Category Archives: Collection-related Publications

Marching to the Drumbeat of Abolitionism

March 4, 2010Books, Collection-related Publications, College-related Publications, Researcher Publications, Special Collections, Wheaton College Archivesadmin

On the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of Wheaton College, Marching to the Drum Beat of Abolitionism: Wheaton College and the Coming of the Civil War by Dr. David E. Maas (Wheaton College Press, 2010) is being published as part of the college’s year long sesquicentennial celebration.

Here’s a more complete description of Dr. Maas’ book:

“Historians have long known that evangelical Christians played an important role in the anti-slavery movement. No study of the anti-slavery movement in the nation is complete without a thorough understanding of Wheaton College’s role in shaping abolitionist sentiment in Illinois and the Midwest. The prophetic voices of Jonathan Blanchard and other early teachers carried the movement like a torch across the prairie, lighting a beacon of freedom on a lonely hilltop in DuPage County. Now our own Dr. Maas of the History Department tells in vivid detail the story of the 300 Wheaton College men who carried the struggle for African American freedom into the Civil War and beyond, long after many Americans had forgotten the conflict’s true meaning.”

Dr. Maas has always had a professional interest in the story of the “losers” and neglected average people in American history. Trying to uncover their stories has led him most often into primary documents in local history. After graduating from Wheaton College (B.A. History, 1962) he pursued graduate studies at California State University at Los Angeles (M.A. History, 1964) and received his doctorate from the University of Wisconsin, Madison (Ph.D. History, 1972). His personal interests mainly revolve around his family: wife (Bobbie) of 48 years, 4 children (David, Pam, Beth, and Daniel) and 13 grandchildren. Dr. Maas ran a professional photography business from 1972 until 2004; in his spare time he enjoys fishing and reading.

The length and breadth and height of it are equal…

February 11, 2010Collection-related Publications, College-related Publications, Special Collections, Wheaton College ArchivesDavid Malone

Begun by Clifford Barnes over 100 years ago, The Chicago Sunday Evening Club (CSEC) held its first Sunday evening service in Orchestra Hall on February 16, 1908. (As a side note, Barnes was the first resident male worker at Hull House in Chicago). With a non-denominational orientation, the services were intended for business persons traveling through Chicago by train as many trains were idled on Sunday leaving many individuals in the city until Monday. Barnes and other leaders worked hard to develop a strong reputation for interesting speakers and well performed music, so much so that it began to attract Chicago residents as much or more than business people passing through. It was not unusual for the Club to average 2000-2500 people at Orchestra Hall every Sunday night. There was a different speaker every week, but some speakers were invited to return year after year.

In those early years, some of the best-known names in American religion and public life were speakers on the programs, including social worker and reformer Jane Addams, William Jennings Bryan, Rabbi Stephen Wise, Booker T. Washington, and Reinhold Niebuhr.

By the middle 1960’s one of the repeat speakers was Martin Luther King, Jr. King’s first visit to the CSEC was in January 1958 as he preached a sermon titled “What is Man?” This visit was followed by April 1959 (“The Dimensions of a Complete Life”), February 1960 (“Going Forward by Going Backward”), January 1961 (“The Man Who Was A Fool”), April 1962 (“Remaining Awake through a Revolution”) and January 1963 (“Paul’s Letter to the American Christians”).

In his 1962 speech, Dr. King said too many Americans were like Rip Van Winkle, snoozing through the changes happening around them. During two of these visits to Chicago the young Hillary Rodham made her way downtown to hear King speak. Though there has been some very minor controversy over her recollections of those visits, Rodham Clinton has spoken of the deep influence King had upon her social and political thinking.

On March 14, 1965, in the recent wake of the Selma marches, several Wheaton College students made their way to Chicago to hear King preach at the Chicago Sunday Evening Club in Orchestra Hall. Speaking from the Book of the Revelation (21:26ff), King spoke of balanced human fulfillment, comparing the symmetry of the Holy City (equal in length, breadth and height) to well-developed individual. This complete individual has a true sense of one’s relation and duty to one’s neighbor and to God. Students commented later that they believed the sermon would have been “perfectly appropriate in any evening service among the churches in Wheaton.” However, the student’s perspective was not that of the FBI. Taylor Branch, in At Canaan’s edge: America in the King years, 1965-68, notes that at this time FBI agents were monitoring King’s travel and activities, including the press conference held at O’Hare airport upon his arrival in Chicago and his televised CSEC sermon. Updates were reported to Washington throughout the visit. His sermon was characterized as “primarily religious sermon, no reference Bureau or government, and only passing reference racial matters. Military and Secret Service advised” (p. 801). King’s only reference to the events of Selma during his sermon was noting that the key to racial harmony was not through external coercion but internal reawakening to the necessity of the New Testament ethic of love.

