INTELLECTUAL REVENGE [T, 6-11-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Personal Musings of an Old Man—INTELLECTUAL REVENGE [T, 6-11-24]

 

In 1964, I was appointed as campus minister for Indiana State U and Rose Polytechnic, in Terre Haute. Early in my time there, I was invited to a faculty symposium. It wasn’t very formal. A lounge-type setting. The series was designed for faculty to learn from one another, hear what was going on in fields other than their own.

INSU was in the process of transitioning from a Normal school [teachers college] to a university. It was hiring a lot of bright young scholars who had just finished their doctorates. I had just finished seminary, the same 3 grad years on top of a bachelor’s degree that they had put in, so they saw me as one of themselves. It was a heady time, and the symposium was a heady place.

In that first symposium session, a young English prof talked about Reynolds Price. I had never heard of him. Of course not, because he was neither theologian nor Biblical scholar. The next session, a new young biology prof talked of Rachel Carson. I had never heard of her. Of course not, because she was neither theologian nor Biblical scholar.

My reading for years was all required for classes. C.H. Dodd. The Baillie brothers, John & Donald. The Niebuhr brothers, Reinhold and Richard. Reuel Howe. C.S. Lewis. George Buttrick. Schleiermacher. Kierkegaard. Barth. Tillich… I did a LOT of reading for seminary. It was interesting and useful. But it was not the reading my new friends were doing. Even worse, I found out it was not what my students were doing. If I wanted to talk with anyone on my campus, faculty or students, I needed to catch up.

I was embarrassed, of course, to admit I was so far out of it. I read at home, not in my office, where someone might see me. Reynolds Price. Rachel Carson. JRR Tolkien. J. D. Salinger. John Updike. Loren Eisley. Harper Lee. Ray Bradbury. Maya Angelou. Saul Bellow…

I learned so much from them. They are still among my favorites. I’m grateful to my new young prof friends for the introductions, even though I’m still embarrassed by how unlettered I was when we started.

I got my revenge, though. “The death of God” was the big thing in theology right then, so I brought Wm. Hamilton, the leading Death of God theologian--along with Thomas J.J. Altizer--to campus for a couple of days, including a session of the symposium. Those bright young profs had never read him!

John Robert McFarland