firsthand

Oral History Transcript

Biola University Centennial Oral History Project

NARRATOR: Dietrich Buss

INTERVIEWER: Monica Brown

DATE: November 16, 2006

MONICA BROWN: (garbled)

DIETRICH BUSS: My pleasure, really

MB: I’m really excited

DB: What form will your final product take?

MB: Well, for me, I’m going to do sort of a write-up and describing what it was like in the interview and stuff. And then I’m also going to do a transcript. And I can send that to you, when I’m done with the transcript, have you review it, just read it and make sure you’re OK with everything. Then you can sign it over to Biola.

DB: Um-hum. Is the department planning on doing anything with the collection of interviews that you have or just part of the archival information that you collect?

MB: I think they’re going to do a documentary but I think with the transcripts we’re turning in, it will just be put into the archives.

DB: OK. Now allow me to because institutional memory …. it’s a good idea because the next generation will come along and wonder what the previous generation was doing.

MB: Yeah. It is really important.

DB: Yes. It is really important.

MB: I’m glad you brought up the institutional memory thing, because it’s true. Institutions can, I don’t know, can start being bored and leaving and kind of just questioning…

DB: There are even other very interesting things that are more, how do you see, more difficult to solve… The catalog says that the … the founders…

MB: It wasn’t…

Doctrinal Statement

DB: Well, it was not the original doctrinal statement but probably when Torrey came in they wanted to… The original Doctrinal Statement was about three sentences in 1908.

MB: What was it?

DB: Well, I’ve got a copy of that. But then in 19xx when Torrey came, then they felt they had to become more theologically rigorous. And they started working on one. But that one was not adopted til 1936, officially, as far as the institution corporation. We were incorporated in 1936 and they became part of the incorporation papers at that point. But it was used earlier, just exactly when was it was used, uh, I figure it probably the overlapped of Torrey who started it and they started using it and signing it.

But the original, it wasn’t the original doctrinal statement. Even though probably was something the founders were probably working on at the same time. That’s why when it’s said it’s from the founders, it’s true. But it is not the original doctrinal statement for the institution.

MB: That’s really interesting.

DB: Yeah. So, I mean, some people may say you’re splitting hairs but the way it’s worded in the catalogue is finessed. So it was from the founders but the way it’s stated, you sort of surmise that there was no previous doctrinal statement.

MB: Yeah.

DB: Which was really not the case.

MB: Yeah. Hmmm.

DB: But there’s not a contradiction of terms of what we believe, obviously, it’s just that the current one, which is the 1976 one, was …

MB: As the original. Yeah.

DB: Then again, it’s one of these things in terms of history, some of these things get conflated…

MB: Yeah, and so they just decided to, yeah. Huh… So that was interesting that the first one was sort of simple. And then I guess they felt like they needed to…

DB: Yeah, they just wanted to be sure that they had Trinitarian people here rather than Unitarians or anybody else. And that the gospel was the gospel of Jesus Christ.

MB: That was the main goal, in the beginning. (laughter)

DB: Yes. I mean the 36 statement that we have in the catalogue, of course, is very elaborate. And then, of course, they have a lot of teaching positions that require a faculty that are added to that. And sometimes there’s not a distinction made between a teaching position and a doctrinal statement.

MacInnis Controversy

MB: Now, who was it that wrote The Fisherman Philosopher? Or Peter the Fisherman?

DB: Gene MacInnis. There was a great controversy in connection with that time.

MB: Was that dealing with the doctrinal statement?

DB: No, it did not. It just had to do with the question of philosophy because it called Peter the Fisherman Philosopher. And, you know, if you look at that time, the idea of philosophy seemed to be really a pejorative term because evolution and evolutionary thinking, Darwinian thinking, had come in. Paul warns against vain philosophy, people turning from the gospel truth to vain philosophies. And, I think, the more his term, using philosophy as a term that created the beginning of the controversy. But the controversy would not die, you know, leading finally to him resigning and half of the board resigning. That led to the reorganization of the new structure, with a president, W.T. White, becoming the first president of the institution. Now, before that, it was just the president of the board but now there was a president of the institution.

MB: OK. So he was president of the board before WT White became president.

DB: No, MacInnis was the dean. MacInnis was not president, he was a dean. But, you see, since Torrey’s time, the dean was sort of on the forefront in terms of visibility. … the chairman of the board, as long Lyman Stewart was chairman of the board , he was also kind of a spokesman for the institution. When he passed away in ’23, James Irvine became chairman of the board. And then they picked the deans. MacInnis was the dean from 1925 to 1929, so he was head of the academic program but he got a lot of visibility because of the controversy.

MB: Yeah. I think it’s interesting that he was the dean during that time that his sort of, um, in between the cracks of Biola’s history also.

DB: Although, I think, if you look at it that way, we’re kind of reading it, thinking in terms of a vacuum. But we kind of think in terms of, I think we kind of read it backwards.

Brandon Rogers: OK, you guys, we’re ready to shoot with you guys.

DB: OK, we can talk about it further, unless you want to bring it up along the way. We can just go over the whole thing if you want to.

MB: I will. Yeah.

DB: Do you have a definite timeframe here?

MB: Yeah. Do we have a timeframe?

BR: What time do you guys have?

DB: I have five to eight.

BR: So, let’s do it until 8:00. What time do you guys have until, where you guys need to be? Usually these things are about 45 minutes to an hour.

MB: OK, yeah, that’s fine.

BR: Or like an hour and fifteen or so.

MB: OK, that’s good to know.

BR: Whatever, I mean, just…

MB: Yes. Could someone let us know when it’s time to wrap up?

BR: You can do as long as you want but up until an hour and a half.

MB: OK, like, when is it an hour and fifteen minutes? Can you go that long?

BR: Yeah, absolutely.

MB: OK.

BR: OK.

MB: All right.

BR: All right. Good.

Dietrich Buss's Biography

MB: Thanks. OK. Well, Dietrich Buss, you first came to Biola in 1958.

DB: That’s correct.

MB: And you’re here until 1963, correct?

DB: No, actually, until 2005.

MB: Oh, as a student. (laughter)

DB: Oh, yes, as a student. 1963, that’s right. I was here then as a student.

MB: And, what first led you to Biola?

College Decision

DB: Well, it’s interesting because I graduated from Wheaton Community High School. I lived in Wheaton, Illinois. And I had applied to Wheaton, my parents were missionaries in Japan and they came back on furlough at spring. So I came to California but also found out that…--and I had been accepted to Wheaton College in the meantime—but it was the Eisenhower recession and there was just no jobs around. I couldn’t find work that summer so I didn’t have money to go back to Wheaton so we started looking around in the middle of summer. Since I was new to California, 1958 that summer, and looked around. Sue South seemed to be one place to go. And then other people are talking about the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. So we looked into that and I put in my application, was accepted, and decided to come. I mean, I didn’t have any money. Tuition was only twelve dollars a unit at the time.

MB: (laughter)

DB: And I was thinking largely in terms of money and I did want to have an education that was in a Christian setting. So, but, of course, the school was downtown and that did not really appeal to me. I kind of like the open spaces. But, that’s what brought me to Biola, actually: financial necessity and the desire to find an institute, school, college that offered a BA degree. And that was a Christian institution.

MB: That’s interesting. Were Wheaton and Biola comparable in any way during that time?

DB: Well, Biola was an institute, not accredited at the time. And, of course, Wheaton had a strong academic reputation for a long period of time, even then. So, no, they were not comparable. Certainly not in 1958. But I didn’t have any money so…

MB: So you were willing to go… (laughter)

DB: So I was not in the position to… And my family was out here now. So that also was a draw. It didn’t seem feasible to go back there.

MB: Where did the mission statement of Biola seem to be during that time?

Mission Statement

DB: Well, it’s the same statement we have now. There was no change. Basically the same statement. Well, the mission statement, while it was different than it was now because now this is the center of education, scholarship, and service. Whereas I think at that time, it was different but I can’t really tell you what it was.

MB: OK.

Education Major

DB: Yes. It was the Bible Institute, and people knew it as such. But we were beginning, Biola had begun to diversity in terms of its academic program by the time I came here. Because I did enter as an Education major, thinking of going into education at the time.

MB: OK. So, when you first came to Biola, it was still in the downtown LA campus?

DB: Yes, yes.

MB: How was that, your first year?

Downtown L.A. Building

DB: Well, buildings there were two towers, twelve-story towers, with the Church of the Open Door in the middle, between those two. Downtown sitting at Hope and Sixth, right next to the city library. Biola had a very, very small library, up on, I think, the seventh floor. But everybody used the city library because they had the resources. So we really used the city library for our main library resource. And then, in those days, Biola students, probably 90% or more, worked. So downtown was the perfect setting to find work. Everybody found work in the retail district or other places. I worked for May Company initially and then Les Ryan.

So, basically, we had classes in the morning: 7:30 in the morning until lunch. And then all afternoon, people would be working and then we’d come back and do their academic work in the evening or…there were some classes in the evening, too, but there was virtually no afternoon classes in those years.

MB: Do you think Biola made its presence known in the city? Did you guys do like outreach in the city?

DB: Oh, yes, Biola, of course, had been down there, in the downtown area since 1908 and was very much part of that whole thing. With the carillons on top and, you know, Dr. Hooker, who was the carillon player. He was also a pianist. He would play those in the mornings and then at noon and then in the evening, three times a day. And since it was on top of a building, it would just resound throughout the whole downtown area, as you could imagine. And Biola was just a well-known fixture. And the Church of the Open Door, you know, it had a seating capacity of 4,000 and that place was packed. I was down there, J. Burnham McGee was the pastor, and that was a really thriving hub in those years. That was still before the white flight, the people moved out of the city, and Biola as an institution of learning and the Church of the Open Door was well-known. I mean, everybody knew about that place, for sure. Biola also had a radio station in those years, KBBI, FM station, which has since been sold. I think we kept that until 1980, somewhere along there.

Mid-Century Vision

MB: Now, do you think, just with you talking about Biola and working at the Church of the Open Door, do you think that Biola at that time had a vision of one day becoming like Wheaton?

