When Jonathan Blanchard came to Wheaton he was brought to the Illinois Institute to resurrect the failing school. He was known for his connections and his fund-raising–having saved Knox College from financial despair and leaving it with hearty reserves.

In February 1868 Blanchard wrote to Thaddeus Stevens, the radical Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, “…I am building a college building as a breakwater against secret societies and all like abominations, for which I want fifty thousand dollars more than are provided: and if, after providing for those who have been faithful to you and your principles, you have any sum from five cents to fifty thousand dollars to leave for the erection of the main building of Wheaton College Ill. and I survive you, I will see every cent you give sacredly devoted to that object and if you leave and (sic) considerable sum the building will bear your name.”

Under Jonathan Blanchard’s plan the completed limestone building atop the hill of center-campus would have been called Stevens Hall and would not have borne his own name. A newspaper report indicates that the completion of the tower was marked by shouting, cheers, a “comparatively feeble” ringing of the bell, and a raising of “the glorious old stars and stripes.” Jonathan Blanchard’s office was “elegantly fitted up” the same day as a surprise for the president.

When Jonathan Blanchard retired as president in 1882, the building remained asymmetrical–built out mainly to the west. In 1890 the east side of the building was flanked with an addition with a full wing, to complement the west wing, being added in 1927. The 1890 addition included a museum, laboratories, and the first library. Other portions of the building contained the above mentioned president’s office, a prayer room, laundry, apartments and classrooms.

So Send I You

So send I you to labor unrewarded,
To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown,
To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing,
So send I you to toil for me alone.

So send I you — to loneliness and longing,
With heart a-hungering for the loved and known;
Forsaking home and kindred, friend and dear one,
So send I you — to know my love alone.

So send I you — to leave your life’s ambitions,
To die to dear desire, self-will resign,
To labor long and love where men revile you,
So send I you — to lose your life in mine.

This hymn, So Send I You, has been called the greatest missionary hymn of the twentieth century. A lonely and scared young teacher wrote it as she contemplated her isolation — a loneliness that pervaded her heart and soul. Margaret Clarkson experienced loneliness of every kind — mental, cultural, and spiritual — as she began teaching at a logging camp during the depths of The Great Depression in northern Ontario, Canada. She wrote these words of pain and suffering.

However years later she would see the “one-sidedness” of this hymn and compose a newer version — one that reflected her growth and rest in Christ.

So send I you — by grace made strong
To triumph o’er hosts of hell,
O’er darkness, death and sin
My name to bear, and in that name to conquer
So send I you, my victory to win

The tract of land called Lawson Field was the gift of Victor Fremont Lawson (1850-1925), friend of Wheaton College and proprietor of the Chicago Daily News — known as a publisher with a conscience. In 1900 when the field was dedicated, acreage, fencing and stands cost about $1500. For the following 90 years Lawson Field was the on-campus home of Wheaton baseball; it now functions as training grounds for various intramural sports programs. Another landmark named after the philanthropic publisher is the Lawson YMCA, a 25-storey art deco structure located at 30 W. Chicago Ave, erected in the early 1930s. The elegant River North edifice, once the flagship for the Metropolitan Chicago Y, was utilized from time to time as additional off-campus housing for Moody Bible Institute students. On the Southside, the University of Chicago’s Divinity School boasts Victor Lawson Tower, designed as a compromise between the classic church-style spire and traditional square-style educational architecture. The chapel’s windows are patterned after the stained-glass in Chartres Cathedral in France; and its cloisters display stones from Christian sites the world over. Lawson met his wife, Jessie, an aggressive real estate developer, in a church choir at Green Lake, WI. After honeymooning there in 1888, they purchased for their summer home 10 acres of land once occupied by Winnebago Indians and settlers. Initially calling it Lone Tree Farm, the Lawsons gradually added more properties until their vast estate, now called “Lawsonia,” comprised 1,100 acres. After the death of its owners, Lawsonia fell into various hands until the General Baptist Convention bought it in 1943 for $300,000. The GBC currently manages the grounds, known as Green Lake Conference Center. As a youngster Lawson attended Chicago’s first Norwegian Evangelical Church; as an adult he took active membership in The New England Church. During his career he was a generous contributor to the Congregational Missionary and Extension Society. A civic and ecclesiastical benefactor, Lawson’s kindness extended to the workplace as well. Historian John J. McPhaul writes in Deadlines & Monkeyshines: The Fabled World of Chicago Journalism, that the pious, fair-minded Lawson “…gave his staffers turkeys [at] Thanksgiving and Christmas.” Victor Lawson’s grave, located in Chicago’s famed Graceland Cemetery, is marked with a granite crusader bearing sword and shield, symbolizing his sacrificial, militant spirit. It was sculpted by Lorado Taft, who oversaw all stonework for the 1893 Columbian Exposition. Lawson’s papers are housed at the Newberry Library.

