Oil and Water: 

The Wesleyans and Higher Education

Dr. Timothy Nichols

Today we are going to be examining the Wesleyans and Education, which I have likened to mixing oil and water. I believe the historian’s legacy, dating at least back to Homer, is that we must first and foremost tell an interesting and compelling story.  Stories from our past--in order to have validity--should also serve to instruct us about the present.  To examine our story for today, of the early Wesleyans and their attempts at education throughout the 19^th century, we should first set the appropriate scenery, or backdrops on the stage.

The attempts to establish schools by the Methodists and Wesleyans tended to be disjointed and lag behind other denominations. Was one of the reasons a historic distrust of intellectualism?   If so, the Wesleyans were not alone in this regard. 

Our first piece of scenery--Anti-intellectualism--is an undercurrent in American life that extends as far back as the first Puritan settlers.  Richard Hofstader who authored the seminal piece on Anti-intellectualism cites an essential primitivism and conservatism to the American character; a rejection of the elite, effete and liberal traditions of the European intelligentsia which they sought to leave behind.  Compounding this factor, there is an even more ancient separation within Christendom between faith and reason.  Thus the Evangelical movement that shaped and defined American culture has tended to be the torchbearer for this religious anti-intellectualism.  The Puritans had a saying “The more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan you will bee.”  In an 1839 attack on the apostasy of the Harvard faculty, George Ripley noted not only that God had “chosen the foolish things of this world to confound the wise,” but that Christ had both failed to establish a college of Apostles, and indeed had chosen ignorant and unlearned men to entrust the great commission.  Under this rubric, learning becomes a handicap to faith rather than a tool. I find this whole subject to be a fascinating one, and it could be an interesting forum in and of itself, but I don’t want to bog down on this today. 

Hofstader also cites a “pervasive and aggressive egalitarianism” to the American character to which the excellence associated with intelligence is seen as a threat. As the United States entered the 19^th century, we begin to see the Evangelical revival movement winning out over the upper class--what we would now call mainline--churches, as well as challenging the great institutions of higher learning that these churches had founded.  The American love/hate relationship with its colleges also dates back to the earliest arrival of European settlers.  It is remarkable to realize that Harvard was founded only 16 years after the Puritans arrived in Massachusetts to begin felling trees to eke out an existence.  Yet distrust for these vestiges of the European intelligentsia is nearly as old. Historian Samuel Morison quotes a Puritan who described the universities as “stews of the Anti-Christ and houses of lies that stink before God with the most loathsome abomination.”  Historian Edward Johnson notes their use of the term “ninneversity” to draw a parallel to the pre-Jonah wickedness of Ninevah.

I want to go back to Hofstader and share a quotation;

“America was settled by men and women who repudiated European civilization for its oppressiveness or decadence, among other reasons, and who found the most striking thing on the American strand not in the rude social forms that were taking shape here but in the world of nature and savages.  The escape from civilization to Arcadia, from Europe to nature, was perpetuated in repeated escapes from the East to the West, from the settled world to the frontier.  Again and again the American mind turned fretfully against the encroachments of organized society, which were felt to be an effort to re-impose what had been once thrown off; for civilization, though it could hardly be repudiated in its entirety, was still believed to have something pernicious about it.”

That leads us to the second and third backdrops we must set in place; the revival fires that burned throughout the 19^th century.  The Second Great Awakening that swept across the United States after the turn of the 19^th century set the stage for the Wesleyans and other religious reform movements. This Awakening should be considered in tandem with– the great urge Westward.  19^th Century America saw the pioneers heading over the Allegany Mountains into the Ohio Valley and beyond to see what they had acquired in the Louisiana Purchase.  For the eastern establishment, the urge westward carried with it the ever-present danger of anarchy, infidelity, and intemperance.  So as the settlers headed west, the denominational churches and their revivals followed at their heels.  One of the legacies of that Second Great Awakening was the array of colleges across the Ohio Valley.  The settlers would spread into a new area and very shortly the accoutrements of New England life would follow:  hotels, taverns, schools, churches, and colleges.   One 19^th century observer noted “a settler could hardly encamp on the prairies but a college would spring up beside his wagon.”  And the renowned educational historian Frederick Rudolph notes, “College founding in the 19^th century was taken in the same spirit as canal-building, cotton-ginning, farming, and gold-mining.  In none of these activities did completely rational procedures prevail.  All were touched by the American faith in tomorrow, in the unquestionable capacity of Americans to achieve a better world.  In the founding of colleges, reason could not combat the romantic belief in endless progress.”