DB: Well, it’s interesting. I would say, beginning with Samuel Sutherland, he developed the vision for—not just being a Bible Institute but really developing a strong academic program. And he became dean during the period of World War II and wanted to… He had started with Biola in <garbled> in about 1936. Then he became dean of Biola and then he had a vision of developing an academic program so that we would have a strong academic program as well as strong Biblical Studies program. And so, it was… he became president in 1952. Things moved even further. But, I think, one of the things that drove it was after World War II, all these GIs came out. Many of them, of course, came to Biola. They wanted to have them academically equipped so that they could go out and really be of useful service and also take a place of leadership. And you really had to have an academic program as well. He had the vision the vision for bringing about both the academic program and biblical studies program.

Fear of Liberal Christianity

See, one of the things that you have to remember is that, people were very concerned, ever since the turn of the century, of the liberal Christianity making inroads; was that there would be defections the basics of the faith. And so the bible school movement, of which Biola was a part, basically moved out of academics, you know. Princeton, Harvard, Yale, all those schools had left the faith and they were liberal schools, embraced Darwinism. And so the whole institute movement at the turn of the century was to try to create kind of bulwarks of Christian learning that would not be tainted by the false teachings of academia. So academia had really, it was considered to be kind of like the work of the devil because of what had happened to it. And there was a great sense that we must not mix our biblical studies with this academic work because the academic work undermines the faith. And so the bible school movement basically tried to stay out of what you might call broad liberal arts education. Especially the Bible Institute Movement, ‘cause they felt that was a way of moving away from the scriptures. And that sort of mentality was also part of this MacInnis controversy because when he talked about philosophy, that was like saying we were going to get into the academics, which undermines the faith. And so it opened up a whole can of worms in terms of where the institution was and where it’s going. Of course, that led to closing that door and moving back to just an institute mentality. In some way it was like a siege mentality, it was to create a barrier to secular thinking.

Sutherland and the Liberal Arts Model

But, see, Sutherland, he had a very broad education. He graduated from Occidental College, he went to Princeton Seminary for seminary training. And he believed that you could have academics, academics as such was not the work of the devil but God had created all things and so we should capture academic reality and capture it for Christian thinking. So there was a change in his mentality and there were others, I think, at the time after World War II who began to realize that we must give our students a broader education than simply preparing them to just teach the Bible. So I think he went into education. It was his vision to get people back into education as teachers. And that’s really the route to which liberal education came back to Biola. To prepare teachers, you know they had to have history, they’ve got to have math, you’ve got to have science, and you’ve got to open it up to the liberal arts, probably philosophy. And it was his vision to be able to do that. But not leave Bible out. And so he really got started and created a… They had a lay conference in which they called Christian leaders from various places, in 1946 I believe it was, to create an association of Bible schools and colleges. One of the determinations was to have thirty units of Bible kept in the curriculum and also develop your academics. Biola’s thirty units of Bible as a requirement comes out of that tradition of the accreditation associations of bible schools and colleges, which Dr. Sam Sutherland of which he was one of the founders and movers. And that was created because a lot of people thought, still then, that unless we lock in that thirty units of Bible there would be drift away and it would be moving to academia only and perhaps maybe academia would become the bulwark for accepting philosophies that are contrary to the scripture.

Missional Emphasis

MB: So, do you think that, when… it seems like when Biola became a more academic institution along with Bible institute, it became more of a mission-al college. People were able to then go out and share their skills and then their bible with others. Whereas before it seems like Biola was more, kind of building up a defense or…

DB: Although, it was very much the thrust of the bible institute movement was to train missionaries. So there was a view to sending people out both here as pastors and missionaries. So there was always an emphasis on overseas missions. That was very, very great. So, Biola, too, has great, great history of people going out on overseas missions. So it was not purely defensive but it was felt like the academic world here in America was sort of the seat of Satan and his minions. And we can’t really mix with that whole enterprise. So there was really kind of a strong, maybe fear, maybe prejudice, as you might call it. But I think it grew out of fear ‘cause what had happened to the institutions as a result of departure from the faith and the kind of things that happened to the institutions that had been great Christian schools. But a lot of people feared that that was inevitable. If you go into academics, once again the institution will drift and it will become a liberal institution. They would depart from the faith and they would not be anything other than just, you know, another USC kind of school. Because that, too, had a strong Presbyterian background at one time.

Transition to La Mirada

MB: Well, moving back to when Biola was on its Los Angeles campus, and that it moved to La Mirada a year after you were a student at Biola. Can you talk about any changes that you saw Biola go through, just in the environment?

DB: Yes. Well that was a terrific transition because 1958, when I came here, it was the last year they were in downtown Los Angeles. And then 1959, even though they were trying to get started in ’58 but that was not possible, so they had to delay it to 1959 to get that campus built out here.

Expansion Within Downtown?

If I could just digress a bit here, in terms of acquiring this property, Samuel Sutherland had a vision for being able to do something beyond what was downtown. And they did have land across the street on Hope that was part of Biola and they thought they’d expand it there. But they had a meeting shortly after--probably 1953, because he became president in 1952—and it was a meeting in which Ray Myers, who was chairman of the board, and Dr. Sutherland and Dr. Talbot were having lunch together at the Jonathan Club, as he describes it. And they were figuring out, you know, if they would add next door where they were. They would build another twelve-story building—because that was sort of the limit that the city had put in terms of building up. And how they would divide the floors. And they talked about this, figuring what it would be, they figured it would cost a million-and-a-half dollars, at that time, to make a twelve-story building to accommodate all of that. And Ray Myers started figuring out and he said, well, for that money, we could actually move out to new developments outside the city and have a whole new campus! And Samuel Sutherland said, we could? And he said, well, why don’t we just move out?

La Mirada's Geography

And it was kind of that meeting that set the whole thing in motion, to really consider going out. Apparently everybody seemed to think that that was feasible thing to do, ‘cause the land was valuable and becoming more valuable all the time. We could sell, move out, so they began to look around and they found, of course, La Mirada. They looked all over the place. But La Mirada, at that time, was Andrew McNally’s Windemere Ranch and had been intact, 2,200 acres, and they were developing the whole thing at one time. And they were selling land so they came out here and decided it would be a very good place. And particularly, up here where we have--La Mirada Boulevard was called Luteweiler at that time. And next to Luteweiler was two lakes, one was down here by the baseball field and the other lake a little further up by what was the football field, of course now it’s the track that’s built up. But there was two lakes, actually, here. And it was lower land that the Southwestern Parks and Recreation had an option to buy and they were just going to buy land up here that was the higher land. But when the Parks and Recreation people decided not to buy, they decided to also buy the lower lands.

Initial Purchase: 160 Acres

So, Biola really bought 160 acres initially, then it went all the way up to Gardenhill Street. And, it’s too bad they didn’t keep the 160 acres, because moving out of downtown to here they had to sell in order to get cash. They didn’t have enough money. They sold the property next door and some other land, twenty-seven acres somewhere in the city. They had about half a million dollars. They came out here and built this campus. It doesn’t sound like a lot of money today, but it was a pretty good amount at that time. But in order to actually get the buildings out-and there’s not a lot of buildings on this campus when we moved out here- they had to sell…they sold eighty-five acres of that 160 and kept the seventy-five so the campus would have been double initially had they kept the land. But, in order to build here, they couldn’t.

Cash-only Policy

See, Biola had a policy of only building with cash in hand. You know that seems very strange to people now, but because of the depression and having almost lost the downtown campus--you know, they were within inches from losing it—the board came up with the policy that they would not go into debt for any capital construction. And so that policy drove the idea that they had to have money to pay for everything they did.

Original La Mirada Campus

So we moved out here, there was just the Talbot building, Sutherland Hall, downstairs science building—there wasn’t a second floor—cafeteria, it was about half of what it is now, and two women’s residences, the old one was just torn down and the new one is going up in its place. But that was the entire campus. No student union, no gym, no other buildings, no Metzger, none of the other buildings were on campus. So, we only had about 600 students at the time.

Bussed from Downtown

And there was no housing, they only had women’s housing down here, this was only women’s. The men were still staying downtown. So, we would come in here in buses in the morning, have breakfast in the cafeteria, go to class 7:30 til twelve, get our sack lunches, get on the bus, eat on the bus, and head on back downtown for work in the afternoon. ‘Cause we had all been working downtown, and so, it was…

‘Cause the area had not been developed you know, Disneyland was just kind of coming in, being here. And so, people had to work, downtown had the jobs to support themselves here. So, but downtown… (pause) yeah, it was a matter of just getting up early in the morning and catching that bus. If you didn’t catch that bus (laughter), you know, you didn’t have class that day. You’d have to go back to work in the afternoon.

Students Pitch in to Develop Campus

But the campus, then, was paid for. I mean, everything was paid for when we started out here in 1959. But it was kind of a bare bones campus. It was, there was virtually no landscaping, the waited for that. So, it was like bare dirt every place. There was a big oval, you know, what Feinberg Hall is on, this whole area here was a big oval, it was wide open. And, that was used… we didn’t have a track at that time, so for track, so we used to go running in PE classes around the oval. And the oval, of course, is totally disappeared except for part of the curviness on the periphery, if you look around. And, but, campus was wild and wooly. We came out here… we had kind of work days where we would take off and faculty would help organize students to plant trees and shrubbery and lawn, put in lawn in places. So, there was kind of a project for the entire <garbled> to help get this place looking like it was a campus. After all, this is 2300 acres <garbled> in olives and citrus. And so that’s why we have all of the olive trees that are in the community.

<garbled> Biola Ave.had not been named Biola Ave, it was named Holder Avenue And Dr. Sutherland wanted to try to get the name of the institute on one of the streets, you know, one of the main streets. And so, he had the presence of mind to go to the Planning Commission, the County Planning Commission, to see if they could get that name changed. Because no houses had been sold, they were just able to go to the developing companies that owned the lands and were putting homes along Biola Ave. And get them to sign off to change from Holder Ave. to Biola Ave. It was actually a different name when we first came out here, and they changed it to Biola Ave. So that was kind of a strategic move.

MB: Yeah, I bet that was fun. (laughter)

DB: Yes.

MB: Yes. So, you still lived downtown then while the university was moving over here.

DB: That’s right. The men students lived down here, I mean, lived downtown. They did put up what we called the bungalows. Right now, where Hope Hall was, is, they used to have apartments built. It was the idea that they would have married students live there in the apartments. And they had units of four apartments each. But they started putting the men students into those. So when I came to campus the following year lived here, it was just one year that we commuted. They had these bungalows put up. And they had four students in each apartment. So that was quite the living arrangement, because they had four fellows in one living space. They did have a bedroom, a bigger room, and a bathroom facility. But it made for very close living. But those bungalows have been pulled out much before Hope Hall was in here. And we had Ellis Park, as they called it, a place where Hope Hall now exists. It was kind of an open space where nothing existed. We had volleyball and barbecue pits and that sort of thing here.

