A. W. Tozer: who was he?

Like thousands of others I have worked with Operation Mobilisation (OM). And wherever that wonderful group goes they sell Christian books – in the street, in churches, on their ships.

There was one author who was always on an OM bookstall – A. W Tozer. Some of the titles were virtually given away. The leadership of OM, especially George Verwer, were passionate about A.W. Tozer.

They were passionate for a reason. Tozer spoke out with razor sharp insight against lukewarm Christianity and called for believers to join, what he called, the fellowship of ‘the burning heart.’

I have never read a dud sentence from Tozer. I could leave this lap-top right now and find a worn-out copy of ‘The Pursuit of God’ or ‘Born After Midnight’ and the prose would be just as engaging and challenging as it was over forty years ago when I was first introduced to him.

In case you have forgotten how good he is, savour a few of these well-known quotes:

What I believe about God is the most important thing about me.

How good it would be if we could remember that God is easy to live with.

God wants the whole person and He will not rest till He gets us in entirety.

To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men.

It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until He has hurt him deeply.

The devil is a better theologian than any of us and is a devil still.

And my favourite, which I often use when teaching –

Truth has two wings

But who was he?

After revering this author for over forty years I realized I knew next to nothing about Tozer except that he was an American preacher. I didn’t even know what the A. W stood for (Aiden Wilson). I had no idea what sort of family he came from; what sort of education he had received; where he had lived and ministered; whether he had married and had children. And, apart from what could be gleaned from his writings, I had no idea about the man’s character.

My situation is no longer so dire. I have just finished an excellent biography on Tozer by Lyle Dorsett[1] and know a little more.

There were a few surprises.

The first surprise: Tozer was not from a Christian family.

The writing is so rooted in what historic Christianity is, the defence of orthodoxy so robust, that it seemed almost a certainty that Tozer was from a strong Christian family.

Completely wrong.

Tozer was one of six children born (1897) and bred on a poor farm in Clearfield Country, Pennsylvania. His father, Jacob, was a disciplinarian, devoted to hard work and his mother, Prude, was ‘shy, beautiful, and humble’. But they were not church goers; and while Tozer’s grand-mother, who lived with them, was meant to be a Presbyterian, there is little record of her going to church either.

In 1912 the family, like many others, left the hardship of the land and moved to Akron, Ohio. Here there was work for the men in a tyre factory; and it was here that A.W. Tozer heard a street preacher. Looking back he wrote, ‘I was little better than a pagan…I became greatly disturbed…I discerned that there was a Light – ever so dimly’.

A few days after hearing that street preacher A. W Tozer gave his life to Christ all by himself in the family attic. Tozer himself underlined that he was not from a Christian family. ‘I was converted by the grace of God when I was seventeen years old and there was no other Christian in my family…in the matter of faith I was completely alone.’

The second surprise: barely had a secondary education

Dr A. W Tozer, as he was known in later years, barely had a secondary education and never went to university. You would never guess this from the writing. The prose is succinct; the arguments clearly structured; and throughout Tozer draws on a vast range of writers and poetry, especially the early Church Fathers and Christian mystics, such as Julian of Norwich. This marked his preaching with a freshness and originality often lacking in his seminary trained peers.

Nor would you guess it from his audiences. Every week hundreds of students from Wheaton College (probably America’s finest Christian university) and Moody Bible Institute poured into his church, the Southside Alliance, in Chicago. And he was a favourite at Christian student conventions. Dorsett writes, ‘Probably no preacher in the United States and Canada captured the minds and hearts of college-age people like A.W. Tozer’. In recognition of his intellectual contribution to Christendom as a preacher and writer Tozer was awarded an honorary doctorate from both Wheaton and Houghton College.

And yet he had barely had a formal education.

Perhaps barely is too harsh a word. In rural Pennsylvania Tozer went to a one room school house where – like millions of others – he was taught from McGuffey’s Readers[2]. There were six of them and as well as giving Tozer vocabulary and literary understanding, he received a strongly Judeo-Christian world-view. Good and evil were never ambiguous, and Jesus stood above philosophers like Socrates and Plato. Tozer mastered those six grades – though the farm work often interfered with his studies, and like many others he left school aged just fifteen. Perhaps the world ‘barely’ is appropriate.

As seen, this did not hold Tozer back. He loved God, and was a firm believer in the importance of the intellect. So he studied. He was a voracious reader and a master at scouring Chicago’s second-hand bookshops for bargains. He read theology, history, literature, science – and he liked to ponder what he had studied. He once said ‘You should think ten times more than you read’. And so it was that this farm boy rose to be the teacher of those who were enjoying the finest education money could buy.

The third surprise: fragile family life

Great preacher, great marriage, great family life. That’s the assumption. Dorsett’s biography shows it was not so simple. This was also a surprise. On the surface it seemed a model family life. Ada, his wife, stood faithfully by Tozer’s side for forty-five years. She cooked, washed, went to the ladies’ meetings – and mothered seven children. The Tozers lived frugally (they never owned a car) but there is no record of Ada ever complaining. On Sundays they all sat around the table, with one or two poorer people from the church – the perfect picture of the Christian pastor’s family.

However under the surface Dorsett suggests family life was more fragile. He interviewed all the children and discovered they did not have rich memories of family times together. One would have expected that a man famous for his prayer life would have made sure his own family had an excellent devotional time together. This was not the case. Every so often Tozer did try to gather the family – ‘These never lasted more than a few weeks. As one son explained, the children just did not want it and they were seldom all together for extended periods in any case’.

