J. Gresham Machen’s genuine admiration for the Christian Reformed Church sits alongside the OPC’s own early, difficult years between 1936 and 1962, caught between fundamentalism and a Kuyperian alternative represented by the clash of McIntyre and Kuyper’s own heirs. Secularism’s advance forms the pressure both movements were reacting against. Machen’s own end is read as tragedy in the full sense, more than an unfortunate ending.