Many of the settlers were correctly viewed as seeking to reject and leave behind the Puritan values of the eastern establishment.  In attempting to Christianize the West, the eastern evangelical denominations launched missionary movements, Bible and tract societies, and Sunday School unions. The Missionaries that followed the settlers westward, often found that their congregations tended to evaporate after the first sermon on temperance.

One of the most significant ways to gain a foothold on the frontier was the establishment of a school to train up the children, and to educate the ministry and the laity.  This brings us to the fourth and final piece of scenery; denominational competition.  Again, Rudolph summarizes, “By 1861, denominational ambition had covered the country with colleges…and the intellectual prospects of the American college were now jeopardized by a torrent of piety.”   French observer, Crevecoeur (Letters from an American Farmer) supports this explanation of denominational competition, “In America, if the sectaries are not settled close together, if they are not mixed with other denominations, their zeal will cool for want of fuel, and will be extinguished in a little time.” (quoted in Hofstader)

For the evangelical, enthusiast denominations, the perceived threat of other denominations was very real.  They feared that if their own denomination was not proactive in establishing educational opportunities, their own sons could be lured away to study under a denomination that had strayed away from the true and right interpretation of the scriptures. 

It is important to mention, of course, that the impetus to found churches was surely based first and foremost on a genuine concern for the souls of the people of the West. (“We DO want them to be saved, and after all, who better to lead them to the Lord than US?”)  Rudolph notes that “The necessity to found colleges was discovered by a group of Presbyterian home missionaries who tossed in their beds sleeplessly when they thought of the benighted condition of life on the western frontier.” And indeed we know that Willard J. Houghton’s vision for Houghton seminary came to him during a sleepless night of traveling on denominational business; He described, “My soul was moved at the midnight hour to ask and work for this school.”

I want to now focus more specifically on Methodism, which had a long-standing suspicion of education and the pursuit of intellectual attainment, particularly in regard to ministerial training. This represents another angle on this anti-intellectual slant of the American Evangelical Protestants.  Hypothetically, (Arguably?) the Methodists may not have been opposed to other forms of higher education, however, when one is talking about the 18^th and at least half of 19^th century, higher education in America WAS ministerial training.  [Doubly confusing is the use of the word “seminary” which was used to describe secondary education at the time – although many of the seminary students were likely headed towards the ministry, as it was one of the few professional positions requiring any post common school education at the time. Confused yet? ]  At any rate, bear the theological training controversy in mind. (As an example, the great Charles Finney once noted:  A man can never learn to preach except by preaching. – which was a fine sentiment from an orator such as Finney. One historian noted “It was said that no one who heard his sermon, “the wages of sin” ever forgot it.”)  The frontier mentality further discouraged ministerial training, another writer put it this way, “The Westerners thought that when God called a man to preach, it was sinful for him to waste time getting ready, for God would not have called an unprepared man.”

Now of course Wesley himself was a scholar and voracious reader who set high intellectual standards, but ones which his American followers had little interest in sustaining – particularly the American evangelical revival which focused more on the heart than on the head. [Hofstader] American Methodism, which had supplanted the Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists to become the largest protestant denomination had grown so rapidly precisely on the basis of its appeal to the poor and uneducated.  Jesse Lee, a leader of New England Methodism described “We have always been more anxious to preserve a living rather than a learned ministry.”

