George Webber, the hero (anti-hero?) of Thomas Wolfe’s novel, You Can’t Go Home Again, realizes that “You can’t go . . . back home to the escapes of Time and Memory.” In his litany of such “homes” he includes, “back home to the ivory tower.”
In the sense that nothing is the same as when you left it long ago, I agree. However, though Time and Memory can certainly be “escapes,” they also play a key role in shaping the persons we are and will become. They are signposts along the journey.
My “ivory tower” was Oklahoma Baptist University (OBU). However, there are many of us who populated the halls of Brotherhood, Kerr, and WMU Dorms, Shawnee Apartments, Bel-Air Apartments, and other student housing back in the 1970s and earlier who – in retrospect – realize we never experienced OBU as an “ivory tower” but rather as – to cite a biblical reference – a refiner’s fire (Handel, anyone?) that helped to shape the people we are today.
No, I can’t go back to the OBU I knew in the 1970s. Brotherhood Dorm, where I lived for 4 years, is still there but goes under a different name and has undergone a few renovations. Tragically, the spirit of the OBU I knew has undergone more than just renovation; it has been demolished. The name is the same, but the OBU no longer exists that, my freshman year (1969-1970), themed its annual Christian Focus Week as “But what is the question?” thus exposing the shallowness of the then-popular bromide “Christ is the answer.”
The OBU we knew in the 1970s was one that – in the spirit of that Christian Focus Week theme – encouraged students to openly grapple with their questions and doubts, to – in the words of Paul & Timothy, writing to the church at Philippi – “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” (Philippians 2:12-13)
Multiple earthquakes have shaken the Baptist world in America since I graduated from OBU 50 years ago. Most significantly, a faction of disgruntled Baptists seized control of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in the 1980s. One of the key issues of contention was that of women serving as pastors. Those who seized control have used their power to impose increasingly narrow doctrinal requirements on churches affiliated with the SBC – in other words, creeping creedalism, which is a denial of the Baptist movement that began in the early 1600s, a movement that stressed the priesthood of every believer, the freedom of every soul to interpret scripture under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, and the autonomy of every local church to ordain and call people – women and/or men – to ministry and leadership as God directs it.
But churches aren’t the only victims. All state Baptist conventions – other than Texas and Virginia – bowed to the dictates of the SBC, and have passed those mandates on to the Baptist colleges and universities under their control. So OBU, controlled by the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma (BGCO), bows to the SBC hierarchy/patriarchy.
The SBC’s denial of the equality of women before God (in both the home and the church – see the Baptist Faith & Message 2000) and its denial of Baptist freedom to believers, churches, and its affiliated educational institutions are just the tip of the iceberg. The SBC has long given the back of its hand to women suffering abuse at the hands of hundreds of its clergy. Only in the past few years has it finally begun to deal with this situation, yet there are sizable numbers of SBC leaders, messengers, and church members who continue to cover up/excuse/enable the abuse rather than punish the abusers and stop the abuse.
Oklahoma Baptist University, under the control of the SBC/BGCO, has become an instrument of indoctrination rather than of growth and learning. It discourages questioning of the SBC’s increasingly narrow creed. A few years ago, when I was giving support – through my TBC Weekly Baptist Roundup e-newsletter – to a group called Save OBU, which sought to sever OBU’s relationship with the BGCO, I received documentation concerning several professors who had dared to question that creed and had – as a result – been silenced and, ultimately, kicked to the curb by the OBU administration. In short, the OBU of the past 30+ years isn’t even a shadow of the OBU we once knew, where academic freedom thrived. I join with many other OBU alumni in lamenting that the OBU of today is under the control of those who choose the misogyny and patriarchy of the SBC over Jesus.
I fully understand and respect the position of those who refuse to return, who feel that – in visiting the OBU campus – they are honoring the OBU of 2023, one that has turned its back on its legacy of adherence to historic Baptist principles and academic freedom. God knows, I’ve fought fundamentalism in one venue or another over the past 40 years. From 2011-2017, I served as only the second executive director of Texas Baptists Committed, the organization that fought fundamentalist Baptists here in Texas and – under the leadership of my predecessor, David R. Currie – prevented a fundamentalist takeover of the Baptist General Convention of Texas in the 1990s. If there had been a David Currie and a Baptists Committed group in Oklahoma in the ’90s, maybe the BGCO and OBU wouldn’t have fallen under fundamentalist control. But there wasn’t, and they did, and I fully understand and respect the position of those who refuse to return to OBU under these circumstances.
My intent in writing this essay is NOT to prescribe what others should do. That’s not my place. My intent is simply to share my own very personal reasons for returning to Bison Hill from time to time.
So WHY do I keep going back? Why am I going to “The Weekend” (OBU’s new name for Homecoming; God only knows why) in October, for the 50th reunion of my 1973 graduating class?
First, I want to see old friends, recall the special times we had together as students, and catch each other up on our lives and families. I love going to our every-5-years class reunions and visiting with old friends. Some are there almost every time – Warren Palmer, Mike Kent, Bernest Cain, David and Mary Sallee, David Berrong, and others. Last time, I had a wonderful visit with Tom Willoughby. This year, Randy Kraft is planning to come for the first time in many years. Randy and I spent our senior year on 3rd floor Baxter, where I was resident assistant and Randy was the chief pain-in-my-you-know-what (it was mutual; I was his chief pain as well), yet we became great friends following graduation and have loved reminiscing (and needling each other a bit, of course). At the 2018 reunion, following our class luncheon, I joined three great friends – Warren Palmer, Mike Kent, and Bernest Cain – at a nearby deli and spent another hour or two reminiscing. I wouldn’t take anything for these reunions.