Even though the Club continued having an impressive list of speakers, including names like Paul Tillich, Ralph Sockman, and Elton Trueblood, the Orchestra Hall programs after 1965 saw average attendance in the range of 200-300 people, rather than the 2000-2500 that King saw. This put financial strains on the Club’s resources because a long-term lease had been signed. In 1968 when the lease expired the Club ceased its meetings there. The CSEC took advantage of new color television technology. Retaining the original format of its program the Chicago Sunday Evening Club became a televised service on Chicago’s WTTW, where it remains today.

Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections houses one of two archival collections of Chicago Sunday Evening Club records and measures over 9 linear feet. This complements a collection housed at the Chicago History Museum (1908-1975, primarily speaker files from 1940-1965). The Wheaton collection contains corporate records, publications, speaker’s addresses, broadcasting information, correspondence, and a small amount of secondary information.

Wheaton’s Charisma

January 19, 2010Alumni, Books, Collection-related Publications, Special Collectionsadmin

The modern Pentecostal movement emerged in 1906 during a revival conducted at 312 Asuza Street in Los Angeles. As the meeting progressed, worshipers received an entirely unexpected “baptism in the Holy Ghost,” wherein nearly all present spoke with other tongues, proclaiming heartfelt praises in “heavenly” prayer languages, presumably understood by God alone. Miraculous healings and prophetic utterances accompanied the event. Following the Asuza Street revival, Pentecostalism remained for years on the fringe of evangelicalism, confined largely to its own local assemblies and schools.

But in 1959 the movement shed its relative obscurity when Reverend Dennis Bennett of Van Nuys, California, rector of the “old-line stuffy” 2600-member St. Mark Church, heard about a mysterious “baptism in the Holy Spirit” experienced by a young couple in a neighboring parish. Bennett’s congregation was not troubled with heresy or divisions, but he fully realized that they – and he – needed a boost of additional energy, a blast of holy power to ignite dormant potential. So, curious but cautious, he visited the couple at their home, noting their extraordinary peace and evident stability. Praying with them at their behest, Bennett suddenly received his Baptism. There in the living room, utterly shocked amid an overwhelming flood of joy, he did indeed speak in tongues, issuing a torrent of unknown words, the supposed heavenly language. Later as he witnessed of this event, several members of St. Mark’s also spoke in these strange tongues, praising God with renewed vigor. As news of Bennett’s experience traveled – covered by both Newsweek and Time – other mainstream denominations investigated his claims. Consequently, pastors and lay people across the nation received a similar Baptism; and soon the Pentecostal blessing invaded the pews of not only most Protestant denominations, but spread throughout the halls of Catholicism as well. The widespread dissemination of Pentecostalism (now known as the “Charismatic Movement” because of its openness to the charisms, or gifts of the Holy Spirit) across denominational lines is usually documented as beginning with Bennett’s ministry.

However, Leanne Payne, founder of Pastor Care Ministries, explains in her autobiography, Heaven’s Calling (2008), that charismatic renewal within Episcopalianism had ignited as early as 1956 at Trinity Episcopal Church in Wheaton, Illinois, under the rectorship of Fr. Richard Winkler. She writes:

People, including well-known leaders (clergy, physicians, nurses, theologians, professors and teachers, authors, and lay leaders), traveled to Trinity Episcopal Church from the ends of the earth to visit, learn, and receive prayer for restoration and freedom from whatever chains bound them. Indeed, Fr. Winkler laid hands on, anointed, and prayed for countless numbers of priests to be baptized in the Holy Spirit, and they in turn ministered to others. One of them was the Reverend Dennis Bennett who took the ministry forward in wonderful ways but especially through his book Nine O’Clock in the Morning and his ministry to orthodox priests.