The Methodists and the Baptists--the denominations which had once been the most distrustful of intellectualism--had to overcome this in order to participate in the new college-founding drama which was unfolding on the frontier.  And as Methodism grew in scope and influence, it gradually came to accept the necessity of an educated ministry.  One observer described this transition to the Methodist denomination during the mid 19^th century:

“Though in its origin, it seemed to thrive upon the outcasts of society—its people are now as respectable as those of any other religious society in town.  No longer do they choose to worship in barns, schoolhouses, and by-places; no longer do they affect leanness, long faces, and loose, uncombed hair; no longer do they cherish bad grammar, low idioms, and the euphony of a nasal twang in preaching. . . the preacher is a man of education, refinement, and dignity.” (Quoted in Hofstader) 

I could spend more time on how the Methodists overcame their distrust of education, but I want to move on to our primary focus today.  Sufficeth to say, the Methodist leadership eventually came to the conclusion that the Christian college would be the life support of the church.  By 1824 its General Conference had passed a recommendation that each conference should seek to establish a seminary.

Organized religion in 19^th century America was splintering over issues including abolition, the inerrancy of scripture, women’s rights, Darwinism, and a conservative vs. liberal-social interpretation of the Gospel.  Layer on top of this the ever-present American trend towards secularization and it is here that the Wesleyan drama unfolds.

Churches in the new world had always tended towards primitivism, congregationalism, and localism.  The denominations that broke away tended to be moreso – the typical objective being to return to the pure condition of primitive Christianity, to which scripture alone would be the key.  As such, the Wesleyans were following a familiar pattern in their break from Methodism. They favored the small, local congregation made up of common rural simple folk, over the more suspect establishment that they tended to view as urban, liberal, and educated. 

But the particular reformers who led the Wesleyan movement were in their own way, deeply committed to education. Wesleyan founders Luther Lee and Orange Scott had no formal educational preparation and yet were determined self-made scholars.  The third founder, the perplexing LaRoy Sunderland has been called the father of theological education for the Methodists and yet ended up in later life as an agnostic. (due, at least in part, to his bitter stand-off with the Methodist leadership.)  He had early cited the educated example of John Wesley and predicted that Methodism would ultimately have to change its course and train its ministers in order to survive. He started the seminary movement within the Methodist-Episcopal church but ultimately withdrew from the denomination in 1840.

Wesleyans who shared the Methodist distrust of intellectualism, had to overcome it, and did so quickly.  Lee Haines believes that the influence of founder Sunderland gave the Wesleyan Connection a different perspective on education from the very outset.

As has been pointed out during this series, the issue of Wesleyan secession from Methodism arose from abolition, and the use of the denominational hierarchy to suppress any debate about slavery.  For the egalitarian-minded Wesleyans, the slavery issue spilled over into higher education, both in terms of desiring abolition minded teachers, as well as a distaste for the elitist higher education which denied access to education to disadvantaged sections of the population such as students who may be female, poor, or black. 

Thus in 1844, just a year after the separation, and only three years after Oberlin graduated its first female students, the Committee on Education of the newly established Wesleyan Connection declared “Each conference should take early and vigorous measures to establish, as soon as providence may open the way, a “Wesleyan Collegiate Institute” for both sexes, combining the advantages of literary and theological training, on a plan in most respects similar to the Oberlin Collegiate Institute.” 

(Note also that two years later, a similar resolution about seminaries was passed which included “whose advantages shall extend equally to all colors and conditions.” – a revolutionary concept in the 1840s.)

There is a bright and glorious project before us – especially as Wesleyan Reformers.  Iniquity and corruption have yielded to our attacks and wherever we plant our standard, victory crowns our efforts.  But we need to fortify our territory, extend our conquests, and urge the victorious contest even to the last and strongest entrenchment of the enemy.  In our glorious warfare we must rely upon our commander and upon the instrumentality which He affords us…

There is another instrumentality which we are by no means at liberty to despise.  We allude to the cause of literature—sound, sanctified learning.   While we would not make mere literature a test for ministerial calling, we would regard it as affording increased means of usefulness to its possessor.  The world—our work especially—is demanding an educated ministry.  If we cannot supply this demand, others will.  We have already a share of professional men in our ranks, who highly prize the benefits of education themselves, and who are deeply interested in the education of their families and community at large.  Our members have learned to appreciate the benefits of education…But there is a peeled, degraded, restricted class who have hitherto been, to a very great extent, excluded from our schools and seminaries of our land.  For these we need institutions, men, and pecuniary assistance.”

