Holiness and Humility:

[Re-]Locating the Houghton Ethos

Dr. Douglas M. Strong

A few years ago, Kathleen Norris published her acclaimed book on Christian spirituality, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography.  This interesting autobiographical story begins with Norris as a struggling writer in Manhattan, when she and her husband tried to make their living as artists in the city.  Despite numerous odd jobs, they could not make ends meet.  About that time, Norris’ grandmother passed away and left her the family farm in South Dakota.  So, with no other options before them, they moved to Lemmon, South Dakota, population 2000.  Norris had never lived there; she had only visited her grandmother in the summers.  She saw herself as a city girl, and didn’t know why she was going to such a remote community.  She didn’t want to be there. 

After living in South Dakota for several years, however, and cooking in her grandmother’s kitchen and reading from her grandmother’s Bible, Kathleen Norris came to faith in Christ—the fervent, devoted faith that had also been her grandmother’s.  Norris realized that there was something special in her own background, and she realized that she wanted to try to comprehend the heritage that was hers from the plains of South Dakota.  This book is a series of musings on her faith and the interest that she developed in that specific region.  She recognized that there were religious characteristics in the region that she wanted to understand in her own life—a spiritual geography.   

            Since the publication of this book, the concept of a spiritual geography has become quite current.  A spiritual geography is an historical and religious sense of place unique to a particular geographic region.  What would we find if we tried to develop or understand a spiritual geography for Houghton?  Where would we locate the Houghton ethos?  By that question, I mean to ask about Houghton’s “location” not only in the geographic sense, but also in the spiritual sense.  What is it about Houghton’s theological and geographical context that makes its ethos unique?  What are the implications of that ethos for the present and future ministry of Houghton?  I will deal with the historical aspects of these questions, and you folks who live here will need to deal with the present and the future aspects.

            These questions are intriguing for me as an historian, and especially for me as a person who was shaped, and who continues to be shaped, by this place.  I began my research for this project by studying the historical narrative of the college, the histories of the region, biographies, and so forth.  I also did a little bit of oral history:  I called up Dr. Kay Lindley, Dr. Ed Willett, and a few of my classmates.  The result is what follows.

First, I will speak about the theological context of Houghton and then the socio-cultural and geographic context.  The theological context is actually quite simple to talk about:  it’s the Wesleyan tradition.  But, what is the Wesleyan tradition?  How can we try to understand it?  What are the aspects of that tradition that form us and fashion a particular “milieu” here.  In the Reformed (Calvinist) paradigm, the theologian tends to observe the Christian life from the perspective of a well-established system—one that’s very logical and very coherent, but is, nonetheless, somewhat static.  In the Wesleyan paradigm, the theologian enters into the paradigm and it’s a much messier situation.  One’s perspective is not nearly as boxed, perhaps not even as coherent or logical in a purely systematic way, but one enters by participating in God’s dynamic plan of salvation.  That way of salvation is a transformative journey—beginning with the new birth—in which we join with God in God’s mission, the missio Dei.  We become participants with God in the missio Dei.  It’s part of who we are and what we were made to be by God.  And this mission of God is headed somewhere.  It’s headed toward a telios, a conclusion, an ending or culmination, and that telios is the new creation.  And so we have to think about the kinds of ways in which those who come to Houghton enter into that journey. 

What are the characteristics of this Wesleyan paradigm, this spiritual journey that begins with the new birth and moves toward the new creation?  Well, there are four characteristics that I would like to mention to you.  First, and most obvious to anyone who has encountered the Wesleys, is the emphasis on an affective spirituality.  That is, the Wesleyan paradigm is one in which evangelical experience is essential.  But what’s interesting, and I think unfortunate, is that in contemporary American spirituality we tend to think that the totality of evangelical experience is the new birth event, the born again moment.  That one event becomes the be-all and end-all of our spirituality.  That’s not a Wesleyan approach to spirituality, because if you’re going to narrate your salvation experience as a Wesleyan, you’re going to be telling about the entire journey of faith, and not just one moment.  Of course, the journey had to begin somewhere, but it continues, and it must continue, in order to be current.

            Indeed, one of the most important aspects about a Wesleyan spirituality is that the individual is expected to have a vital, present experience of God.  Wesley was always asking folks:  “Do you know the experience of God, now?  Does the Holy Spirit witness to your spirit that you are a child of God, now?”  Not years and years ago.  We don’t want only to talk about how God moved in the past.  Of course that’s important, for that is your testimony.  But what is happening in the present with your experience of God?  This important first characteristic of the Wesleyan paradigm has to do with the currency of one’s affective experience of God in Christ.