Christian leaders who visited Trinity Episcopal to consult with Winkler include Agnes Sanford, founder of the School of Pastoral Care, author Catharine Marshall and missionary R.A.Torrey III, grandson of Reuben Archer Torrey, third president of Moody Bible Institute.

Leanne Payne’s papers (SC-125) are maintained in Special Collections at Wheaton College.

Max Isaac Reich

December 14, 2009Collection-related Publications, Special CollectionsKeith Call

After the death of his mother, Max Isaac Reich (b. 1867) came with his father to England from Berlin, Germany, to live with his stepmother, an orthodox Jew. Attending synagogue, he early discovered the glory of the LORD and the faithful traditions of his Jewish fathers. But one day he was faced with an intriguing challenge when, employed as a printing apprentice at a London firm, he asked foreman John Crane about the meaning of life. Crane simply responded: “Jesus.” Not long after that Reich heard one of the daughters of William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, proclaim the love of Jesus, further piquing his ruminations. If that were not enough, D.L. Moody, famed American evangelist, preached forcefully during a London crusade, shaking the entire city. Though Reich was forbidden to attend, he relished the warm, pious atmosphere generated by the revival. At last he realized that Christ is “…the completion and fulfillment of all that was best and holiest and highest in the faith of my beloved people.”

He continues, “…Upon that confession it seemed as if a weight had been lifted off my heart and mind, and I felt as though the Father Himself had come forth and kissed me.” His conversion occurred on a Sabbath evening, Midsummer’s day, 1884. Ostracized by his Jewish friends, he was blessed to have been quickly taken under the tutelage of John Galway McVicker of the Plymouth Brethren, who encouraged his young disciple to study the life of Christ as it is presented in the Gospels. Reich did so with characteristic diligence. Other notable Brethren who provided lasting influence were George Muller, founder of the English orphanage, and Thomas Newberry, editor of the Englishman’s Greek and Hebrew Bible.

In 1886 Reich traveled to New York City to preach, then traversed the U.S. and Canada. Two years later he married Mary, “…a true wife and a good mother.” Moving west they ministered to Native Americans on the frontiers of Arkansas, Oklahoma and Texas. With a family of five sons and four daughters, he moved to Scotland in 1892, then ministered in Europe, gaining proficiency in five languages. Long affiliated with the Plymouth Brethren, Reich in 1904 drifted toward Quaker convictions, eventually associating with the Society of Friends for the remainder of his life, though his sympathies encompassed truths treasured by all Christians. Soon he and Mary became overseers of Beth-shan in North London, a rest home for retired Christian workers. They returned in 1915 to the U.S. where he founded the Hebrew Christian Alliance of America, serving as its president from 1921 to 1927. Similarly in 1937, he founded the Hebrew Christian Alliance in London. In 1930 he joined the extension staff at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, speaking at Bible conferences, preaching and interpreting prophecy, before joining the faculty as full-time lecturer of Jewish Missions. Instructors and students adored his humble, courtly demeanor and well-stocked mind. In addition to classroom teaching, he wrote articles and devotional verse for The Alliance Weekly (which he also edited) and various journals. These pieces were eventually gathered into books including The Deeper Life and Sweet Singer of Israel. As editor he occasionally published pieces by pastor A.W. Tozer and V. Raymond Edman, president of Wheaton College. Wheaton College conferred to Reich an honorary degree in 1936. After a distinguished fifteen-year career at MBI, he died in 1945 following an operation. He is buried beside a Friends Meeting House near his home in Pennsylvania.

Max Isaac Reich’s papers (SC-91), comprising his Bible, diaries, photographs, sermon notes, verse and journals are archived at Wheaton College Special Collections.

Thiessen and Determinism’s cold and chilling effects

November 23, 2009Collection-related Publications, College-related Publications, Special Collections, Wheaton College Archivesadmin

It is said that an institution is the lengthened shadow of a man. In a very real sense Dr. Thiessen, the first dean of our graduate school, left an indelible impression upon it…Though dead he yet speaketh. His influence continues through his writings and through the lives which he trained for God’s glad service.

So stated Dr. Enock Dyrness, Wheaton College registrar, eulogizing Dr. Henry Clarence Thiessen.

