Chicago and its suburbs host an array of influential “megachurch” campuses, each comprising congregations of several thousand members. Willow Creek, Harvest Bible Chapel, Christ Community and others, attempting to attract unbelieving seekers and disenfranchised Christians, typically eschew in their services the elements of “old-fashioned” worship such as hymns, pews and traditional architecture, instead using praise bands, humorous skits and theater-style seating. A lesser-known megachurch, at least among Evangelicals, is First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, located in the northwest corner of the state. Contrary to megachurch methodology, First Baptist doggedly maintains an adherence to revivalistic evangelism, the singing of gospel songs and an unwavering insistence on the King James Bible as superior to all successive translations.

Founded in 1887 by Allen Hill, First Baptist grew steadily under a series of dedicated pastors, each contributing a unique strength. Notable among them was Dr. J.M. Horton, who served for fourteen years until resigning to lead the Indiana Baptist Convention. After Horton came Dr. T. Leonard Lewis, graduate of Wheaton College and Moody Bible Institute, who served for three years until resigning to assume the presidency of Gordon College in Boston. Then in 1944 came Dr. Russell Purdy, recommended to First Baptist by Dr. Will Houghton, president of Moody Bible Institute, and Dr. Harry Ironside, pastor of Moody Memorial Church. Purdy’s 1947 departure opened the way for Dr. Owen Miller, a supporter of missions and church plants. Miller served faithfully until 1958, leaving for Riverside, California; and again First Baptist sought a pastor. Several candidates interviewed with the trustees and deacons, but the most intriguing was a young Texas firebrand named Jack Hyles. As Keith McKinney and Gail Merhalski remark in The Old Church Downtown (2001), “Pastor Hyles’s preaching was different…Most of the guest preachers were serious, staid and stiff in their delivery…The most interesting pulpit supply were faculty members from Wheaton College…to put it mildly, most could not be heard above the occasional cough…Brother Hyles, on the other hand, preached!” Not surprisingly, Hyles was elected. In addition to breathing vigor into First Baptist’s evangelistic efforts, he promptly severed its ties from both Southern and American Baptist conventions, sensing an alarming drift toward ecumenism. Under his leadership First Baptist’s various outreaches dramatically expanded; and in 1973 Christian Life magazine recognized it as conducting one of the “100 Largest Sunday Schools.” With multimillionaire contractor Russell Anderson, Hyles co-founded Hyles-Anderson College in Schererville, Indiana, in 1972.

Ministering widely within Fundamentalist circles, he enjoyed a tight friendship with Dr. John R. Rice, founder and editor of The Sword of the Lord, located in Wheaton, Illinois. In 1960 Rice asked Hyles, who had been serving as assistant editor of the newspaper, to assume the editorship, providing that he resign and move to Wheaton. Hyles, reluctant to surrender his pulpit, declined and resumed his position on the Sword’s board of directors, while Rice in 1963 moved all operations to Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

During the late 1960s Hyles spoke at Moody Founder’s Week in Chicago, Illinois, Rex Humbard’s Cathedral of Tomorrow in Akron, Ohio, and Oswald J. Smith’s People’s Temple in Toronto, Ontario. But as the years progressed, he limited his engagements, cautious of theological compromise.

In this sphere he squarely placed Wheaton College, about which he infrequently but always pointedly referenced in his preaching, as in this 1975 sermon, favorably invoking an older era to illustrate God’s restorative power:

“Right over here in Wheaton, Illinois, the President of Wheaton College, Dr. [Charles] Blanchard, told how a man had died and they had covered him up. His wife got under the sheet that was over his body. She stayed there and said, ‘He’s not going to die!’…He got up and the wife started walking out the door with him. A dead man! The doctor said, ‘Hey, you can’t walk out the door. You’re sick.’ The wife said, ‘No, he’s not sick. He’s dead. Leave us alone!’ They went home. Yes, God can still do it!”

More often, however, Hyles cited Wheaton College as a plum example of how not to administrate a Christian school, as in this 1970 sermon:

“Here is the problem, and here is what is causing these little, immature, teenage pink punks to ruin our country (and they’re letting them do it). The reason they are is because we older people are letting them do it…Let’s take an example – and I’ll just come right out and say it – let’s take over here in Wheaton College. It used to be a wonderful center for the Truth. There was a day when Wheaton College was one of the grandest and greatest colleges in America. No longer is that true…Wheaton College was in our budget when I came eleven years ago to pastor this church. As long as I’m here, it’ll never get in our budget again. Never. You say, ‘I don’t like that!’ Well, you can lump it the best way you can, because I don’t like it either. I am sick and tired of Christian colleges hiding behind last generation’s character, kowtowing to a generation of beatniks and liberals, and acting like them. Listen, if Wheaton College were what it ought to be tonight, let them take a stand on the issues of our day; let them fight and get bloody for the Bible again like they used to.”

He expresses a similar conviction in Fundamentalism in My Lifetime (2002):

“Basically, Bob Jones University was ‘The Wheaton College of the South.’ However, because Wheaton College was much older than Bob Jones University, it changed sooner. Bob Jones University remained fundamental, as nondenominationalists go, later than Wheaton College, because of its age.”

