Oak Park, Illinois, located eight miles west of the Chicago Loop, is the home of notable contributors to national and world culture. For example, here lived novelist Ernest Hemingway, as did Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright designed several of his famous structures at his Oak Park studio; and James Dewar, inventor of the late, lamented Twinkie, resided amid the solace of its tree-lined avenues. Oak Park is also the childhood home of Dr. Wallace Broecker, who coined the now-ubiquitous phrase “global warming” in a 1975 essay titled “Climate Change: Are we on the brink of a pronounced global warming?”

As a child, Broecker attended Harrison Street church in Oak Park with his parents. The small assembly was led by T. Leonard Lewis, who would later serve as pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, before serving as president of Gordon-Conwell Seminary in Masschussetts until his death in 1959.

Broecker, encouraged to attend Wheaton College because his neighborhood friend, “Ernie” Sandeen, enrolled, recalls campus mischief in Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat – And How to Counter It (2008), written with Robert Kunzig:

It has a reputation as the Harvard of evangelical colleges, an ambitious but also a godly place, where students signed a pledge to adhere to the same set of rules that applied to Harrison Street…It was a serious place…and it seemed to force into full flower the most profoundly unserious aspect of Broecker’s character, one that can still be startling today to the uninitiated…At Wheaton the pranks got more elaborate. In his junior year he was business manager of the yearbook, which position of influence allowed him to sign excuses that got him and his friends out of daily chapel. It also got him a key to the attic of Blanchard Hall, where college memorabilia was stored. That October, Broecker discovered an unused door leading from the attic into the bell tower, which was off-limits to students; the custodian kept the main entrance carefully padlocked. At midnight on Halloween night Broecker, Sandeen and their roommates woke the campus with a loud tolling. When the custodian came racing into the bell tower, they exited through the attic and locked him in. He was forced to ring the bells again to summon the police. By the time the law arrived the Broecker gang had retreated to a ground-floor classroom. Broecker remembers vividly the flashlight beams coming through the windows and playing along the walls as he and his friends hugged the floor, out of sight.

Broecker offers an interesting perspective on the 1951 revival…and his subsequent drift from Evangelical Christianity:

In addition to going to chapel every day, Wheaton students were required to spend a week every year rededicating themselves to Christ under the guidance of a visiting preacher. That year the event took an extraordinary turn – it became a mass public confession. For three days and nights students lined up in the choir loft and behind the pulpit, waiting for their chance to proclaim their sins. The pressure to participate was intense. Broecker sat there in turmoil, brooding more seriously than he had ever brooded over anything. He certainly had sins – violations of the Wheaton pledge, for instance, that went beyond dancing. (He has never liked dancing.) But he knew some of of the people who were confessing, and he knew they weren’t being honest. They were holding back on the juicy stuff. The hypocrisy of the whole spectacle revolted him – people were pretending to believe in rules they couldn’t really live by, and then pretending to confess their violations of those rules. Hypocrisy and dishonesty, Broecker realized, were the sins he could least abide. That day in chapel, he slipped the fragile line that had tied him to the Rock.

Moving into the field of scientific research, Broecker found a substitute:

[Science] is the belief that if we observe the world carefully, test our ideas skeptically, and communicate honestly, we can figure things out. That summer of 1952, Broecker was converted to science. In time he would come to think of it as something sacred.

Wallace S. Broecker attended Wheaton College for three years before transferring to Columbia where he graduated. He is the Newberry Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. In 2006 he received the Crafoord Prize in Geosciences.

Howard G. Hendricks, longtime professor at Dallas Theological Seminary, died on February 20, 2013, at age 88. In addition to writing, classroom teaching and conference speaking, he mentored such Evangelical leaders as Tony Evans, Joseph Stowell, Chuck Swindoll, David Jeremiah and Erwin Lutzer.

Hendricks, interviewed by The Dallas Morning News in 2003, remarked, “You’re looking at a completely fulfilled human being. If I died today having produced some of the people God has given me the privilege of shaping, it will have been worth showing up on the planet.” He earned his bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College in 1946 and a master’s degree from Dallas Theological Seminary in 1950, joining its faculty a year later. Known as “Prof” to generations of students, he remained until 2011, when health issues forced him to retire.