Born in 1883 in rural Nebraska, Thiessen accepted Christ at 17 and grew steadily in the scriptures as he also proclaimed the gospel to his friends. Thirsting for deeper scriptural knowledge, he entered the Bible Training School in Ft. Wayne, Indiana. After graduating he pastored for seven years in Ohio before accepting a call to teach full-time at the Bible Training School, where he also functioned as principal. Seeking further education, he entered Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, teaching part-time to pay expenses. From there he enrolled at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, then moved to Southern Baptist Theological Seminary for graduate studies, majoring in New Testament Greek. From there he served as Dean of the College of Theology at Evangel College in New Jersey. In 1931 Thiessen was hired by Dallas Theological Seminary, instructing New Testament Literature and Exegesis. He taught with distinction until 1935, when invited by Dr. J. Oliver Buswell to join the Wheaton College faculty. Responding with a letter to Buswell, Thiessen recounts his own impressive academic qualifications and that “…there may be a way of realizing my ideal at Wheaton College.” Specifically, this meant an ambition to establish “…a first class theological school of the fundamentalist and premillennial type in the North…” Once hired he started as Professor of Bible and Philosophy; a year later Buswell appointed him Chairman of the Bible and Theology Department. At this time, John Dickey, friend of the college, died, leaving an inheritance to be used expressly for instituting an advanced theological program within six months of his demise. As a result of this gift, Wheaton offered in 1937 its first graduate courses, headed by Thiessen. As the curriculum solidified and expanded, he chose Dr. Merrill Tenney as his associate.

Thiessen was a popular but demanding instructor, firmly committed to dispensationalism. Sadly, this brought him into conflict with Dr. Gordon H. Clark, professor of philosophy and equally committed to Covenant theology. Wary of Clark’s “determinism,” Thiessen warned Buswell that his influence “…will do great, perhaps permanent, harm to many of the youngsters, because few of them are able to reply to his reasoning…” When V. Raymond Edman replaced Buswell as president in 1940, he followed Thiessen’s lead and took steps to dismiss Clark, first eliminating the philosophy major, then prohibiting Clark from teaching Reformed doctrine. Though Clark was tempted to leave, Buswell privately advised him to stay put. Edman then met with faculty and trustees to discuss Clark’s Calvinism and its “…chilling and harmful effect upon many students.”

Clark was a supremely capable teacher of unquestioned piety, much-respected by his students, including young Ruth Bell (Graham) who, awash with the over-gushy pietism prevalent during those years, sought his refreshing “logic” and “…his unemotional brilliance…” Faced with intensifying hostility from the administration, Clark finally negotiated a technical resignation in 1942, moving on to a successful career at Butler University. After his firing, Edman reinstated the philosophy major but hired no trained philosophers to teach it, instead opting for theology professors to lead the course until Dr. Arthur Holmes revived the program in 1957.

Though the dispensationalists prevailed, they did not necessarily represent the position of all students or faculty. “Thiessenism,” wrote one, “is the only creed of Wheaton’s Bible Department…but a bitterly dogmatic and autocratic one…It’s agree with and memorize what Thiessen and his satellites say – or flunk…Of course, Dr. Clark isn’t the epitome of broad-mindedness – but he is [the epitome] of gentlemanly consideration…I’ve never found him forcing his views on anyone.” Premillennial dispensationalism remained Wheaton’s unofficial eschatological statement for the remainder of Edman’s tenure.

Thiessen continued teaching at Wheaton College until debilitated by asthma, which allowed him only an hour or two of sleep each night. Advised by doctors to seek a warmer climate, he accepted in 1946 an invitation to serve as president and dean of Los Angeles Baptist Seminary, placing Wheaton’s Bible Department in Merrill Tenney’s capable hands. Thiessen preached his farewell sermon, titled “Facing the Future with Christ,” at Wheaton Bible Church. After moving to California his condition worsened as he endured numerous nasal operations, and on July 25, 1947, he died. His widow, Anna, requested that Thiessen’s brother complete and publish his classroom syllabus. Lectures in Systematic Theology, in print since 1949, steadfastly advances Dr. H.C. Thiessen’s hope that it might “…set forth the truth more clearly and logically, and that the Triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit will be glorified through its perusal.”

(Information regarding the Thiessen/Clark controversy is obtained from The Fundmentalist Harvard: Wheaton College and the Enduring Vitality of American Evangelicalism, 1919-1965 by Michael S. Hamilton and Clark: Personal Recollections by John W. Robbins.)