Wrestling with a Separatist Past

Institutional histories are tricky … especially when it’s fairly recent history. I and Mark Norris, a colleague in the history department here at Grace College, are working on an edited volume about the history of the college and seminary. I’ve been wrestling with the 1960s and 1970s, a time when Grace Seminary took a decidedly neo-fundamentalist turn. I had always known about Grace’s fundamentalist heritage, but had not realized that popular personalities, such as John Whitcomb (left), helped to steer the institution in such a separatist direction. Whitcomb, with his dogmatic young earth creationism, “second-degree” separationism, and fatalistic assumptions about slippery slopes had all the hallmarks of fundamentalism during this era. Eventually, Whitcomb's critical attitudes became problematic for others at Grace and he became estranged from the seminary where he taught for many years.

The challenge, since many of these of individuals are still around, is to nuance the narrative in a way that is charitable, balanced, and gracious, while not shying away from the unflattering attitudes of separatism. To complicate matters further, this book is meant in part to commemorate the institution’s 75th anniversary. I have found Grace College to be a great place to work and I cannot say enough positive things about it. Fortunately, we have moved beyond the fundamentalist excesses of the past. So I am excited about celebrating the institution’s history. But I do feel compelled, as a critical historian, to help provide a sense of historical consciousness that acknowledges and probes the uncomfortable tensions and controversies of the past. Not surprisingly, it is proving to be a challenging balancing act!

The Activist Impulse: John Fea

In chapter three of The Activist Impulse, "Intellectual Hospitality as Historical Method: Moving beyond the Activist Impulse," Messiah College professor of American History John Fea reflects on the limits of the activist impulse for the faithful study of history, arguing that evangelicals and Anabaptists alike often have trouble understanding the past on its own terms as their views can become clouded by political or theological agendas. Fea argues for a method of historical inquiry that seeks more nuanced and empathetic understanding by extending “intellectual hospitality” to the past and the individuals we find there. In so doing, we embrace virtues, such as humility, that both evangelicals and Anabaptists value, and in the process become better Christians as well as better historians.*

Fea offers amusing examples of his history students who often gravitate toward the typically evangelical America-is-a-Christian-nation approach or the typically (neo-)Anabaptist America-is-evil approach, neither of which is the best way to do historiography. In relation to these approches, Fea discusses John Howard Yoder and his historian followers, Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States, and--from the opposite perspective--Christian nationalists such as David Barton and his WallBuilders ministry. In contrast to these approaches, Fea argues that the "task of the historian is to use [the] five 'Cs'—change, context, causality, contingency, and complexity—to reconstruct the past and make her findings available to the public" (88), or, in short, for historians to cultivate "virtues such as humility, empathy, and hospitality" in their work and in their lives (95).

Fea's essay is provocative and challenging not only for Christian historians but also more broadly for Christians (and others) working in the academy. For more of Fea's provocative writings, see his recent book, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction as well as his daily musings on his blog.

*This paragraph is adapted from pages 9-10 of the book.