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Time to Bury the Fundamentalist Hatchet?

Maybe there’s hope for us all. In the world of evangelical higher education, the relationship between fundamentalist Bob Jones University and evangelical Wheaton College has always been a rocky one. According to a story in the Wheaton Record [sorry, not available online], last week BJU president Steve Pettit visited Wheaton’s campus, the first time a Jones leader has done so in a long time. There were smiles all around. Does this mean that the times they are a-changin?

Smiles, everyone, smiles...

Smiles, everyone, smiles…

For those who don’t know their history, last week’s visit may have seemed like no big deal. The leader of one evangelical college visited another evangelical college. What’s the big whoop? As I’m discovering in the research for my new book about the history of conservative evangelical higher education, this détente may signal an important shift in the worlds of fundamentalism and evangelicalism.

Since the beginning in the 1920s, leaders of the two schools fought viciously. BJU founder Bob Jones Sr. accused sitting Wheaton president J. Oliver Buswell of jealousy. Jones wrote,

Dr. Buswell and his field staff working under him were putting out propaganda everywhere that Bob Jones’ credits had no value and that we were misrepresenting facts when we told students that our graduates were admitted to leading graduate schools. . . . [Buswell is a] conceited, frustrated, ambitious, disappointed man.

Ouch. For his part, Buswell retorted that he had never said such things, had never been anything but friendly and helpful to Jones’s new school. What he had done, Buswell admitted, was protest against the sin-friendly policies at Bob Jones College. For those who don’t know their Wheaton history, it may come as a shock to find out that in the early days, Wheaton accused Bob Jones of not being fundamentalist enough. Wheaton’s President Buswell had critiqued Bob Jones’s new school in a review of a book of Jones’s sermons. The sermons themselves were first-rate, Buswell wrote.

But Dr. Jones, let me ask you a question or two. Your own educational program is reeking with theatricals and grand opera, which lead young people, as I know, and as you ought to know, into a worldly life of sin.

Double ouch.

Things never got much better from that point on. Bob Jones Jr., son of the founder and second president of Bob Jones University, told a story of his father’s traveling days. One time, Jones Sr. was on a train with some Wheaton students. One of the students, “trying to be very smart,” asked Jones how Bob Jones College could allow dramatic productions and still call itself fundamentalist. As Bob Jones Jr. explained,

Wheaton used to turn up their self-righteous noses at our drama, but they played inter-collegiate football, which we had had to give up at Bob Jones University because we found the people were betting on our games, littering our campus with whiskey bottles when they came out to see us play; and we found that inter-collegiate athletics were a definite blight to our spiritual lives.

By the 1970s, the relationship turned from one of frigid civility to outright hostility. In 1974, Bob Jones III officially changed the status of Wheaton in BJU’s internal coding system from “Friendly” to “Unfriendly.” Jones’s secretary explained the shift in an internal memo:

The above school or organization has been coded “F”; however, Dr. Bob III, has changed the code now to “U” to make our coding system more consistent. It has been a problem for some people because an organization or school would be coded “F” but we would treat them like “U” people.

From that point on, BJU officials would not even maintain their polite façade of cooperation with Wheaton officials. In 1977, an administrator from Wheaton wrote to Bob Jones III to ask for guidance in establishing a student drama program. He asked if Jones would offer some tips from its long experience with such programs. Through a secretary, Jones informed the Wheaton official, “because of the Neo-Orthodox position of Wheaton College, we are unable to give you the assistance you request.”

Pettit visits wheaton 2

No self-righteous noses here…

Given that protracted and ugly history, President Pettit’s visit to Wheaton’s campus seems revolutionary indeed.

Have things turned a corner? Does President Pettit’s visit really signal a thaw in this long evangelical cold war? Several signs point to yes.

First of all, Pettit is no Jones. For the first time in the history of BJU, the school is not led by a direct descendant of the founder. Maybe that gives Pettit a little more wiggle room to ignore family feuds.

Also, BJU is changing. It now claims accreditation as well as athletic teams. It has apologized for its history of racism.

Wheaton is changing, too. As did BJU in the 1970s and 1980s, Wheaton has tussled with the federal government. Just as BJU did in the 1980s, Wheaton insists that its religious beliefs must give it some leeway when it comes to federal rules.

If Wheaton sees itself pushed a little more out of the mainstream, and Bob Jones University pushes itself a little more toward that mainstream, they might just meet somewhere in the middle. There will always be some jealousy between these two giants of evangelical higher education, but it seems possible that the worst of the fundamentalist feud may have passed.

