Early Life and Religious Faith
Dwight Armstrong was born to Horace Elon Armstrong and Eva Wright Armstrong in Des Moines, Iowa on 12 September 1904, with a twin sister Mary Lucille Armstrong. The Armstrongs had come to the United States from England with William Penn, and were descended from Edward I, King of England. Like his brother Herbert, Dwight was raised in the Quaker religion. In his early adult life, he was employed in Portland, Oregon.
There are conflicting accounts pertaining to the conversion and baptism of Dwight Armstrong. According to one report, around the spring of 1927 Dwight Armstrong "accepted Christ while attending a Quaker congregation in Portland, Oregon". Subsequently, both Armstrong brothers were baptized during the Pentecost season of that year by Dr. Dean, pastor of the Hinson Memorial Baptist Church in Portland, Oregon. In the 1986 edition of Herbert W. Armstrong's Autobiography edited by Dr. Herman L. Hoeh, on pages 416-417 it suggests that Dwight answered an altar call given by his brother in December 1930 in Harrisburg, Oregon and was subsequently baptized by his brother.
In 1931 the family moved to a farm south of Oregon City, Oregon. The father died in early 1933, and Dwight remained on the farm until about 1947. After the founding of Ambassador College that year, Dwight moved with his mother to San Gabriel, California.
As of the mid-1950s, he was caring for his mother, who was living with him at the time. In 1953, Karen Hill (sister of longtime Worldwide Church of God minister David Jon Hill) came to Ambassador College in Pasadena to serve as a receptionist and telephone operator. In time, her duties grew to include caring for Mrs. Armstrong.
According to David Jon Hill, "Karen and Dwight became acquainted in this manner and got married in 1954. This made for some sort of further relationship with me and the Armstrongs that I never did figure out -- if I had kept at it I probably would have found out that I was my own grandpa. Dwight, as most know, was the composer of most of the Hymns in the Church Hymnal, used for so many years, and an accomplished violinist. He was a quiet man and kept mostly to himself -- a good match for my sister's social ability and talkative nature."
Read more about this topic: Dwight L. Armstrong
Famous quotes containing the words early, life, religious and/or faith:
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is no small mischief to a boy, that many of the best years of his life should be devoted to the learning of what can never be of any real use to any human being. His mind is necessarily rendered frivolous and superficial by the long habit of attaching importance to words instead of things; to sound instead of sense.”
—William Cobbett (1762–1835)
“The short lesson that comes out of long experience in political agitation is something like this: all the motive power in all of these movements is the instinct of religious feeling. All the obstruction comes from attempting to rely on anything else. Conciliation is the enemy.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning. It is a very serious task, young man, and possibly a tragic one.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)