Monthly Archives: August 2010

Hickory Presbyterians

August 25, 2010Alumni, Books, Collection-related Publications, Special Collectionsadmin

Not only was Kenneth Landon ’24 involved in the incipient efforts by the U.S. government to organize its foreign intelligence during and after the Second World War (as reported here), he was also a remarkably well-educated man, with impressive institutional credentials to match his wide-ranging intellectual, and especially linguistic, gifts.

More than a decade before he received his doctorate from The University of Chicago in 1938, he attended Princeton Seminary after being graduated from Wheaton College with a philosophy degree. Princeton had by that time become embroiled in the fundamentalist-modernist controversy that marked the era.

The dramatis personae of these tragic events at Princeton pit, on one side, the president, J. Ross Stevenson, whose tenure as president began in 1914, and Charles Erdman, long-time student advisor and professor of homiletics, against Robert Dick Wilson, a talented Semitic philologist, and J. Gresham Machen, to whom students referred, with gibing affection, as “Das”. Despite the opposition and with the approval of the faculty, Erdman’s ouster took place in 1926.

The seminary class of 1927–Landon’s class–was, in his generous judgment, the most brilliant and talent-laden that the seminary had had for fifty years. More certainly they among the last classes ever to walk the halls of Old Princeton. In 1929, Machen was to lead a number of Princeton faculty in the founding of an alternative Presbyterian seminary, Westminster Theological in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

In the 90-plus-hour “Landon Chronicles” oral histories, Kenneth and his wife, Margaret ’25 (of Anna and the King of Siam fame), tell about the controversy as they knew it from within and give their judgments on the falling out. According to them, Stevenson had a habit of splitting every institution he touched, not unlike the habit, Margaret mentions in passing, of a more local Presbyterian controversialist, Wheaton College’s third president, J. Oliver Buswell. He had his share in splitting institutions too, thus proving the byword, attributed to the ousted Charlie Erdman, that Presbyterians are like hickory: split easily.

(mp3 – 00:05:48)

Love the Lord Your God

August 24, 2010College-related Publications, Entries with Audio, Wheaton College Archivesadmin

Dr. J. Richard Chase, sixth president of Wheaton College, recently passed away at age 79. He was a college president for nearly a quarter century at Biola University & Wheaton College combined. Two years after his retirement, the President Emeritus returned to Wheaton and gave the 136th Undergraduate Commencement address on May 7, 1995. His message (excerpted below) was entitled “Love the Lord Your God.” He is introduced by his successor, Duane Litfin.

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Graduates, the upheavals of change-experienced by people throughout time–are sure to swirl about you for as long as you live on the earth. The challenge to think and act Christianly today is tough, It is tough here in Wheaton, and, I suspect, far tougher in Burundi, Bosnia, and the barrios of the world. Society has never been an ideal cocoon for moral living: righteous living has never been the art of riding on society’s coattails. It has ever required a commitment to a guiding principle or foundation and the resolve to act responsibly. You may pick a time in ages past when you could travel with a “supportive” crowd in a “supportive” society, but true, righteous living is a matter of the heart, not a herd instinct.

A Pharisee, a teacher of the Law, asked Jesus, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” (Matthew 22:36). The Pharisee’s predicament was not much different from that of modern man. He was caught in the turmoil of both his foundation for life and his career. In a matter of months, Jesus had turned this Pharisee’s world upside down. His conversation with Jesus and our Lord’s response, “You are not far from the kingdom of God” (Mark 12:34), suggest that he was agonizing in mind and soul. There he was, caught between his past occupation and pattern of life and a new, revolutionary way of trust, faith, and commitment. And this is to say nothing of the oppressive Roman rule under which he lived, and, as a religious leader, of the accommodations he had to make with the ruling officials to hold his position. He approached Jesus with a question to test him. Although this Pharisee wanted to put Jesus on the spot, he was curious. I suspect he wondered, Could this man Jesus, who answered the Herodians and Sadducees so powerfully, help me? He asked, “Of all the commandments, which is the most important?” (v. 28).

And Jesus responded, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself” (vv. 30-31).

Living effectively and righteously is never easy. But our Lord’s brief response gives us a place to stand. Here is a foundation that helped Daniel in Babylon, Deborah the prophetess as she led Israel against the Canaanites, Wilberforce as he stood against the slave traders, and countless numbers of God’s people in every age. This commandment tells us to love the Lord and our neighbors with such passion that it can invigorate our minds, direct our actions, and enrich our souls. It provides an overpowering focus for lives cluttered with competing goals and distracting desires. Further, it is as valid and all encompassing today as it was twenty centuries ago.

