Grace Theological Seminary - Xapis / Grace Yearbook (Winona Lake, IN)

Page 30 text:

PAGE 24 throughout the community that the seminary teachers are troublemakers ... These charges can be verified if the board wishes to investigate. . We believe the coming of Dr. Ans- pach will begin immediately to change these conditions under which we have had to work. His program for the institution, as outlined by him upon several occasions, is the pro- gram we have believed in and prayed for through the years... . Every diffi- culty that has ever arisen between seminary and college administration has had to do, either directly or in- directly, with Christian faith and life. No other problem exists. Our battle is not over men, but over truth. We do not hate men; we do hate untruth and error. And we do not propose to surrender when it arises. If you ex- pect us to, do not ask us to remain here. We believe that, if Dr. Ans- pach’s program is loyally and enthu- siastically supported, this institution can become by God’s grace one of the most outstanding educational institu- tions in America, spiritually and in- tellectually” (22). No president ever began his admin- istration at Ashland College with so complete and united support of its church constituency, or with such un- reserved approval for his avowed pro- gram. Yet within a few months the new president’s almost cynical viola- tion of his solemn promises had pre- cipitated a conflict which virtually wrecked the seminary at Ashland, lost to the college at least half its church constituency, and led to divi- sion of Brethren churches into two national conferences. To be sure, one man by himself could not have done all this. There had been existing dif- ferences, some trivial, and others more serious, but none that could not have been handled without such far- reaching results if the actions of Dr. Anspach had been tempered with more wisdom and good will. Consider some of these actions. A clear indication of his real inclinations appeared when the new president be- came sharply critical of the seminary because its teachers protested the in- clusion of certain religious modernists on his inaugural program. Further- more, one of his first administrative acts was the proposal of certain con- stitutional changes to permit a sub- stantial increase of non - Brethren membership on the board, and de- priving the church districts of their former elective powers, thus making the board self-perpetuating. This was serious enough for the college, but far worse for the seminary which was controlled by the same board. Again, he began to reduce arbitrarily the small financial allowance made to the seminary for essential activities such as the annual day of prayer. In his first year it was found that, in spite of his former pledges, the new president was actually sympathetic with the very teachers in the college whose attitudes had caused much of the dif- ficulty under the former administra- tion. During the academic year of 1935- 36 Dr. K. M. Monroe resigned his po- sition as professor of the Old Testa- ment, and President Anspach author- ized Dean McClain to secure for this position Rev. Homer A. Kent, then pastor of the First Brethren Church of Washington, D. C. After the lat- ter had accepted the call, Dr. Anspach suddenly reversed himself, to the

Page 29 text:

THE FACULTY, 1947-48 Front Row: Homer A. Kent, Alva J. McClain, Herman A. Hoyt. Back Row: Paul R. Bauman, Harry Sturz, Robert D. Culver. letter, which contains other material of considerable interest, shows con- clusively that there was no misunder- standing on the part of anyone re- garding the pledged program of the new president. Furthermore, at a meeting of representatives of both seminary and college, Dr. Anspach announced the above program and then asked each professor present whether he would agree to cooperate in this program. The seminary teachers agreed heartily—for it was their program—the college men final- ly acquiesced, but with great reluc- tance. As it appeared afterwards, they were not able to make promises quite as easily as the new president. But at the time it seemed like the beginning of a better day. In the 1935 annual meeting of the college board, when Dr. Anspach had been called to the presidency, Dean McClain in his annual report to the board had referred to conditions in the college in part as follows: ‘The baneful influence of fraternities .. . Faculty worldliness, including addic- tion to cigarets, cards, and movies... Tolerance toward smoking and danc- ing by the students .. . Drinking and public drunkenness among students, with no apparent serious attempts to investigate thoroughly and discipline . . . Contemptuous attitude toward the church and its ministry . . . Ques- tioning the truths of Christianity, and the teaching of the dogma of evolu- tion... Denunciation of the seminary as being responsible for the difficul- ties here... Attempts to discredit the character of the seminary work by claiming to students that it had ‘no academic value’... Spreading reports PAGE 23

Page 31 text:

great embarrassment of all con- cerned, leaving the seminary with less than the minimum number of teachers necessary to maintain stand- ard theological work (23). At the 1936 meeting of the board, a large part of the president’s report was devoted to an unwarranted and rather petty attack upon a group of preseminary college students who had distributed Christian tracts on the campus; and submitted a plan to divide the college student body into two groups in relation to “standards of living and conduct’; the one group to be permitted to uphold “restricted standards”; the other and larger group not to be required to live in harmony with such restricted stand- ards of “social activities’; and the views of each group were to be “re- spected and protected” (24). This absurd proposal, supported by a ma- jority of board members present, aroused widespread indignation, pro- voked the resignation of Dr. L. S. Bauman from the board, and subse- quently resulted in the historic “Open Letter” addressed to the president of Ashland College by the Brethren Ministerial Board of the Southern California District (25 ). Vill. The Conflict Enters the General Conference of 1936. Following the issuance of the “Open Letter’. and its distribution throughout the churches, the college president labored hard to explain his actions and rally support to his ad- ministration. When the General Conference convened in August of 1936, the main issues had become fairly clear: first, the protection of “liberalism” in the college because of the refusal of the administration to apply the officially adopted standards of faith; second, the question of church control over its board; third, the conflict over standards of life and conduct on the campus; fourth, deep concern regarding the future of the seminary under the jurisdiction of a hostile president now supported by a majority of the board, and whose promises apparently meant little. The so-called “Ashland College Problem” reached the floor early in the General Conference where it was discussed to some extent. That the problem was no mere tempest in a teapot is abundantly clear from the following actions passed by the Con- ference: First, after the public reading of the “original charter of Ashland Col- lege,’ a motion was made that the Conference appoint a committee of seven men to investigate the condi- tion causing the disturbance and re- port back to the General Conference in 1937. Although bitterly opposed by the college president and his friends, the motion passed with a fair majority of votes. According to the Minutes, page 13, “The Special Com- mittee for investigation of Ashland College as elected by conference are as follows: R. D. Barnard, C. A. Stew- art, R. F. Porte, Wm. Schaffer, Jr., Roy Patterson, E. H. Wolfe, H. V. Wall” (26). This committee organ- ized and outlined a program of pro- cedure, but was informed by the col- lege administration that it would have to wait for an invitation from the college board which would not meet until the following year (27). Second, as to the proposal of the PAGE 25