As for family holidays, there were none. Perhaps this was because of Tozer’s frugality but it is more likely that the idea of being a tourist did not appeal to him. Once, when her older siblings had left home, their youngest daughter Rebecca did organise a holiday. It was not a success. Tozer was so moody that Rebecca had to ask him to cheer up. It seems this was the first and the last ‘family’ holiday.

Another normal family activity A.W. Tozer did not get involved in was engaging with the wider family, on either his side or his wife’s. He remained aloof. He was reluctant to visit them, and equally reluctant to invite them to his house. Dorset says it is clear this caused pain to his own family.

And at the heart of this family there seems to have been a shadow over the marriage itself. Rebecca, said that her mother ‘was a romantic soul to the core’. Tozer was not. Indeed he ‘eschewed sentimentalism’. It seems there was a distance between them, which the children felt. Rebecca even said, ‘Mother was a sad woman, she struggled to be cheerful’. This distance was seen every summer at the summer conferences where Tozer was a speaker. Usually Ada would stay at home.

After her husband’s death in 1963 Ada was more candid about her marriage to A.W. Tozer.

‘My husband was so close to God, a man of such deep prayer, always on his knees, that he could not communicate with me or our family. No one knew what a lonely life I had, especially after the kids left home’

Our view of Tozer as a husband will probably plummet even further when we consider his attitude towards his finances and his family. As a pastor, indeed one of their most successful[3], Tozer was given a salary by his denomination, The Christian Missionary Alliance (C&MA). He regularly gave half of it back to the church; but he never told Ada. She served up macaroni cheese day after day to her family, never knowing that she could have made her family’s diet more interesting. C&MA also wanted to make pension provisions for their pastors. Tozer refused to sign up. Moreover he gave away all his rights for the royalties for his books. Money which could have gone to his wife and family, poured into the account of Christian Publications.

All of this fragility in the family and the marriage was a surprise; but we should be very wary of judging Tozer.

Certainly it is not fair to judge him for being unromantic. That was his character. Moreover in his age romance in marriage was not as centre stage in people’s thinking as it is today. And there were plenty of examples of dynamic Christian leaders who were willing to make sacrifices regarding their marriage for the work of the church. Perhaps the most famous is C. T Studd, pioneer missionary in Africa and founder of WEC (World Evangelisation Crusade). For sixteen years he laboured in Africa; his wife, Priscilla, in England. They were apart. There were many others. And there are thousands of missionary children who were sent to boarding schools. Set in this context, in his own age, it is unwise to make any accusations against A.W. Tozer regarding a lack of romance in his marriage.

And it is unwise to judge Tozer for his attitude to his time and money. He grew up in a strongly patriarchal society, later buttressed by his reading of the Bible. The husband was the head of the household and it was up to him to decide how the family spent its time and money. For whatever reason Tozer did not believe in spending time visiting or being visited by relatives. Nor did he believe it was Ada’s role to have an opinion either about what he did with his salary; or how he provided for their senior years.

And Tozer did provide for his wife - in an unexpected way.

To their credit, after Tozer’s death in 1963, C&MA gave Ada the pension she would have been due if her husband had signed up to their scheme. So she was not destitute.

However the story is richer.

In 1959, after thirty-one years of ministering in Chicago, the Tozers moved to Avenue Road Church in Toronto. When preaching Tozer noticed a man sitting near the front all on his own. This man was Leonard Odam, a widower. Tozer encouraged Ada to sit next to him during the service, so he would not feel so alone.

A year after A. W. Tozer’s death Ada became Mrs Odam. She was more than provided for financially; it seems she also found the romantic love she had always yearned for. In 1974 she said, ‘I have never been happier in my life. Aiden loved Jesus Christ, but Leonard Odam loves me.’

This surprise about Tozer and his finances turns into a challenge. It seems that God asked Tozer not to take all his salary, or his book royalties, or secure a pension. Tozer was no fool. He would have asked, ‘What about my family?’. And it seems the reply was, ‘Trust me’. Tozer did just that.

Dorsett is aware that he is stepping into sensitive territory when he – quite rightly – shows this fragility of the Tozer family. And, perhaps apprehensive that some readers might become overly judgemental, Dorsett emphasizes that while there were strains, there was absolutely nothing untoward in the Tozer household. The children were all cared for, and moreover they all became Christians and have lived successful balanced lives. Moreover Aiden and Ada were totally loyal to each other. And just in case anyone leaves his book thinking that Ada did not love her first husband, Dorsett tells us that she, 'spoke glowingly of Aiden's accomplishments...and even endearingly had his mortal remains removed from Chicago and placed among the graves of her beloved family in an Ohio cemetery.' 

There are surprises, but none of them distract for a moment from the fact that Aiden Wilson Tozer was a man who lived close to God and through his preaching and writing has encouraged millions of others to do so.

He still does.

If you have never read any Tozer, make sure you do before you die.

And if like me you read him many years ago, why not read him again? You won’t be disappointed.

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[1] A Passion For God: The Spiritual Journey of A. W. Tozer by Lyle Dorsett, Moody Publishers, May 2008. Kindle Edition. Nearly everything in this essay is drawn from this book. If something is in quotation marks, unless I am quoting Dorsett.

[2] In chapter two Dorsett has a fascinating section on the impact of these McGruffy readers. Dorsett’s point is that through these readers morally Tozer would have had an education strongly influenced by Christian values.

[3] When Tozer arrived at Southside Alliance Church in Chicago under a hundred attended on Sunday. When he left there were around 800. Furthermore Tozer took over the editorship of the denomination’s magazine and subscription doubled.