My gift to you on this commencement day is but a reminder that Wheaton has brought you in contact with faculty who have informed, badgered, prodded, encouraged, guided, and yes, even graded you, in an attempt to equip you for a life of thinking. Think as you paint, play, perform, and counsel; think as you assist, reach, pray, relate, react, grieve; and think as you play and as you rejoice. Think within the context of an all-consuming love for our God and our world of neighbors.

(mp3 – 00:23:19)

Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye

August 16, 2010Entries with Audio, Wheaton College ArchivesDavid Osielski

Sue Thomas was born in 1950. At the age of 18 months she experienced an instant and total hearing loss. With the support of her parents she spent years with therapists learning to communicate and read lips despite being profoundly deaf. Instead of being relegated to an institution her parents were determined to help their only daughter become a success among the hearing. Although having academic challenges as the only deaf child in her public school district near Boardman, Ohio, she focused her energies on skating and became the youngest Ohio State Champion free-style skater.

She persevered through her schooling and finally graduated from Springfield College in Massachusetts with a degree in Political Science and International Affairs. She was hired by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a fingerprint examiner and then as an undercover investigator doing surveillance work reading lips for the FBI agents in Washington D.C.

In 2002 her inspiring story was adapted for television and aired as a weekly drama. At its peak, “Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye” was watched by more than 2.5 million viewers in the United States and was syndicated in 60 countries. It has since generated a loyal fansite, Facebook, and Twitter pages.

Prior to her international acclaim, Sue Thomas spoke in Edman Chapel in December 1991 to the Wheaton College family and shared her Christian testimony. She had recently written her autobiography “Silent Night” which has since been updated for it’s 20th anniversary edition.

[excerpted from Wikipedia and Sue Thomas Productions]

(mp3 – 00:38:26)

Und, Chakup wowed a wow!

August 12, 2010Wheaton College ArchivesDavid Malone

In 1937 Wheaton College founded the John Dickey Memorial Graduate School of Theology. To augment the faculty President J. Oliver Buswell remembered a retired Methodist minister with an earned doctorate. He asked Dr. Jacob Hoffmann to join the faculty to teach Hebrew and Old Testament. Hoffmann spoke with a heavy German accent and in his autobiography Carl F. H. Henry recalled a very funny situation where this accent lighted the mood. Henry was part of early classes of the graduate school and remembered Hoffmann exegeting a portion of Genesis. In his distinctive, and emphatic, German Hoffmann read Genesis 28:20 “Und Chakup wowed a wow” (more clearly, “and Jacob vowed a vow”). Henry and his classmates chuckled a bit. Hoffmann not sure if he misread the verse restated, with more emphasis, “Und Chakup wowed a wow!” Chuckles turned to unhindered laughter. Not used to the classroom, Hoffmann gathered his composure and, for a third time, recited the beginning of the verse, but more slowly: “Und… Chakup… wowed… a… wow….” The small class of five or six students exploded. Henry, the son of German immigrants, recounted Hoffmann’s response, “Ah, chentelmen, I know vy you are laffink; you know vat sort of scountrel diss man Chakup vass, don’t you?” As a former pastor, Hoffmann likely knew a scoundrel or two when he saw one.