Second, my life was transformed by the OBU that existed back then, an OBU that encouraged students to be open with our doubts and questions, and wrestle with them. During that same Christian Focus Week I mentioned earlier, we were shown – in Yarborough Auditorium in the basement of Raley Chapel – a thought-provoking movie, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, which ends (spoiler alert, if you haven’t seen it) with the suicide of the deaf-mute “hero,” leaving his friends to question the way they burdened him with their problems while ignoring his loneliness. What a powerful movie – I’ve watched it many times through the years; in 2004, I used a scene from it as the basis of an article I wrote on race for the Christian Ethics Today journal. Friday’s Chapel program from that Christian Focus Week featured a play, written by my roommate, Cary Wood, titled “The Experience,” that gave us an honest, thought-provoking look at the salvation experience and the manipulative methods of the evangelists of the day. The theme, the movie, the play – none of these would make it past the SBC/BGCO censors that control today’s OBU – no way!
It was an OBU where, my sophomore year, a minister interrupted a concert by a band called Badfinger. Claiming to represent the Oklahoma City Pastors’ Conference, he complained about the music, lyrics, etc., and threatened to bring the hammer down, insisting that this kind of thing never be allowed at OBU again. But this was the OBU of 1970, not 2023. Robert Lynn, interim president, stood up to this man and said he would not allow a group of pastors to dictate to OBU’s students and faculty the kind of music they could hear – a profile in courage and integrity that you won’t find at the OBU of today.
More personally, I will be visiting and celebrating the OBU where, one day my sophomore year (Nov. 12, 1970), I lost the simplistic thing I called “faith”; the questions and doubts I had long suppressed were knocked loose and came rushing to the front of my mind because of a comment made by Dr. Bill Mitchell in Western Civ class. Then – through late-night bull sessions with friends like Cary Wood and Ron Russey, and the immense influence of Jerry Barnes, pastor of University Baptist Church, across the street from campus – I began learning how to think for myself and to search & struggle for a more authentic faith than the one I had known growing up. It was Ron Russey who had suggested I go see Jerry; when I first spoke with Jerry, I told him that I no longer believed in God, much less Jesus as God’s son, but was searching. Jerry said, “Come join our church,” which I did.
Jerry’s preaching challenged me as no preacher’s ever had, and he met with me once a semester to hear the progress of my “struggle” and help me with the next steps. We remained friends the rest of his life, and I attended his funeral in 2017. My Sunday School teacher at University Baptist Church was Dr. Jim Hurley, OBU’s legendary Natural Sciences professor, who taught a series of lessons on a book titled The Death of God, which posited that the Church had killed the God of scripture by abusing scripture. The Death of God – not your typical Baptist Sunday School lesson!
So it was at OBU that God knocked the props out from under what I called “faith,” and it was at OBU that God put influences in my life who helped me begin the journey toward an authentic faith, a journey that continues today. It was an OBU that was rife with such influences – people who encouraged you to think, to ponder, to struggle, to search for a faith you could truly call your own, a faith that would enrich you the rest of your life. The faith in Christ that I have today has evolved out of the influences God put in my life at OBU. Why do I get emotional every time I’m on Bison Hill? Because I’m reminded of the way God worked within me through the people at that place.
Finally, it was at OBU my senior year where I met and began dating a freshman from Hong Kong, named Joanna Wong, who became the love of my life. We were married at University Baptist Church after she graduated in 1976, and were married for 44-1/2 years (two kids, four grandkids) until kidney disease took her from me on Valentine’s Day 2021. On our 40th anniversary in 2016, we drove up to Shawnee, worshipped at University Baptist Church, and got our picture taken on the very chancel where we said our vows 40 years earlier, then walked around the campus where we had first gotten to know each other and fallen in love. As great as are all the influences I mentioned earlier – plus my parents (who loved and encouraged me throughout my faith struggle) and many others – Joanna will always be the greatest influence in my life, my example, and always the love of my life.
A few weeks ago, I met my sister, Patsy, and her family in Abilene for a family-only graveside service to bury the cremains of her husband of 61 years – and my beloved brother-in-law – Palmer McCown, who passed away last year on Christmas Day. Just before I left to head home, somehow we got to talking about Hardin-Simmons University – where Patsy & Palmer had met lo those many years ago – and my OBU. For some reason (who remembers?), I launched into Ka-Rip (only OBU alums will know this reference) – and yes, I still remember it to this day. They all had a good laugh – along with puzzled looks at phrases such as “Rincto lincto hio-totimus” and “Ragula tagula melican man.” Then I began singing the Hymn to the Alma Mater, and everything got quiet, as they heard the emotion in my voice and saw tears in my eyes – of course, I was remembering the many wonderful times that the late, beloved College of Fine Arts Dean Warren Angell had led the OBU student body in singing it. OBU, you see, brings a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes.
So when I go to OBU in October, I will be visiting the OBU of today, but I will be remembering and celebrating the OBU I knew 50 years ago, where God changed my life in ways that are profound and eternal. For me, it’s holy ground, certainly not because of what it is today, but because of what God once did there in my life – and, I’m sure, in the lives of others. And I won’t let today’s OBU or today’s SBC rob me of that. I mustn’t, because I need to continue celebrating what OBU has meant in my life. There’s probably no place where I feel God’s presence as keenly as on Bison Hill, because of the profound differences God brought about in my life at that place. That’s why I’ll continue to return there – for October’s “The Weekend” and whenever I feel the need to remember.