All posts by David Malone

Army Specialized Training Program

Wheaton College Archives
John LaVine

John LaVine

Photo: Minnesota Historical Society

In mid-August 1942 Wheaton College experienced its first war-related blackout. At 10:30pm on August 12th alarms, whistles and air-raid sirens blew sending students to shelters below ground. The following summer 250 soldiers arrived on campus to begin Army Specialized Training Program 3672, otherwise known to everyone as ASTP. The program sought to meet the wartime demands for junior officers and soldiers by training skilled technicians and specialists. Headquartered in the old gymnasium (Adams Hall) the 20-dozen or so men were housed around campus and took their meals in the basement of Pierce Chapel. About a half-dozen faculty were involved in instructing these post-basic training soldiers. It was an interesting joining of forces in that Wheaton College did not adjust its lifestyle expectations for the soldiers while on campus. Due to the final pushes of the war and the need to replace fallen soldiers the program was cut back and was withdrawn from Wheaton in April of 1944.

One of the soldiers stationed at Wheaton for supplemental training was John LaVine. gathered by the Minnesota Historical Society, below are some of his recollections of his time at Wheaton.

“We finished our basic training…and was awaiting transfer to the Army Air Corps when my assignment to go to Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, came through, to the ASTP unit there, and David’s assignment came through to the same college, so we boarded the train with several others and proceeded to return to Chicago. From Chicago we took, I think it was, the North Shore Line, an electrified commuter railroad up to Wheaton, to the college, and reported in there. Were assigned our billets, which were in the college gymnasium, and that was where about 50 of us slept on Army bunks, in Army fashion. Wheaton College was kind of a nice assignment. Wheaton was a fashionable Chicago suburb. I believe it still is. Wheaton College was, I believe, a Methodist school — [it had a] religious affiliation, anyhow. It was a small liberal arts school. The city of Wheaton was “dry” because of its college and Methodist background, so we had to go into Chicago, for the action, and so that’s where we did go. I think we went into Chicago only a couple of times, probably down on Clark Street, and so forth.”

“We were at Wheaton — I think it was winter semester, and then it was quite an engineering and scientific-oriented curriculum– it was not a humanities — and I think I had an Algebra test, and Algebra, although I’d had some in high school, really wasn’t my forte, and I did engage in attempting that famous dictum, a parody of “Victory through Air Power”, the slogan during World War II. I was trying “Victory with Eye Power” on an examination and got caught. If they’d had any sense they’d have bounced me out of the program, but I ended up walking a penalty tour al a West Point. We didn’t have our own weapons at Wheaton College. They had had an ROTC on it, and they had, I think, old Civil War muskets, that they’d fill the barrels with lead, and I was issued one of those — which must have weighed about 40 pounds — to walk around with on my shoulder for a couple of days. By this time, the needs for soldiers was acute with the increasing activity in the European theatre and the imminence of the invasion there, and also in the South Pacific, so the Army decided that it could not afford the luxury of the ASTP program, and so the program was closed down after that one semester at Wheaton College, and we were then returned to real life. The entire unit was loaded onto a troop train in Chicago, destination Camp White, Oregon.”

 

The inefficient gospel in an age of efficiency.

Collection-related Publications, Researcher Publications, Special Collections

The Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections house the papers of noted sociologist and theologian Jacques Ellul. Though not all recognize the totality of Ellul’s ethics and writings, as the more secular fail to see the significance or importance of his theological writings, Ellul’s Christian works are key to understanding all of his other writings.

Jacques EllulEllul, born January 6, 1912 in Bordeaux, France, and grew up in a non-religious home. His mother was a devout Christian but in deference to Ellul’s father never discussed her faith with Ellul until after his own conversion. By his own description, his conversion was a violent one followed by years of struggling with his faith. After coming to peace with his faith and its call upon his life Ellul associated with the French Reformed Church, which he chose because it was weak and unorganized. Ellul always sought to side with the poor (in spirit, wealth, or other resources). Though he read Calvin it was Barth who appealed to Ellul. Another early influence upon Ellul’s Christianity was the Personalist Movement, which he helped found in France with Emmanuel Mounier. This movement stressed the reality, value and free will of persons. In conjunction with personalism, Immanuel Kant formed Ellul’s thoughts on the movement and Ellul claimed to have read the entire corpuses of Kant and Barth. Beside the poverty of his childhood, caused by his father’s unemployment, another influence upon Ellul was Karl Marx. Ellul believed that Marx accurately described the system under which Ellul’s world operated, but due to the influence of the Bible, and Jesus Christ as the hermeneutical key, he did not believe that Marx provided a suitable solution to the world’s ills.