From The Report of the Committee on Education

to the First General Conference of the Wesleyan-Methodist Connection, 1844

Later in the text of the educational resolution, they went so far to declare, “The supposition that the Scriptures do not require Christians and especially Christian ministers, to study and become truly learned, when circumstances will permit, is a great and dangerous error.”

The continuing story of the Wesleyans and theological training is an interesting one, and one that I don’t have the time, nor probably the expertise to continue right now.  Perhaps it can be a part two some day.  Since I want this story to head towards the establishment of Houghton, I’m going to continue on the path towards general education.

Additional text from the Education Committee minutes of 1864 reveals their fear that that the doctrine taught at these other institutions may be theologically flawed:

“The times demand a complete and thorough education…especially in times of revolution, the demand for the education of the masses is positive…the schools of this country have been and still are, radically defective…too exclusively literary and scientific.  Not that they educate the intellect too much, but the moral and spiritual elements of our being too little.  Both in influence and policy they have been largely pro-slavery and anti-liberty.”

I have to interject a disclaimer that the rhetoric against other denominations is a little harsh by this time.  But it is important to set it into the context of the times and the fervor with which the Wesleyans upheld their principles of holiness reform.

So anyway, at some point--several hours ago--I was building up to some sort of drama once I got all of the scenery set in place and indeed the saga of the Wesleyans attempts at higher education is a lively story which I believe will give us a greater appreciation for what the denomination went through on the road to Houghton Creek.  I have to say that for this next section I am greatly indebted to the work of Lee Haines – our speaker last week, and Willard Smith who culled a lot of valuable records from the denominational publications and minutes of the Wesleyan Conferences. 

Immediately following the 1844 Resolution, the first educational endeavor by the Connection was set to launch in the New England Conference in Dracut, Massachusetts. The Wesleyans took over a handsome Academy building of a previously failed school.  The Wesleyan Dracut Institute opened in the autumn of 1844 and closed in 1845 as a result of unpaid pledges and a lack of students.

[note:  Rudolph describes, “the nineteenth century American college could not support itself on a regimen of petty sectarianism; there simply were not enough petty sectarians or, if there were, there was no way of getting them to the petty sectarian colleges in sufficient numbers.”]

The next attempt was the Royalton Academy in our own western NY.  The Rochester conference paid $3000 in 1845 for “two commodious stone buildings” – relics of a failed attempt by another denomination.  Unfortunately this academy likewise succumbed due to insufficient financial support.  The True Wesleyan (at the time the name of the denominational newsletter) had touted both Dracut and Royalton as “coeducational holiness schools where parents could know that the teaching would firmly reflect their anti-slavery convictions.”

It is probably worth pausing at this point to note that educational historians Brubacher and Rudy estimate that 2000 colleges were founded between the Civil War and World War I, of which less than 800 survived.  (Some revisionists have challenged this number noting that some of those 1200 missing colleges were still births – so the Wesleyans were not alone in their failures)  The Achilles heel of these early colleges was almost invariably finances.  There was the self-defeating practice of the sale of scholarships, intended to raise enough cash to get the doors opened, but then leaving the fledgling institutions cash-starved when too many pre-paid students arrived.  Secondly there was the ever-present 19^th century danger of fire, which destroyed many young institutions that lacked the financial wherewithal to rebuild and reopen.

