NEWS FEATURE: Fuller Theological Seminary turns 50

c. 1997 Religion News Service PASADENA, Calif. _ Fifty years ago, Charles E. Fuller’s”Old-Fashioned Revival Hour”radio broadcast drew more listeners than Bob Hope and Charlie McCarthy. But Fuller, sensing the moderate fundamentalism he represented was at a turning point and ready to re-emerge on the national stage after the battering the movement took with the […]

c. 1997 Religion News Service

PASADENA, Calif. _ Fifty years ago, Charles E. Fuller’s”Old-Fashioned Revival Hour”radio broadcast drew more listeners than Bob Hope and Charlie McCarthy.

But Fuller, sensing the moderate fundamentalism he represented was at a turning point and ready to re-emerge on the national stage after the battering the movement took with the Scopes trial, wanted more than just broadcast soul-winning: He wanted a West Coast seminary that would send young men to churches and mission fields armed with both the Christian zeal of old-time fundamentalism and a sound scholarship capable of holding its own in modernist America _”an evangelical Cal Tech,”he said.


Fuller’s dream has come true on a tiny, palm tree-lined campus of utilitarian buildings in downtown Pasadena, not far from the real Cal Tech, and the seminary he founded has become one of contemporary evangelical Christianity’s most important and influential institutions.

There have been some changes from Charles Fuller’s original vision: not all of the students are young (average age: 35) and not all are men. Still, many of what today are the pillars of the new evangelical movement emerging in the late 1940s and early 1950s and now dominate the Protestant religious landscape _”Christianity Today”magazine, Campus Crusade for Christ, nondenominational churches and parachurch movements, and evangelist Billy Graham _ all have ties to Fuller Theological Seminary.

And the institution is looking at different _ if not always new _ challenges from those of the world 50 years ago.”We’re post-Vatican II, post-Marxism,”said the Rev. Richard J. Mouw, seminary president.”We wanted a school that would go out to the nations, but now we’re bringing in the nations. And we are committed to men and women in the ministry.”But we’re still affirming what (the founders) affirmed, in terms of the supremacy of the lordship of Jesus Christ, the high authority of scriptures, and the evangelistic task … we still have that zeal.” With over 250 faculty members and 3,800 students from 80 nations representing 125 different denominations, and more than 15,000 alumni, Fuller would seem the model of a successful seminary. But it wasn’t always so.

According to historian George M. Marsden, who wrote a 1987 history of Fuller,”Reforming Fundamentalism,”conservative Christian leaders were growing alarmed at the turn toward modernism in mainline seminaries in the early years of the 20th century. One of these leaders, Boston pastor and theologian Harold J. Ockenga, was also concerned about the poor scholarship in the remaining evangelical seminaries and the narrowness of denomination-based colleges.

Ockenga was tapped by Charles Fuller in 1946 to be the president of his planned school of missions and evangelism. But Ockenga proposed to Fuller an expanded vision: creation of an institution nurturing scholars to write the books necessary to give evangelicalism _ the new term being applied to the moderate, non-separatist fundamentalists _ intellectual weight.

Fuller Seminary’s first class in 1947 consisted of 39 men _ women were not allowed _ mostly World War II veterans, and mostly dedicated to evangelism or mission work. Because the mansion Charles Fuller purchased for the school wasn’t properly zoned, the first classes met in the Sunday school rooms of a local church. Many of the first year’s class learned theology sitting in chairs for kindergarteners.

From the beginning, the nondenominational seminary was viewed with suspicion. Denominational leaders, wary that Fuller was formed in reaction to the direction of their schools, considered the seminary divisive. On the other hand,”separatists”and”come-outers”_ conservatives who had left their denominations _ felt the new seminary was not orthodox enough on matters of doctrine.


There were tensions on campus as well. New England-bred faculty in suits and ties bristled at California students who attended class in fatigues and aloha shirts. Students and faculty who wanted Christianity to change the culture were at odds with those who felt the most urgent task was wholesale soul-winning before the imminent end of the world. Founded at a time when evangelicalism and fundamentalism were synonymous, it was becoming apparent at Fuller there were emerging differences in viewpoints.

During the 1950s and ’60s, along with evangelist Billy Graham, who became a Fuller trustee in 1958, the school helped define the”new evangelicalism.” New evangelicals attempted to move beyond fundamentalism’s image as anti-intellectual and prone to condemn other Christians over minor differences in doctrine. New evangelicals wanted firm scholarship, a positive view of Christianity as the law of love, and also sought to remake society, not just the individual soul.

In the 1960s, Fuller added a school of world mission and an accredited graduate school of psychology. The most profound change, however, was accepting a new view of the basic fundamentalist doctrine of biblical inerrancy.

For many years, Fuller faculty annually signed a statement affirming the Bible was without error in whole or in part. But, writes church historian Marsden,”the most dramatic moment in the seminary’s history”came during a 1962 planning conference.

In the midst of a search for a new president, some faculty _ led by Dan Fuller, Charles’ European-educated son and a student of neo-Orthodox theologian Karl Barth _ endorsed the idea that the Bible, while the infallible guide to faith, was not necessarily authoritative on scientific and historical matters.

Some of the influential trustees, who were also major benefactors of the school, sided with Dan Fuller. In the midst of much internal struggle over this new direction, the seminary hired a more progressive president, David Hubbard.


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Under Hubbard, Fuller’s courses expanded beyond its roots in the Reform _ mostly Presbyterian _ wing of Protestantism to incorporate evangelical ideas from Pentecostal, Anabaptist, and Anglican traditions. But the school didn’t keep away from controversy.

In the 1980s, a course in”Signs and Wonders”divided the campus. In lab sessions, students would lay on hands and offer prayers for miraculous healing. While the class sessions were well-attended _ a doorkeeper was hired to keep out nonregistrants _ many of the faculty and students came from church backgrounds traditionally suspicious of”charismatic gifts.”Questions were also raised about the validity of course materials and the academic credentials of co-instructor John Wimber. Wimber, co-founder of the charismatic Vineyard Churches, died Nov. 17 of this year.

The course was discontinued and a faculty task force convened to study the class. Their report concluded that miracles are not central to the evangelical message and a class setting was an inappropriate place to pray for miracles.

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Fuller today calls itself the largest evangelical seminary in the world, with extension campuses in California, Arizona, Washington, and Colorado.

And in a sign of changing times, the seminary, where Presbyterian students were once discouraged from attending because of its ties to critics of the mainline denomination, is now”one of the biggest Presbyterian seminaries,”Mouw said.

Fuller reflects the changing face of the evangelical world, Mouw said.”Evangelical churches were often the churches on the wrong side of the track. … They were often the little churches, not the downtown churches. Today, we own the biggest real estate in town. We are the mainline _ we have to refer to those (non-evangelical) churches as the oldline.” Among the challenges Fuller will face in the next century, said Mouw, is”how we deal with new churchly configurations. What is the future of denominations? How do we serve the needs of parachurch members like the Promise Keepers?” With a site on the World Wide Web, Fuller is also concentrating on how new technology can erase geographical differences and make seminary education even more accessible.”Evangelicals have always been pragmatic and adaptive, and Fuller is nothing if not pragmatic and adaptive,”Mouw said.


MJP END RUTHSTIVER

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