I recently drove past a church and its sign said “Casual Worship, 9:30 a.m.” I know what they meant as they placed this message on their sign, but it also can communicate something completely different. The sign could have some unintended consequences. Evangelicalism is exhibiting signs of broad differences of opinion in the area of worship. As one segment goes further into minimizing worship styles to appeal to a wider unchurched public another segment seeks to retain or heighten the liturgy that has been a part of the church for over a millennia.

V. Raymond Edman’s last chapel address, and his last sermon, was also his last moment on earth. On September 22, 1967, unbeknownst to him he made the topic of his address the topic of worship and how one enters into the presence of a king. The story of this event has reached hagiographic proportions as the fuller story is not told. Edman was preaching about being in the presence of the King, but he wasn’t preaching about this as he faltered and fell to the floor. He had been chiding students about their casual worship–about their wearing ball-caps into chapel, about their chatter as worship began and about their general sense of informality “in the presence of the king.” He was preaching against those who would use the chapel time, and pulpit, to advance their own agenda.

After Edman’s death an edited pamphlet was produced that emphasized the better parts of this final address–the parts that Edman certainly meant to the primary focus of his talk. His biography, written by Earl Cairns, was titled In The Presence of the King.

The Archives & Special Collections has placed the text of the pamphlet online, along with a link to a fuller recording.

Continuing the Eerdman’s Library of Religious Biography series (edited by Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch and Allen Guelzo), Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America seeks to provide a ciritical biography of this noted evangelical figure.

Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984) was probably the single greatest intellectual influence on young evangelicals of the 1960s and ’70s. He was cultural critic, popular mentor, political activist, Christian apologist, founder of L’Abri, and the author of over twenty books and two important films. It is impossible to understand the intellectual world of contemporary evangelicalism apart from Francis Schaeffer.

Barry Hankins explains how Schaeffer was shaped by the contexts of his life — from young fundamentalist pastor in America, to greatly admired mentor, to lecturer and activist who encouraged world-wary evangelicals to engage the culture around them. Drawing extensively from primary sources, including personal interviews and materials housed in the Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections, Hankins paints a picture of a complex, sometimes flawed, but ultimately prophetic figure in American evangelicalism and beyond.

This volume should provide more information into the life of Francis Schaeffer–in addition to the recently published Crazy for God, the autobiography of Frank Schaeffer, Francis and Edith Schaeffer’s son.

Recently, the Wheaton College Archives and Special Collections obtained a letter penned by Wheaton’s first president, Jonathan Blanchard as a recommendation for alumnus Anson T. Hemingway, grandfather to Ernest Hemingway. The College Archives purchased the letter and photograph of Anson in his later years from a dealer via eBay (a great deal of history goes up for sale on this site daily). The letter makes a strong connection between Jonathan Blanchard and Anson Hemingway, as well as helping establish the context in which Ernest Hemingway grew up.