Anyway, back to our story, the Wesleyan’s most spectacular failure involved the Leoni School in Michigan (known in different incarnations as the Leoni Theological Institute, Michigan Wesleyan University, Michigan Union College, and Adrian College, a fine institution which--last I knew--still exists today) which opened in 1850 in a less savory environment than the first two attempts.  The Wesleyan founders first had to do battle with an adjacent distillery.  “We have bought out and driven the last rum seller from the place,” crowed The Wesleyan in 1855.  Coeducation would feature prominently at Leoni.  “It will gratify friends of the equal education of the sexes to know that young ladies may enter our new institution upon a like footing with the other sex.”  (Note that even at groundbreaking Oberlin the females were originally relegated to the “Ladies Department” and had to do the laundry for the male students.)  The Leoni founders were also careful to point out “Great care is taken to guard the morals of the students—the strictest care will be taken to prevent improprieties between young ladies and gentleman.  They are allowed to take no pleasure walks or rides together.”

Leoni had three Presidents in its first three years. Denominational founder, Luther Lee served first and then was replaced by Asa Mahan after his historic presidency at Oberlin. John McEldowney followed Mahan in year three. The Leoni School was established on shaky financial ground with scholarships sold for only $25 in keeping with the Wesleyan mission of educating children from the very poorest of families.  To make matters worse, the scholarships were sold on credit and were both perpetual and transferable.  (There was apparently no Jeff Spear around at the time to have apoplexy over this “ruinous scheme.”) Thus no money was initially forthcoming, nor did it ever. School officials beseeched the Connection for assistance noting that their creditors were threatening to “take us by the throat.”  The national Financial Panic of 1857 nearly drove Leoni into the ground and students began to transfer to the newly established Illinois Institute (more on that later.)

The Leoni school officials invited the local townspeople to meet in the chapel to convince them of their need to support the Institute if it was to survive.  At this point the enigmatic Asa Mahan reenters the picture, leading a group of citizens from nearby Adrian in a campaign to have the school relocated there.   (Not uncommon in those days in which having a college was a source of local pride – kind of like having a Wal-Mart now.  In fact, it is interesting to note as an example that Geneva College’s present location is based on the success of Beaver Falls in outmaneuvering Northwood, Ohio and other bidders to have the college relocated to Pennsylvania thirty years after its founding.)  The transfer of Leoni ultimately occurred, but it was a messy affair involving a great deal of contention between the two towns.  The transfer of the school library was done under cover of nightfall by ox-cart! The re-tooled college opened in 1859 with Mahan again serving as President.  In the process, the Wesleyans lost some control under the new charter which added local citizens to the board. Mahan disappeared in 1864 and the board asked for his resignation after it was learned he was attempting to open another school for the Methodist Protestant denomination.

Apparently the financial problems of the Leoni Institute jumped into the ox cart with the library books.  Pledges and faculty salaries went unpaid.  (Faculty salaries, meager as they were, were always the first to go in the times of fiscal crisis.)  The Michigan conference urged the General Conference to support Adrian, but the response was small.  Willard smith notes in his dissertation, “While the Wesleyans referred to Adrian as their church college, legally they had no control over it.  The twelve trustees of the college were a self-perpetuating body.”  The revised articles of association for the college included the clause that the six Wesleyan seats could be reassigned to another denomination if the total college assets did not reach $100,000 in five years.  The Wesleyans actually managed to attain that goal, but the school’s finances remained troubled.

During the early war years, the Connection was pursuing a merger with the Methodist Protestant Denomination.  The Wesleyan membership voted it down – leaving an awkward situation in Adrian where most of the proponents of the merger were located, including Mahan and the current president.  The Adrian Board of Trustees housed bitter opponents over the failed merger.  In the aftermath, the Adrian group proposed that the school become a joint venture between the two denominations.  The Methodist Protestants would then make a large contribution to bail out the school.  The cooperative effort was not particularly cooperative!  McEldowney, who had favored the union, but remained loyal to the Wesleyan-Methodists, was re-elected President.  But the Methodist Protestants demanded his resignation.  Maverick Mahan, resurfaced and wanted the presidency back.  The student body sided with McEldowney.  Eventually the Adrian community board members took action to resolve the bitter dispute.  They ruled that the Wesleyans had not met the $100,000 clause of the Articles of Association, then realigned themselves with the Methodist Protestants instead.  They proceeded to oust McEldowney and elect Mahan to a third presidency.

