally, we are prone to discouragement and our hope burns out quickly. It is only in God’s power that we remain able to work towards healthier communities in bold faith and divine courage.
Hope is a muscle that we train through fervent prayer and resilient action. It is a contagious spirit that flows from us as we continue to work and learn together. Let us be encouraged by the work being done, but never grow complacent. God has emboldened us to be changemakers and shine His light by loving on the communities around us.
New Years Day | A Blessing
Greetings and gratitude on this New Year’s Day!
As we enter into this new year, we do so with gratitude for so many provisions. But, we also come with uncertainty and losses carried with us. May this Scripture and Blessing offer you strength and courage as you begin again.
“He will keep your feet on solid ground and guide you to the end of the trail so that you will have a good reputation when the day comes for our Honored Chief Creator Sets Free (Jesus) the Chosen One to be revealed”
A Blessing for a New Year
On the day when
The weight deadens
On your shoulders
And you stumble,
May the clay dance
To balance you.
And when your eyes
Freeze behind
The grey window
And the ghost of loss
Gets in to you,
May a flock of colours,
Indigo, red, green,
And azure blue,
Come to awaken in you
A meadow of delight.
When the canvas frays
In the currach of thought
And a stain of ocean
Blackens beneath you,
May there come across the waters
A path of yellow moonlight
To bring you safely home.
May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
May the clarity of light be yours,
May the fluency of the ocean be yours,
May the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
Wind work these words
Of love around you,
An invisible cloak
To mind your life.
-John O’Donohue
With thankful hearts,
From all of us at Theological Horizons