Note: This online-only article is part of a series showcasing past Banner editors. You can read all the content celebrating The Banner’s 160th anniversary here.
Rev. John Yeury De Baun, a pastor of the True Reformed Dutch Church in America in New Jersey, published the first issue of The Banner of Truth in July 1866, and for 11 years De Baun published the magazine alone, bearing both editorial and financial responsibilities. De Baun felt it was important to have an English-language periodical for the church’s young people who were speaking English more and more at the time and needed to be built up “in the most precious fundamental truths of the gospel,” as he wrote in his first editorial.
In July 1877, Classis Hackensack of that denomination appointed a committee to help supervise the magazine, and others began assisting him, furnishing articles, but De Baun remained the corresponding editor.
That same year, the Grand Rapids classes of the Christian Reformed Church began English worship services on an experimental basis. There was a real opposition within the classes toward this movement. Some viewed it as an open sign of apostasy from the faith, according to Willis de Boer, writing in The Banner in 1966. Nevertheless, they secured Reverend De Baun’s services for a brief trial period. In five years the congregation grew from 17 members in full communion and 19 members by baptism to 100 families and 455 souls.
When De Baun moved to Michigan, the Banner of Truth moved with him.
De Boer wrote that at the same time De Baun led the first English language classes at the CRC’s theological school, what is today Calvin Theological Seminary. While he was still in New Jersey, he sent some of his theological books for use by students, establishing the first library for the seminary.
De Baun retired from The Banner in 1887 and subsequently returned to Leonia, N.J., where he had served part-time earlier in his ministry.
J.G. Vanden Bosch, in a profile written in The Reformed Journal in 1957, noted that the closing years of de Baun’s life were not illuminated with bright hope of the Reformed faith that had animated him during his ministry. “He had his share of grief,” wrote Vanden Bosch. Five of his nine children died young and his wife died when he was 62. But the gradual decline of Classis Hackensack undoubtedly was largely responsible for his gloomy outlook.
Vanden Bosch wrote: “Perhaps he foresaw the defection of younger members of the Leonia (N.J.) congregation who organized as a Presbyterian Church soon after his death. And surely the growing indifference to orthodoxy in the major denominations of America also accounts in part for his mood.”
After De Baun’s death, the magazine remained controlled by the family until, in 1903, the magazine was sold to a group of businessmen in Grand Rapids. They increased publication frequency to biweekly and shortened the name to The Banner.