Category Archives: Special Collections

Rediscovering Values – Jim Wallis

Jim Wallis was recently on Wheaton’s campus as part of an informal debate with Arthur Brooks on the topic “Does Capitalism Have a Soul?” The debate was held in Edman Chapel and also featured Arthur C. Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute and moderator, Michael Gerson (Washington Post columnist and former speechwriter and senior adviser to George W. Bush)..

Wallis is president and CEO of Sojourners, a bestselling author, public theologian, speaker, and international commentator on ethics and public life. He has been named to serve on the White House Advisory Council on Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships. His latest book, Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street–A Moral Compass for the New Economy was released in January 2010 (paperback, early 2011). His two previous books, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith & Politics in a Post-Religious Right America and God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, were both New York Times bestsellers. Wallis discusses his reasons for writing Rediscovering Values in an article from the Huffington Post. The Papers of Jim Wallis as well as Sojourners are available to researchers in the college’s Archives & Special Collections.

Colleen Townsend Evans

As a natural beauty growing up in Hollywood, California, Colleen (known as “Coke” to her friends) Townsend worked as a model to pay college expenses. After receiving a scholarship for dramatic training, she took a screen test. Suddenly “discovered” by the studios, she signed a contract with 20th Century Fox and performed in such films as The Walls of Jericho, Willie Comes Marching Home and Chicken Every Sunday. Hers was truly the American Dream. But one night a high school friend, Louie Evans, Jr., son of Dr. Louis Evans, Sr., pastor of Hollywood Presbyterian, excitedly told her about his experience with Christ during services at a mountain retreat. At that moment Coke realized the difference between religion and relationship. Now her faith was energized. After marrying Lou, the young couple headed overseas through the auspices of the World Council of Churches, helping with reconstruction efforts after WW II. Returning to the U.S. with valuable practical experience, Lou pursued seminary training in San Francisco, then journeyed with Coke back to Europe for two years of post-graduate studies at the University of Edinburgh. As Coke’s missionary endeavors increased, her desire for Hollywood evaporated. “I was only shifting from something I enjoyed to something I wanted even more,” she told an interviewer.

Coke and Lou EvansThough the Evanses had asked the Los Angeles presbytery to assign them to urban neighborhoods, they were instead sent to Bel Air, and later La Jolla, to establish churches among the affluent. But Coke and Lou would not deny their desire to minister among the destitute and marginalized. After a successful ministry in Southern California, they moved in 1973 to Washington, DC, where Lou would lead as pastor of National Presbyterian. First living in the suburbs, they soon moved to the inner-city, occupying a 100-year-old row house located four blocks from the Capitol. Eager to serve, they frequently opened their home to visitors. “Using our home for entertaining is something we love,” she remarked. “Our kids have always brought home lots of friends from college during the summer or on holidays. One night we had 29 for supper.” In addition to teaching adult classes, leading prayer groups and developing “covenant relationships” among ethnic friends, Coke was honored to chair the 1986 Greater Washington Billy Graham Crusade. After 16 years in DC, the Evanses relocated in 1989 to California. They were the parents of four children. Colleen Townsend Evans is the author of several books, including Love is an Everyday Thing, Living True, A New Joy and Bold Commitment, co-written with Lou.

The papers of Colleen Townsend Evans (SC-39), comprising manuscripts and interviews, are housed at Wheaton College Special Collections.

Living on the Edge

Calvin MillerAs the final section of his autobiography, Life is Mostly Edges (2008), Dr. Calvin Miller, pastor, poet and professor, asks the reader what he or she would do differently, if life could be repeated. At age 72 he answers the question for himself:

1. I would put more emphasis on being a better husband and father. To the church or the university I would whip out a lot more noes, and a lot more yesses to my family. I would eradicate almost all of the “Daddy’s-too-busies,” and the “later, darlings,” from my vocabulary. If the church suddenly came up with a critical meeting on circus night, I’d go to the circus.

2. I’d celebrate my mother in her presence. She was a simple woman whose humility kept her from seeing just how great she was. This adherence to her modesty I would shatter with the sledgehammer of praise. How would I do this?…I would write her a check for all the times she struggled to keep the family together…I would walk her to work in the morning and carry her lunch, and meet her when the day was over to tell her that I loved her…If anyone had maltreated her, I would get their address and visit them with an axe at midnight…For every time when I had made life hard for her, I would do seven years of penance…I would be there all the more for the woman who was always there for me.