Ellul’s most important work is considered to be The Technological Society (in French: La Technique, 1954). Other important writings are Propaganda (Propagandes, 1962) and The Political Illusion (L’Illusion politique, 1964). His works sought to provide readers with the ability to critique how they engage the modern world. One of the most significant critiques of our time, especially from a Christian perspective, would be upon the “cult of efficiency” that permeates our culture. It is Ellul’s more explicitly theological writings, the ones that round out the pictures provided in the more sociological titles listed above, such as The Meaning of the City, The Politics of God and the Politics of Man and The Presence of the Kingdom, which challenge the practices of our culture. We live in a culture that emphasizes efficiency and demands it from every task. However the Gospel is inefficient.

Our culture is concerned with its technological advances and our lives are measured by what we possess. The accessories of our lives speak volumes about what we and others find important as they speak to our wealth, freedom and ability to acquire resources easily. The history of civilizations tells of their wealth and might, even of the strength of its armies and the technology of warfare. However the history of God’s dealings with humanity — his acts of grace and mercy towards his creation — tell of a bulrush baby being rescued and furnace-cast followers being saved. God has a heavenly host at his command, yet he seeks and uses the weak and powerless. We see this in the story of Gideon who was from the smallest family in the weakest clan (Judges 6). Solomon extolled the Lord for his care for the weak and needy (Psalm 72). Ezekiel records the words of the Lord and tells us that God retrieves the strays, strengthens the weak and destroys the strong (Ezekiel 34). The Gospel is intertwined with these principles to the point that Paul revels in his own weaknesses (II Corinthians 12) as they serve as conduits of God’s grace.

Decades ago the writings of Jacques Ellul ominously reveal the problems of our efficient age. In his Technological Society Ellul clearly outlines the trajectory of society and what is so portentous is that he penned these words more than fifty years ago and we are still on that same trajectory and seeing the terminus out in front of us; the outcome that Ellul portrays is not inviting. In very rational fashion he articulates the logical conclusions of the choices humanity has made. He calls his readers to ask questions, like “what will this create?” prior to embarking upon a course of action or implementing a new process/technology.

Ellul died May 19, 1994 leaving a theological legacy that can be found in more than fifty books in French that were translated into English and eight other languages.

Judgment Day

Books, Collection-related Publications, Wheaton College Archives

Evidence from Scripture / William MillerIt is said that tomorrow, May 21, 2011 is Judgment Day. Billboards around America have declared that the end is near and that Christ will return. Over the course of the subsequent five months the earth will be destroyed. In the history of American religion this is not a new tale or theology. It has been here before, even for the contemporary prognosticator (who once before predicted the end to happen in September 1994).

In the middle of the nineteenth-century William Miller also believed that the return of Christ would occur. He announced that through his study of the bible he determined that the Second Coming of Christ would occur “about the year 1843” — give or take a year or two. He eventually stated more clearly that “Jesus Christ will come again to this earth, cleanse, purify, and take possession of the same, with all the saints, sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844.”

A farmer, Miller was also a lay leader in the Baptist church in New York, near what was known as the “burned-over” district that produced other religious movements like Mormonism. Miller began publicly announcing his views in the early 1830s. He published “Evidence from Scripture and history of the second coming of Christ about the year 1843 : exhibited in a course of lectures” and by the early 1840s it began to gain national attention as others took hold of his ideas and publicized them. One such figure was Joshua Vaughan Himes, pastor of Chardon Street Chapel in Boston, who published a newspaper, Signs of the Times. “Millerite” papers began to spring up around the country in cities like New York, Philadelphia and Cleveland. In the early months of 1843 over a half million publications had been printed and distributed.

Miller’s day passed with great disappointment. It is quite likely that on May 22, 2011 the sun will rise as it had the day before reinforcing that no one knows the day or the hour, except the Father.