Anson Tyler Hemingway, the son of Allen Hemingway and Harriet Louisa Tyler, was born in East Plymouth, Connecticut in 1844. The family came to Chicago in 1854 and within ten years all three Hemingway brothers had enlisted in the Civil War. Anson served in the Army as a private with the 72nd Illinois Regiment and fought in the deadly Battle of Vicksburg. He later re-enlisted in Company H, US Colored 70th Regiment as 1st Lieutenant and also served as provost martial of the Freedman’s Bureau in Natchez. Anson’s other two brothers died during the war.

After his time in the military, Anson attended Wheaton College. After two years of study, as a friend and admirer of Dwight L. Moody, he went on to serve as general secretary of the Chicago YMCA for ten years before establishing a real estate business in Oak Park, Illinois. Anson married fellow Wheaton student Adelaide Edmonds, who graduated in 1867. Together they had four sons and two daughters. An avid outdoorsman, Anson gave his grandson Ernest a special tenth birthday present of a 20-gauge shotgun, believed to have sparked the future author’s lifelong hunting pursuits. Anson Hemingway passed away in 1926 at the age of eighty-two.

Imagine that for five years you are living in a dirty cramped 12-foot by 20-foot basement room that is heaped full of boxes and other material in an office building in a major city. In this room are six others who must live and sleep together and with only two beds.

This was the experience of seven Siberian Pentecostals who sought refuge from religious persecution in the American Embassy in Moscow in 1978. It would 1983 before even one of them was able to leave. That one person was Lida Vashchenko.

In 1978 seven Siberian Pentecostals crashed past Soviet guards and into the United States embassy seeking help in emigrating from the Soviet Union because of religious persecution. Pyotr Vashchenko, Augustina, and their three daughters, Lidiya, Lyubov and Liliya along with fellow Christian believers Mariya Chmykhalov and her son Timofei had traveled 2,000 miles by rail from the Siberian town of Cherno-gorsk.

Starting in 1961, Siberian officials began harsh anti-Christian campaigns and routinely disrupted Christian worship services and jailed many Pentecostal leaders. The Vashchenko children faced harassment at school — ridicule, ostracism and beatings. The following year the Vashchenkos decided to educate them at home, but the state ruled them unfit and removed their daughters from the home and placed them in state homes until they turned 16. In January 1963, while Pyotr was in prison, Augustina and fellow Pentecostals made international headlines for forcing their way into the U.S. embassy seeking asylum. When they were promised better treatment they left. However, the Vashchenko’s home was confiscated, their jobs were lost and they were imprisoned.

Known to the outside world as “the Siberian Seven,” they lived as uninvited guests in a grubby 12-foot by 20-foot room in the basement of the U.S. embassy on Moscow’s bustling Tchaikovsky Street. They shared two beds and earned small change around the embassy washing cars, knitting garments, cleaning rooms.

Inspired by Soviet Dissident Andrei Sakharov, after three and a half years in the embassy basement Augustina and Lidiya Vashchenko began a hunger strike — stopping their eating in a desperate bid to win world attention and shame the Soviets into relenting. Their health failed quickly. Their plan worked as the severity of their situation gained international attention and the hunger strike became life-threatening. However, Pyotr Vashchenko was opposed to their tactics because of his understanding of the Christian teaching against suicide.

While in the embassy, the group completed a 225,000-word account of their heart-rending saga, reworked by John Pollock as The Siberian Seven. Their experiences reveal the sufferings that Christians behind the Iron Curtain had been compelled to bear. It has been noted that the case of the Siberian Seven is a good example of the gravity of the human rights situation that existed inside the Soviet Union.

The Wheaton College Archives & Special Collections acquired the papers of Kent Hill that related to the Siberian Seven. Hill, former president of Eastern Nazarene College and former director of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, was studying in Moscow on a Fullbright scholarship when the seven sought refuge. Hill eventually received, and later translated, copies of their papers that they had compiled to document their charges of persecution and oppression. These papers tell a story of human rights violations and religious persecution. The collection (SC-52) contains diaries, correspondence, photographs, and other manuscript material.

