[Biblemat] Turner on Bible Colleges - VI

[Dan Gatlin]

A CLOSE LOOK AT “OUR” COLLEGES
   
  By Robert F. Turner (Preceptor, October 1962)
   
    (This is the sixth and last article of a series on Educational Institutions Among Brethren.  You are urged to study the series as a whole; (beginning with April, ‘62 Preceptor) and your criticisms will be appreciated.  RFT)
   
      I “graduated” from Freed-Hardeman College in 1936.  During the next three years, as a student in the University of Illinois, I had opportunity to compare these two types of schools.  I have given financial support (albeit somewhat limited) to two of “our” schools, and have urged others to support them.  The administrators and teachers of these schools have treated me kindly, despite our divergent views on current issues, and I have no reason to write vindictively.  I believe I have been greatly benefited by my “Bible school” training, and I am no unmindful of the splendid influence such schools may have had on young people.  (I sent my own daughter to A.C.C. until she withdrew of her own accord.)  But I can not deny a growing reluctancy to encourage such institutions.  And I am thinking of something other than the flagrant abuses prevalent in many schools today.
      This history of Bible teaching schools operated by brethren is a massive contradiction of theory and practice.  Previous articles have emphasized this fact, and further proof is easily available to the serious student.  These schools are “secular” institutions, that capitalize on their “spiritual” influence.  They are “private enterprises” that “belong to the brotherhood.”  They dare not do “the work of the church” but specialize in preachers and elder training, indoctrination, devotionals, and the sending out of “soul-saving” teams.  And periodically, as public opinion permits, they ask the churches (whose work they can not do) to support them from the church treasury.  Such indictments are of record, and few if any schools will deny them.
      If such contradictions occurred infrequently — perhaps only under some inadvertently poor administration, one might dismiss them as abusers to which al human institutions are subject.  But almost from the first these schools have operated at variance with their stated policies; and I am forced to believe there must be some basic errors or contradictions in our very conception of “Christian Colleges” — that something is expected of them which is contradictory in its very nature.
      Mind you, I said error in “our” conception.  I am convinced that whatever errors may exist are not simply in the school itself, but among the brethren who foster and support the school.  These are “our” schools, in a very real sense of the word, and no amount of denying can change this.
      Can it be that we are wedding cross-purposes when we expect a secular school to produce spiritual results??  As seen in article two, Campbell thought it neither desirable nor expedient to teach in the secular school anything other than “morals” and those things common to all religious denominations.  The “brotherhood” abandoned Campbell’s original theory of education when they demanded that peculiar and distinctive doctrines be taught in the secular schools.
      Another pioneer educator, Tolbert Fanning, wrote Campbell concerning this very matter. (Mil. Harb., Sept. 1850, p. 510f)  He asked, “1. Is it true, that we can adopt the Bible as a text-book, (and we all do so) in our colleges, with our lectures thereupon, and teach, nothing that is ‘peculiar’ — which is not ‘Catholic,’ and which is not ‘universally admitted’?  2. Are we satisfied, from any demonstration whatever, that religious Professorships in colleges, constitute the best means of teaching morality and maintaining sound government for youth?  3.To qualify men for preaching the gospel, would it not be better to establish schools exclusively devoted to this end?”  To Campbell’s discredit, it must be reported that he used ridicule, and side-stepped the last two questions.  But Fanning’s questions are most apropos.  It seems highly possible that he sensed the contradiction in secular Bible teaching, and that in a school which must not “do the work of the church.”
      Perhaps both parties of this difference contain truth, and both contain error.  Perhaps Campbell was right in saying that the secular school was not the place to teach distinctive doctrinal matters; and the brethren were right in feeling that the Word of God could not be properly taught without teaching that which was peculiarly and distinctively the truth.  The error of both parties lay in their thinking that both secular and spiritual purposes could be blended in one institution of human origin — the inherent contradiction of secular—Christian. 
      At this early date everyone concerned — Campbell, Fanning, and “the brethren” — were convinced of the all-sufficiency of the church to do her God-assigned work.  We may ask, then how could they justify the establishment of a human institution to teach the Bible?  There are two elements involved here.  First, they seemed to be just about as confused as we are today on this matter of the “all-sufficiency” of the church to preach the Gospel.  And second, they had accepted the “whole man” concept of education; that training is incomplete which does not develop the “moral” nature of man.  The original purpose of the early schools was to build moral fiber as well as intellectual acuteness.  But the fine-line distinction necessary to separate “moral training” from the means of soul salvation were lost to the masses.  I am convinced that such a distinction would be even more difficult to maintain today, with the brethren conditioned to accept “brotherhood institutions.”
      The second inherent contradiction in our conception of “Christian Colleges” lies in their relation to “the brotherhood.”  The local church is the only divinely approved means for performing the work which God assigned to be done collectively.  Or, as others have put it, the organizational structure of the church begins and ends with the single independent congregation.  First, this principle is scriptural, and therefore right.  Second, this has been a basic consideration throughout the restoration movement, and is a major deterrent to our becoming “another denomination.”
      But early schools were established during the very time that brethren were developing a “brotherhood” consciousness, and we have shown that their growth has closely paralleled the ebb and flow of “brotherhood” activity.  We establish a teaching institution, emphasize its importance in “Christian” development, indoctrination, the training of preachers, etc., and call on brethren all over the country to unite in its support “for the good of the cause”; — and then, we wonder why the church-school ties grow so persistently.  How can a large number of brethren support and encourage such an institution without involving action in a God-assigned church work?  And since the school and its supporters are not a single local church, how can this avoid becoming a “brotherhood” activity?  There may be a way — but our total “Christian College” history fails to reveal it.
      Benjamin Franklin concluded that the school should be “as secular as a bookstore”; and I’m inclined to agree with him.  The schools handle a noble product — knowledge.  They provide an invaluable service — instruction and training.  Our precious children need these things, and we should like to provide them at a source that respects their faith in God, and maintains a surrounding conducive to their continued service to God.  We may be able to accomplish this in our own community, through our influence as citizens, in the P.T.A., working through and with the local school board; or we may feel we should unite with other parents and establish such a school of our own  BUT THE SCHOOL MUST REMAIN A SECULAR INSTITUTION — secular in its aims, as well as it nature.
      To develop and maintain this type of school, we must divorce them from the church and its work.  We must not expect of them anything but that which belongs with secular education.  The church or churches near such a school should make every effort to provide the spiritual guidance and training needed by the students — and that, not because they are students of the school, but because they live and worship there, and are the responsibility of the elders there.  And finally, we must love the Lord and His church enough that when we see the school encroach upon and overshadow the Lord’s own institution, we will renounce the school rather than seek to change the church so that the contradiction can be removed.  If loving the Lord and His church more than I love the school is a crime, then I must plead guilty.
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