Paging through the Standard from 1969, I came across an interesting article by editor Donald Anderson titled “Moon Reflections.” And while I’ve missed the 45th anniversary of the moon landing by a few days, it’s still an interesting tidbit — one that also happens to illustrate a trend I’ve noticed in the Standard. It’s a well-known story: after a four […]
In his posts on the Vietnam War, Fletcher has noted that Bethel-educated chaplains like Kenneth Carlson received a great deal of publicity from the Baptist General Conference. In the pages of the BGC’s chief publication, The Standard, these uniformed pastors were both “the primary mediators of the war to Conference laity” and “front-line soldiers in the global struggle against atheistic communism.” […]
During and after the First World War, Bethel Academy principal A.J. Wingblade made a concerted effort to keep a full list of all those associated with Bethel who had served as soldiers, sailors, or nurses during the war. As many as could be reached were invited back to campus for a special reception on December 1919, where they […]
Earlier this month I noted how “as the [Second World] war went on, ‘Loyalty’ began to be used in Bethel publications in such a way that loyalty to country and loyalty to God were put in service of loyalty to Bethel, and its desire for better facilities.” Starting in late 1942, the prewar practice of designating February […]
We are convinced that war destroys all Christian values, including the destruction of human lives, rights and properties; that the possibility of plunging the human race into an unimaginable holocaust of death and destruction through nuclear warfare is ever upon us… — Proposed resolution on War and Peace, 1966 BGC Annual Conference ❧ In this […]
I am afeard there are few die well that die in battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Henry V, IV, i They occupy indeed a higher place before God who, abandoning all these secular employments, serve Him with the strictest chastity; but “every one,” as the […]
One of the more curious sections of Windows of Memory, the 1961 memoir by Henry Wingblade (Bethel president from 1941-1954, after having taught at the Academy and Junior College for many years), is his chapter on Bethel and world missions (no. 25). Instead of simply telling the stories of five Bethel alumni who entered the missions field, […]
Several weeks ago, I teased a series I planned to write on the Baptist General Conference during the Vietnam years. On Wednesday, I introduced that series. Today’s post was intended as the first of the three parts, but after a few hours of work on that post, I realised that there were too many background problems to […]
One day after their attack on Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces began their invasion of the Philippines. In December 1941 that commonwealth hosted twenty-one American Baptist missionaries, mostly working in hospitals and schools on the island of Panay. By April 1942, with American and Filipino defenses collapsing, only eleven of those missionaries remained at liberty. With the help of a […]
Regular visitors might have noticed that a new page suddenly appeared here last night: a detailed timeline intermingling events in political and military history with key moments in the development of Bethel University. This timeline is very much a work-in-progress: the War on Terror section has yet to be filled in past the events of […]
Bethel at War 1914 - 2014 