            The second characteristic, and related to the first, is that a person’s experience of God is one of continual grace.  In fact, “grace” is the most operative word in Wesleyan spirituality.  Almost without exception, the idea of God’s grace appears in Charles Wesley’s hymns.  That’s because the journey is not one that results from our striving.  The journey can occur only because of Christ’s work, a work that continues presently.  God’s saving action begins, and then it continues for our entire lives.  As I’m sure many of you know, the Wesleyan trajectory begins with prevenient grace, the grace that comes to us before we ever had any knowledge of Christ.  Then, the trajectory continues as justifying grace, the saving faith of the new birth, and then it extends into sanctifying grace, which moves throughout our lives, we pray, until finally we are glorified with Christ.  Thus, continual grace is a mark of our Wesleyan spirituality.

            Our journey toward God’s new creation would be completely impossible without the third mark of Wesleyan spirituality, and that is that there are means of grace to sustain the journey of grace.  We cannot continue, we cannot in any way hope to move toward God’s design for us on our own, or with our own resources.  We simply don’t have them.  We all know what it is like to try to will ourselves into any kind of experience or behavior pattern.  It’s simply impossible.  But through the means of grace, we have the capacity to do so.  Again, this is due to God’s action, not our own.

            What are those means of grace?  They’re familiar to you, of course.  They are prayer, Scripture reading, the Lord’s Supper, fasting and, finally, the one that Wesley stressed the most—what he called “Christian conferencing,” which is simply an eighteenth century way of describing small groups for the purpose of accountable discipleship.  It was Wesley’s understanding that such groups must be limited in size, for only in a small setting can there be the kind of trust, vulnerability, and confidentiality that one needs to be truly accountable.  Only in such a setting is it ever possible to move towards Christian perfection.  In fact, it is useless and senseless even to talk about such a doctrine unless accountability is present.  Wesley said on many occasions that he would rather not even preach for someone to be born again if there was not an opportunity for that person to be answerable to others following his or her conversion.  He believed that if there were no place for a convert to be spiritually accountable, then you’ve simply created a child for the devil.  And we all know people who have had exuberant religious experiences but, because of inadequate follow-up, their faith dissipates very quickly.  The third characteristic, then, of a Wesleyan spirituality is the way in which the journey of faith is supported by the means of grace.

            The fourth mark is one that I’ve already mentioned but I simply want to highlight; that is, Wesleyan spirituality stresses the expectation of people being made perfect in love.    Wesley had certain questions that he asked of all of the people who were going to be Methodist pastors.  In fact, they are still asked in my denomination.

            The first question is this: “Are you going on to perfection?”  Now the answer that the bishop expects to receive must be “Yes.”  People often say: “How can you even ask if someone is ‘going on to perfection?’  It’s presumptuous.”  But if we view the Christian life as a journey upwards towards God, as a continual increase of grace in our lives, then to say “no” to such a question, because we’re not sure whether we are moving upward, in fact means that we’re going in the opposite direction.  And one wonders where a person is going if he or she is not going on to perfection.

            So, the first question is: “Are you going on to perfection?”  The second question is:  “Do you expect to be made perfect in love, in this life?”  Note that the question includes the phrase “to be made perfect.”  It does not ask the person “Are you already perfect?” or “Are you going to make yourself perfect?”  Rather, the question asks if “you expect to be made perfect by the grace of God?”  Of course, the sticky point is the expectation that perfection will occur “in this life.”  But Wesley’s thought was that if you don’t have a sense of confident anticipation, you will never be moving toward the goal.  The expectation needs to be there and then Christian perfection may indeed occur in your life.  If, to the contrary, we believe that it is never possible to reach the goal of God’s high calling, then we’ll certainly succeed, won’t we?  We’ll never get there if we aren’t motivated to try.

            This doctrine of Christian perfection (or sanctification or holiness) is central to the Wesleyan heritage.  When I was here at Houghton, sanctification was not being preached much anymore; nonetheless, I still think that the concept pervades the atmosphere around here. 

            There’s a negative side to this doctrine and also a positive side.  I would imagine that you could easily identify the possible negative aspects of emphasizing holiness.  There can be, for example, a certain self-righteousness among people who claim to be sanctified, a kind of smugness--perhaps even pride.  If that attitude is present, then the folks that are saying it have not truly understood the doctrine of holiness, for sanctifying grace is God’s doing and has nothing to do with my own ability to be perfect.  God’s grace alone restores us to God’s image.  So this kind of self-righteous pride is a complete misunderstanding of what Christian perfection or entire sanctification is all about.