Rural Bible Crusade

August 9, 2010College-related Publications, Wheaton College Archivesadmin

Sometime during his last year as a student at Moody Bible Institute, J. Lloyd Hunter preached at Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. Leading a ragged drunkard to Christ, Hunter reflected on the man’s lost decades, years that might have been dedicated to serving Christ rather than alcohol. At that moment Hunter decided to offer his own life in an effort to reach children. Traveling with his wife to various churches around the country, he gained valuable experience working with the American Sunday School Union. While living in Wheaton in 1937, Hunter, ablaze with a vision for evangelization, organized the Rural Bible Crusade, a ministry encouraging public school children to systematically memorize scripture. Its first advisory council consisted of J. Oliver Buswell, V. Raymond Edman, J.D. Hall, John R. Rice, Wendell Loveless, Bob Jones, Sr., William McCarrell, Oscar Lowry, Paul Rood, Harry Rimmer, George Strohm, Louis Talbot and Walter Wilson. Shortly before Christmas vacation of that year, Hunter stood before the students of Wheaton College to introduce his program. There Hunter’s idea was packaged as a contest, with letters sent to four thousand local school teachers. The envelopes contained a tract, Four Things That God Wants You to Know, with a request that pupils memorize Bible verses. Four hundred teachers responded positively, some requesting to join the contest, and to them were sent Gospels of John and a tract. Prizes were given for the verses learned. Ten verses entitled the pupil to a button. Thirty-two earned him a New Testament. Five hundred verses won him a fine leather Bible. Many families who never attended church received a Bible and heard the Gospel for the first time. Under the direction of Hunter, Phil Saint, Wheaton College student and brother of missionary martyr Nate Saint, taught “chalk talks” to classes, training young people in the essentials of presenting the Gospel to children. As the ministry blossomed Hunter’s health declined, and he entered the hospital in 1943, where he led three nurses to Christ shortly before his death. He was 55. Later that year, a committee met at Wheaton College and formed a constitution which delineated new internal organization. After the document’s ratification, the work of Rural Bible Crusade continued as it enrolled thousands of children in the Bible Memory Program. In 1966 the ministry moved from Wheaton to Salinas, Kansas; and in 1990 it changed its name to “Bible Impact Ministries.” In 1993 the ministry relocated to St. Louis, MO, expanding with permanent camps and facilities. Hunter’s passion for evangelizing and discipling young souls survives unabated.

[Some information for this entry is derived from Bible Impact Ministries.]

Jerry’s Pub R.I.P.

August 4, 2010College-related Publications, Wheaton College ArchivesDavid Malone

On August 4, 2010 Gerald Hawthorne ’51, a beloved Greek professor and mentor to many, passed on to his reward. His influence was noted in a festschrift published in 2003.

Beginning in the mid-1970s, Art Rupprecht and Jerry Hawthorne joined a group of their very interesting and interested Greek students late on Friday afternoons in the Stupe. The week’s classes were over and it was time to relax with a free cup of coffee — they arrived just at closing time when the staff were about to throw the remaining coffee down the drain. It was theirs for the taking. Faculty and students spent time thinking through some theological issues, talking about baseball or fishing, or discussing some difficult Greek passage, telling a few jokes, and generally enjoying each others company and insights. Soon others wanted to join. So it became a weekly feature, but it was too large and often too raucous to continue meeting in a corner booth of the Stupe.

Just as concerns over a meeting place arose a new chapel schedule was implemented with chapel to be held weekly on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays — leaving Wednesday at 10:30 free when faculty and students had no officially scheduled meetings. So Wednesday became the new day. Now all that was needed was a place. John Ortberg, speaking for his housemates, offered Windsor House as the newly designated place of meeting. It was agreed that faculty would provide the donuts and the Windsor men would provide the coffee. Occasionally one of the faculty would fudge a little on the donut buying, for one of them was caught slipping across to Windsor house early, to heat up a day-old coffee cake for the coffee hour.

Eventually these Windsor men graduated, but the new men assigned to that house wanted us to continue, which the faculty were only too happy to do. Windsor House, which was adjacent to Buswell Library, continued to be a place of meeting for students from all parts of the world, faculty from all discipline a — great amalgam of students and faculty. Discussions were lively and sometimes even heated, but always argued with passion, if not always with reason. Everyone present could not help learning something he (all men in those days) had not known before-those were great times together.

Jerry Hawthorne When Windsor House was torn down the group was invited to join the men in Kay House, so that this tradition could continue. By the time that particular Kay House group of men were ready to move on via graduation to their higher calling, the new “pharaoh knew not Joseph.” So no successive invitation was extended from that house. When that moment of desperation came, however, many of our student friends were awarded Hidden House as their next year’s domicile, and with one voice they beckoned us to come and join them at their home each Wednesday morning as usual. The tradition kept going and growing. This pleasurable and profitable welcome break from the routine bustle of academic life continued unabated for more than a decade.

As change is always inevitable, the chapel schedule changed again. The new schedule had it fall on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Not wishing to flaunt chapel, nor to encourage undesirable behavior on the students’ part, the majority of the faculty regulars decided that all who wished could come to Jerry Hawthorne’s office (on the second floor of Wyngarden Health Center) at the traditionally designated time. As many as 15-18 professors from the departments of literature, language, philosophy, psychology, sociology, history, communication and the sciences crammed into that small office for the weekly repast of coffee and donuts. Here the late and beloved Dr. Joe McClatchey delighted to come as long as he was alive; it was he who dubbed this place and this congregation, “Jerry’s Pub,” a name it still holds.