Relationship with Church of the Open Door

MB: So, one thing I was wondering is, when Biola moved to La Mirada and downtown Los Angeles, they were so close to Church of the Open Door, just working alongside them. Was that relationship maintained at all when Biola moved over here? Or…

DB: Well, we still have a good working relationship with the Church of the Open Door out in Glendora. But, this is interesting, I don’t know if you’re aware, the Church of the Open Door was started because of Torrey and Horton had wanted to bring in a strong dean. Actually, Horton was sort of a dean; he was called a superintendent. He had the academic program with Lyman Stewart being the chairman of the board. And they did have their eye on R.A. Torrey and made contact with him. But they had a stipulation—he was an evangelist, and he wanted to be out there preaching to people, didn’t just want to be in academia. So to induce him to come, they said, how would it be if we build an auditorium that would allow you to preach, we’d bring the people in. And so, they landed on the idea of having an auditorium that would seat 4,000 people. So that Torrey could really have a place where he could really preach the gospel still. It was out of that kind of arrangement that the Church of the Open Door grew. Because as people came there, it was not just an evangelistic hall but of course, it was organized into a church and that became, then, the Church of the Open Door. So it was not anything separate from Biola, initially. It was really Torrey’s outreach to the city and his preaching that drew the people in, leaving then Biola to organize the church. Of course, organizationally, in the early years, there was not a separate organization but, as time went by, I think particularly in the period when you have Dr. Talbot…

Dr. Talbot was both…when he became president, he was also pastor. I mean, the burden got to be too much for one person to carry: administrative responsibilities for the school and also being pastor of a full-blown church. So, by the time I came, with Dr. McGee being the pastor, he had no responsibilities as far as the institute. Organizationally, it developed its own board and its own structure and everything kind of was under one roof (laughter). The institute and also the church was under one roof but they were really growing separately. But there was a good working relationship all of those years. There was a little conflict, as such…

Chapel

MB: Did you guys have chapel there for…?

DB: Oh, yes, yes. It was right there. Yes, but that…the student body was very small compared to the largeness of the facility. It was just a student body and it was small—600 students in a place that holds 4,000, the seating capacity. But that anomaly, I think it goes back to R.A. Torrey, ‘cause he wanted to have a place that could really reach out. And they did fill that. Sunday, that place was filled. They had three balconies—you’ve probably seen the pictures of what it looked like. It was a very thriving place.

Academics in the Sutherland Era

MB: Well, in the La Mirada campus, just with the change of environment, was there also a change in vision? Do you think that was when Sutherland started realizing that he could make Biola a more academic institute, or…

DB: He had been working on this, I think, ever since he started the Association of Bible Schools and Colleges. And the curriculum had developed because when he came here in 1958, they did have an undergraduate program offering a bachelor of arts. So, beginning with Dr. James O. Henry, who came here in 1952…he was called in to start teaching World Civilizations, Western Civilizations, it was called then. But they started building academic programs in the early ‘50s and putting in…There were no science labs but I mean, they taught science, they taught math, they taught <garbled>. And they had to teach all the education courses. But there was, of course, Biola had a strong music program. In fact, they offered a degree for a long time before this. But it was in church music, you know, although they did offer other courses as well.

Accreditation

But by 1958, they already had a pretty good academic program started but they did not have accreditation. And one of the requirements was that you had to have, of course, a library. So, coming out here, they did put prominence in the library. That’s the old library which is now the Rosemead School of Psychology, that was the library. And by 1960, they had been working… Dr. James Christian was the dean during those years and he was really the point man to develop that academic program to get us to qualify for accreditation with the Western Association of Schools and Colleges, WASC. So that had been going on probably since, you know, since 1948 probably, in there. They started to remold the curriculum under Dr. Sutherland’s academic leadership as dean. Then, when he became president, I think it accelerated. And it was his vision that was accepted by the board. So, the board was behind what the president was doing, obviously, so the school was moving toward more academic program. In those years since World War II, kind of built some kind of a foundation. But I would say, really beginning in the early ’50s because James Christian was the first, what you might call, liberal arts faculty with a history being not just church history and doctrine but bringing in broader historical studies. And he was hired for that purpose. So, he was the first chairman of the history department and it was he who really hired me, when I came here.

1923-1929

MB: Yeah, I was going to ask you about that. You are history yourself and you’ve done a lot of research on Biola. Could you explain to me a little more about the time from 1923 to 1929 in Biola’s history?

First President

DB: OK. When you go back to the early years, I guess the way to approach it is to ask the question, who were the visible leaders in Biola’s history. And, because the title of president of the institute. a president of the college, president of the university… The idea of president of the institution did not come into being as such until W.P. White became president. That grew out of the controversy with MacInnis, really blew up, the lid blew off in 1929. You know, he’d been here earlier—he was here from 1925 on. And then, he resigned. And half the board resigned. And then they decided to reorganize. And then hey really got visible, up front would be the president of the institution. So that became W.P. White.

So, but, in that period from 19…when you ask the question, you have to really nail down when did R.A. Torrey pass on. Because he the visible leader, Horton was behind the scenes, he was doing the academic work. The front man of the institute was the…

Stewart, Torrey and Horton Years

MB: Stewart?

DB: Lyman Stewart, yes. Milton was his partner but Lyman Stewart was kind of the driving force. And he died in 1923. Torrey was very much visible, well obviously because he became dean in 1912, and he was there until 1924. So in the sense that when Lyman Stewart passed on, then you do have a transition, too, because Dean Torrey also leaves. But in terms of the leadership titles, Lyman Stewart was Chairman of the Board and R.A. Torrey was dean. T.C. Horton had been in charge of academics but that title that he had was superintendent. It was later applied to many other outreaches, so it seems like any other outreach was superintendent. And T.C. Horton carried those, whereas Lyman…whereas Torrey, Dean Torrey carried the academic program and ran the institution academically. And, of course, he was kind of stern and he had great rallies there in the auditorium at the Church of the Open Door.

But then the question is, if Lyman Stewart died in ‘24, ’23…part of the confusion internally as far as I can see, is that internally we have designated that Lyman Stewart died in 1929 and so it seems like there’s continuous leadership from Torrey, then comes White. But that’s not the case. Because Torrey did die in ’23, I think I have to nail that one down, even though the memo from Emily Gibson shows that it was 1929. So, if the Chairman of the Board was R.A. Torrey, he was the leader, then who carried the mantle for the institution after 1923? And I think, logically speaking, the Chairman of the Board next became Joseph Irvine. He had been in the work of the institute. He was very visible. He was a very strong person. And he was Chairman of the Board, so I think he really became the successor of Torrey. He probably was not…not Torrey, Lyman Stewart. He became the successor of Stewart in terms of the organization. But I don’t think he was an outgoing man in the same way as Lyman Stewart was, or as R.A. Torrey. So, there was probably the deans had more visibility after that successor of Torrey, MacInnis, the dean. But that turned into a terrible debacle.

And there wasn’t strong leadership at the top. And I think that one of the reasons was they decided to have a strong president of the institution, not just the president of the board. If they had the title of the president of the board but didn’t have president of the institution.

Videographer: OK, hold on for just a second. We need to change the tapes.

DB: OK, good, no problem.

Videographer: Sorry about that. The conversation … we just have to change reels really quick.

DB: Yeah. OK. So, the question of, people ask the other way, who is considered the CEO? Well, if you ask that question, you’re thinking about the top dog, the top man. That’s why I think the memo I gave you…the question of how to view it, I could bring that together at the end. The last page (referring to the memo on the table), people that are starred with a, people who were the top leaders, in terms of the public. You don’t the have the president of the institute, you have the president of the board. Stewart was the president of the board, he was never called president of the institute.

MB: Yeah. So are you saying...do you think it was really important than after the MacInnis conflict…did Biola really realize that it was really important to have a president of the institute to establish sort of their, the way the public viewed them?

DB: I think institutionally, in order to keep cohesion, also. I think that there was some of the leadership split at, that led them to really evaluate who represents the institution. Is it the Chairman of the Board? While it seems like with Irvine MacInnis and the controversy…it just became a terrible tug of war and there was no person who could say, the institution stands for this. I’m surmising here, because there is not a lot of record in that period in terms of the, you know, even the board minutes and the like that you have about that. It was all behind the scenes really, and the public was aware of it but…Looking at James Henry, who has done more research than anybody else on this question. His chapter on the deans and his chapter on the president, those two chapters, you get the sense they needed to have one visible spokesman for the institute. And that, with all the controversy, there were many, many voices being heard. There was kind of a muddle, the image of what the institute, who’s the institute’s spokesman. And then this reshuffling led them to come up with this new title. And it is usually problems like that that lead you to re-evaluating what needs to be done, I think. And then they came up…But what is from our perspective, what’s kind of misleading, when you look at these presidents, when you look at presidents of the institute, you say OK, Lyman Stewart was on top. So the next president must be W. White. Not realizing that the president of the board probably was the voice of the institute since we didn’t have any other president. And the dean was under the board, under the board, because he wasn’t running the school. He was running the academic program but he was not running the school. The board and the chairman had leadership there. So, when you ask those questions, then, I think you get a different sense as to who the so-called CEO, the visible leader for the institute, even though titles change. This is mine, this is my lineup. There’s no question once you get to White but it’s right in here (referring to memo on table) between, especially once, if you forget he died in 1923, you put 1929. Cause then you can say he died in ’29 then Stewart was still…But there’s a period of five years here that you have to account for. It was not without some leadership. Yeah.

(Long pause)

MB: When they get the cameras back on, I’ll ask you about MacInnis.

DB: Yeah. OK.

Depression Years

MB: I’m also very curious about…you said that during the depression we almost lost Biola?

DB: Yes. OK. Go back to that?

MB: Yeah.

DB: OK. Yeah, that’s an interesting story, too.