3. I’d build a monument on Golgotha. I would build myself a replica of Golgotha, an Everest of Calvary, so high that the empty cross at its summit would be hidden by the mist of sheer altitude. I would keep a shrine at the top of my giant Calvary, with no sugary idols where the dying was done. I’d have no icons there, for the living Jesus who has been the central icon of my life would meet me there. When he came at sunrise, I would be there with the bread. And when he came at dusk, I would be there with the wine. And I would reverse my prayer life. I wouldn’t talk to him so much; I would listen more. I still wonder after a lifetime of chatty prayers, if I had not been so noisy in his presence, would he have told me more of his giant heart?

4. I’d babysit. Could I pass this way again I would take seriously a little girl in our church with whom I was hugging and laughing and having a great time, when suddenly she stopped my teasing her and asked point-blank, “Dr. Miller, do you ever do babysitting?” I told her I was too busy. But if I had to do all over again, I’d do more babysitting. In general I’d take more time for children and perhaps less for deacons.

5. What am I doing to be sure that I am a good steward of the years I have left? First, I am determined that this question will not drive me. One thing I do not want for the years I have left is to be so preoccupied with an agenda that I will not have time for anything but the drive…Such a tight little squinting of the eyes gobbles up our peripheral vision. It steals the panorama of what we might have seen if we had laid down some of our busy agenda and looked around a bit.

6. I’ll stop looking ahead and look around more. Looking around more will be my focus in my final years. I will smell the roses of Versailles and count the scent as sweet as those on the altar of the church. I will bypass a great many Christian novels and go on reading Pulitzer Prize winners just as I have always done. And I will not be so bent on my writing that I have no time to look around. I will not type my manuscripted way into the grave, staying so busy that I cannot take a walk with my wife, work the New York Times acrostic, go to a movie, or see a play…Looking around more means walking in a good direction but with an unhurried step. I would like to begin each day with God and then, coffee cup in hand, go out into the world. I don’t want to try and dissect it. I don’t want to figure it out. I just want to walk about in it. I also want to celebrate the simple things.

Miller, formerly pastor of Westside Baptist Church in Omaha, Nebraska, is currently Professor of Preaching and Pastoral Ministry at Samford University’s Beeson Divinity School. He has written over 40 books, including novels and poetry, notably The Singer and The Symphony trilogies. His papers (SC-24), comprising manuscripts, correspondence and watercolor artwork, are archived at Wheaton College (IL) Special Collections. He has lectured at Wheaton College on several occasions.


End of Summer

Although the official Gregorian calendar doesn’t mark the beginning of the Fall equinox until September 21, we all know the tell-tale signs: tanned students back from summer break have returned to class, the temperatures are cooling, Labor Day is behind us, and white shoes are no longer seen in public. The Wheaton College Special Collections recently acquired an original Vaughn Shoemaker cartoon celebrating the days of summer. After some much needed conservation efforts, the print was scanned and is now housed in the Vaughn Shoemaker Collection. Shoemaker was a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist with the Chicago Daily News for thirty years. He is well-known for his John Q. Public character who depicts the common man.

View a video about Shoemaker.

Francis Schaeffer papers

Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, NC, announced yesterday that the Francis Schaeffer Foundation had selected the seminary to serve as custodian of the Francis Schaeffer papers. It is interesting that Schaeffer’s papers will reside at a Baptist institution, despite Schaeffer’s life-long relationship with the Presbyterian tradition. Reinforcing this relationship is the Francis A. Schaeffer Institute at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. In response to questions about the paper’s new home, Deborah Middelmann, Schaeffer’s daughter, stated that

“My father was a very odd man. Had it been given to a more logical place it would have been very inappropriate.”

Below is a biographical sketch that accompanies the collection of Edith and Francis Schaeffer’s papers at Wheaton College.

Francis SchaefferFrancis August Schaeffer IV was born on January 30, 1912. Raised in a blue-collar working-class home, Fran, as he was called, learned the value of work from his father. Later, as a minister, he lifted up hard physical labor and working with your hands as the calling of God.

Though he valued physical labor it was intellectual effort that would characterize Schaeffer’s legacy. Purchasing a text on Greek philosophy by accident, it grabbed Fran’s interest and opened the door to his intellectual pursuits. Further studies in philosophy led him to explore basic questions about the meaning of life. This set Schaeffer on a path of search and inquiry.

