Category Archives: Special Collections

100 Years

Books, Collection-related Publications, Special Collections

CairnsDr. Earle Cairns, professor of history and chairman of the department of history at Wheaton College, was commissioned in 1960 to write a book, Saints and Society, about the social impact of evangelical compassion. Cairns profiles reformers such as John Wesley, William Wilberforce and Lord Shaftsbury, chronicling their contributions to the sweeping revivals that shook England and beyond. The book served a dual purpose, also celebrating the 100th anniversary of Wheaton College, founded in 1860. Published by Moody Press in Chicago, the book’s dust jacket sports the college logo (below). Records, documents, photos and memorabilia pertaining to the Wheaton College Centennial are maintained in the Wheaton College Archives (RG 10.4).

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Full Circle

Alumni, Books, Collection-related Publications, Special Collections

FullCircleThe 1960s were years of dizzying upheaval for the United States. Its citizens wearied of the complex, seemingly endless war in Viet Nam. University students experimented with radical philosophies and mind-altering drugs. Racial tensions tightened in the inner city, often exploding. Popular music, particularly rock and roll, assumed an edgier attitude, reflecting the spirit of protest. As culture-shattering challenges shook the American psyche, the church did not remain unscathed. Amid the turmoil, David Mains, formerly assistant pastor at Moody Church in Chicago, with his wife, Karen, determined that the moment was right to implement a “creative” congregation on the edge of the ghetto, using all the gifts of its membership while aggressively reaching the socially disenfranchised and those disillusioned by local churches. Under Mains’ leadership, Circle Church began in 1967 with 28 people. Four years later Circle Church’s membership climbed to 500 congregants,  comprising students, high-rise apartment dwellers and ghetto inhabitants. Mains tells the story in Full Circle (1971). As the years progressed, however, Circle Church began to slowly unravel. Mains picks up the story in a 2004 Christianity Today essay called “Presumption at Circle Church.” He writes, “Today I am embarrassed about some of the attitudes expressed in Full Circle. I still have the same principles, but my comments seem cocky and presumptuous. I saw Circle Church as the tip of a new wave that would sweep across evangelical churches. That didn’t happen. Circle Church still exists, but in a smaller form and with more specialized emphasis.” Mains cites several reasons for the failure of Circle Church, expounding on each point. 1) I often allowed myself to fixate on issues. 2) I was naive about social problems. 3) In encouraging others’ gifts, I minimized my leadership role. 4) I held onto the church too tightly.

“The best thing that happened to me in leaving Circle Church was the breaking of my pride,” Mains writes. “During the breaking time, I felt rejected by the church that I had poured my life and soul into for ten years. For a brief time I questioned my faith in God. I wondered if I could trust him again.” He concludes,”More than a year passed after I left Circle Church before I began to feel like a man again. I have since sensed a new filling of the Holy Spirit, which was the result of a complete surrender to God. The process taught me to put confidence not in myself but in the Lord. As never before I identify with Paul’s words, ‘His strength is made perfect in my weakness.'”

Though Mains expresses a measure of remorse, his experiment in the Chicago ghetto, using liturgy, art and lively worship, waved a banner of salvation and hope for many, while providing a template for later generations of churches employing similar principles.

In 1977 Mains assumed the position of director for the Chapel of the Air, with Karen acting as co-host of the syndicated radio broadcast. Both have authored several books. Their papers (SC-118) are housed at Wheaton College Special Collections at Wheaton College (IL).

Masked: The Life of Anna Leonowens by Al Habegger

Books, Collection-related Publications, Special Collections

A brave British widow goes to Siam and—by dint of her principled and indomitable character—inspires that despotic nation to abolish slavery and absolute rule: this appealing legend first took shape after the Civil War when Anna Leonowens came to America from Bangkok and succeeded in becoming a celebrity author and lecturer. Three decades after her death, in the 1940s and 1950s, the story would be transformed into a powerful Western myth by Margaret Landon’s best-selling book Anna and the King of Siam and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical The King and I.

But who was Leonowens and why did her story take hold? Although it has been known for some time that she was of Anglo-Indian parentage and that her tales about the Siamese court are unreliable, not until now, with the publication of Masked, has there been a deeply researched account of her extraordinary life. Alfred Habegger, an award-winning biographer, draws on the archives of five continents and recent Thai-language scholarship to disclose the complex person behind the mask and the troubling facts behind the myth. He also ponders the curious fit between Leonowens’s compelling fabrications and the New World’s innocent dreams—in particular the dream that democracy can be spread through quick and easy interventions.