            The other possible negative aspect of entire sanctification, which is something that you may have experienced (especially if you have been around Wesleyan circles long enough), is legalism.  In this sort of situation, it is presumed that someone’s holiness can be measured either by certain behaviors or the absence of certain behaviors.  There’s a checklist of actions that one must follow in order to see whether one is sanctified or not, a litmus test of correct conduct. 

            What’s the positive and beneficial aspect of holiness?  The constructive role of emphasizing sanctification is that “pressing on to the goal of God’s high calling” (using Paul’s language) is something that impels people to action.  The Wesleyan Methodists, for instance, believed that it was possible to move toward the goal of a sanctified society.  This vision of the God’s new creation stirred them up to act on their beliefs, as evidenced by their antislavery activism and their advocacy for women’s rights. 

            A good example of sanctified action can be found in the life of Willard J. Houghton.  Basically uneducated, Houghton was a simple man who nevertheless had a God-inspired dream for a school.  It was really quite unrealistic for him to think that such a project could be accomplished.  Where was the money going to come from?  How could it possibly be built?  Despite the potential problems, Houghton acted on his vision.  He knew that God wanted him to do this.  And he did it!  The fact that he went ahead meant that he was depending on God in a way that was beyond his own strength, and then, in God’s strength, it was accomplished. 

            That is a quick run through of some of the highlights of Wesleyan theology, the theology that provides the religious context for Houghton.  My question to you is:  How do you think Houghton re-presents, that is, how does it present again, this Wesleyan tradition?  To what degree, for instance, is Houghton promoting an affective spirituality, a current vital Christian experience.  In what way does Houghton help to cultivate the experience of continued grace through one’s life?  How does Houghton support the means of grace in the lives of students, faculty, and staff—especially through accountable discipleship?  And what about the expectation to “be made perfect”?  Articulated somewhat differently, we might ask:  Is Houghton still holding forth the vision that God wants the new creation to occur in our lives and in our world?

            Let’s turn to the socio-cultural and geographic context of this place.  I want us to go back to the nineteenth century, to what western New York was like in that time period, which was the historical setting for the founding of this place.  The reason that Houghton is even here as a community is because the Genesee Valley Canal—and then later the railroad—went down this valley and connected it with the Erie Canal.  In a very real sense, Houghton was part of a vast communication and transportation system that connected New England to what was then known as the West—which was Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and so forth.  Carl Carmer, the popular regional historian of New York, referred to the Erie Canal and all of its tributaries (including the Genesee Valley Canal) as a “psychic highway.”  What Carmer was saying is that the ideas of New England traveled along the canal on their way to the West and then the frontier ideas of the West traveled back to New England.

            That means that in order to understand the socio-cultural context of this place, we have to know both the New England heritage and the frontier heritage, and the way in which they met and struggled in between.  The term that was used for upstate New York in that era was “the burned-over district.”  It was considered “burned-over” because there were so many revival fires and reform movements, one after another, which swept through and burned the region over.  This area was a crucible for wild and eccentric ideas, some of which were deeply Christian, such as holiness and antislavery, and some of which were not very Christian in an evangelical sense—such as the ideas that led to Mormonism, the Shakers, and the Oneida Community.

            In some ways, this area of the country is very much like New England.  With few exceptions, the original European settlement of upstate New York came from New England, and so we inherited the Yankee background.  What is New England like culturally? 

            Recently, there have been a number of articles indicating that the climate of the Northeast may shift quite radically over the next century, due to global warming.  Something that seems quite devastating to me is that these climatic changes in New England and New York may cause flora like the sugar maple not to be able to grow here anymore.  That’s rather tragic when you start to think about it.  Indeed, in multiple ways, the severe weather of northern New England and New York means that cold has defined the culture of the region for four hundred years.

            The weather has shaped this particular community, as it has shaped western New York.   Every community has its popular stories about its past, and Christian communities have their stories about how God has molded them and shaped them.  Ever since I knew anything about Houghton, the stories that I have heard most frequently are the widely recounted descriptions of the building of the chapel.  Notice how these stories center around the weather.  Because of a large storm, field stones that hadn’t been available previously were dragged down the creek.  The roof wasn’t going to be finished because of an impending snowstorm, but God spared a small circular area surrounding Houghton.  We’ve all heard these stories.  They center on the weather.  Of course they do, for they combine God’s providence with the harsh reality of where we live.  I think that’s very indicative.