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by Adam Laats on October 25, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in From the Archives, Higher (Power) Education
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Posted by Adam Laats on October 25, 2015

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2015/10/25/time-to-bury-the-fundamentalist-hatchet/

From the Archives: A Satanic Cult Leader for the GOP

US News & World Report calls him the “evangelical darling.” By some counts, he is the second-most-popular candidate in the GOP scrum. But for anyone familiar with the history of evangelical Protestants in the USA, it can be shocking that a Seventh-day Adventist such as Ben Carson can be so popular among conservative voters. It wasn’t so long ago, after all, that conservative evangelicals considered Seventh-day Adventism to be trick of Satan, a cult to lure unwary believers.

Kings Business anti SDA 1For those unfamiliar with the denomination, SDA had its origins in the “Great Disappointment.” In the mid-1800s, William Miller predicted the imminent return of Christ. Some true believers sold everything to prepare for the end of the world. When October 22, 1844 came and went, some folks reasonably concluded that Miller had been wrong.

But not everybody. One splinter group, guided by Prophet Ellen G. White, explained that Christ had come and gone, but it had been a spiritual event, invisible to the mundane eye. White experienced visions of God and angels, creation and the end of time.

Her followers coalesced into the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Unlike other Christian groups, SDA members had reason to believe that creation had been a literal six-day event. They had reason to believe that it had taken place within the past 10,000 years. After all, White had been shown it all.

This is the church from which Dr. Carson comes. Unlike some presidential contenders in the past, he has made no noise about separating himself from the teachings of his church. Quite the contrary. He has publicly and repeatedly embraced them.

So far, so good.

What remains shocking for those who know their SDA history is that Dr. Carson has been publicly and repeatedly embraced by evangelical Protestants. It was not so very long ago, after all, that evangelical intellectuals blasted SDA beliefs in the harshest terms.Kings Business anti SDA 2

Writing in the 1919 publication of the founding conference of the World’s Christian Fundamentals Association, George Guille described SDA this way:

It is Satan’s stroke against the throne and the heart of God.

Hrm.

And a few years later, in 1921, in the pages of The King’s Business, the magazine of the Bible Institute of Los Angeles (today’s Biola University) one writer described SDA in similar no-holds-barred language. Jessie Sage Robertson warned Biola’s cult expert Keith L. Brooks that SDA was a dangerous cult. As she put it,

Strange, isn’t it, that a whole body of religionists should decry Spiritism as of the devil, and yet accept a whole system of Biblical interpretation received by one [Ellen G. White] in a state of non-self control?

Too many evangelical pastors, Robertson believed, were not aware of these “false religious systems” with “their soul-destroying dangers.”

If I were an SDA neurosurgeon, I might feel a little trepidation at accepting the friendship of such recent enemies. I might not feel excited to be welcomed by people who had so recently accused my religion of such terrible crimes.

Now, I’m not as dumb as I look. I am aware that these warnings are all from a long time ago. I am aware that our last round of elections brought a leader of the Latter-day Saints Church (the Mormons) to staunchly fundamentalist Liberty University to speak.

But I am also aware that schools such as the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago STILL sell charts warning true believers of the dangers of “cults” such as Mormonism and Seventh-day Adventism.

The point, however, is not that evangelicals should or should not embrace Dr. Carson. Rather, the point for all of us is that evangelical belief is always changing.

For progressive secular folks (like me), we need always to remember that evangelicalism is not somehow a product of a past America. Evangelical Protestants are not trapped in time, either from the Victorian 1870s or the Leave-It-to-Beaver 1950s.

And conservative evangelicals need always to remember that their religion is changing, no matter what they might hear. It can be tricky in evangelical circles to talk about religious change, since so much of evangelicalism is based on remaining true to God’s Unchanging Word. Smart evangelicals, however, will be the first to tell you that human interpretation of God’s Word is always changing, and always riddled with errors.

Will evangelical voters vote for a member of a Satanic Cult? Time will tell, but it seems most evangelicals have put that past behind them.

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by Adam Laats on September 22, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in Evolution/Creation, From the Archives
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Posted by Adam Laats on September 22, 2015

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2015/09/22/from-the-archives-a-satanic-cult-leader-for-the-gop/

Are We Too Polite to Tell Our Children the Truth?

It’s not a secret. The roots of Memorial Day lie twisted with America’s toughest problems of race and region. But my hunch is that very few Memorial Day speeches mentioned such things. In addition to the vexing problems of knowledge and politics that cause our continuing educational culture wars, I think we need to add one surprisingly boring cause.