During his years at Wheaton, Hendricks roomed with three other male students in “Peterson’s Palace,” a privately owned home near campus. He was a member of the Beltionian Society.

by Dr. Zondra Lindblade ’55

The great blue heron is perfectly camouflaged against the lakeshore pines. The green caterpillar is protectively colored on the begonia leaf. Camouflaged treasures are everywhere, but experienced northwoods eyes see beyond the pines and begonias to recognize the disguised.

In many ways, a “sociological imagination” resembles northwoods eyes and wilderness expediency. The imagination first examines obvious features of how we live together in families, corporations, and in society, and then probes beneath the surface to “see” camouflaged functions and meanings. What is camouflaged often surprises and sometimes contradicts conventional wisdom.

The sociological imagination is a filter, a directional lens that focuses on the obvious and hidden human experiences. Once awakened to the reality of groups being more than the sum of individual parts, the filter questions and educates the illusive realities that question “what everyone knows.”

For some time the issues of social welfare reform have occupied our “imagination.” These stimuli have opened my eyes and heart to a particular phrase in Micah 6:8.The call to “do justice” in this verse is resounding for sociologists who study cause and effect of social stratification, stigmatized education, or inner-city miseries. These are vacuous academic activities if there is no heart cry for justice. God’s command in Micah 6 to do justice is daunting.

In the next phrase, God requires believers to actually love mercy. A desire for justice may overlook and camouflage God’s compelling love for mercy. Mercy is assistance given to those who do not deserve help–or who think they do not. Mercy is a reflection of God’s character (Ps. 69:16) and part of His plan for repentance (Rom. 2:4).

What does it mean–to love mercy? Discussions of welfare reform usually ignore the priority God places on mercy. Do we consider mercy nalve, ill-informed, and shortsighted because mercy is offered before merit? Mercy does not consider independent responsibility as a first–order priority. Do we focus on eradicating dependency and setting the welfare mother on is both fulfilling to her and good for society? Are we occupied with making sure that sinful choices bring hard consequences? Are we slow to persevere when lessons experienced are not learned, when positive change is one step forward followed by four steps back?

Mercy may well invoke a “reckless advocacy” for the marginalized and undeserving. Mercy might offer help with no questions asked or answers expected. The example of the Savior is strong and convincing. He is a reckless advocate who “while we were yet sinners died for us.”

In my 34 years of teaching, occasionally there have been undeserving Wheaton students who have requested academic mercy from me. I have found that the students who received that mercy remember this help with greater appreciation than most of the assignments diligently pursued. And mercy remembered is often mercy later given.

———-

Twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles, titled “On My Mind”, in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Former Professor of Sociology Emerita, Zondra Gale Lindblade Swanson ’55 (who taught at Wheaton from 1964-1998) was featured in the Autumn 1998 issue. Dr. Lindblade was former department chair and retired in May 1998 after serving the College for more than 34 years.

by Dr. Carl F.H. Henry ’38, M.A. ’41, Litt.D.’68

What earlier generations considered a noble evangelical endeavor–the integration of faith and learning–now easily deteriorates into an academic cliche that obscures essentials of the Christian view. Faith becomes a rubber word. It accommodates so many options that it readily invites the notion of faith in faith. It can embrace faith in Allah, faith in Buddha, or even faith in New Age, no less faith in Christ.

For some of its champions, integration need not involve an indispensably unique cognitive content but rather only an openness to reality that escapes rational exposition of the self- revealing God of the Bible. The emphasis on faith instead implies only the challenge of the transcendent, the necessity of religion, the advocacy of the nonrational, the priority of the paradoxical.

If faith is essentially a term of infinite nuances (and not necessarily of a fixed inherent meaning), the term “learning” similarly is laden with ambiguity. It is hardly a summary term for an unchanging body of knowledge, nor need Christians applaud it as the timeless wisdom of the ages. Moses was familiar with the learning of the Egyptians and Daniel with that of the Babylonians, but these biblical spokesmen hardly exalted this into universal truth to be “integrated” with the revelation of Yahweh.