            The region reflects its climate.  The New Englander is sturdy, rigorous, and serious—traits which are due to the Puritan heritage as well as the weather.  There’s a sense in which there is a moral earnestness in the New England mind.  Northeasterners, for instance, used to hold the opinion that, due to the Southern heat, Southerners represented a kind of moral slackness, while the northern climes created a kind of hardiness.  Tell that to somebody from today’s Bible belt and they’ll laugh at you and think you’re ridiculous, but I’m speaking about the views of the nineteenth century.  Our spiritual geography is shaped somewhat by those cultural values of steadiness and determined purpose.

            But we must also ponder the frontier mentality of the midwestern territory.  The frontiersmen were not as serious-minded.  They were open to experimentation and change.  When we combine such frontier traits with the earnestness of New Englanders, we have the socio-cultural context for this unique place, where religion and social reform were so strong.  The moral seriousness of New England and the Western openness to experimentation traveled together along the transportation corridors of New York state and ended up in Houghton, among other places.

            How should we characterize this burned-over district?  Actually, the burned-over district was not just upstate New York but also included northeastern Ohio, parts of southern Michigan, and other areas where New Englanders settled.  The various social reforms, including temperance and abolition and women’s rights and so forth, were all based on the region’s willingness to experiment with the rather un-Puritan theological commitment to holiness.  Charles Finney, the great evangelist and reformer, who traveled through western New York and then ended up in Oberlin, Ohio, was a Presbyterian who preached about entire sanctification.  In order to recognize how really radical that is, you have to compare Finney’s views to those of a high Calvinistic Presbyterian.  Finney preached holiness, believed in holiness, and taught holiness.  And Oberlin became a center of evangelical social reform for decades.  If you know anything about Oberlin today, it’s not at all an evangelical place, which is interesting, because Oberlin and Houghton had a very strong tie for many, many years, and Houghton students would often finish their undergraduate education at Oberlin.  Why the connection?  Because of their common commitment to revivalism and reform.

            Given the nineteenth century regional heritage of radical, holiness-oriented evangelicalism that challenged the society to live up to Christian standards, then Houghton, as a Wesleyan institution in western New York, is the most direct heir to the burned-over district legacy.  If that’s true, then we must ask what Houghton is doing to live up to that legacy.  How does Houghton represent the burned-over district heritage for today?

            While the burned-over environment characterized western New York in the nineteenth century, the region has changed demographically and economically in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.  In the nineteenth century, because of the canal and the railroad, upstate New York was very much at the center of what was going on in the nation, but let’s face it, that has not been true in more recent years.  This has to do with the realities of economic marginalization and geographic isolation, which affects Houghton along with the rest of the region.

            Negatively, this economic marginalization has created a fatalistic, almost defeatist attitude in western New York.  Let me give you an example from the popular culture.  The Buffalo Bills lost the Superbowl four times in a row.  Each year, there was a sense of sadness and melancholy, an attitude in which the residents of the area seemed to say:  “We can’t ever quite seem to make it to the top.” 

            Among upstate New Yorkers, there is often a certain self-deprecation and an inability to affirm and assert our own strengths, even when we have them.  Let me give you an example.  One of my best friends, a Houghton classmate and fellow western New Yorker, went on (like me) to get a Ph.D.  He and I have often talked about the time when we entered into the world of graduate academe.  Although Houghton prepared us very well intellectually, we found it difficult to participate in the highly competitive graduate seminar environment because we felt as if our fellow students ought to go first.  How do we honor the ideas of our colleagues, we asked ourselves, when they were severely critiquing our papers?  We started to doubt our abilities; we weren’t sure that we were as good as they were.  Now my friend is an exceptional scholar, but it took him a long time to believe it—partly, I think, because he came from western New York and his native tendency to be unobtrusive became a kind of self-deprecation.

            More positively, what this modest unobstrusiveness has created among western New Yorkers is an unassuming nature, an unpretentiousness attitude, which is most evident when compared to the boastful attitude of people from other regions, such as Washington.  When I come back here, I immediately note the understated quality about everything.  There’s a very noble aspect to this unassuming nature, for such an attitude fosters humility.  I see this in the way that Houghton articulates the servant-scholar mindset.  It’s in all of your literature, and I’m sure that it’s probably become trite for you, but it’s wonderful.  It’s wonderful because it helps, or I hope it helps, the students and others to see what evangelical Christians are all about.  We truly are servants in our scholarship, or we ought to be.  This radical humility before God and before each other creates a certain vulnerability.  Now that’s a tough attitude to maintain in today’s world, which is very harsh, but it creates people who care, who love, and who serve, and that’s what Houghton grads are doing all around the world.

            What does all of this add up to?  How are we to characterize the Houghton ethos?  I have spent a long time thinking about this, and I polled some of my classmates.  What we concluded is that Houghton’s ethos is, quite simply, a combination of holiness and humility.  That’s an interesting mix, because that means that Houghton presses toward excellence, but without pretension.  Now I could point out other Christian colleges that try to be excellent with pretension, but Houghton is very strong in that combination, holiness and humility.