After Dr. Jack Hyles’s death in 2001, his son-in-law, Dr. Jack Schaap, was elected senior pastor. Each week First Baptist Church continues to operate a fleet of buses throughout Chicagoland and northwest Indiana. Matthew Barnett, pastor of Angelus Temple, founded by Aimee Semple McPherson in 1920, cites First Baptist as a model for urban ministry.

From its earliest days the Wheaton College community has agreed to common standards of behavior. These codes have changed significantly over the last 150 years and moved from explicitly forbidding activities to the biblically-based principles of today’s Community Covenant. Once referred to as “The Pledge”, students from previous decades contracted to refrain from a variety of activities such as movie attendance, card playing or membership in a secret society. According to Wheaton College’s first rules in the 1860 catalog:

THE FOLLOWING THINGS ARE POSITIVELY DISALLOWED, VIZ.:

• Generally, all offensive, disorderly or indecent conduct
• propagating infidel principles
• profaning the Sabbath
• profane or obscene language or behavior
• playing billiards and like games
• using intoxicating liquors or tobacco
• disorder in rooms
• disorder in or about the buildings, especially at nights
• injuring college property
• a careless use of fire
• throwing water, dirt, or other offensive things from the windows
• joining any secret society or entering the marriage relation while a member of the College

The deportment of the sexes towards each other will he particularly regarded by the Faculty, and any student whose conduct shall be, in the judgment of the Faculty, either foolish or improper, will be promptly separated from the institution, if admonition fails to correct it. In short everything is forbidden which will hinder, and everything required, which, we think, will help students in the great object for which they assemble here, which is improvement of mind, morals and heart.

The Faculty will exercise a parental and moral oversight of the character and conduct of the students, each officer having power to suspend disorderly students until next Faculty meeting. The students are required to be present at all College Exercises; to treat their officers with respect, and fellow-students with decorum; to attend church on the Sabbath; and not to leave town; or be out at night; or be out of their rooms in study hours; or absent from examinations without permission.

In the early years of Wheaton College, one could say in the early decades, as well, the college relied heavily upon the enrollment of local students. Though it broadly drew students from the region, it was the Wheaton community that served as the “bread and butter” of its tuition dollars.

In 1860 the transition of leadership from Lucius Matlack to Jonathan Blanchard, from the full control of Wesleyan Methodists to the inclusion of Congregationalists, brought new energy and resources. It also brought a different perspective. For over one hundred years a member of the Wheaton College community could not be a member of a secret oath-bound society. Of any sort. The Illinois Institute and, afterward, Wheaton College were founded on several principles: abolition, temperance and anti-secretism. It was these last two, in tension, that brought forth Wheaton College’s encounter with the Illinois legal system.

Edwin Hartley Pratt (1849-1930), a local student, was enrolled in the Academic program at Wheaton. He and several other students joined a local Good Templar’s lodge. Known officially as the Independent Order of Good Templars, this fraternal organization stood for many of the principles that Wheaton, and Jonathan Blanchard, held dear: equality for men and women, racial non-discrimination and temperance. It’s motto sounded very good and biblical — “Friendship, Hope and Charity.” However, it was still a secret society and Jonathan Blanchard would have none of it (having believed that the slave system was the work of secret societies).

So, the administration of Wheaton College (i.e. Jonathan Blanchard), tossed out Pratt and his co-secretists.

In response Pratt’s father sued Wheaton College under the belief and assumption that his son had done nothing illegal and therefore could not be expelled. A legal battle (Pratt v. Wheaton College) ensued that made its way to the Illinois Supreme Court. In a precedent-setting decision the Illinois Supreme Court upheld the right of Wheaton College, and any other school, to establish rules to govern the lives and discipline of its students, much in the same way that a parent would. As the ruling stated, “A discretionary power has been given, … [and] we have no more authority to interfere than we have to control the domestic discipline of a father in his family.” This firmly established the principle of in loco parentis.

In loco parentis is the legal doctrine that outlines a relationship that is similar to that of a parent to a child. The concept goes back hundreds of years and was embedded in English common-law that was borrowed from by American colonists. The Puritans put this idea to use and it found its way into American elementary and high schools, colleges, and universities. The legal system in the nineteenth century was unwilling to interfere when students brought grievances, particularly in the area of rules, discipline, and expulsion. However, this would change in the 1960s as all forms of authority were challenged.

One may wonder what ever happened to Pratt. After leaving Wheaton, he became a noted homeopathic physician and surgeon in Chicago and was known for his professional writing and work. He wrote Orificial Surgery And Its Application To The Treatment Of Chronic Diseases (1891 and dedicated to his father) and The composite man as comprehended in fourteen anatomical impersonations (1901 and published in several editions). He served as President of the Illinois Homoeopathic Medical Association and served on several medical boards and commissions. In 1877 he married Isadore M. Bailey (a Wheaton student from 1875-1877) with the Rev. C. P. Mercer of the Central Swedenborgen Society officiating. Pratt joined the Chicago Society of the New Jerusalem (Swedenborgian) in 1881.

Oddly enough, Pratt v. Wheaton College wasn’t the only time that Pratt was before the Illinois Supreme Court. In 1903 Pratt was sued for not gaining consent before conducting a hysterectomy on a mentally-ill patient. Pratt lost the case and was fined $3,000. He fought the ruling seeking redress before the Supreme Court. Yet, again, the court failed to rule in his favor.

Poor Pratt.