Human learning is subject to ongoing revision and displacement. A science textbook only a decade old is now usually considered outdated, whereas the word of the Lord–so the inspired biblical writers insist–is fixed and final, and Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday, today, and forever” (Heb. 13:8).

Yet some contemporary religionists correlated Jesus Christ the God-man with faith and not with learning, and they internalize rather than objectify all specific religious claims.

The term “integration” raises an additional network of questions. Does it mean a correlation of data that is testable for logical consistency and validity, or simply an open-ended presentation of claims that can be reconciled only in some respects? Are logic and systematic consistency something alien to the Christian revelation? In recent years not a few professedly evangelical theologians have argued that one rationalizes and falsifies Christian truth if one aims to present it as a logically consistent world-life view.

Some mediating scholars emphasize that the Christian revelation must not be confused with the “eternal truths” affirmed by pantheistic and idealistic philosophers. That is assuredly the case. But when this is made to imply that Christian truth is not eternally true, one falls into costly error.

Even the fact that the gospel was temporally and historically revealed and was conveyed in a particular language does not imply that it is not eternally true. It is in fact true yesterday, today, and forever–eternally true–that Jesus’s crucifixion and third-day resurrection are integral to the divine redemption of sinners.

Some confusion over integration of faith and learning seems to have found its way even into Christian colleges and universities. As a consequence the very epistemological foundations of the Christian revelation are misstated or ignored. The unbroken authority of Scripture, that is, the inerrancy of the divinely inspired writings, is minimized or obscured.

Another example of this is the growing tendency to view the insistence of scriptural inerrancy as merely an evangelical distinctive instead of the bedrock of evangelical doctrine. Yet if the canon of Scripture includes erroneous teaching, the process of integration is frustrated since problematically unreliable Scripture cannot be logically correlated either with faith or learning.

Another consequence of affirming biblical errancy is that evangelical campuses are tempted to neglect, or even to avoid, formation of the Christian worldview; on the mistaken premise that this would involve an unjustifiable rationalization of the biblical revelation.

As a result Christian truth is formulated not alone in opposition to speculative philosophies, as is necessary, but regrettably also in opposition to an explicit evangelical world-life view predicated consistently on the teaching of Scripture. Sometimes this maneuver involves a substitution of natural law speculation for an explicitly biblical theology, the minimization of which has implications for the entirety of a revelatory system.

In any event, the epistemological foundations of Christian faith are endangered when Scripture teaching is neglected or considered problematical. In the biblical view; only if one begins with the knowledge of the self-revealing God does one become wise in the knowledge of life.

“The beginning of wisdom is connected with the fear of the Lord” (Prov. 9:10).

—–

The following statement was included at the time of publication in the Alumni Magazine (Autumn 1999):

Dr. Carl F.H. Henry was a Long Island newspaperman when he became a Christian in 1933. He is recognized as a foremost author, educator, lecturer, and theologian. He taught or lectured on college campuses throughout the United States and in countries on every continent. He has written 43 books, some translated into Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Romanian, and Russian.

Dr. John A. Huffman Jr., pastor and author, recently published his memoir, A Most Amazing Call, chronicling the ups, downs and byways of his extraordinary life. Born in Boston, he earned his undergraduate degree at Wheaton College, his graduate degrees from Princeton Seminary. While studying at Princeton, he served as an assistant under Norman Vincent Peale, pastor of Marble Collegiate Church in New York City. “My life ever since,” Huffman writes, “has been so much richer for the opportunity of knowing him as both a friend and a mentor.”

After serving other pastorates, Huffman was called in 1978 to assume leadership at St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in Newport Beach, California. Exploring wide-ranging interests involving the Christian life, he has published nine books, including The Family You Want and Forgive Us Our Prayers. He has served on the boards of several influential evangelical organizations, including Christianity Today, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, World Vision and the National Association of Evangelicals.

Away from his pulpit, Huffman has served several sports chaplaincies, including the Miami Dolphins (1969-73), the visiting NFL teams (1973-78) and the PGA Senior Golf Tour (1973-78).