Beginning in the mid-1970s when Art Rupprecht and Jerry Hawthorne joined a group of their very interesting and interested Greek students late on Friday afternoons in the Stupe. The week’s classes were over and it was time to relax with a free cup of coffee — they arrived just at closing time when the staff were about to throw the remaining coffee down the drain. It was theirs for the taking. Faculty and students spent time thinking through some theological issues, talking about baseball or fishing, or discussing some difficult Greek passage, telling a few jokes, and generally enjoying each others company and insights. Soon others wanted to join. So it became a weekly feature, but it was too large and often too raucous to continue meeting in a corner booth of the Stupe.

Just as concerns over a meeting place arose a new chapel schedule was implemented with chapel to be held weekly on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays — leaving Wednesday at 10:30 free when faculty and students had no officially scheduled meetings. So Wednesday became the new day. Now all that was needed was a place. John Ortberg, speaking for his housemates, offered Windsor House as the newly designated place of meeting. It was agreed that faculty would provide the donuts and the Windsor men would provide the coffee. Occasionally one of the faculty would fudge a little on the donut buying, for one of them was caught slipping across to Windsor house early, to heat up an Aldi’s day-old coffee cake for the coffee hour.

Eventually these Windsor men graduated, but the new men assigned to that house wanted us to continue, which the faculty were only too happy to do. Windsor House, which was adjacent to Buswell Library, continued to be a place of meeting for students from all parts of the world, faculty from all disciplines — a great amalgam of students and faculty. Discussions were lively and sometimes even heated, but always argued with passion, if not always with reason. Everyone present could not help learning something he (all men in those days) had not known before–those were great times together.

When Windsor House was torn down the group was invited to join the men in Kay House, so that this tradition could continue. By the time that particular Kay House group of men were ready to move on via graduation to their higher calling, the new “pharaoh knew not Joseph.” So no successive invitation was extended from that house. When that moment of desperation came, however, many of our student friends were awarded Hidden House as their next year’s domicile, and with one voice they beckoned us to come and join them at their home each Wednesday morning as usual. The tradition kept going and growing. This pleasurable and profitable welcome break from the routine bustle of academic life continued unabated for more than a decade.

As change is always inevitable, the chapel schedule changed again. The new schedule had it fall on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Not wishing to flaunt chapel, nor to encourage undesirable behavior on the students part, the majority of the faculty regulars decided that all who wished could come to Jerry Hawthorne’s office (on the second floor of Wyngarden Health Center) at the traditionally designated time. As many as 15-18 professors from the departments of literature, language, philosophy, psychology, sociology, history, communication and the sciences crammed into that small office for the weekly repast of coffee and donuts. Here the late and beloved Dr. Joe McClatchey delighted to come as long as he was alive; it was he who dubbed this place and this congregation, “Jerry’s Pub,” a name it still holds, although the infamous “Jerry” is now retired, and the Pub presently meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays in Art Rupprecht’s office.

The fact that we met on Wednesdays during chapel was information that could not be kept secret. Eventually it reached the ears of the Board of Trustees. They asked the President to see if this were true or simply rumor. If true he was charged to ask this group to cease and desist. When the President learned of the long history of this group and reported this to the Trustees and that it was not a subversive group intending to undermine chapel, the Board graciously gave the group permission to continue on Wednesdays at Chapel time, but only until Hawthorne retired. Hence, the new schedule.

Although this group never attained the recognition and reputation of C. S. Lewis’ “Inklings,” it nevertheless served the same purpose. From among those students who regularly attended “the Pub,” not a few of them have gone on to help, under God, to make this world a better place in which to live. Many of them have distinguished themselves as doctors, missionaries, pastors, artists, university professors, college presidents, public school teachers, leaders in development programs, clinical psychologists, and the list goes on and on.