Historian David Blight has argued convincingly that the first Memorial Day (Decoration Day back then) was part of a furious effort by African American Southerners to defend the memory of Union soldiers buried in the South. On May 1, 1865, the first Memorial Day celebration took place on Washington Race Course in Charleston, South Carolina.

That first Memorial Day did not bring Americans together. It celebrated the victory of the Union. It celebrated the end of slavery. It used a display of African American military force to make the point to white Southerners that the old days were gone forever.

A dozen years later, of course, many of those white former Confederates had regained political power in the South. African American freedoms had been wrested away by vengeful white elites North and South. By the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, Professor Blight tells us in Race & Reunion, North and South had come together to celebrate the heroics of white soldiers on both sides. Memorial Day had come to be a celebration of white unity, at the cost of African American rights.

What would YOU tell them?

What would YOU tell them?

Why don’t we tell any of that to our children? I think there are two obvious culprits and one surprisingly banal one.

Around these parts, local historians like to remind us that the official first Memorial Day took place in Waterloo, New York. In 1966, then-President Lyndon Baines Johnson decreed that Waterloo was the birthplace of the tradition. That’s a comforting story everyone can get behind. And it points out the many reasons why we don’t tell ourselves the story of the Charleston Race Track.

First, lots of us just don’t know. We might not have read Professor Blight’s book. In all fairness, we might assume that the history we get in our newspapers and from our parents is the truth.

Second, there has been significant political activism to make sure we don’t know. As Professor Blight detailed, organizations such as the United Daughters of the Confederacy worked hard to obscure the race-conscious history of Memorial Day. In textbooks and historical markers, in schools and in Memorial-Day speeches, activists such as Mildred Rutherford insisted that the memory of the Confederacy must be honored.

What not to know and how not to know it...

What not to know and how not to know it…

But above and beyond ignorance and activism, there is a far more basic reason why we don’t talk much about the still-festering racial issues at the real root of Memorial Day. For those of us interested in educational culture wars, we can see the same operation at work in questions about evolution and sex education in public schools as well.

As I argue in my new book about conservative school activism in the twentieth century, conservatives have often had a very easy time vetoing ideas or methods in public-school classrooms or textbooks. Why? Because they didn’t have to disprove the ideas, they only had to insist that such ideas were controversial.

Public schools are surprisingly similar to polite dinner parties. Not because everyone’s manners are at their best, but because any topic that is perceived as controversial is taboo. Teachers will avoid it; administrators will recoil from it.

We’ve seen this over and over throughout the twentieth century, in subject after subject.

Here in scenic Binghamton, New York, for example, in 1940, school Superintendent Daniel Kelly yanked a set of history textbooks from the district’s classrooms. Why? Not because he disliked them. He told a reporter, “Personally, it’s the kind of book I want my children to have. To say it is subversive is absurd.” However, he was willing to get rid of them in order to “stop the controversy” about them.

A few years later, in 1942, an enterprising group of academics tried to determine why so few teachers taught evolution. They mailed a survey to a representative group of teachers nationwide. Overall, they found that fewer than half of America’s biology teachers taught anything close to recognizable evolutionary science. Why not? In the words of one of their respondents, “Controversial subjects are dynamite to teachers.”

When it comes to Memorial Day, this polite impulse to avoid controversy must be part of our loud silence about the roots of the holiday. Who wants to be the boor at the cookout who turns a sentimental get-together into a racial confrontation? Who is willing to tell the gathered Boy Scouts and VFW members that their parade is a charade, since it has its roots in the reinstitution of American racial slavery? Who is willing to tell kids in class that their long weekend is really a reminder of America’s long and continuing race war?

Such things are simply not done.

In addition to the obvious culture-war culprits of knowledge and politics, we need to remember this obvious fact: Teaching the truth is rude.

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by Adam Laats on May 26, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in Evolution/Creation, From the Archives, Schools in Black and White, Teaching Sex and Sexuality
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Posted by Adam Laats on May 26, 2015

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2015/05/26/are-we-too-polite-to-tell-our-children-the-truth/

From the Archives: A Creationist Mother’s Day Puzzler

What’s a Presbyterian to do? Especially at the staunchly conservative Princeton Seminary at the end of the nineteenth century, Presbyterian intellectuals wrestled with the questions posed by their creationist theology. One problem remained particularly stubborn and particularly relevant to Mother’s Day.