Huffman attended both Wheaton Academy and Wheaton College. Reflecting on his schooling he writes:

There were also great professors who opened to me new horizons intellectually, politically and spiritually; too many to list in this space. They helped me integrate the world of ideas with my Christian faith….In particular, I will be forever grateful to the chairman of my history department, Earl Cairns, who shaped my philosophy of history…And I was exposed to many outstanding chapel speakers such as Vernon Grounds, Leighton Ford, Richard C. Halvorson, Robert Boyd Munger, Bill Bright, Harold Ockenga, V. Raymond Edman, Hudson T. Armerding and Billy Graham — all whose friendship and counsel I have valued through the years.

Retiring from St. Andrews in 2009, he considers his life of service:

As I have now concluded my first 70 years, I move into a new era. My title is “honorably retired.” My 47-year call to local church ministry is now complete. From now on I will simply endeavor to do whatever the Lord lays on my heart as literally “minister-at-large.” What I hope to do with the rest of my life is to continue to lead men, women and children to a personal saving faith in Jesus Christ…

Huffman and his wife, Anne, have three daughters.

Over twenty years ago, the Wheaton Alumni magazine began a series of articles, titled “On My Mind”, in which Wheaton faculty told about their thinking, their research, or their favorite books and people. Associate Professor of History Emeritus Thomas Kay (who taught at Wheaton from 1959-2004) was featured in the Spring 2003 issue.

Historians are often asked, “What does history teach?” Such an inquiry suggests that history is a measure by which we might evaluate the present and project the future; it makes the past absolute, definitive, and normative. Hence,”Whatever was, was right.” Thereby, the past serves as window both to the present and also to the future. The historian becomes both pundit and prophet.

My response to such queries is always, “History teaches change.” Each unique historical event may provide an understanding of the past, the present, and perhaps a glimpse into the future, which is not to say that the past determines the present or the future.

Sages of ancient Greece and Rome sought to discover in history the element of a balanced and complete social and political structure that could be implemented for all time. From those elements one might develop the best of human associations, perfecting their members and possessing eternality. Their efforts and formulae for well-intended reform and renewal broke down under their own weight and a failure to grasp the character of the fundamental human condition–sin. Self-interest, personal gain, and power undercut the search for peace, stability, order, and community. The laws of the jungle became the master.

The advent of Jesus Christ came when many aspects of the Roman Empire and classical civilization were giving way. Even in the glow of the cessation of civil strife and the popular hope that Augustus Caesar would be harbinger of peace and a new, enduring order, the rule of the stronger continued. In the midst of grasping, praying, and hoping for political, economic, social, and moral stability there were many changes. Rome fell prey to the whims and desires of leaders bound by their personal goals of power, self-glorification, and deification. That for which Rome yearned–peace, order, eternality–would not come through changes wrought by sheer power, even by those who exemplified the highest classical values. Such change came and continues to come to every person in the advent (past, present, and future) of Jesus Christ, whose eternal kingdom, the City of God, transforms the human experience now and forever.

As throughout history, life has always been, and will continue to be full of changes. There are the changes of birth, growth, and death; the changes in human relationships and changes of residence, work-place, and martial status.

Ironically, the essence of Christianity is also change. There is the change of becoming a new creation in Christ and the ultimate change that will mark the denouement of history: “In a moment in a twinkling of an eye, we shall all be changed” (1 Cor. 15:52). It is only after history is finished that non-change becomes fully possible; in that place where there is no day nor night, no tears, no illness and no death.

History teaches change and coping with change. This is the human predicament. Change is only transcended by both the temporal and eternal foundations of the City of God. It is this for which all humanity has sought, and will continue to seek throughout the ages.

———-

The following statement was included at the time of publication: Dr. Thomas Kay has been professor of history at Wheaton for 44 years and served as coordinator of the interdisciplinary studies major for 14. He received his master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Chicago and serves on many load and state historical society boards including chairing the Illinois State Historical Society Symposium this year Dr. Kay’s current projects include a history of College Church in Wheaton, where he represents the middle of five generations of family attending. Dr. Kay and his wife Janice have three children and seven grandchildren, including two sets of “grand twins.”