“God’s Own Party” published from work in the Special Collections

Researcher Publications

Daniel WilliamsThough many may see the rise of the Religious Right and the engagement of evangelicals in the political sphere as a recent happening, Daniel Williams’ assiduously-researched book, God’s Own Party: the making of the Christian Right, published by Oxford University Press, reveals that its roots go back to the 1920s and 1930s. Williams, assistant professor of history at the University of West Georgia, tells the story of how fundamentalists and evangelicals moved into positions of political power and influence as soul-winning was replaced with social-crusading. Though rooted in the early decades of the twentieth century in a fight against communism a decisive shift occurred mid-century and following as groups like the God's Own PartyNational Association of Evangelicals (whose records were used for this book) and individuals like Billy Graham grew in popularity and influence. By the 1960s Graham was becoming known as the President’s pastor and took on celebrity status. This popularity became a tool for shrewd politicians. By the 1970s litmus-test issues emerged as social controveries abounded like the Equal Rights Amendment, Roe v. Wade, Birth Control and homosexuality. In more recent years, as Williams’ research shows, younger evangelicals expressed concern for environmental and social-justice issues. Williams’ book serves as an essential resource for understanding the current and historical relationship between American evangelical religion and politics.

“Hearts Beating for Liberty” helps tell the story of Mary Blanchard

College-related Publications, Researcher Publications, Wheaton College Archives

Mary Avery Bent BlanchardThe influence and story of Mary Bent Blanchard’s life is, unfortunately, left largely untold. However, Stacey Robertson’s recent book “Hearts Beating for Liberty: women abolitionists in the Old Northwest” helps place Mary’s life into context with other activist women of her day. Robertson’s book challenges many of the traditional histories of abolition that often portray the story of the work to abolish slavery as a solely Eastern cause. She shifts the focus to region known then as the Northwest and shows how the women of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin helped build a vibrant antislavery movement. Hearts Beating for LibertyOther writers have sought to do the same for the history of the Underground Railroad. Robertson, Oglesby Professor of American Heritage at Bradley University, argues that the Old Northwest had a complicated history of slavery and racism, but its abolitionist citizens created a uniquely collaborative and flexible approach to abolitionism. These “western” women helped build a local focus through unusual activities that crossed the boundaries of cultural propriety as they plunged into Liberty Party politics, boycotts of goods from slave-states and illegally helped fugitives. The work of these women was done right alongside male co-believers, unlike their Eastern counterparts. Robertson tells the pragmatic work of female antislavery societies as they sought to eliminate racist laws, aid fugitive slaves, and build schools for blacks. These women exemplified the capacity to work together to accomplish significant goals.

Special Collections researcher publishes “Scandalous Women”

Researcher Publications

Scandalous Women: the lives and loves of history's most notorious womenWayward wives and warrior queens alongside wild women of the west and amorous artists and amazing adventuresses are the fodder for this book of “herstory.” Elizabeth Mahon took her notable blog and put it into book-form. In this book, “Scandalous Women: the lives and loves of history’s most notorious women,” she writes in an accessible manner that tells the stories of Anne Boleyn to Anna Leonowens. Publisher’s Weekly calls this volume a “Feminist History for Dummies” as it covers the lives of well-known women and generally lesser-known females like Carry Nation who was president of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in 1900 and busted bars to bits with an axe and called others to do the same. As mentioned, a chapter in Mahon’s book retells the story of Anna Leonowens. Some of Leonowens’ writings are housed in the Kenneth and Margaret Landon Papers at Wheaton College.

Clouds of Witnesses published from the Evangelism & Missions Collection

Collection-related Publications, Researcher Publications, Wheaton College Archives

Clouds of Witnesses by Mark Noll and Carolyn NystromThrough nearly a dozen and a half biographical sketches Nystrom and Noll take the reader to Africa and Asia to see the lives of Christian believers in other lands and in other times. These stories span a century from the 1880s to the 1980s as the variety of Christian faith and practice are displayed in the lives of these inspiring individuals. Historian Philip Jenkins has clearly articulated in The Next Christendom: the rise of global Christianity the growth of Christianity in regions like Africa and Asia, but Clouds of Witnesses puts names and faces on that rise and growth. These are stories of the individuals, like Bernard Mizeki, Byang Koto, Wang Mingdao and Song Shangjie, who have lived their faith and sacrificed to spread the good news of Christ’s gospel. It is for this purpose — to encourage missions and evangelism and to document the lives of those involved in these activities — that the Evangelism & Missions Collection exists. This collection was useful in the research of this volume. This book can also serve as a companion to Mark Noll’s award-winning book The New Shape of World Christianity: How American Experience Reflects Global Faith. Noll’s papers are also a part of the Archives & Special Collections at Wheaton College. All of the titles mention herein will help you understand how the Christian faith has been spread, fostered and grown as a result of the Great Commission.