B.B. Warfield was no liberal. He was largely responsible for the “Princeton Theology” that bequeathed to American fundamentalism a vital notion. Along with his colleague A.A. Hodge, Warfield argued that we must read the Bible as inerrant in its original autographs. That is, later translators may have messed things up here and there, and we may certainly err in our understanding of the Bible, but real orthodoxy requires us to believe that the inspired writers of the Bible did not make mistakes.

All about Eve...

All about Eve…

Among the many gems in Bradley Gundlach’s book about Princeton and the “evolution question,” we find Warfield’s notes about Eve and evolution.

In the late 1800s, Warfield and the other lions of orthodoxy at Princeton wondered what evolutionary ideas meant for orthodox belief. Could an evolutionary theory fit in with a universe that had been planned for eternity by an all-knowing God? If evolution could be separated from its materialistic assumptions, could it be used as a way to understand God’s plan for humanity?

As Professor Gundlach argues, time and again Princeton’s conservative thinkers said yes. They objected to the assumptions that some people wrongly associated with evolution—that it was random, directionless, and atheistic, for instance. But they embraced the notion that God had developed all life from earlier forms. Just as a tree rests within the potentiality of a seed, so all life may have developed from simpler forms, the Princetonians insisted.

In short, most Old Princetonians embraced what has been called “theistic evolution,” a notion similar to what some folks today call “evolutionary creationism.”

There was one tough sticking point, however. As Professor Gundlach describes, in Warfield’s lectures on anthropology from the late 1800s, he struggled with the theological implications of evolution. Warfield asked himself and his students if a God-guided evolution was

consistent with the Biblical account of the origin of things in general & of man in particular.

According to Gundlach, Warfield answered with a qualified yes. The only problem Warfield saw was at the root of Mother’s Day. As Warfield explained in his anthropology class,

I am free to say, for myself, that I do not think that there is any general statement in the Bible or any part of the account of creation, either as given in Gen I & II or elsewhere alluded to, that need be opposed to evolution. The sole passage which appears to bar the way is the very detailed account of the creation of Eve.

The rest of the Genesis account of creation, Warfield believed, could be read without doing violence to its original meaning as a poetic description of evolution. But Eve was different. The Mother of Humanity was made by a special divine act, in language starkly different from that of the rest of Genesis.

For Warfield, at least, evolution need pose no problem for Christians. Only the question of Eve needed to be resolved.

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by Adam Laats on May 10, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in Evolution/Creation, From the Archives
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Posted by Adam Laats on May 10, 2015

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2015/05/10/from-the-archives-a-creationist-mothers-day-puzzler/

Racist Fundamentalists…It’s Complicated

Sometimes the archives can make things too complicated. White fundamentalists have always been accused of racism—a charge they’ve vehemently denied. But what do we do when an African American fundamentalist agrees with the racism of his white fellow fundamentalists?

First, a quick historical sketch: Since the 1920s, as I argued in my first book, fundamentalism got tangled up with ideas about Southern Pride. Conservative religion has often become part and parcel of a broader cultural conservatism, one that included support for racial segregation and white supremacy.

Racist? Or just fundamentalist?

Racist? Or just fundamentalist?

By the 1970s, leading white fundamentalists became some of the most public supporters of racial segregation. Most famously, Bob Jones University steadfastly clung to its whites-only policy long after many white Southerners and white fundamentalists had grudgingly moved on. Some historians, such as Randall Balmer, have insisted that white racism among fundamentalists was the real root of the so-called New Christian Right that emerged in the 1970s.

I disagree. There is no doubt that white fundamentalism—especially in the South—has long had close ties to white racism. There is more to the story, however, than quick condemnations of conservative religion as a front for white supremacy.

In my recent work at the archive of the Moody Bible Institute, I came across a document that reminds us how messy history is. In 1970, the leaders of Moody dis-invited prominent fundamentalist John R. Rice from Moody’s big annual Founder’s Week event. Why? Because Rice had come out in support of the segregationist policies of Bob Jones University.

As President William Culbertson informed members of the Moody community,

Moody Bible Institute has for 85 years welcomed young people of all races and nationalities to its tuition-free training in the Bible. Through times of changing social mores the policy has always been to emphasize the salvation from God by which all men who believe are made one in Christ. We have sought, and do seek, to apply the spiritual principles set forth in the Word of God to the practical problems of our culture. We believe that there is nothing in the Bible that forbids interracial relationships. We are absolutely opposed to injustice and exploitation. We are dedicated to the proposition that we are debtors to all men.