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, boasts a singularly rich Christian heritage, dating to the founding of the country. Closely associated with Amish, Mennonite and Quaker settlements, this district also enjoys the presence of Quarryville Presbyterian Home, founded by Franklin S. Dyrness. Graduating in 1931 from Wheaton College, Dyrness enrolled at Westminster Theological Seminary. Later serving as a pastor in Pennsylvania, he attempted locating housing for several elderly women from his congregation. Finding nothing suitable, he decided to establish his own home, but this one would be different. “We’re here not here just to have people take care of old people,” he told an interviewer. “I’m not interested in that. Let the government do it. We’re here with Christian concern in action. The Lord has led them here, and they have come of their own accord. People say that you ought to be happy that you established this. I say, please don’t say that. I have no credit. I don’t want any. The Lord is the only man who can do it and he did. Therefore, give God all the honor and praise.” While studying at Wheaton College Dyrness met his wife, Dorothy (“Dot”) Ruth Rasmussen. Franklin’s brother, Enock Dyrness, acted as the college Registrar from 1924-69.

Quarryville is tied to Wheaton College in other significant ways, as well. Throughout the years, many staff and alumni have retired here, notably Katharine Tiffany, longtime English teacher, who called it “the Conrad Hilton of retirement homes.” A room at the Home was named after her, the K.B. Tiffany Memorial Center. Dr. J. Oliver Buswell, third president of Wheaton College, lived his final years at Quarryville. Unlike his successor, V. Raymond Edman, who died of a heart attack quite publicly while preaching a chapel message at Wheaton College, Buswell simply slumped in his wheelchair, passing quietly. He is buried in Quarryville Cemetery. Wheaton’s fifth president, Dr. Hudson Armerding, spent several retirement years at Quarryville, assisting the chaplain with preaching and room-to-room visitation, before returning to Wheaton shortly preceding his death in 2009.

Franklin Dyrness served as president of Quarryville Presbyterian Home from its 1948 inception until his retirement in 1985. He was elected to the Wheaton College Honor Society and was bestowed the Doctor of Divinity in 1960. The Home and his alma mater contributed funds to establish the Franklin S. Dyrness Chair of Biblical Studies at Wheaton College. He was also president of the Board of Trustees of The Reformed Presbyterian Church in North America. According to his son, F. Seth, Jr: “We gathered around his bed and sang some of his favorite hymns for him. As we sang the final verse of Rock of Ages, he closed his eyes and went to be with the Lord. It was beautiful and deeply comforting for us as a family.” Franklin Dyrness died on June 16, 1990.

As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, it is appropriate to pause and remember our fallen soldiers, not only those of the present, but also those of the past. A statue of a doughboy, representing U.S. troops killed during WW I, stands in Memorial Park in downtown Wheaton. Other memorials situated in public spaces around the city commemorate the ultimate sacrifice of our Armed Forces.

The first resident of the City of Wheaton to die during WW I was Norman James Tweedie, but the first Wheaton College students to perish were Russell R. Brooks and Willis Hugh Cork.

A memorial to Cork in the Wheaton College Record declares:

It is not task to bring a rich and sincere tribute to the memory of Willis Cork, who passed away the morning of Oct 2, for memory brings a richer and fuller tribute than mere words can ever express. The past year had been hard for Willis who since the first of last summer had been patiently and persistently trying to get into some branch of the service, so we man feel sure that the last two weeks held a deep happiness for him in the realization that he was at last an active part of that cause for which he was to make the ultimate sacrifice. As a student he was thorough, in business reliable, and with all he was one of those lovable people who win and hold the affection of all who come into contact with them. It seems hard to realize that the charm of his sunny smile and rare good will are gone from us, but for Willis Cork, athlete, student, soldier and Christian, the change is a glorious one and in his own words, “God’s will is best.”

Judge Frank Herrick, Wheaton’s official poet laureate, composed this verse honoring Cork:

We loved him for his sunny soul,
His clean life day by day,
His zeal that would not brook control
To join the worldwide fray!

The sunlight hidden in his heart
Shone in his genial face
Revealing an unconscious art
His wealth of inward grace.

We saw him don the khaki suit
That soon became his shroud
And wear it brave and resolute
With happy heart and proud!

Death has paled the shining star
And dimmed the eager glance
That with longing saw afar
The flaming fields of France!

Farewell, hero-heart that beat
Sweet music strong and brave.
Thine is the sacrifice complete
That Freedom’s flag may wave!