            The best part of that combination, when it’s working, is that the humble side helps to mitigate against the negative aspects of the holiness message that I described earlier, the possibility of pride or self-righteousness.  And the holiness emphasis helps people to move beyond self-deprecation and toward a kind of God-centered humility.

            It’s a tough balance to hold, isn’t it?  The stress on holiness—God’s expectation that, through grace, we can accomplish everything that God has intended for us in this life—is a very positive image of what can be accomplished.  But to live in such a victorious manner while maintaining humility is a difficult tension.

            Christian colleges frequently describe their attempt to integrate faith and learning, the balance of head and heart.  I would submit to you that a holiness Christian college must do something more.  It’s not just the integration of faith and learning that is essential, but includes the integration of all of one’s life, so that the individual is fully engaged with God’s project, and the person is concentrating on a deeper knowledge than just the intellectual life.

            At such a college, professors, students, and staff all model the image of how our lives should be lived.  And that’s what we need to take with us.  I want to give you a few examples of people from our past who lived such a life of integration.  One, of course, was Willard J. Houghton.  Listen to his phrases, how he signed letters: “Living to make the world better,” “Yours for fixing up this world.”  Or how about this one?  “We should set an example of liberality [in] fixing up this world.”

            Stephen W. Paine was another example—intelligent, witty, a natural leader.  Listen to what Dr. Paine’s father wrote to him when he was going to assume the deanship at Houghton—at age 25!  This was his father’s advice, in a letter to Stephen:  “I would suggest that you be in much prayer, asking for the Lord’s guidance about whether you should accept this position.  Above all things, ask Him to keep you humble.  You have already had enough on your shoulders to prove the undoing of the average young man of 25, several times over.  Your continued favor with the Lord depends absolutely upon your continued humility under every circumstance.  Ask Him to keep you humble and earnest to do His will, and I am not afraid of the outcome.”  Do you hear that?  “Keep you humble and earnest to do His will.”  Holiness and humility.  Moral earnestness and an unpretentious attitude.  Later, at age 28, Dr. Paine was selected as the President of the college, the youngest college president in America.

            The summer that he became President, Dr. Paine attended a holiness camp meeting up on the hill.  At the conclusion of the meeting, most of the people left the tabernacle, but he was still inside.  The sliding windows of the tabernacle were open, and Dr. Paine could hear some people speaking on the outside, but they couldn’t see him because the windows were low enough that you could only see a person’s legs.  He heard the people saying what a wonderful man the new president was, how great he was, how he was going to do tremendous things for the college, and how God had blessed them through Stephen Paine.  As he heard all of this, he said to himself, “I am not the person that they think I am.  I can’t live up to their expectations.”  And he prayed right then and there that God would give him the strength to be what he needed to be for the college.

            To my thinking, this is a prime example of being made perfect in love in this life.  Dr. Paine believed that he needed to depend on God to supply all his needs.  Another example comes from the late 1960’s, just prior to when the campus center was built.  The leaders of the college knew that a campus center was needed, but the money was simply not there.  Should they hold off or should they go ahead?  They decided to have a prayer meeting and to ask God one question: “Should we build?”  Dr. Paine and the others were depending on God for the answer.  As I hear it, the clear consensus of the prayer meeting was that God had answered “yes,” they should build, even though they didn’t have the money.  Within a couple of weeks, New York State announced a new program of loaning money for such buildings.  The State gave a non-interest loan to Houghton and the college was able to build the campus center. 

            Given these characteristics of sanctified living, where do we locate the Houghton ethos?  Well, obviously the Houghton ethos is located here—in Houghton, but it’s also located wherever we encounter the context that has created this place.  Dr. Ed Willett said to me: “You can take a person out of Houghton, but you can’t take Houghton out of a person.”  That’s certainly true in my life, and I know it is true for many others.  And what I think that means is that thousands of grads are relocating the Houghton ethos of holiness and humility—relocating it all over the world, wherever Houghton alumni are serving their Lord.

            So here are the questions that I leave with you.  What is the mission of a Christian college?  And what should be the mission of Houghton College, in light of its context?  What are the implications for the present and the future of this college, given its history?  Thinking about the specific reform focus of our nineteenth century forbears, I ask us, as they asked themselves: What are the pressing needs of today’s society?  And then there’s one more question that Finney and Willard Houghton and the early Wesleyan Methodists asked: How do we help folks to have a present and vital and current experience with Christ?”