Moody Bible Institute, Culbertson told anyone who would listen, still agreed wholeheartedly with John R. Rice’s fundamentalist theology. Moody refused to compromise with those who would modernize the Bible or water down fundamentalist religion. But Moody could not be seen as part of a racist, segregationist movement.

Naturally, John R. Rice and his supporters blasted this decision. More evidence, one Rice supporter charged, that Moody had

moved one more step away from the great revival that is blazing across this land into the camp of lukewarm churches that make God sick. I do not suppose that anything that I have said will make any difference to you or Moody Bible Institute’s position. Years will come and go and Moody will ‘go the way of all flesh,’ while the Moody Memorial Church continues to dry-up on the vine.

Among the fat stack of angry letters supporting John R. Rice, one stands out. It came from William H. Dinkins of Selma, Alabama. Dinkins was an African American fundamentalist and, in his words, someone who “stand[s] with Dr. Rice for fundamentalism and the old-time religion and all that goes with it.” Too often, Dinkins charged, “We Negroes [sic] . . . try to inject Civil Rights into every circumstance, without sensing the effect of what we are doing.” When it comes to religion and the Word of God, Dinkins continued, “Civil Rights is an extraneous issue, and ought not to be in question, and I feel that responsible people ought not to be effected by such pleas.”

The view from Selma, 1971

The view from Selma, 1971

Dinkins’s letter raises difficult questions about race and religion. First of all, we wonder if this letter was legitimate. Could someone have faked it in order to create an impression of biracial support for racial segregation? If not, we wonder how common such sentiments have been. As historian Jeffrey Moran has argued, white fundamentalists have long tended to ignore their African American co-religionists, at best. And, as John Dittmer and others have showed, in the early days of the Civil Rights movement many African American leaders in the Deep South supported segregation, at least temporarily and pragmatically.

In the early 1970s, was there really any support for racial segregation among African American conservatives? Did fundamentalism trump race?

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by Adam Laats on April 26, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in From the Archives, Higher (Power) Education, Schools in Black and White
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Posted by Adam Laats on April 26, 2015

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2015/04/26/racist-fundamentalists-its-complicated/

From the Archives: To Educate a Fundamentalist

What do fundamentalists learn in school? As I continue my research into evangelical higher education this week at the Moody Bible Institute archives, I’ve found a couple of clues about what went on in fundamentalist classrooms.

It is always one of the trickiest things for historians to pry behind the classroom door. We can study the institutional goings-on at schools. We can look at the paper trail of rules, curriculum changes, textbook decisions, and the like. But it is extremely difficult to discover what real students really did.

Thanks to the voluminous collections at MBI, I’ve found some hints of what fundamentalist learning looked like. One scrapbook collection from the early 1940s includes assignments and study guides. For example, this student turned in eighteen assignments from a book on missions. (The first fourteen were on time, the last four late. What happened during those last weeks?) The assignment was clear: Students were to read the book The Progress of World-Wide Missions, by Robert H. Glover. They were to write answers to a series of questions posed by the instructor.IMG_1938[1]

For this student, at least, the process was one of regurgitating facts and opinions from the book. She did not offer any of her own thoughts on the subject, nor did that seem to be encouraged.

This student also left behind her set of study guides about Biblical dispensations. The theology taught at MBI hinged on dispensational premillennialism. Bible history (and future) was divided into a series of periods, or dispensations. In each dispensation, God ruled according to dispensationally appropriate guidelines. In order to make sense of the Bible, according to this system, it was necessary to understand the various dispensations at work.IMG_1954[1]

It seems fair to assume that these study guides were meant to provide students with help memorizing the details of each dispensation. When students had memorized these facts forward and backward, they could presumably read the Bible correctly. This system was the key to “rightly dividing the Word of Truth.” Without it, students and their future missionary targets could end up with woefully misleading interpretations of Scripture.

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by Adam Laats on April 17, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in From the Archives, Higher (Power) Education

Posted by Adam Laats on April 17, 2015

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2015/04/17/from-the-archives-to-educate-a-fundamentalist/

From the Archives: Good GPA, Good SATs, “Well-Rounded,” and…

How did fundamentalist colleges select their students? Despite my hilarious title this morning, until World War II admissions were not usually based on standardized test scores or high-school grades and activities. During my research this week at the Moody Bible Institute, I found one example of admission standards from 1930 that tells us a lot.