In late summer 1930 Schaeffer attended a revival and experienced an old-style, sawdust trail, conversion. His new found religious fervor was coupled with his emerging intellectual appetite. In 1931 Schaeffer began his studies at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. With the nickname “Phily,” Schaeffer worked his way through school, continuing to value the synergy found in combining physical work with intellectual pursuits.

In 1935 Francis began studying at Westminster Theological Seminary, following J. Gresham Machen there after his departure from Princeton Theological Seminary. Unfortunately, another split surrounded Machen after his death. After Fran’s second year at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia the new Presbyterian Church in America denomination split and Schaeffer left Westminster, along with Dr. Carl McIntire, and helped found Faith Seminary in Wilmington, Delaware. Upon the completion of his studies he was ordained in the Bible Presbyterian Church.

In the early summer of 1938 Schaeffer and his family moved to Grove City, Pennsylvania to pastor the small Covenant Presbyterian Church. There were few children in the church and the Schaeffers helped organize and teach a summer Vacation Bible School–the first summer, in a church that had no Sunday school, seventy-nine children attended. However, not all of their early efforts were as successful. Their efforts to reach college students at Grove City College failed. However, with Schaeffer’s preaching and encouragement the church grew and in less than three years they built a new building and the membership exceeded one hundred.

In 1941 Fran began serving as the associate pastor of the Bible Presbyterian Church of Chester, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia. He served this church for less than two years. Though his ministry was marked by compassion, Schaeffer was known to display a quick temper that expressed itself in sudden outbursts among his family.

In 1943 the Schaeffer family left Pennsylvania for Bible Presbyterian Church in St. Louis, Missouri. Here Schaeffer’s ministry was known as one of personal hard work and working his congregation hard. Shortly after his third daughter’s birth in 1945 Fran traveled Europe for three months on behalf of the American Council of Christian Churches and the Independent Board for Presbyterian Foreign Missions visiting different churches in order to learn about their situation following the war. On his return he reported on his journey and its personal toll. Though it was one of his greatest spiritual experiences, it exhausted him. After months of recovery and a return to his pastoral duties, Schaeffer was given another leave to travel and speak in preparation for a meeting of the International Council of Churches meeting to be held in Amsterdam in August 1948.

The trip began an over-three decade involvement with Christian activity in Europe. One of the key friendships that began in Holland was with art critic and professor, Hans Rookmaaker. After the meeting in Amsterdam the family moved to Switzerland. Here they lived and ministered to those they met, particularly Americans military personnel. 1951 marked the beginning of a spiritual revival and renewal for Schaeffer and his ministry. He had been in Europe for three years, facing the crisis of how best to communicate the gospel in a culture that was not his own. He struggled to communicate to those who had suffered through two destructive wars and whose churches had spurned a biblical theology. He reaffirmed his belief that the Christian faith is rooted in the revelation of God in the Bible. By this time the Schaeffers were living near Champery, preaching in a small Protestant chapel located in a heavily-Catholic canton.

After returning from a seventeen-month furlough in the United States where Schaeffer taught at his former seminary, Faith Theological, he perceived fractures in his denomination. The Schaeffers were concerned for the future of their ministry. Some of his teaching generated controversy and their financial support suffered. However, the Schaeffers returned with a fresh emphasis upon trusting God with financial cares. It was in this context that in 1955 L’Abri, (“the shelter”) would be started, first in Champery and then in Huemoz in the Canton of Vaud. One of the hallmarks of L’Abri was a continual trusting in the provision of God for their needs from the original down-payment to purchase Chalet les Melezes to monies needed to buy everyday necessities.

Edith and Francis SchaefferThe Schaeffers described the purpose of L’Abri as showing forth by demonstration, in life and work, the existence of God. Fran and Edith came from opposite backgrounds and it was this diversity that would be exhibited in those who came to stay at L’Abri. Students from diverse backgrounds–Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, liberal Christians, Roman Catholics, and others of various anti-Christian and Christian views–came to their door from all over the world. Over the next decade and a half the work of L’Abri was extended to England and through broadcasts on Trans-World Radio. These efforts served to draw more seeking answers to the little Swiss village.

Schaeffer’s ideas and talks were in great demand. He was invited to speak at European universities and Ivy League schools. Accomplishing what few could, Schaeffer easily packed Princeton Seminary’s chapel. His twenty-one books have sold in the millions and have been translated into at least twenty-four languages. Some of his influential titles are The God Who Is There (1968), Escape from Reason (1968), He Is There and He Is Not Silent (1972), How Should We Then Live (1976) and Whatever happened to the human race (1979). His last books before his death were the best-seller A Christian Manifesto (1981) and The Great Evangelical Disaster (1984).