“From Bible Belt to Sunbelt” published

Books, Collection-related Publications, Researcher Publications, Special Collections, Wheaton College Archives

From Bible Belt to SunbeltIn this new book Darren Dochuk, from Purdue University, argues that Great Depression-era religious tenant farmers, “plain-folk” migrants, from Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas are key to understanding the contemporary interchange between American religion and politics. These migrants, with their Southern steely persistence and Western rugged impatience and pragmatism helped shape the character of politics in Southern California through the development of a political machine that influenced politics in the second half of the twentieth century in the careers of Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. The research in this book received the 2006 Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians. By utilizing the records of the National Association of Evangelicals and the National Association of Christian Schools Dochuk’s book has been well-reviewed and serves as a helpful guide as it tells the story of the rise of the New Right and modern conservatism.

Play Ball!!

College-related Publications, Wheaton College Archives

Late March and the first days of April have traditionally been the start of baseball season and this year is no different. Today marks, for some, the start of time, especially as life re-emerges from the slumber of winter. As W.P. Kinsella wrote in Shoeless Joe (later turned into the successful film Field of Dreams), “…the one constant through all the years has been baseball. America has been erased like a blackboard, only to be rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time while America has rolled by like a procession of steamrollers.”

One of the items that was, for all intents and purposes, erased from the memory of Wheaton College was a small little notebook in the Charles Blanchard papers. As the Archives & Special Collections has moved the descriptive information about its holdings into an archival management system (archon.wheaton.edu) staff have been reviewing box inventories and the contents of collections. One of the items that emerged was a scrapbook of clippings. Listed under “General Files” this little notebook turned out to have started out life as a baseball scorebook, circa 1868-1869, from the earliest decades of American baseball. 1869 was the year that saw America’s first professional baseball team, The Cincinnati Red Stockings. This scorebook was hidden away under pasted clippings with titles like “Temperance,” “Oddfellowship,” “The Fifteenth Amendment,” “The British Question” and many more.

Charles Blanchard clippings scrapbook with baseball statisticsThe obscured pages have yet to be fully revealed, due to the pasted articles, but what is easily found are some of the names of the players, the positions they played and the statistics gathered for inning by inning action. The style of the statistics follows an older “box score” format that more resembled Cricket scoring that kept track of O-s and R-s, or, the number of “putouts” and “runs.” The statistics show a very different game than we see today as players, like Blanchard, are listed as scoring ten runs in a game with final scores of 53 to 29 not out of the ordinary.

In the roster section Charles Blanchard’s name appears numerous times and on one occasion we see that he manned second base. Other names that appear on the roster are Sox (a fitting name for baseball), Ramsey, Fischer, Hiatt and Bliss. Another name that appears, and has appeared in this blog before, is that of “Hemingway.” Since the earliest clippings in the notebook date from 1868, the year following the last known date of Anson Hemingway’s attendance at Wheaton, we can properly assume that the baseball player is the paternal grandfather of noted American author Ernest Hemingway. The younger Hemingway loved baseball as well and while living in Cuba erected a field and gathered local boys for two teams to whom he’d pitch. In this early baseball scorebook we see that the elder Hemingway, who later went on to work for the YMCA in Chicago, played third base.

In America professional baseball is nearing its sesquicentennial and amateur play is older than that. For decades each spring has brought forth flowering bulbs and hopes for a pennant. In Chicago, for Cubs fans at least, that hope, according to Alexander Pope, springs eternal. Maybe this is the year?

One could say that baseball keeps one young. Below is a photograph of Charles Blanchard at a ripe old of 72 years old giving it one more swing!

Charles Blanchard, ca. 1920

“Sports and Faith: stories of the devoted and the devout” published

Collection-related Publications, Special Collections

stories of the devoted and the devout.The Apostle Paul used athletic allusions to communicate the role of the Christian in the world. He used athletic metaphors to describe the Christian life. In his new book, Sports and Faith (Sporting Chance Press, 2011), Pat McCaskey, Senior Director of the Chicago Bears, through a personal memoir looks at the lives of numerous individuals he encountered who had sought to be faithful and to make a difference in the lives of others. McCaskey looks at his grandfather, George Halas, “Red” Grange, Brian Piccolo, the Nancy Swider-Peltzs, Wayne Gordon and John Perkins. Some of the names may more readily pop into one’s mind and memory, but the individuals represented are examples worthy of attention with lessons to tell. Mr. McCaskey’s wife, Gretchen, and son, Edward, are graduates of Wheaton College (1974 and 2009 respectively).