Sometime between World War I & World War II, American colleges and universities developed standard admissions procedures. Until then, students could take an examination to prove they were prepared. Some colleges worked out deals with local high schools to admit all their graduates. Plus, colleges often admitted many students who were not adequately prepared, then sent them to the school’s preparatory department.

In the 1920s, as Roger Geiger argues in his new book, colleges such as Yale and Princeton devised standardized tests. Not to offer an equal playing field, but to test for those qualities polished by the kinds of prep schools fancy families preferred. In fact, one intended consequence of these tests was to give schools some justification for turning down new numbers of qualified Jewish applicants.

Fundamentalist colleges and Bible institutes had different standards. At many fundamentalist colleges, students from any religious background were welcome, as long as they observed the lifestyle rules and attended mandatory religious services.

At Moody Bible Institute, on the other hand, incoming students had to prove they were on board with the school’s fundamentalist theology. Until the 1940s, new students did not have to prove they had completed high school. But they had to offer solid proof that they were invested in the school’s soul-winning ambition.

Each applicant in the 1920s and 1930s had to offer three references. Those folks were asked to fill out a four-page reference form. Some of the questions were fairly ho-hum: How long have you known the applicant? Is the applicant strong intellectually? But others were unique to this kind of conservative evangelical institution: “Has he to your knowledge ever backslidden? If so, when, and what were the circumstances?” “Has he a genuine love for souls?” “Is he discreet in his conduct toward women?” “Has he any doctrinal, or other peculiarities that would unfit him for Christian work?”

One referee offered a telling answer to this last question on an application from 1930. Is the applicant theologically peculiar? “No, he is a fundamentalist.”

1930...

1930…

In 1930, to this referring pastor at least, being a “fundamentalist” meant eschewing any of the heterodox theological options available. Fundamentalists in this era worried not only about secularism and atheism, but also about close theological cousins that might lure away earnest believers. As I argued in my first book, in the 1920s fundamentalism struggled to define itself against such conservative near neighbors as Seventh-day Adventism, Christian Science, or Pentecostalism.

The theological reefs and snares included some terms that have been lost to time. In the 1920s, fundamentalists worried about “Bullingerism” and “Russellism” among their ranks. The danger was not only that such students would not embrace the school’s mission. The stark danger was that such attractive theological ideas could spread like wildfire among the student body.

Schools such as MBI worked hard to be sure each incoming student was free from such spiritual contagion, just as they tried to be sure incoming students were free from tuberculosis and smallpox.

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by Adam Laats on April 16, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in From the Archives, Higher (Power) Education

Posted by Adam Laats on April 16, 2015

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2015/04/16/from-the-archives-good-gpa-good-sats-well-rounded-and/

From the Archives: What’s a Popular Fundamentalist to Do?

It’s not easy being the king. During my digging yesterday in the Moody Bible Institute archives, I came across a plaintive letter that typified the social difficulties some fundamentalists have experienced in higher education.

Help...I'm popular!

Help…I’m popular!

Here’s the background: An alumnus wrote to President James M. Gray in 1930, asking for advice. This former MBI student had moved on to George Washington University after his preparatory time at the Institute. MBI, the student reported, had prepared him for life in the secular academy. As he told President Gray,

During my first year here at the school I encountered much by way of modernism, so called, especially in such departments as history and natural science. While none of the teaching has perturbed me, yet the atmosphere is not nearly so buoyant as that at Moody.

So far, so good. One of the primary goals of Bible institutes has been to prepare students to enter secular higher education. Once inoculated against secularism and liberalism by one or two years of Bible study, the thinking went, students could go to regular colleges and learn to be productive Christian members of society.

Even when that plan worked, as with our 1930 letter-writer, it was not always easy. This MBI alumnus could handle the religious and intellectual challenges of life at a secular school. But it was harder to figure out the social ones. He did not know what to do about good friends who were not fundamentalists. As he asked President Gray,

What shall I do about amusements? I am somewhat popular with no small number here at the university and because of my having received, last year, an athletic scholarship I was invited to many fraternity functions. My friends at the school are they who dance, play bridge and while these amusements are out of the question for me, what about the identifying of myself with perfectly good fellows in fraternity? Will I be a better influence to remain out of them or, in entering them, abstain from the amusements and thereby make my Christian testimony conspicuous by the abstinence?