Exploring the full historic complexity of what it once meant to pass as white, Masked (published by University of Wisconsin Press, 560 pages) pays close attention to Leonowens’s mid-level origins in British India, her education at a Bombay charity school for Eurasian children, her material and social milieu in Australia and Singapore, the stresses she endured in Bangkok as a working widow, the latent melancholy that often afflicted her, the problematic aspects of her self-invention, and the welcome she found in America, where a circle of elite New England abolitionists who knew nothing about Southeast Asia gave her their uncritical support.  Her embellished story would again capture America’s imagination as World War II ended and a newly interventionist United States looked toward Asia.

The Kenneth & Margaret Landon Papers (SC-38) are cited as primary source materials and are housed in the Wheaton College Special Collections, available to researchers.

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Alfred Habegger is professor emeritus of English at the University of Kansas. His previous biographies are The Father: A Life of Henry James, Sr. and the highly acclaimed My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson. He lives in northeast Oregon.

Why She Stayed

Collection-related Publications, Special Collections

In 2006, Ted Haggard, pastor of New Life Church, author and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, shocked America when he confessed to drug abuse and an illicit affair with a male prostitute in Denver. GayleConsequently, Haggard quit his numerous leadership positions and sought pastoral counseling. Not only was Haggard publicly humiliated, but so was his wife, Gayle. Inundated with a persistent question, she responds in her memoir, Why I Stayed (2010). She recounts her marriage to Haggard, from their meeting as students at Oral Roberts University to the present. Gayle Haggard summarizes her conclusions in the final pages:

Why did I stay married to Ted Haggard? I think the more pertinent question — the one I had to settle in my heart — was, Why should I go? My reasons for staying with Ted were far more compelling than any that would have propelled me toward divorce. I stayed with Ted because to me he’s worth the struggle…But even in the midst of my pain, I believed Ted loved me…I decided that he was worth fighting for, our marriage was worth fighting for, and our family was worth fighting for. I stayed with Ted because commitment means something to me. I’ve committed my life to God, which means that I’ve chosen his ways and I follow his example of love and forgiveness. I’m committed to our marriage, to stay in this journey till death do us part. I am committed to our children, and I want to restore honor and dignity to their lives.

The papers of the National Association of Evangelicals (SC-113), from its inception in 1941 until the mid-1990s, are housed in the Wheaton College Special Collections, available to researchers. The NAE is currently headed by Dr. Leith Anderson.

Ageless Wrinkle

Collection-related Publications, Special Collections

WrinkleThe editors of Amazon released in 2014 their selections for “100 Books to Read in a Lifetime.” Placing sixth is A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. The Newberry Award Winning classic celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2012.

Other choices include 1984 by George Orwell, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak and The Shining by Stephen King.

The original manuscript for A Wrinkle in Time is housed at the De Grummond Children’s Literature Collection at Hattiesburg, Mississippi; but L’Engle’s remaining correspondence, artwork and manuscripts (SC-03), including the remaining titles of the The Time Quartet, is housed at Wheaton College (IL) Special Collections.

Dayuma

College-related Publications, Special Collections
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l to r: Rachel Saint, Dayuma, President and Mrs. V. Raymond Edman

Dayuma, born and raised amid the daily brutalities of the Waodani tribe of Ecuador, died on March 1, 2014, entering “gates of splendor” as the result of missionary work initiated by Jim Elliot and Nate Saint. After her conversion, she traveled throughout the United States, speaking about evangelism and reconciliation.She was baptized in 1961 by Wheaton College President V. Raymond Edman at Evangelical Free Church of Wheaton. She presented to Edman three Waodani spears, now housed in the Wheaton College Archives.

Assisted by missionary Rachel Saint, she eventually brought many of her family and friends to saving faith, consequently reducing the murder rate among her tribe by 90%.

The story of martyrs Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, Peter Fleming, Roger Youderian and Ed McCully is told in Through Gates of Splendor by Elisabeth Elliot.

Apostles of Reason

Books, College-related Publications, Researcher Publications, Special Collections

WorthenMolly Worthen, Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, using the combined resources of Wheaton College’s Archives & Special Collections, Billy Graham Center Archives and the Wade Center, has released Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (2014). Navigating the paradoxes and ideological clashes of the Christian Right with American culture, she examines the often fierce struggle between faith and reason.