MB: Good. (laughter)

Henry Manuscripth1. DB: I should maybe mention to you, although I think in 1957, in the King’s Business, it was the fiftieth anniversary, you know. And James Henry put together the story of Biola from its very beginnings. He goes back to Lyman Stewart and the building of the Union Oil Company. And his article is very good on the early years, although it doesn’t get to the controversy of MacInnis or the problem of Lyman Stewart’s passing—who’s leadership—but in the 1957 King’s Business there was about a 75-page, 50-page, 60-page article on the history of Biola. “Black Gold and Souls to Win” is the title of that. “Black Gold and Souls to Win.” ‘Cause he was in the oil business and so, he wanted to bank... And then the manuscript, his manuscript. These are the two really solid sources, even though it’s not published. Henry was a very careful, very close student. He did so many interviews. I think you can pretty well, and he gives good reasons…I mean he develops them so you can really see what’s happening, the full context. He goes to each person, you know, very systematically. He was trying to figure it out himself. But when you go through there, you can really put it together.

MB: (Cough) Yeah, I’ll definitely…

DB: The problem is that once people have come up with a lineup and things have been lost along the way, they just assume that it’s been published and…

MB: It’s correct.

DB: It’s correct within the catalog or in the graduation pamphlets, you know, they go to that as their authority. So things could get lost in the mists of history. That’s why I think it’s so great the hundredth anniversary really look at some of these things that have been lost in the process. I don’t think it really, you know, was intentional desire to make mistakes. But it’s that people don’t realize that a period of time sometimes institutional history becomes hazy and even downright mistakes. Because Alan Gibson’s lineup there--this was the original memo, I made a copy of that—was in preparation for celebrating the new president, you know, Clyde Cook coming in.

MB: I know! And then next year we’re going to be doing that again.

DB: Right. And I imagine we’ll come up with the same lineup!

MB: Probably. (laughter)

DB: Right. So someone has to bring and call it into question. (pause) Although I didn’t realize that Biola had, you know as a result of looking at it here, preparing for it here…I didn’t realize it until the last week that Lyman Stewart was…he died 1923. But in checking back the sources all the way around, there in no doubt in my mind that it’s not 1929 but it’s 1923. So you might want to make a note of that one because it is ’23. For your own…all you have to do is go to Google. There’s lots of information on Lyman Stewart. All the reference work will show you that it was 1923.

‘Cause this looks real neat. I mean it looks real neat. And I think what happened, probably whoever worked on this and didn’t look into the history of it, just looked at, well, White is the first president so it must have been the new leadership. He was, you know, came before then. Again, Biola’s presidents, but Lyman Stewart was never president of the board. And it was not until the reorganization that they consciously worked on that whole issue, coming out of controversy. It gave him president of the institute. And then there was still…and then they came up with chairman of the board. They chose that title as president officially

MB: Instead of president, because they had a president then.

DB: Yes, then they called it chairman of the board. Right. So in a sense, you can say that Lyman Stewart did have the title of president.

MB: It was just a different title.

DB: Yeah, it’s an interesting puzzle.

(pause for equipment repositioning)

MB: So what brought you back to Biola?

DB: Well, I was…I went from Biola--I graduated in ’63, and then didn’t want to go into elementary education after my student teaching. (laughter) So, that created a dilemma ‘cause I thought probably secondary education would be something I might like. So I decided to go back immediately and get an M.A. and a secondary credential. Went to Cal State Los Angeles and then got my first teaching job in ’65 at Coulter Academy in the Wilshire district, which was Leah Coulter had started a school there. She was also one of the founders of Westmont. That got started after World War II. And we’d gotten through probably through January of that year and then, they had a, called a faculty meeting, and announced to everybody that Coulter Academy was shutting down. The city of Los Angeles had condemned the buildings because they were termite-infested and they could not continue there. So, due to the fact that the Wilshire district was a high-rent district, good land prices, they also decided to pull up stakes rather than rebuilding on that location, to sell the land and move on to Rancho, California, which is Riverside County. And they have relocated and they have a thriving place out in Temecula. And it’s called, um, they may have adopted the name Coulter but it’s something else as well…Lynnfield Coulter, it’s called. Lynnfield School. It was first called Lynnfield School and now it’s called Lynnfield Coulter. But when that happened, of course, since I had an M.A., I didn’t have to teach high school. Biola was growing and needed new faculty. And my brother had started teaching here in 1964. They had a German, a strong German program going in

MB: I was going to ask you about that, yeah.

DB: Oh, I see. Yeah.

MB: Yeah.

DB: So…

MB: Are you German?

DB: I’m German?

MB: Yes. I lived in Germany.

DB: Oh, you did?

MB: Yeah.

DB: In what capacity—a student?

MB: Um…no, my dad’s in the military.

DB: Oh, I see.

MB: Yeah, I lived in Mannheim and Vilsack and then Hannow.

DB: I see. So you had a chance to see a lot of Germany. Did you see a lot of the rest of the continent, too?

MB: Um, yes, of course, I went there.

DB: OK. That’s one thing, we used to have more languages. German was really going back then. They needed someone else to teach, initially, German. So I was brought in to Biola. Since I am German in background and kept up with the language in college, I was brought in to teach German and some history. ‘Cause everything was growing, everything was growing, back in the ‘60s was just a period of terrific growth.

MB: Oh, that reminds me. I heard that, I think I guess it would be around ’70, late ‘60s. In just during, into the Vietnam War, you know there were a lot of riots in Southern California

DB: Uh hmm. Oh yes. Yes, also the Watts Riots, 1965

MB: Yeah, so, I actually heard—you know how we have a contract now that we have to sign when we come into Biola, that says we won’t drink and stuff.

DB: Right.

MB: I heard that the contract back then, you had to say that you wouldn’t riot. Is that correct?

DB: I don’t think so.

MB: OK.

DB: They had famous provisions: no smoking, no drinking, no dancing, no movies

MB: No movies?!

DB: Yeah (laugh), early years they had no movies.

MB: That’s funny.

DB: Right.

MB: While you were here?

DB: Um. you know, I think the first movie I went to see was Ben Hur.

MB: So that was probably supported by Biola (laughter)

DB: I know it. But those were things that were part of the fundamentalist movement. Of course, no gambling. No drinking, no smoking, no drugs, no movies, and…Gambling was one of the ones, too; there used to be a pretty long list. Of course, they’ve kind of peeled back on that. And now what are the prohibitions?

MB: Now It’s no drinking, no dancing, no smoking.

DB: But you can dance off campus.

MB: Yes. So, yes.

DB: So, that’s no longer the same extent. Gambling still there?

MB: I don’t think so.

DB: Really.

MB: I think, um, ‘cause one of the things the students say are like, we’re signing a contract for things that we wouldn’t do anyway. Um, so I think they might have removed gambling. ‘Cause I just don’t see people going around gambling. (laughter)

DB: You get into semantics, too. Can you do gaming? The lottery?

MB: Yeah.

DB: ‘Cause that’s basically gambling, right?

MB: I would, yes.

DB: But they used to be that all the provisions also applied to the faculty.

Brandon Rogers: Hey guys. We’re having some technical difficulties. There’s a problem with recording it so we’ve got to fix that problem. So we’re working on that now. One of the guys is going to get a special device, he’s going to fix it, so just bear with us.

MB: OK

DB: OK

BR: Keep talking. You’re getting some great stuff. Really interesting stuff about, yes, the founding, no it was about… the ideas about and how the different seminaries fit in with the different theologies, conservatives. Some of the stuff in the middle, I forget exactly what it was, but it was really good.

DB: About the fear about getting into academics? That was a big fear, like going out of the Bible school movement. That they would depart from the faith, there was a conflict between academics and faith. You probably have to pick up that team in terms of the push for integration. Because integration of faith and learning has been a major thrust academically. We worked on that a lot in terms of history.

MB: Yeah, what does that look like in the history department? Integration.

DB: I think probably being history helped because history is so integrated. I mean, looking at society, looking at economics, looking at ideas, looking at religions, you know. I mean you could put anything into history, depending on what you want to look at. So history, by its very nature, unless somebody is so narrow-minded they just take political history and that’s all they’re going to do, you know. But those days are really long past in terms of the academy. So history is very integrated. But the thing about it is, you know, I probably should take up ABSC and its demise. Because the board finally voted in 1988 to get out of the Association of Bible Schools and Colleges, ABSC. That whole became defunct, I think is what it is…Because schools were moving away from creating such a strict separation between biblical studies and liberal studies. All of that is very much a part of our history. I don’t know if you still sense that, in terms of the biblical studies department. I think it’s much less so. But it used to be that the first deans, the previous deans that I worked with, that just did not want to, especially what constitutes thirty units of bible. You had to have kind of a clean slate of thirty units of bible. It does not dilute it with anything else. (equipment noise) The only way we got around it was to say, we’re going to have an integrated seminar, with three units to that. Everybody needs to take an integrated seminar. But as far as bringing in broader, taking say, like, from the history department’s point of view. The intention was, can we take the… We used to have three, six, nine, twelve units of doctrine classes.

MB: Like history of doctrine?

DB: We just turned that into… Yes, church history and the history of doctrine.

MB: And could that count as…

DB: Could that count as part of the thirty units. And, of course, they said no! You can’t do that. That dilutes the bible. Dilutes biblical studies. So the compromise was to come up with three-unit integration seminar, a capstone course for seniors. But for many years, I felt like we really should turn this into more dynamic study, really integrating church history, history of Christianity, call it that way, and take the doctrinal studies part and show how the doctrine developed. Because you can take the history of the bible itself, the canon, the doctrinal controversies—the Nicene controversy, from Nicaea to all the church councils.

MB: Do we still have a class like that, even?

DB: Well, church history, no. What’s amazing to me is that Talbot has, they used to have, Dr. Christian used to teach six units of church history Talbot. And when he retired, they changed from church history to historical theology. And it’s a very kind of rarefied, just tracing the theology. But it’s not full-on church history with all of its warts. It’s kind of sanitizing it, you know, the history of theology. You know, theology changes, historical theology. But the only place where church history is taught is Dr. Wilshire in the history department taught church history class for many, many years.

MB: Oh, he doesn’t any more.

DB: It used to be biblical studies…he still teaches that, doesn’t he? Maybe not.

MB: I haven’t seen it available yet.

DB: Really? I’m surprised.

MB: Yeah. I took Roman history with him, which was good. And that kind of leads into a little church history.

DB: Right. But even biblical studies majors did not…yeah, they had to have church history. Those are the only ones that had to have church history course, no one else had to have it. They offered it in the history department. But Talbot doesn’t offer church history as such, in a broad way. Unfortunately. So there’s still somewhat of a…

MB: Sounds like a good class to have.