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by Adam Laats on April 14, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in From the Archives, Higher (Power) Education

Posted by Adam Laats on April 14, 2015

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2015/04/14/from-the-archives-whats-a-popular-fundamentalist-to-do/

MBI Kind of Town…

What did you do after high school? Did you go to a “college?” Or was it a “university,” “institute,” a “normal school,” or maybe a “professional school?” For generations of ambitious Protestant missionaries, the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago has been the best-known institution of evangelical higher ed. So much so that MBI has clung to the “BI” name much longer than many other evangelical colleges.

DOWNtown funk...

DOWNtown funk…

I just rolled into Chi-town on the last of my research trips this year. As SAGLRROILYBYGTH are well aware, I’m working on a book about the history of evangelical higher ed. This year, I’ve traveled to Bob Jones University, Wheaton College, Biola University, Gordon College, and Liberty University.

MBI is last, but certainly not least. I’ve logged my share of time in these archives over the years, especially while working on my PhD dissertation and first book. MBI is not the oldest Bible Institute, but it has remained far and away the most influential.

For those outside of the orbit of evangelical culture, the primary goal of Bible institutes has been to provide quick and affordable education for missionaries. In order to serve effectively on the mission field, many evangelicals have believed, missionaries need a thorough knowledge of the Bible. In order to bring people to true salvation, missionaries need a proper knowledge, too.

Beginning in the late 1800s, Bible institutes popped up in American cities nationwide. Many of them attracted students without a lot of academic preparation. These students, after all, were not heading into the traditional professions, but rather heading out to spread the Gospel in every land. They did not need to know Latin and trigonometry, but rather only the Bible and maybe some basic medicine and language skills.

Over the decades, many of these Bible institutes turned into colleges or universities of one kind or another. This was part of the triple revolution in higher education that Roger Geiger describes in his new book, The History of American Higher Education. By 1940, Professor Geiger argues, the wild diversity of early institutions of higher education had become standardized, a recognizable modern system of American higher education.

In this system, no one went to college without first completing a high-school education. They looked forward to an education that would prepare them for specific professions. Colleges themselves closed their preparatory departments or split them off into stand-along high schools. Universities had shaken out into a relatively stable hierarchy of prestige and social influence. At the top were wealthy old schools such as Harvard and the University of Michigan. At these universities, undergraduate education rollicked along in a cloud of sports, fraternities, and social climbing, while the schools themselves fought viciously to increase their research footprint.

As this modern system regularized itself in the years after World War I, several types of institutions phased out. These evolutionary also-rans included many institutes of technology, proprietary medical or legal schools, “female institutes,” normal schools, and—though Professor Geiger doesn’t mention them—most of the Bible institutes.

These old-fashioned types of higher education did not disappear. Rather, most of them changed to offer the new standard bachelor’s degrees. Many of them built new dormitories and fielded sports teams. And most of them took their place in the competitive hierarchy that arched from Harvard down to Podunk State College & Grill.

A very few exceptions stood out from this winnowing process, at least symbolically. Some of the old-fashioned institutions of higher education had been so successful in the 1800s that they felt no need to change their names, even as they usually adopted some of the features of modern higher education. Most notably, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology never changed its name to call itself a “college” or a “university.” MIT began as one of a scramble of “institutes of technology” in the years surrounding the Civil War. Unlike today’s MIT, the early institutes did not focus on recognizably pure modern research. Instead, they mostly provided students with a more practical mechanical education meant for workers in industrial workshops.

As more and more students wanted to spend their tuition dollars at a “college” or “university” that took its place in the ever-more-rigid hierarchy after World War I, most of these “institutes of technology” turned themselves into “colleges” or “universities.”

Following a somewhat similar pattern, since 1940 most of the crop of Bible institutes that sprang up around the turn of the twentieth century turned themselves into “colleges” or “universities.” Biola University, for example, began its life as the Bible Institute of Los Angeles—BIOLA, get it? Gordon College, too, had its roots as the Boston Missionary Training School. As early Gordon President Nathan Wood remembered, the first name change—to Gordon College of Theology and Missions—resulted from student pressure.   Three class presidents, Wood recalled, requested

a change of name to one which would express the collegiate and theological work of the school. . . . It meant much to them as future Alumni.

To put it in terms Wood never used, the Gordon students recognized early the congealing patterns of modern American higher education. A “training school” did not convey the same prestige and professional opportunities as did a “college.”

For some stand-out schools, however, these rules did not apply. Moody Bible Institute was so well known among evangelicals its name sufficed to keep students coming. There was no need for it to change its name to acknowledge the changing environment of American higher education. Like MIT, MBI had created such a unique niche in higher education that it kept its old fashioned name and much of its old-fashioned structure. Also like MIT, MBI took on many of the features of modern higher education. Unlike in its early days, MBI now offers college degrees, not just Bible training.