Historian Mark Noll, formerly of Wheaton College, remarks: “Apostles of Reason brings a new level of sophistication, as well as sparking prose, to the study of modern American evangelicals. A combination of empathetic understanding and critical acumen makes this an unusually humane, as well as unusually insightful, book.”

The Geography of Memory

Alumni, Books, Collection-related Publications, Special Collections

JMWJeanne Murray Walker, poet and teacher, tells the tale of her mother’s slow, agonizing descent into the depths of dementia and eventual death in The Geography of Memory (2013). As her mother recedes increasingly into the past, Walker sees her own childhood illuminated. Better understanding their relationship, mother and daughter bind ever tighter as the days darken.

“Provides us with fresh glimpses into hidden joys and startling surprises.” — Richard J. Foster, author of A Celebration of Discipline

“I read it, mesmerized, wondering my way through this deeply moving portrait.” — Luci Shaw, poet

“A powerful tale of loss but also renewal, pain but also love. A treasure.” — Alan Jacobs, author of The Narnian

“This deeply humane memoir is at once a memorial to a mother whose memory failed before her body gave way, a poignant reflection on the sister who lived close by while the author flew in repeatedly from afar, and an insightful exposition on memory itself. With a poet’s eye for the apt image, The Geography of Memory is also a case book of spiritual disciplines taught by what Jeanne Murray Walker calls “the ugly twins, aging and death.”   — Mark Noll, Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History, University of Notre Dame, author of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind

The papers of Jeanne Murray Walker (SC-72) are archived in the Wheaton College (IL) Special Collections.

Listening for Madeleine

MarcusLeonard S. Marcus, author and literary historian, has compiled Listening for Madeleine (2012), a collection of interviews by friends, family, writers and editors who knew Madeleine L’Engle, author of A Wrinkle in Time, Bright Evening Star, Certain Women and many more titles. Sections concentrating on various aspects of her life include “Madeleine in the Making,” “Writer,” “Matriarch,” “Mentor,” “Friend” and “Icon.”

In his Introduction, Marcus describes a 2002 interview with L’Engle, conducted at her home, Crosswicks.

What followed was an utterly remarkable performance, and an act of generosity that must have drawn on every ounce of her strength and determination. I recognized, from the published interviews I had prepped on, her responses to some of my questions. But much of what she said, I thought, was new. When I asked her about the mail she received from readers, L’Engle told the story of a young reader of A Wrinkle in Time who ended what had seemed a typical fan letter with the news that he was ill with cancer. “We corresponded,” she said, “until he died. It was hard and wonderful both.” Then L’Engle said, “My books are not bad books to die with.” As she uttered this extraordinary remark, a chill ran up my spine. “What do you mean?” I asked her. “What I mean,” she said, “is that when I read a book, if it makes me feel more alive, then it’s a good book to die with. That,” said L’Engle, “is why certain books last.”

The papers of Madeleine L’Engle (SC-03) are archived in the Wheaton College (IL) Special Collections.

Two Freds, One Faith

Special Collections

One could hardly imagine two more disparate Presbyterian ministers than Fred Rogers, best known as beloved children’s show host “Mister Rogers,” and Pulitzer Prize-nominated novelist Frederick Buechner. One man, wearing a zippered cardigan, sings “Won’t you be my neighbor?” before placidly discoursing on themes such as courtesy, personal hygiene or regular school attendance; the other writes decidedly “grown-up” fiction and non-fiction, frankly discussing the crippling tensions he has felt between faith and doubt. One man’s pulpit is television; the other’s pulpit is his desk. Both are influential in vastly different spheres.

Nonetheless, the two Freds interacted during the early 1980s. Among the papers of Frederick Buechner (SC-05) are three notes from Mr. Rogers. For the first two, dated July 14, 1981, Rogers thanks Buechner for a phoned chat, and for “…what you called out of me.” Rogers then invites Buechner to visit him during August if he is near Pittsburgh or his summer home in Nantucket. On the other note he writes his address. On the third, dated August 27, 1981, Rogers thanks Buechner for sending a gracious letter which welcomed his return to Nantucket. He also thanks Buechner “…for you and your superb work.”

(Researchers desiring access to those portions of the collection classified as Private Materials or Special Private Materials must obtain written permission from the Buechner Literary Trust.)