DB: It is very important, I think, to have a broader church history to understand controversies that arose and understand how the doctrinal emphasis… Because usually there’s a negation of something before you emphasize the importance of something.

MB: Yeah, it’s true.

DB: You know, it’s always the negation of something. Somebody raises the question and somebody answers the question. And that leads to new positions being pulled out. And they find that kind of a… Hegel would call it the dialectic, I guess. There’s always controversies leading to the positions that emerge. They might not be new positions, they’re just honing out. Just like Biola has done over the years when there are controversies and they come up with what they call a teaching position. I don’t know if you’re aware of that but there’s a doctrinal statement and a teaching position, which means like right to life and the life… We never had any, you know. there are no doctrinal positions saying you shouldn’t have an abortion. But there is a statement, a teaching position, that Biola faculty have to teach that that’s wrong because God created life and man cannot take life. So that’s sacred, life is sacred. Because Biola does teach that life is sacred. Yet, or the question of eschatology. I mean, we’re pre… we’re dispensational theology we have here. And then as far as hiring, it used to be that if you subscribe to that doctrinal statement, fine. But, more recently because of the orthodox—I don’t know if you’re aware of the orthodox controversy?Orthodox Controversyh2. MB: No, actually.

DB: Under previous provosts, they started out hiring people who subscribe to the doctrinal statement but were actually Antiochian Orthodox, which is more like the Greek Orthodox.

MB: Wow.

DB: You know, they liked a more formal worship. And it’s a very, very…I mean, there’s a long tradition of the way they do things like the high (garbled) and these things and… It turned into a controversy: can you be at Biola and be Antiochian Orthodox? And, so, you’ll notice, as a result of that, the (garbled) said, no. That you used to be, too, they could be Catholic and kind of (garbled) doctrinal statement, you know, that’s still OK. But I think there’s a greater…since that, I think... Now you’ll find the emphasis is on, you have to be Christian, subscribe to the doctrinal statement, and be within the Protestant evangelical tradition.

MB: Really.

DB: Yeah, and that grew out of controversy over the Orthodox because they felt like, well, the Orthodox never went through the Reformation so they never really embraced that “salvation by faith alone” as Luther preached and the Reformation preached. But some of the eastern churches really didn’t have to go through the Reformation because they were always orthodox. They always embraced the deity of Christ, they embraced the scriptures. And contrary to the Catholic Church, they said that tradition is really the more important. And that tradition of the church with Mariology and all the things that (garbled), especially transubstantiation. Whenever you have the sacrament and the turning of Christ’s body into bread and wine--and the bread turns into the body and the wine turns into the blood. Actual physical elements change. That, of course, led Luther to turn against the doctrines at the end and say “sola scriptura,” the answers in the scripture solely. And so the Catholic Church, the western church, didn’t go through the Reformation. But the eastern church never changed their position. So to say that, because they didn’t go through Reformation, they are not really in the Protestant tradition. I mean that’s questionable.

Now I turn to a huge controversy on campus.

MB: When was this?

DB: It was during Dr. Lingenfelter’s, when he was provost. He was called to go to Fuller School of Missions, but I think he left because it was really too much of a controversy. But he did decide that people at our institution and who are Antiochian Orthodox will not receive tenure.

MB: Wow. I guess they can always remove you, then

DB: Yeah, that’s right.

MB: So the minute you go against some doctrinal thing then they have freedom to…

DB: Well, they didn’t go against doctrine but they were…because they considered the Antiochian people not to be truly Christian. And therefore, therefore they said, they could only bring in people who are Protestant evangelical tradition. But these people believed, you know, ones that are still part of the institution, talk to them and they are strongly evangelical. But, in any case, the hiring position has therefore become that you can’t be of the Catholic tradition, you can’t be of the Orthodox tradition, you’ve got to be of the Protestant tradition to be part of the faculty. But I think in the early years that was not the case if you subscribed to the doctrinal statement. And if you supported the institutional positions of the school and teaching objectives that was not considered a negative.

MB: Now, one thing that I was reminded of when you were talking was…

DB: Have a drink here.

MB: Yes, please. Thank you. (laughter) Yeah, I definitely had to. My throat was getting dry. And you’re the one who’s talking. (laughter). It’s true what you said that controversies have to come to make the university grow or change and see what, you know, what direction they want to go in. So after MacInnis they realized that, it’s good that we have a president and established that. What had been some of the other controversies that allowed Biola to grow, such as possibly the depression?

DB: Well, yeah, we didn’t go into that. We should go back to that, shouldn’t we?

MB: Yeah.

Hunan Bible Institute Finances

DB: There was a financial thing. It had to do with, it was very strange because Lyman Stewart, they had the money. He wanted the Christian public to support the institute. They didn’t want to just finance the whole place. ‘Cause they were supporting Biola in China—that’s a whole other story—Biola in China, the Hunan Bible Institute.

MB: Do you know about that?

DB: Oh, yes, yes.

MB: I would like to hear more about that.

DB: There’s also chapter, Henry (garbled) was the chaplain of that. And another thing that you ought to know is in the library, in the archives. There is a, by Robert Harrison, who was a faculty in history here. And he took great interest in the Hunan Bible Institute. He researched that and there’s a probably thirty, forty-page paper on the history of the Hunan Bible Institute, which is in the archives. Sue Whitehead is the person you want to get to know. ‘Cause she is the archivist and she has the keys to the archives so that Henry manuscript, Robert Harrison’s paper on Biola and China, the Hunan Bible Institute—is a very good, very detailed study that he made. You probably might want to take a look at it and you’ll find out more about that, too. And then Henry’s article, and you can just go to, you don’t have to go to the archives. You can just go directly to microfilm; I think we have hardcopies in the archives. But we have microfilm. Oh, no, I heard it’s now, the King’s Business is now accessible on the Biola website.

MB: Yeah, that’s what I heard.

DB: So you can go down to… But I don’t think they brought it to 1957 yet. But that’s a 1957 issue, February, ‘cause they’re celebrating Biola’s anniversary in February. February, 1957 King’s Business. James O. Henry’s, “Black Gold and Souls to Win,” that article. But (pause) the Torrey faculty, I’m trying to think of its name. (pause) He’s been very interested in the history of Biola…(pause) Do you know any history on the Torrey faculty?

MB: No.

DB: My goodness. I’ll think of his name. But he has done a lot of work on Torrey, his Torrey Institute. He’s done a lot of work up there on Ruben Archer Torrey, R.A. Torrey. Ruben Archer is his full name.

MB: I wonder if we are doing any oral interviews with people in the Torrey faculty.

DB: Well that program didn’t come into being until the ‘90s so it’s really pretty recent.

MB: Yeah, but I wonder if they would have any more…

DB: They collect information. Yeah, I’m trying to think, (sigh), what’s his name? He’s a scholar on the trinity, a Trinitarian. Fred

MB: Sanders?

DB: Sanders!

MB: Yes!

DB: Yes! Yeah, you want to talk, you want to learn anything about Torrey. They’ve also put out a video, Torrey Institute has put out a video on the Torrey family. Yeah, because it’s…it’s three generations of Torreys. It’s quite interesting. And I’m sure they have a video you can see up there. Three generations of Torreys.

MB: Thank you.

DB: They won’t be involved in (garbled—equipment noise)

MB: Yeah, that’s a...

DB: There’s a big Torrey plaque that you see upstairs at the top of the staircase.

MB: Of the history…

DB: That came off the institute building.

MB: Oh, really!

DB: Yes, yeah.

MB: Oh! Yeah, they were putting up different quotes but I guess Torrey’s name…yeah.

DB: Yeah, that’s an amazing conversion, too, because he was quite a wild fellow. He went to Yale and he was wanting to take his life and had come to the end of his rope, believe it or not. And the Lord saved him. Torrey has not been a Sunday school boy all his life. He was, he was very worldly. He was a young college man and he really turned his life around, the Lord turned his life around and he became this evangelist.

MB: Yeah, praise the Lord. So was he the beginning of the three generations?

DB: He is the beginning of three generations of Torreys. He settled (garbled). But Fred, I think, they’re the ones who are working on the website on the King’s Business, putting the whole thing on there.

MB: I think he’s who I heard…

DB: So he would be good source in terms of more information about Torrey especially. And, so, but the only published history of Biola is one year, back in the ‘80s, the editorial people of the annual came up with a history of Biola. It was a student production and it was quite well-done. Then the other published history was the ninetieth anniversary of the history of Biola. Those are the only two but none of them really tapped, well they did consult…

Videographer: OK! We’re almost ready to roll.

DB: I still think that James O. Henry’s manuscript is the best source that you’ll find.

MB: I will definitely take a look at that, then.

DB: Because if you go beyond that you have to go to the board minutes. But there are a lot of stuff you won’t find because it’s very sketchy. (in background: OK…OK…) I guess they’re still working on it. I’m sure Evelyn Gibson will be here for the hundredth anniversary.

MB: I hope so.

DB: I heard her name, she’s coming.

MB: Can I ask you a question before we start rolling?

DB: Yeah.Master's College "Split"h2. MB: See if it’s a question worth asking. Another thing I heard that happened at one time that no one really knew any more information about, was there a time where a lot of students went to Master’s College?

DB: Oh yes, yes

MB: .Was that because of a doctrinal change or academic or do you know what was behind that?

DB: That’s an interesting story, too. Because it was a more recent thing and it happened…(garbled) Here’s a ??? We had an extension program, Talbot extension program, was in there in this church, in Panorama City I believe it is. And he was also on the board of directors. So he was very much, you know, part of Biola. But, I think he felt, Biola was in its lifestyle, he was concerned that Biola wasn’t living up to its Christian standard. And there was never a really specifics about it. But he decided to start his own school, Master’s College. So there was a whole bunch of faculty that were induced, I guess you’d say, because they had a very big teaching load, decided to join Masters. It was also seminary students, I think there was a good group of prominent students influenced also to join Master’s Graduate School, Seminary. She called…I can’t believe I can’t remember his name.

MB: I’ve heard of his name, too.

DB: But that was a fallout, that was a fallout. They basically took the extension program, it was a big extension program on their campus at the church. Basically, all those students were absorbed into new seminary (laughter). And that was a big loss to Biola, initially.

MB: Did it lead to any sort of change in Biola?