In the aftermath, McEldowney accused Mahan of lying to the trustees, citing a certified document signed by Mahan during Presidency #2 stating that the Wesleyans had indeed met the conditions.  Luther Lee expressed relief over the failed merger, declaring that he would not have been able to belong to a church which would sustain men who would conduct themselves in such a manner.

Meanwhile, a fourth school--in Wheaton, Illinois--was in the process of a less contentious transfer.  What little is known about the early days of this effort by the Illinois conference is that “by 1855 the Wesleyans had opened their Illinois Institute, beautifully located in a healthful country village, removed from the various temptations and corrupting influences of a populous city.” Financial problems again plagued the Institute.  The President resigned in 1859 citing “as I have no salary, no revenue, and am in debt.” Hobbled by the sale of scholarships, the trustees began spending the endowment to pay the faculty.  Eventually, the trustees offered the struggling enterprise to the wealthier Congregational denomination which eagerly accepted.  The takeover was not a rancorous one.  The Wheaton College minutes declaring, “The college hereafter is to be under the control of Orthodox Congregationalists with the cooperation of its founders and our friends, the Wesleyans.”The Wesleyans and the Congregationalists considered a transfer of Wheaton back to the control of the Wesleyans in 1876, but the Connection failed to come up with enough money.  The Wesleyans later opened their Theological Seminary at Wheaton in 1881, but it closed in 1889 after both financial and personnel problems relating to rumors that the professor was morally unfit.

The Wesleyans last pre-Houghton attempt took place at Wasioja, Minnesota.  The citizens of that community had undertaken a seminary project which they transferred to the Wesleyan Minnesota conference in 1872.  Wesleyan efforts in Wasioja were crippled by a tangled transfer agreement with the town.  That as well as a profound lack of income due to the sale of scholarships, an 1878 crop failure, and a fire combined to finish off the Wesleyan Methodist Seminary in the 1880s. They determined to cease forever the sale of scholarships.

The connection also explored other projects in Iowa and Ohio; all failed to materialize.  Several themes occur throughout the failed attempts.  One is the tendency towards out-of-the-way places.  In describing Wasioja, the principal noted, “It is one of those forlorn, shiftless, hopeless looking places occasionally met with the result of disappointed railroad expectations.” (Any resemblance to Allegany County is purely coincidental.)

A couple of postscripts to the failed endeavors:

The denomination, on top of its educational failures had lost much of its steam by the 1880s.  With the achievement of abolition, the Wesleyans had trouble finding support for its other causes of temperance, opposition to masonry, and opposition to gender discrimination.  The zealots of the 1840s had not been replaced by a dynamic younger generation.

Church members began complaining that the connection had lost sight of its essential mission.  F.R. Eddy notes “When the Wesleyans created this new form of government, they transferred the emphasis from their evangelism that had swept across the mountains and was sweeping across the plains, to reform—a moral reform and a governmental reform.  They transferred the emphasis from evangelizing to save men, to legally compelling men to do things certain ways.  For forty years our church did nothing but argue, did nothing but promote reform, conducted more debates than revivals.” Despite these many setbacks, the Wesleyans persisted in seeing education as the means to the end of winning lost souls.  And in 1881 the General Conference determined to form a united educational society to establish a single cooperative Wesleyan school.  And the rest, as they say is history, our history…

For the Houghton Wesleyan Methodist Seminary, the legacy of this story was that the Wesleyans learned how NOT to run a school.  By the time Houghton was in operation, the other colleges had perished or were gasping their last breath.  Scholarships were never sold for a Houghton seminary education and debt was (and is) steadfastly resisted.  Denominational support, while meager, was sufficient during times of crisis. Further, the Wesleyans had learned enough to place the Houghton seminary firmly under denominational control.  Lastly, it became a concern for the entire connection or denomination rather than only one regional conference.