Doubtless, I’ll find some evidence here in the archives about efforts over the years to change MBI’s name. Unlike smaller schools, however, MBI had the size needed to stand out as an island in the new seas of modern higher education.

2 Comments
by Adam Laats on April 13, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in From the Archives, Higher (Power) Education
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Posted by Adam Laats on April 13, 2015

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2015/04/13/mbi-kind-of-town/

Hookers for Jesus; or, Fundamentalists on Valentine’s Day

Well…didn’t Jesus hang around with tax collectors and prostitutes? Former sex worker Annie Lobert is promoting her new book, Fallen: Out of the Sex Industry and into the Arms of the Savior. She told The Christian Post recently that romance—real romance—should start and end with the love of Jesus Christ. It prompts us to ask a central but awkward question: Are evangelicals really all that different from the rest of us when it comes to love and sex?

To those of us outside the circle of evangelical Christianity, this sort of religion-ized sexual tell-all can seem like a cheap way for sexually repressed evangelicals to get their jollies. Time and again, as an outsider observing conservative religious culture, conservatives’ attitudes seem like nothing so much as a “health” lecture at a strict Midwestern high school in 1953.

But is that fair?

The pages of evangelical magazines exploded recently with comments about Fifty Shades of Grey. Evangelical women were scolded for reading the book, which one writer condemned as “a written form of pornography, plain and simple.” Other conservatives offer visions of what real Christian romance is, what Fifty Shades of Grace might look like.

To me, such huffing and puffing sounds downright embarrassing. Are conservative Christians really still so flustered over sex that Fifty Shades of Grey can cause such hand-wringing? But then I remember that silly flouncing over FSoG is not at all limited to evangelical culture. Americans as a whole seem to share the desire to half-condemn and half-giggle at the goings-on between the covers of FSoG.

Certainly, non-evangelical writers have also condemned the cartoonish sex and romance of the FSoG movie. And who can forget Saturday Night Live’s funny-because-it’s-true parody of Americans’ goofy obsession with the book?

In my current research, too, I’m struggling to figure out how much fundamentalist sexual angst is different from the sexual angst of mainstream culture, and how much it is largely the same. The archival record at evangelical colleges and universities is full of real anguish over questions of proper courtship and sexuality.

You’ll have to wait for the book to read the full stories, but from one college I find a 1950s story of a gay divinity student who faked his own death to escape from the condemnation he felt as a gay fundamentalist. Faked his own death. And escaped to a new life in Texas. From the 1940s, I read a bittersweet diary of a college student who agonized over her choice of future spouses. She did not feel much attraction for one potential mate, but as she wrote to her mother, a campus speaker turned her around. This speaker told of what true Christian romance should feel like. In this speaker’s case, God

showed him that God’s intent is for the man to be a special means of communicating his love to the woman, and vice versa. It is like the offerings of honey and frankincense. The honey is natural sweetness, and is never to be burned. It stinks. It cannot stand the test of fire. But frankincense smells sweeter the hotter the fire. So the natural love and the divine. His natural love for Irene ebbed and flowed, rising and falling with the state of his soul. But God’s love, in Christ, through Bill, to Irene, was constant—a thing of divine origin and purpose, pure and living. What a revelation!

For this young woman in the 1940s, the fact that she did not feel much actual attraction for her future husband became swathed in layer after layer of indecipherable religious enthusiasm.

To me, that seems awfully odd. As does faking one’s own death and secretly absconding to Texas. But I ask myself: in the 1940s and 1950s, how different were these fundamentalist feelings about sex and courtship from those prevalent in non-fundamentalist America?

Certainly, in the 1950s, almost no one felt comfortable living openly as a homosexual. In the 1940s, the romantic experiences of young heterosexual couples on secular college campuses reeked of unhealthy layers of this or that cultural imperative.

And now, conservative evangelicals fuss and fume about proper sex and relationships.  But so do the rest of us.

To put it bluntly, the question is not: How sexually messed-up are evangelical Christians? Rather, the question is: Are evangelical Christians notably MORE sexually messed up than the rest of us?

4 Comments
by Adam Laats on February 15, 2015  •  Permalink
Posted in From the Archives, Teaching Sex and Sexuality
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Posted by Adam Laats on February 15, 2015

https://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2015/02/15/hookers-for-jesus-or-fundamentalists-on-valentines-day/

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