DB: No, it really didn’t. I mean it was really a loss to Biola because an insider who had decided to start his own school to compete with Biola. (laughter) So they come to the competition for students on the graduate end, that is Talbot Seminary students,

MB: So was it students to compete with Biola or was he… I mean, ‘cause did you say like he started it because he thought… like…

DB: The lifestyle issues that were not…Biola was not living up to its commitments. Now what would that be? Well, I think they were basically teaching the mother should be in the home, Biola’s encouraging them to get out and get in to the professions. And students were getting too worldly in their attitudes, wanting to make more money rather than serve the Lord. I mean it was a lot of intangible things. But it was a definite tone that they did not like Biola, they wanted it to be more conservative in some way. But there wasn’t any big one issue…

MB: Not like a moral doctrinal issue?

DB: No, I don’t think the doctrinal statement was any different than ours. It was pre-millennial, dispensational theology and eschatology. So, it was more a kind of a Christian lifestyle question. But I think it also had to do with a desire for them to start their own school.

MB: That sounds like a strong motivation. (laughter)

DB: Yes. Now Jack Hafer also has his own school of theology. And some of these big churches. So I think, now I hate to say it, but it’s probably part of an ego thing in order to have my institution. I don’t want to judge, I mean, but you can’t help but think that given its such a limited criticism of Biola that would lead him to say that, well, we need to have our own school. Why do you need your own school? Why can’t you help support us while you’re departing from the faith. Well the students are not getting enough Christian education in terms of their values. Or you’re becoming too secular. This kind of thing.

MB: Do you think…I don’t know…

DB: Are they still working on the…

Videographer: Yeah, we are. We’re just trying to…

DB: Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to know…

V: Honestly, we’ve just run into some technical difficulties.

DB: Oh, I see.

MB: Do you think that, like, I am aware of the King Seminary, Jack Hafer’s? Does Biola try to partnership at all with these other schools. Or…?

DB: I think (garbled) Paula has their extension programs, their (garbled) programs, also their seminary programs. I think there is an innate conflict of interest because those schools that have their own seminary, they’re trying to keep their students, grow their seminary. And if Talbot, you know, in a sense a competition, ‘cause they’re only so many evangelical students that are going to be out there, especially preparing for the ministry. And it’s costly, you know, you’ve got to have a library, have facilities, have faculty. So any time you get some additional competition, you’re actually not wanting to partner with them.

MB: (laughter) I guess not. I was just wondering.

DB: You’d think it would be better if they’d all get together in one. But of course Biola is not going to say, we’re going to support you because we need to keep, we need to keep our school as strong as we can. And you don’t want to duplicate, I mean, library facilities and library acquisitions. Really very, very expensive. A lot of money that (garbled). And you really begin to fragment when you start to…

MB: We have a really nice library, I know.

Asian Influence in History Dept.

DB: Right. Oh, yes. So… But in terms of history, as far as this department, we used to have a strong Asian component. And Dr. Wada, who was my boss, initially. He was an Asianist, Japanese and Chinese history, and…

MB: Wow! “Cause I don’t sense that at all any more.

DB: And then Dr. Lind, Mary Anne Lind, she was here for ten years. Every once in a while we call her back to speak because she’s a great platform person. She’s going to be at the Free Church in Fullerton for what they call a Christmas Repast. It’s a ladies Christmas-kind of, it’s an outreach really to ladies. They have three banquets for the three pastors. And Dr. Lind is going to speak at the repast. But she’s an Asianist and we had her for ten years here. And when Dr. Wada passed on, his widow—well, she just passed on last week, two weeks ago—well, she had donated all of his classical Japanese and Chinese holdings, which are in Japanese and Chinese, to the library. They’ve never been accessed, they’re not on the shelves at this point. But they do have all of his stuff, an extensive library. That’s one of the things regarding the near East and before Dr. Judith Rood, we didn’t have that before. Her interest is on the near East, Middle East history. But we’ve lost the Far East.

MB: We have.

DB: And South Asian, Indian, besides Japan. We really should have, it really should be bolstered.Closing Hunan Bible Institute=
MB: Yeah, and then I’m wondering if Biola in China is still in existence, isn’t it?

DB: No. The Chinese finally paid us off. No, when the Chinese Communists under Mao Zedong took over the country in 1948, the state department, of course, Biola filed claims with the state department. Then with the normalization of relations between China and the United States, they had to come around and also deal with the expropriated properties that they had taken. So Biola got some good cash from the Communist Chinese to start our School of Intercultural Studies.

MB: Oh, really! In ’83.

DB: Yeah, after ’83, you’re right. Of course, Dr. Cook decided to start the school.

MB: (laughter) From the Chinese!

DB: But actually Biola got paid for, ‘cause that was a very nice campus. Lyman Stewart’s money built that campus. If you’ve ever seen the campus, it’s very impressive. Good buildings.

MB: Of all areas, why do you think Lyman Stewart chose China?

DB: Well, the China Inland Mission was doing tremendous work, you know. Hudson Taylor was well-known and he recruited missionaries in the United States in the…

BR: All right, guys, we’re back on. Thank you. The first part did not record. (video cameras rolling)

DB: Which one?

BR: The first half hour did not record.

DB: None of that made it?

BR: I would say you guys are having a very good conversation going on right now. It’s actually really interesting; I think it’s really good. I say continue on exactly with what you’re doing.

DB: If it didn’t record, what will we do about the first part?

MB: I recorded it all.

BR: She got the first part there.

DB: It’s a good thing you had a backup.

BR: Yeah. I say just keep on going with what you have right now. It’s really good. In fact, it’s the best that we’ve got so far, I think. I think it’s really good. You’ve come up with some really good stuff. I really like what you were saying, it’s really good. keep on going.

DB: So do we’ve got to go back over that talk, shouldn’t I?

MB: Yes (laughter).

DB: You’ve kept track of what we’ve been talking about.

BR: Just do, just do a little initial, like, a little initial introduction again. Then keep on talking exactly what you’re talking about Lyman Stewart. Give a little into about what you’re talking about. I think it will be great. OK?

MB: OK.

BR: Great.

MB: (laughter) OK. Well, hi, this is Dietrich Buss. Thank you for coming to be interviewed for the Oral History of Biola.

DB: I’m happy to be here.

MB: (laughter) Now you are an historian, in fact you were the department chair from 1976 to…

DB: 1977.

MB: 1977.

DB: To 2002—twenty-five years.

MB: What did you do from 2002 to 2005?

DB: I went back as a full-time teacher in the history department. Dr. Rood joined us in 2002 and came in both as faculty and chairman of the department. Since I had tendered my resignation as chair earlier, having carried the burden.

MB: Yeah, a long time.

DB: It got to be great at the beginning but do you know what? After twenty-five years it gets to be somewhat of a, your energies begin to wane, I guess. Yes.

MB: Yes, I would say so. Well, as an historian, you’ve done a lot of research of Biola. And we’ve talked a little bit about the timeline of Biola and the presidents. And also from 1923 to 1929, exactly who was in leadership in Biola.

DB: Yes, yes.

MB: And we talked about MacInnis and the controversy with him that then led to Biola establishing a university, an institutional president. And we didn’t really get to talk about the actual controversy; we just kept saying it was a controversy. Could you tell us a little bit about MacInnis and the book that he wrote, Peter the Fisherman-Philosopher.

DB: Yes. I think if he had just said Peter the Disciple it would have been no problem. But since he decided to publish it as Peter the Fisherman-Philosopher. Just the epithet “philosopher” became a code-word for potential problems. Because philosophy was something that Paul had warned against, that we should not get into being philosophers, because they would distract us, take us away from and undermine, perhaps, even the Gospel. And it seemed like just the term more than any content or anything about McGinnis. Because he affirmed the Trinitarian position, the support of Biola’s statement, and seemed to be a great contributor. But there was something about that title and his determination to retain it that brought about greater discussion about the issue, influences upon the institute. Any time, especially at that point, when fundamentalists-liberal controversy was still very much on the minds of people, it was felt that, given the history of institutions that had been Christian—whether Harvard or Yale or Princeton—they had been undermined by philosophy that was contrary to the scripture, Darwinism had been recently one of those great ideological invasion that undermined the creation story. And that was felt that, given the direction of secular institutions now, that “academic work” was in someway the handmaiden of Satan. And that it undermined the true Christian faith. So any hint of bringing in philosophy was sort of a code word for this undermining influence that might destroy the foundation of Christian faith that the institute was built upon. So the controversy was not just the title but, I think, in terms of how and what influences academics should be brought to bear upon the institute, those who felt that academics shouldn’t be kept at a distance were making the argument that they were the defenders of the faith. So in a sense, liberal education and Christianity were seen as not compatible for Christian commitment. So that, I think, was symbolic and it opened up this huge controversy which could not be quelled. It just grew and grew. And it did not seem to be anybody in leadership in place to really bring this controversy to rest til it came to a head. And most of the board resigned. When McGinnis was forced to resign over it, the board, there was such a division on the board itself that over half the board decided to quit. And that led to looking at how leadership was exercised. And they felt that they had to have an institutional voice, as you said, came up with the opposite of a president of the institute. It had been the president of the board but that was the president of the board, and then there was sometimes stronger personalities that were more visible. For instance, Dean Torrey certainly over-towered anybody else in the institute. But he was dean. But there was a board, president of the board, which was Lyman Stewart. As long as Lyman Stewart was there, that was no problem. But once he was dead—and I think we have to be sure to realize that he was dead in 1923, ’29—then there was somewhat of a vacuum in the top visible leadership. And it may be that that vacuum was recognized and thy decided they need to have, not just a president of the board, and James Joseph Irvine became the president from 1924 on. So basically, he continued the leadership position that Lyman Stewart had held. But somehow, James Irvine does not appear anywhere on the leadership lineup of the institute. Somehow, 1929 was given as the date for the demise of Lyman Stewart! So we don’t even recognize that there was a problem. I think it was recognized that you can’t just have a president of the board. So they gave the title of president to the institutional new office and it was the chairman of the board thereafter. At least, then, you knew who was going to be the visible head and representing the institute to the public--it was the president of the institute. And then W.P. White became the first president, as far as the institute is concerned.

MB: Do you think he was conservative enough to make up for McGinnis?

DB: Yes. I mean, they were very careful, very careful at that point. They had to reconstitute the board, reorganize, and I think they probably moved very deliberately, very carefully. That’s my…you know, I surmise this. You really have to consult the manuscript, that’s where I get my information from, the manuscript. James O. Henry, on his lineup of presidents, and his chapter on his lineup on the deans. He’s got a chapter on each of these.