Diagnosed with cancer in 1978, Schaeffer felt that he had accomplished more in the last five years of his life than he had in all the years before he had cancer. Francis Schaeffer died early in the morning of May 15, 1984. An ally in pro-life efforts, Ronald Reagan remembered Schaeffer “as one of the great Christian thinkers of our century.”

Dr. Louis H. Evans, Sr.

William Evans, a native of England, heard D. L. Moody preach in New York City in 1890, and there received the gift of salvation in Christ. Advised by Moody to attend his new school in Chicago, Evans traveled to the Windy City, enrolled at Moody Bible Institute and graduated in 1892. He was, in fact, its first graduate. After a few years in various pastorates, he was appointed as Director of Bible at his alma mater. Aside from his classroom accomplishments, Dr. Evans contributed three lasting agents in the propagation of the gospel message. His first contributions were books titled How to Prepare Sermons (1917) and Great Doctrines of the Bible (1912), still in print through Moody Publishers.

Louis EvansHis other contribution was not a book but a son, named Louis Hadley Evans, who would one day be cited as one of the notable preachers of the twentieth century. Born in Goshen, Indiana, in 1897, Louis was raised in Wheaton, Illinois, in a house that stood on the corner of Franklin and Irving, where the Nicholas wing of Buswell Memorial Library now stands on the campus of Wheaton College. Louis attended Wheaton Academy, across the street from his home, for one year (1914-15), then later entered Occidental College in Los Angeles. A remarkable athlete, muscled and broad-shouldered at 6 ft. 4, he participated in football and basketball, winning multiple honors. After serving in the Navy during WW I, he acquired a theological education at McCormick Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Chicago. Ordained in the United Presbyterian Church, Evans led congregations in North Dakota, California and Pennsylvania. While serving as pastor at Third Presbyterian Church of Pittsburgh he received a call to Hollywood, California. Initially he found the request unappealing. “I said no at first when their call came,” he commented to Time magazine. “But later I realized it would be a burr in my saddle and that Hollywood would be one of the finest recruiting grounds in America. Also, I wanted to get my teeth into something.” When Evans assumed leadership at Hollywood Presbyterian in 1941, he found the church $250,000 in debt with a membership of 2,378. Within the first year the debt was wiped out, and for each successive year his parishioners topped their offerings, giving more than any other Presbyterian congregation in the U.S. As membership increased, swelling to the largest assembly in the denomination, so did Sunday School enrollment. Henrietta Mears, Director of Christian Education, was responsible for discipling these converts and implemented an engaging program that inspired hundreds of young people to enter full-time Christian activity; among these were Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ.

After serving for 12 years at Hollywood Presbyterian, Pastor Evans resigned in 1953, leaving a healthy congregation of 6,400 members. “It made a rancher out of me instead of a shepherd,” he joked. For the next nine years he traveled as Minister-at-Large for the National Board of the United Presbyterian Church, USA, speaking to universities, conventions and churches, often appearing on radio or television. As he journeyed from one engagement to another, his wife, Marie, usually drove as he sat in the back seat, tapping out sermon notes on a specially built typewriter stand. In addition to itinerating, he served as President Eisenhower’s summer pastor in Washington, DC, and was one of the co-founders and early president of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Life magazine named Evans as one of “America’s Twelve Outstanding Religious Leaders,” along with Billy Graham, Norman Vincent Peale, Fulton Sheen and George A. Buttrick. Writing eight books, he continued public ministry until four months before his death in 1981. His memorial service was officiated by Dr. Lloyd John Ogilvie, who also served as a pastor at Hollywood Presbyterian (1972-95) and eventually as Chaplain to the U.S. Senate. “Rolled into one man,” eulogized Ogilvie, “was the brilliance of an Apostle Paul, the impetuousness of a Peter, the love and tenderness of a Barnabas.”

The papers of Louis H. Evans, Sr. (SC-31), are archived at Wheaton College (IL) Special Collections. The collection is comprised of photographs, recordings and typewritten documents.

David Aikman’s book on Graham in paperback

Billy Graham: His Life and Influence (Thomas Nelson, June 2010) examines Graham’s impact on the worldwide development of Christianity, international affairs and the fall of Communism. Author and former TIME Magazine senior correspondent David Aikman integrates his Christian faith and understanding of world affairs into this careful analysis of Graham’s ministry. Aikman examines critical episodes of Graham’s life that explain his impact on American public life and the private lives of world leaders.