“The Kongo People have a saying for mere visitors, “Eat, drink, and then go home, for you know not how this village was built.” [Fields] Knowing some of the story of how our village was built helps me to understand our continuing strong denominational ties.  Certainly these ties were one of the important factors that kept Houghton from secularizing as nearly all colleges gradually did around the turn of the 20^th century. It puts in perspective our long-standing commitment to a balanced budget.  And lastly, the historic commitment by the Wesleyans to a spiritually sound and intellectually strong egalitarian education available to all students, underscores the concerns about diversity described at our last Faculty Forum.  Certainly we seem to have met and exceeded the goals of the Wesleyans in admitting female students, but we always have before us the challenge of making an excellent education available to poor and diverse students of all colors and economic backgrounds. 

It is also interesting to note that once Houghton was established, the anti-intellectual sentiment did not vanish.  As early as 1888 there were apparently already “rumors circulating concerning the elevation at Houghton of the intellectual above the spiritual, and a committee was appointed to investigate.” 

J.N. Bedford, an early professor of theology wrote a letter to the editor of the Wesleyan Methodist warning against the anti-education bias of some members, “All branches of study, where truth encourages research lead the investigator to the fountain head of life, blessing, and deeper piety”… he goes on to urge the use of education for the glory of God, “without such use, culture will be a force used against God and be misdirected.  Education must receive the support of every well-wisher of humanity.”

The issue of the ascendancy of the spiritual vs. the scholarly is never fully put to rest at Houghton.  I believe that our historic and ever present wrestling with that issue is an important distinction that determines and defines who we are.  The Annual Report of the College in 1928 addresses this:  “In the maintenance of a first-class holiness college with emphasis properly placed on real spirituality and sound scholarship, there is presented a challenge to those in authority, little appreciated by the general church.  It would be much easier and perhaps less hazardous to conduct a Bible school where scholarship is given second place.  It would also be easier to conduct a college stripped of all spiritual life.  Houghton’s call is different from either of these two and in that call there comes greater responsibility and opportunity.”

I’d like to close with a quotation I particularly appreciate.  It was in fact stated long ago by one of its presidents to describe Princeton, but it still inspires me…

“Religion should burn in our hearts and shine from the faces of the teachers: and it should have a living power in our meetings, and should sanctify the air of the rooms in which the students reside.  And in regard to religious truth, there will be no uncertain sound uttered within these walls.”

(President McCosh of Princeton)

Sources:

Brubacher, John S. and Willis Rudy, Higher Education in Transition, An American History 1636-1958.  New York:  Harper & Bros., 1958

Bucke, Emory S. (Gen. Ed.) The History of American Methodism.  New York:  Abingdon Press, 1964.

Fields, Mamie Garver, with Karen Fields.  Lemon Swamp: A Carolina Memoir.  The Free Press, 1985.

Haines, Lee “Wesleyan Theological Education—A Historical Perspective.”  Unpublished paper presented at the Symposium of Divisions of Religion Colleges of the Wesleyan Church.  Marion, IN.  May 14, 1977

Hofstader, Richard.  Anti-intellectualism in American Life, New York: Knopf, 1963.

Jennings, A.T.  The History of American Wesleyan Methodism.  Syracuse, NY:  The Wesleyan Publishing Association, 1902.

Marsden, George M.  Fundamentalism and American Culture:  The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism.  New York:  Oxford University Press, 1980.

McLeister, Ira F. and Roy S. Nicholson.  Conscience and Commitment:  History of the Wesleyan Methodist Church of America.  Marion, IN:  The Wesley Press, 1976.

Rudolph, Frederick.  The American College and University:  A History.  New York: A Knopf, 1962.

Smith, Willard G.  The History of Church Controlled Colleges in the Wesleyan Methodist Church.  PhD. Diss., New York University, 1950.

Veysey, Laurence.  The Emergence of the American University, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1965.