MB: No, I do have a question, with White. He probably was the one who mostly moved Biola through the depression. Was he the one who had to deal with carrying Biola through financial crises during the depression?

DB: Well, that was, of course, a terrific burden. What happened is Lyman Stewart, as far as the institute finding itself in financial troubles during this time, is that they didn’t overspend so much. The problem had been that when R.A. Torrey left, not Rodney, Lyman Stewart, through his family, had endowed Biola with an endowment which was in the form of a company, Western Machinery Company, as it was called. It was producing farm machinery and it was envisioned that this would be a money-making corporation that would help to finance Biola. But as it turned out, that was either mismanaged or something had happened to that and it started going under. And the institute began to borrow money in order to keep that company afloat, thinking it could be resurrected and could once again be revived into a money-maker. What actually happened is that they put good money after bad and Western Machinery Company folded and left the institute hanging with the debt. And it was a fairly sizable debt, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, which they could not pay because enrollment was down, they couldn’t even continue to pay their faculty. They weren’t able to pay the outstanding debt. Of course, the bank wanted their money so, basically, it was a countdown with the bank saying, you’ve got to come up with money by this date otherwise we are going to auction your buildings. And President White was not able to turn that situation around, it became a desperate situation because they had auction signs up on the buildings and they had a number of bidders that were ready to bid., including some organizations that were very contrary to what Biola believed.

MB: Do you know any of those organizations?

DB: Well, I think Jehovah’s Witnesses were one of the organizations wanting to take those buildings. But you also have to remember that the Church of the Open Door was part of this building structure. You couldn’t just sell the two wings, the twelve towers, between them was the Church of the Open Door in the middle. And, of course, everything was connected by heating and power and water, so you couldn’t divide it this way, to begin with. So naturally the concern fell upon the pastor of the Church of the Open Door who, of course, wanted to see the institute survive, and that was Dr. Talbot. So, Dr. Talbot decided that he would go on the radio to make a big appeal to the Christian public to come to the rescue of the institute. In the meantime, behind the scenes, they had, they were able to negotiate with the bank, that if they came up with so much cash, they would relent. And they would negotiate even the amount of debt. So bankers were willing to see Biola survive if they could come up with minimal financial consideration. So Dr. Louis Talbot going on the airwaves, it did get the Christian public to rally, and they came up with enough money to keep the buildings from being auctioned off.

So that’s why, of course, he’s considered sort of the savior of the institute at that point. There were other people who wanted to pull for it but he became sort of the point man at that point. Of course, as far as--I have to check the dates exactly when that auction was taking place, because Talbot was there until ’35 and then President Rood came in ’35 to ’38. And then Dr. Talbot became again president in ’38 to ’52.

MB: Do you know why he wasn’t, why did Talbot take that small break?

DB: Well, he was basically drawn in because, he didn’t want to become president of the institute and also full-time pastor of the church. This was a large responsibility. So I think he came in to rescue the institute but did not want to carry the burden of having those two positions on his shoulders.

MB: OK. So the second time he was not pastor of the church?

DB: You know, I can’t even answer that question for you. I know that there’s a Carol Terry Talbot wrote her husband’s biography, For Such a Time As This, I think is the title of it. I read it but I really haven’t put the dates together now when you ask that question. I know he went back to becoming full-time pastor when President Rood took over but what exactly was the arrangement after he became the second time the president, 1938 to’52. I have a feeling that he may not have carried both responsibilities because Dr. Talbot was extremely interested in mission work and you find that, towards the end of his years at Biola especially, he went out to visit Biola alumni on missions trips. Biola has a great archives. I think of him being out there visiting. And Dr. Sutherland was dean and he carried much of the responsibility of the president’s office in many ways I think during the latter part because Talbot loved to be out visiting missionaries, being out with the public beyond the institute. But the fallout from that almost-bankruptcy was that the board now determined that they would never ever again encumber the institute with a debt. And that all improvements and buildings would have to be on a cash-in-hand basis. And that really was the rule also in building this campus because they had paid for everything. It was a (garbled) campus but they had paid for everything, the land, the buildings, you know, debt-free. And had they been wanting to go into debt, they probably could have done, made it look like a campus that was lovely but they didn’t have the money so they weren’t going to do it. They didn’t have any more cash and in all those years, Biola was very fiscally careful. That had become a kind of a bedrock of the board’s financial policy. Just to make sure that they would never find themselves financially in trouble. fiscally in trouble. And Biola has been very, very careful financially.

MB: Do you think, are there any other times in Biola’s history that you can think of that required, that was like a time of faith, that required them to have faith like they did when Talbot was trying to raise money while Biola was being threatened with auction?

DB: I think that’s probably the most significant time. There have been other times when we’ve had to cut the budget because enrollment was down. And that created hardships. I remember the time we had, not terribly long ago, back in the ‘90s, when enrollment was actually down and we were a million dollars just in the undergraduate program…a million dollars short. And cutting back on everything. It was really a difficult time but the buildings were not in anywhere in danger but it was just a matter of being fiscally sound, so we would never end up with the year in the red. Always making sure you balanced the budget at the end of the fiscal year. So sometimes it’s been really retrenchment in the program, especially in the years…the school was growing. By the ‘70s, the early ‘70s here, probably triple our enrollment and came into three thousand five hundred. But then there was a whole period in the ‘80s when there was a retrenchment. Every year the school…we were not getting students and we were basically the undergraduate program was losing students. So there was a retrenchment and there was a reversal of that. This continued into the ‘90s but there was a marked reversal of that I think about 1997, when things started moving the other way, a real growth spurt. The growth spurt of Biola really comes in about 1997 and after. But I think when you look at the mid or early ‘80s to about 1997, and look at the undergraduate figures, I mean we were constantly declining. So that was a difficulty and we were making cuts in programs and the like. They were dropping majors, they had a camping major, they had a public administration major, all those things were cut out. In order to try to financially keep solvent. So that took a lot of discipline. But the leadership was resolved to not go into debt and not try to do anything that would undermine the fiscal future of Biola. But then it really turned around. As a matter of fact, if you look at the expansion, probably Biola doubled its square footage under roof from 1998 to 2003. I mean it’s phenomenal the amount of construction that is continued since that time into the present, with all of the new buildings going up--Crowell Hall and the new residence.

MB: Do you have any theories of why the increase in Biola?

DB: You know, it’s demographic for one. Just more students available. Biola has been able to tap, I think we did a much better job of advertising Biola beyond California in the process. So we’ve gotten students from, it used to be basically California, but, you know, we’re getting students from the northwest and west of the Mississippi, we even get students from the other side of the Mississippi, not a great many. But there has been, I think, a greater attempt to have national visibility beyond California. That probably helped enrollment. And Biola had very attractive, although we do have competition, let’s face it, Azusa Pacific, Point Loma, Master’s College—those are all schools that are really parallel to Biola in many ways. We draw on the same constituency. And they have all grown, too. I think APU has just about has full enrollment. Point Loma has…, Westmont, too. I mean they can’t even expand. They’re locked, they’re land-locked, they can’t expand ‘cause of the limit of land they have in the city won’t let them expand. So given the larger number of students and the growth of California as a whole, I mean just think of the growth of California’s population. It’s let for all the schools basically to prosper. They’re all prospering together.

MB: OK, kind of taking a step back now. With McGinnis you had said the controversy arose with the wording of his title, philosophy. And now, in Biola, philosophy coupled with apologetics is very popular and very big and very strong in Biola.

DB: That’s true.

MB: As a faculty member, when did you see this shift occur? Or even as a student in Biola.

DB: Well, it’s been gradual but it has been…Several things have converged to bring that about. The fear of liberal arts undermining faith was part of the fundamentalists’s legacy, I would say. And they created bible institutes basically as bulwarks that did not, bulwarks of biblical faith that kept out philosophy and liberal arts programs, largely because of what happened to the institutions like Harvard, Yale, and Princeton and the like. They were no longer staying true to the faith. But as time went by, the new generation of leadership and especially, I think, Samuel Sutherland. He said these two do not have to be, in fact there was quite a lot of controversy when we became accredited. ‘Cause 1960 we were accredited. And of course we had more liberal arts and there was more secular influence in a sense on Biola’s curriculum. You have to meet the standards that are academic which include certain offerings that you have to have. So Biola’s curriculum was forced to be wider as a result of accreditation. But that was fully embraced. That’s why Sutherland wanted the AABC created so that, in the process of doing so, biblical studies would also be stronger. The AABC schools all had to have thirty units of Bible. So that was a given. And he felt that we could definitely expand liberal arts because all truth is God’s truth, you know. You shouldn’t be afraid of facing truth wherever it’s found.

So you do have direction going there and I think you also had the Christian College Coalition initially, Christian College Consortium later, a group of Christian colleges that banded together and now there are probably over a hundred and ten of those that are part of the Christian Coalition. But they emphasized integration of faith and learning. And that was a matter of trying to bring Christian understanding to bear in all areas of truth, whether the sciences or math or history or whether it’s sociology of psychology. So, that was part, and we had associated now with, since 1976…John Birnbaum came out here and we became a part of the coalition. We started to send students to Washington, D.C. with the Washington D.C. Studies program and the like. We have a whole raft of American Christian Coalition Studies programs that we’re involved in, including the Film Studies Center here in Hollywood. I mean that would be unheard of in the years that we were initially a fundamentalist school to go to Hollywood and to be involved in what their enterprise was.

But the idea that we should pursue truth wherever it’s found and see it from God’s perspective was part of the Coalition. And I think that also influenced Biola to the point that, then, I think it was as late as 1988… While that was going on, at the same time, I think there was more defensiveness on the part of liberal studies not to, say, dilute the Bible. And not to mix liberal studies with the Bible, keep the thirty units kind of pristine and not dilute it by bringing in liberal arts to bear upon it. So in a sense that was kept in a separate pigeonhole from the rest of the studies, with a lot of people thought we need to really integrate this. So our association with the American Studies program and especially the Coalition program, the Christian Coalition program, brought us to think about integration, what that means. The watchword then became how do we integrate? In fact, there was a president’s initiative, we had president’s luncheon program which was started here in the ‘80s, to have different departments present papers on integrating. What do we do for integration? Now we still have president’s luncheons every, I think every month, and the president sponsors it. Many different topics now. But initially that was to kind of help move forward to integration of faith and learning.