David Barrington Thomson Aikman was born on June 6, 1944, the same night as the Normandy invasion, in Cobham, Surrey, England. Dr. Aikman received his early education at Stowe School in Bucks, England. He was graduated with honors in Russian and French from Worcester College, Oxford, received his M.A. in Far Eastern Languages and Literature (Mongolian and Turkish) from the Far Eastern and Russian Institute of the University of Washington, Seattle and also received his Ph.D. in Russian and Chinese history from the University of Washington.

He began his twenty-three year career with TIME magazine in 1971, reporting from five continents and more than 55 countries. As foreign and Senior Correspondent he interviewed major world figures like Mother Teresa, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Boris Yeltsin and Billy Graham. He was bureau chief in Berlin, Jerusalem and Beijing aided by his skill in speaking Russian, Chinese, French, and German. He is an expert on China, Eastern Asia, and the former Soviet Union. From 1998 to 2002 Aikman was a Senior Fellow at the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center. Additionally, he served as editor-at-large of Newsroom, an Internet-based news organization reporting on the religious aspect of news events around the world.

David Aikman has been an eyewitness to the rise and fall of nations and regimes. Based in Hong Kong in the early 1970s, he saw first-hand the fall of Indo-china to Communist rule. He was the last correspondent to leave Phnom Penh before the Khmer Rouge invaded in 1975. While Eastern European Bureau Chief, Aikman also covered the emergence of dissident groups in Poland. Aikman was familiar with many of the people who became advisers to Polish President Lech Walesa. Dr. Aikman has also been Bureau Chief in Jerusalem, during the invasion of Lebanon by Israel; Beijing, during the reforms of Deng Xiaoping and the last days of the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square; and in Moscow, during the Chernobyl disaster and the beginning of Yeltsin’s loyal opposition movement in 1989.

David Aikman is also an accomplished public speaker, appearing regularly on major C-SPAN, CNN, NBC and others. His speaking has focused on the Middle East, China and on religious persecution around the world. The David Aikman Papers are housed in the Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections.

[excerpted from David Aikman.com and David Aikman Papers]

“Red” Grange documentary receives Emmy nomination

Larger Than Life: The Red Grange Story, a documentary produced, in part, from resources housed in the Archives & Special Collections, has received an Emmy nomination from the Mid-America Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for Best Historical Documentary. The winners will be announced on Oct. 9, 2010.

the Red Grange story

The documentary is on the life of Harold “Red” Grange interwoven with the story of the creation of a new Grange statue commissioned by the University of Illinois. Originally broadcast on the Big Ten Network, Larger Than Life presents Grange as the sports superstar that transformed professional football and helped firmly establish the National Football league. The 45-minute long documentary is available for viewing online and is full of primary source materials and interviews with sports historians and other noted individuals. One of the historians interviewed is Gary Andrew Poole, author of The Galloping Ghost: Red Grange, an American football legend. As with Poole’s book, the University of Illinois utilized several images from the Grange collection that are unique to our holdings in its production.

Hickory Presbyterians

Kenneth and Margaret LandonNot 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.

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Unceasing Worship

Harold Best, 1972Harold MacArthur Best is Emeritus Dean/Professor of Music of the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music. He received the B.S.M. from Nyack College, the M.A. from Claremont Graduate School, and the D.S.M. from Union Theological Seminary. Dr. Best served as Dean of the Wheaton College Conservatory of Music from 1970 until his retirement in 1997. He is past president of the National Association of Schools of Music, past chairman of the Commission on Accreditation, and former member of the ASCAP Standard Awards Panel. He is the author of numerous articles on the relationship of Christianity to the fine arts, worship, issues in arts education, culture, and curriculum. His books Music Through the Eyes of Faith was published by Harper San Francisco in 1993 and Unceasing Worship: Biblical Perspectives on Worship and the Arts was published by InterVarsity Press in 2003. He also contributed a chapter entitled “Traditional Hymn-Based Worship” in Exploring the Worship Spectrum: Six Views by Zondervan in 2004. He has composed in a wide range of media and styles, and his publications include choral and organ compositions. He is also active at the national level as a lecturer, consultant and workshop leader in the areas of curriculum, accreditation, worship and church music.*

His book Unceasing Worship was featured in the Spring 2004 edition of the Wheaton Alumni magazine and on October 4, 2006, Best returned to Wheaton College and spoke in Edman Chapel.

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