Campus Aflame: A History of Evangelical Awakenings in Collegiate Communities PDF
Preview Campus Aflame: A History of Evangelical Awakenings in Collegiate Communities
A History of Evangelical Awakenings in Collegiate Communities /Edited by Richard Owen Roberts % Campus Aflame G.M. Elliott Library C'ncinnati Christian University 2700 Gienway Ave cincinnatl, OH 45204-3200 ee eTa Pp bry, Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2023 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation httos://archive.org/details/campusaflamehist0000orr| G.M. ELLIOTT LIBRARY Cincinnati Christian University Campus Aflame A History of Evangelical Awakenings in Collegiate Communities by J. Edwin Orr Edited by Richard Owen Roberts r NTERNATIONAL AWAKENING PhEos Wheaton, Illinois 1994 Published By International Awakening Press P. O. Box 232 Wheaton, Illinois 60189 U. S. A. A Division Of International Awakening Ministries, Inc. First Edition, 1971 Published by Regal Books Division, G/L Publications New and Revised Edition Copyright 1994 By International Awakening Ministries All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America ISBN 0-926474-07-3 Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 93-78598 Microfilmed 1971 as Evangelical Awakenings in Collegiate Communities Table of Contents Preface Editor’s Introduction The Evangelical Heritage The Evangelical Revival Despair and Recovery Collegiate Awakenings After 1800 The Impact on Education Educational Pioneering Overseas The Mid-Century Decline The 1858-59 Awakening Eeereieeees eek Post-1860 Overseas Impact The Multiplying Fellowships The Student Volunteers 101 Sporadic Revivals Overseas 107 The Awakenings of the 1900s io The 1905 Aftermath 125 Collegiate Awakenings Overseas 133 Volunteer Objectives Overseas 139 Decline of a Great Movement 149 A Slow Evangelical Recovery 159 Mid-Century Resurgence 169 The Evangelism of the Fifties 185 The Unbelievable Years 197 Epilogue: 1970 205 Pattern of College Revivals 213 Theology of College Revivals 227 Notes 233 Bibliography 265 Index 275 Preface In standard church histories and in standard histories of higher education, reference is often made to the phenomenon of revivals of religion or evangelical awakenings in collegiate communities, particularly during the late eighteenth and the early nineteenth centuries. Frederick Rudolph, in a standard text on American colleges and universities, has devoted ten pages to a study of the phenomenon up until the year 1858. Other historians with an obviously profound knowledge of the history of colleges and universities seem to have found the phenomenon of evangelical awakenings in the colleges intriguing, to say the least. More often, however, the educator of the twentieth century is apt to regard such revivals of religion on campus as a form of hysteria happily past. It seems strange that no qualified scholar thus far, to the best of my knowledge, has produced an authentic account of evangelical awakenings in collegiate communities. Nor has anyone traced the impact that these awakenings in both college and community have had upon social progress including the initiation of educational systems, primary and secondary and advanced, as part of a worldwide accomplishment. It is even more amaz- ing to discover that the usually well-informed educational or ecclesiastical historian seems blissfully unaware that evangelical awakenings in col- legiate communities—far from fading out a hundred years ago—are still occurring in the same form in the same kind of Christian colleges and in different form through voluntary societies in the secularized universities of our time with a greater impact than ever upon missionary enterprise. All this serves to show that the writing of an account of the course of evangelical awakenings in collegiate communities has been long overdue and makes a contribution to history of practical value in education rather than pedantic interest. With the facts available, judgments may be made. In certain cases, judgments need to be reversed. It is inevitable that people of the latter third of the twentieth century are inclined to interpret happenings of the past in the light of their own reading or prejudices. For example, I have found that the achievements of the New England mission- aries in the Hawaiian kingdom a century and a half ago are belittled and disparaged or outrightly denied because of the writings of a popular novelist or the equally fictional screenplay of a film producer; and all the protests of capable Hawaiian historians have gone almost unheard. Chris- tianity filled the void of a broken society in Hawaii, rather than invading a Hawaiian paradise where everyone was having fun as in the fictional account. The missionaries made Hawaiian Island populations literate in less than twenty-five years, rather than capturing power by teaching only chiefs and their children. As history, the novel and film are frauds. Hh CAMPUS AFLAME However, there is so much material here presented in published form for the first time that it would be presumptuous to pronounce judgment in every case. This is somewhat of a pioneer study—if not regarding the early nineteenth century, certainly concerning later periods——and a fuller analysis of untreated aspects of the college revivals must properly await the study of interested historians now able to view the facts in perspective for the first time. Studies could be made of the question of academic free- dom in evangelical colleges where faculty members subscribe to a state- ment of faith; of the bases of support of these colleges which, in large measure, depend upon the gifts and bequests of ordinary Christian people and the benefactions of ordinary congregations as well as the support of loyal graduates, rather than massive grants from wealthy foundations and corporations or underwriting by denominational funds; and of the political alignment of evangelical colleges, a few of which have been buttressed by support from the political right, but the great majority of which are free of political alliances of any kind, minding their own business in the educating of the young with a concern for the gospel of redemption, individual and social. The writer has refrained from writing at length on the future of the evangelical college in competition with state education. There is no such thing as Presbyterian physics or Baptist chemis- try—though some insist that Baptists are more interested in H2O than _other denominations. There is an evangelical attitude to philosophy, of course, and a desire to combat atheism in all its related fields. In 1965, as in 1905, evangelical educators recommended the moving of Christian Colleges to state university campuses and concentration on the subjects of Christian concern. For the past quarter of a century, I have been engaged in a teaching ministry on the campuses of secular colleges and universities and of Christian colleges—while this dissertation was being written, for example, delivering twenty-eight lectures in four days as the guest of the State University of Arizona and conducting series of meetings in colleges from New York State to Washington State. Residing near the campus of the University of California at Los Angeles, I enrolled in an occasional course at Moore Hall, the School of Education—curriculum for computers, economics, and the like. It was suggested that a study of college awakenings had become necessary. In order best to engage in such research, the scholar needed experience in writing history, understanding of educational developments, acquaintance with psychology and anthropo- logy, objective observation of the phenomenon of current evangelical awakenings on campus, and theological training. I owe an academic debt to Professor Ernest E. Smith (long ago) and
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