And what also pushed it forward was the acquisition of Rosemead School of Psychology, 1977. We had Edward H. Polly was the dean and he was all gung-ho for bringing in the school.

MB: Yeah, because psychology is another one that Christians haven’t normally ventured in.

DB: Yes. And of course you have the School of Psychology and they’re not only offering M.A.s they’re offering a Ph.D and a Doctor of Psych in psychology. I mean we just had undergraduate programs, Talbot Seminary Master of Divinity, and some (garbled) programs. This totally was something new, to have PhD programs on this campus. But that, I think, helped in pushing for integration because that was one of their emphases, integration of psychology and the Bible. So, from many different angles, the need to integrate became a good thing, it was not considered to be a negative. Although I think biblical studies was still a holdout there for a long, long time. But finally we also dropped the distinction because AABC had made it a point that we need to keep them separate, not dilute biblical studies with liberal studies. That was virtually a doctrinal position of the AABC membership and we dropped AABC as late as 1988. The board said we wanted to integrate more. And the way we initially bridged that was to have an integrated seminar. For each major they should have an integrated seminar: if you’re history, you have an integrated seminar; if you’re psychology, you have an integrated seminar; bible has an integrated seminar—all majors would have an integrated seminar that would be a capstone course. But it was an attempt to really get the faculty to think more about doing this right. And it’s a difficult enterprise because everybody has to be integrated in their own mind before they start teaching integration. If you’re just pigeonholed in your area of biology or just plain art, history of art, or even just plain history—although history is integrated, I think, by its very nature. . People who aren’t Christians tend to be more integrated, I think, maybe in other areas but there are whole fields—you be a sociologist or you can teach literature and not really do much integration. You could be just teaching those subjects. But Biola did emphasize integration and I think that also was very appealing to many people who were outside. And I think it helped also—you asked the question of what helped grow—I think the whole integration enterprise, which we really put forward, and it was very appealing. You know, how are we different from Cal State Fullerton? They teach, have history classes, psychology classes, sociology classes, you go there for that major, that’s what you get. But we said ours is not only that but you get a biblical worldview. And that became kind of a watch word. A Christian worldview, in which you see everything is under God’s control, God’s understanding, so we bring all knowledge into captivity into the mind of Christ. So I think that has been a way, in a sense, convincing people to pay this tuition which is so high. Can you imagine?

MB: When did the tuition rise?

DB: It’s been steady. When I came here as a student, it was twelve dollars a unit. I was able to work in the summer and pay for my fall room and board and tuition; it cost me about five hundred dollars a semester. That was all expenses, including books. Five hundred dollars! So for a thousand dollars a year, so you carried a four-hours-a-day job, twenty hours a week, half-time, I’d be able to work and pay without getting any debts.

MB: That’s good.

DB: Yeah. And that’s the way it was for my generation of students. And that’s one of the things, when I look back, it’s a real unfortunate that students find themselves deeply in debt when they come out after four years of undergraduate work. It is something, I think, there is something, if you’re going to be integrated in your life, there’s one thing you should do is not be encumbered by debt. And I think from that standpoint, Biola needs to be integrated further. Needs to be able to say that every student coming out of Biola needs to have all their bills paid. (laughter) Especially, school costs. Personal debts is one thing. But I think to graduate from a school like Biola that teaches integration has to come out with forty, fifty, sixty thousand dollars in debt is not consistent with our Christian commitment. It ought not to be. And yet it is almost a pragmatic necessity, right, for a lot of students. So we, in a sense, need to reevaluate that part. And I know it’s just a fact of life that school is tuition-driven. And so costs are high. Faculty has to get paid. And you want nice facilities. And the only way to do that is to charge people the kind of money that’s being charged, so it’s just an economic reality, put it that way.

So, in any case, we’re talking about integration here so I think that’s another thing to think about in the present, the financial part of it (garbled) because tuition, I mean, has always been five, six percent going up every year. Tuition goes up and that basically drives the cost of education more (garbled) more than anything else.

MB: Well, one thing that Biola takes pride in now is the way that we are set apart from our culture and that’s seen in the contract that we signed. How was the contract when you first came into Biola? Did you have the same sense that you guys were set apart?

DB: Yes, I think that separation from the world was a big part of the thinking, separation being able to reach people through the Gospel and the idea of Christian walk being distinctive from the values of the world. That all was deeply embedded. Coming out of American culture as things were, there was really a line being drawn in terms of the evangelical community, in the fundamentalist movement as a whole, that there were certain practices that were contrary to Christian practices: that you don’t dance, that you don’t drink, that you don’t gamble. And that you do, well movies was also one of those things that was very much part of the (garbled) because there was just a lot of cultural things in connection with the Christian life that were prohibitions, basically. Of course the institute held to those. I might say that when we came, one of those things was curfew almost. Lights go out at ten o’clock! That was just part of it. And if you were caught with lights on after ten o’clock, I mean you would get demerits. I mean, we didn’t have demerits but you could be called into the dean’s office. So there was a kind of a lifestyle. I mean there was no Midnight Madness in those days. That was just unheard of. We all had to be in bed and people, it was not a situation like what you have today, possibly. But, I mean, as far as strict: women had to have hemlines two inches below the knee, this sort of thing. There was lot of, lot of dress things, including short hair and keep shaved. All just part of the Biola culture. You look like Biola Bob and Biola Betty, that’s part of it, the same look. And it was nice. There was an emphasis all around on clean living, let’s face it. And, of course, those prohibitions, given our culture a lot of those things are removed, although there are still some things of that Biola contract. But I think if you go back twenty, thirty years you’ll find that there were many more prohibitions that were attached to that contract then there are currently. And the culture’s changed, too. As a whole. Not only Biola but the culture as a whole.

Now, they did put in “you don’t smoke”? That’s another one of those.

MB: Yeah, we still have that one.

DB: The culture as a whole has embraced that, you know. It is not politically correct to even smoke on beaches nowadays.

MB: Now the last question, to wrap things up: Biola is set apart but also Biola, with integration, tries to find ways in order to invest in the culture that surrounds it. And share the gospel, share Jesus Christ with them. How did Biola do it, back when you were a student, and how do you recommend that Biola engages our culture now?

DB: You know, when I came in, you all had to have what was called a Christian services assignment. You sign up for that just like you would sign up for a class. We used to go down, (garbled) going down to Hollywood and Vine Street meetings. We used to have a team go down there or to Juvenile Hall there to teach Sunday School. Everybody had to have a Christian services assignment. Then, probably somewhere between the late 1980s, maybe early 1990s, they decided to change it to service learning. I don’t know if that term is still around. Service learning is that you do something of usefulness outside the classroom. It could be in connection with your academic work but it’s a service and at the same time, it could be an internship, even. But the distinctiveness of doing something where you share the gospel in a public forum someway, that was the idea of Christian service assignment.

Over the years, I think, probably while that’s encouraged through (garbled) and like going out on a mission, maybe there’s a more bigger emphasis now. There was a definite code of sharing your faith that was part of your academics. It probably not as much today as it was then, perhaps things have happened and I know that Christian service assignment was definitely dropped. Of course, we also had five days of chapel, too, in those early years. Then they changed it to three days of chapel. And it used to be that you would have a whole week of bible conference, the Torrey Bible Conference, a whole missions conference week in spring. And that, of course, has been pared down to Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

MB: When did the Missions Conference started?

DB: Missions Conference, as such, I know that Biola had a missions conference going back to the early days because they were missionary-minded. And they sent out missionaries. So as far as I know, Missions Conference has existed a long time. But the Torrey Conference came later; yeah, they came later.

MB: It started with Paul Rood, right?

DB: Paul Rood, right. That’s probably true. Because the Torrey memorial would have to come after Torrey, obviously. So these things, I guess, change with the eras. But I think, looking back, clearly the culture of people has changed, the people are given more liberty to choose things that they didn’t have before. There is… Depending on the leadership and what the leadership put forward, the institution can go in various directions. Of course, there are such things and obvious things like changing the semester. Like we used to have the semester go to the end of January and you got out much later in spring when they decided, because you had the big break at Christmas, that they didn’t want to continue the semester when we got back in January, wanted to end it before Christmas. So we changed the whole calendar to end before Christmas, which is a logical thing. So some of these things are just a matter of organizing the student schedules so it’s convenient. But I think the students, too, they have preferences and choices that they like to have in the institution. So some of these things also depend on the students’ expectations and what they want to see as time goes by. ‘Cause we have a whole week of Torrey Conference and people drop out and go on vacation—it’s pretty difficult to carry on but you can probably compress it into three days and have students take a strong interest. So student generations change the institution but the leadership has to decide what are the priorities. And thirty years of Biola has been a priority, it continues to be a priority, as long as we’ve integrated, it’s probably something that people valued. Plus, for the institution to have that, ‘cause there are some things that are… because we are an academic institution, first and foremost, but we have a Christian mission. So how do you balance those two. Because a lot of tradeoffs that are made, I think there are a lot more students going out on spring missions, summer missions, and involved in different ways that was not the case in my time because people just didn’t travel all over the world. When I was a student, whereas students routinely are going to Europe, going to Asia, going for the week down to Brazil or whatever. So there’s so much more intercultural kind of stress for missions that did not exist in the same way, maybe evangelism existed more for everybody. It seems that Christian mission, cross-cultural mission, seems to be more on the forefront of this generation, much more easily embraced by this generation. Maybe it’s partly that we like to share the gospel but we like to travel, too. (laughter) You know, open new windows and seeing the world, broaden your education, what you do in the process.

MB: Well, thank you, Dietrich Buss for your time and thank you for your expertise in the history of Biola.

DB: Well, it’s my pleasure and, if you have questions, I’ll be happy to clarify anything that you might have, as part of our discussion.

MB: Thank you.

DB: It’s been a pleasure to meet you. And to have a chance to share part of my background and experiences while at Biola.

So, let me have a drink of water.

BR: Very good.

MB: If I do have questions…do you think, would you like to get together for another interview? Or would it be better to if I wrote down questions and you responded on paper?

DB: Oh, if you just want to meet as an interview, or if there’re short little things, you could email directly. You can do it that way. But if there’s some larger things where it would be worthwhile meeting again, you know, I can do that. I live here right in Fullerton.

MB: Thank you.