Oral History Transcript 1

Biola University Centennial Oral History Project

INTERVIEWEE: Paul Rood

INTERVIEWER: Cody Ackermann

DATE: November 30, 2006

World Christian Fundamentalist Association

CODY ACKERMANN: Mr. Rood, you mentioned that your grandfather was the head of the fundamentalist association. Was that worldwide fundamentalist association or what was that name at the beginning?

PAUL ROOD: The worldwide fundamentalist association is what the movement began to call itself in the early 1920s, because it really branched out beyond the United States to Europe and the origins of this came about at the same time that Biola was formed, 1908. 1906-1909 is actually when this organization came together to lead the evangelical orthodox scholars and evangelists and ministers in the United States, came together to put together a movement and to publish works that were explaining the position of what was called the fundamentalists, on what the key positions of the orthodox faith that was published a that time. And Dr. Torrey was very involved in organizing that publishing work and the organization that was funded to do this was called the World Christian Fundamentalist Association, and they had an ongoing ministry of organizing, debating, publishing, and being engaged in politics, in the Christian movement, in the universities, in the seminaries. And shortly after the founding my grandfather came into the movement and then, as I mentioned, he was asked to be the president of the movement. He remained president of the movement until he died, and the World Christian Fundamentalist Association passed out of existence at that time.

CA: So after his death it no longer... it ceased to exist after his death? Did it continue at all?

PR: It became other movements, National Association of Evangelicals, and it spawned a number of organizations that we're familiar with today.

CA: So then he was... he would have been president of that association while he was the president of Biola?

PR: That is correct, before coming to Biola, while he was at Biola, and then after he left Biola.

CA: Did the World Christian Fundamentalist Association partner with Biola, or did they become intermeshed at all because he was so involved with both?

PR: They were separate organizations, but many people at Biola were involved in it from the beginning. Lyman Stewart, T.C. Horton were instrumental in it, but it included organizations throughout the country from all denominations. The most prominent evangelical leaders served on its advisory board or were a part of this organization, and they would typically sponsor annual conferences, nationally and internationally, they would have regional conferences and meetings and the like.

CA: You mentioned the organization also was international, that they were doing things in Europe as well. What types of things were they doing, do you know?

WCFA Work in Europe

PR: Yeah, the evangelical orthodox church in Europe was really on the ropes in the early twentieth century, so there were movements in Europe like the Keswick movement, which was an evangelical awakening movement in the English-speaking countries, and then other movements in the different language groups: German, French, Scandinavian, had similar awakenings. These movements became affiliated and allied with the American fundamentalists. My grandfather, for example, traveled to Europe every year, he had campaigns in England, Scandinavia and Europe, throughout the thirties, forties, and fifties. In fact, one of the reasons he came to an early death was he just traveled and worked so hard that he had a stroke in Stockholm in 1951 where he lost his ability to speak. Three years later he had another stroke where he lost all function, so he was basically being fed by a tube the last four years of his life. So the last six years of his life were in silence, which is one of the reasons which I... even if I could have communicated with him at such an early age, he was unable to communicate with me. Also his life was really cut short, and he died as a young man.

President Rood Helps Biola Amid Financial Crisis

CA: What exactly... I mean I know he pulled Biola through a very difficult time financially, what sort of, on a day-to-day type basis, what type of things did he do specifically that helped pull Biola through that financial crisis?

Prayer Campaign

PR: Yeah, that's kind of interesting, there's not much written about it, but what I've been able to glean from letters and the (garbled) of other in articles that were written during that time, he was editor of The King's Business which was Biola's magazine at that time, and they gave some account of what was going on then. Some things we do know is that the day he arrived here, he had a convocation and there was a day of prayer where I understand everybody—faculty, students—were spent not just thinking about prayer or being conscious to pray, it was around-the-clock prayer, because as I said, no one had been paid for six weeks, it was a desperate time.

Revival Effort, Establishing Torrey Conference

The other thing he did was he had a revival kind of that—remember he's a revivalist—this was an event to call upon God's help and assistance and to spend time in prayer and Bible study and exhortation. And so he established the Torrey Memorial Bible Conference, which as you know we have here at Biola every year since then; it's next week in fact. He started that. Another thing he did was he put the "Jesus Saves" sign on top of the building at Sixth and Hope. Within months after he arrived they gathered enough money—remember they had none—so they had to find money somewhere to put that first sign up on one tower. Several months later they put the other "Jesus Saves" sign up.

Rood's Personal Character

Those were things that I'd call just calling the community to prayer, calling on God's assistance to help the church and the community and the institution through this very difficult time. And the other was just exhorting people to have courage. And I understand my grandfather was a very optimistic person, he had a huge sense of humor, a big laugh and was quite a character, so part of it was just building morale and those are some of the first things he did. I'm sure the other thing they wanted him to do was raise money, and that's a difficult thing to do during a depression; but he went around the country representing Biola, tapping into friends that might be able to help, and I'm sure that he had a very hard time in the role. All college presidents are supposed to raise money, imagine doing it when you have no money and it's the depression. So there are a few stories that I've heard about that time that are of interest, one was they had a mortgage obligation that was due in a week, that if they didn't meet it, it was going to result in some serious legal...

CA: Was this on the property, or do you know specifically what this was?

Money Miracles

PR: It had to do with the property at Sixth and Hope—and the church that Louis Talbot was pastor of and the school which my grandfather was president of were kind of twins—one of them rented property from the other and financially they were intertwined. So both the church and the institute were in financial distress. But there was an important obligation due, and the word I had is my grandfather spent the whole day before it was due on his knees. Two individuals walked into the office, an elderly man and woman, and said, we just got an insurance settlement, and we felt that the institute needs this money more than we do, and it was $5400, which is just short of the $6000 that was due. So the next morning, in the mail, the other $600 came in.

CA: Was it anonymous or...

PR: No, I think it came it through some other sources, but there's just a miraculous occurrence. There was another event that I recall him telling when he was facing another financial deadline, probably payroll or something like this that they were late on, and he had his feet soaking in a water basin—I think back then people used to do that a lot, especially during the depression when people were under a lot of distress and pressure—so he had a foot basin and he had his shoes off, and a secretary came in with the mail, and she said, oh there's a letter from R.G. LeTourneau that you probably want to see. And he opened it up and there was a check, and it fell into the foot basin and the ink dissolved and went away, but it was a check for $5000; so they quickly ran to Western Union and sent R.G. LeTourneau an email, or a telegram, saying, your check has been destroyed. And so he sent a check the next day for double the amount. So little stories like that just kind of give you a sense of what his life was like on the fundraising side of things.

CA: Well thank you very much.

PR: Thank you.

Oral History Transcript 2

Biola University Centennial Oral History Project

INTERVIEWEE: Paul Rood

INTERVIEWER: Stephen Hale

DATE: November 22, 2006

STEPHEN HALE: My name is Stephen Paul Hale. I am interviewing Professor Paul Rood. Today is November 21, 2006—22, 2006. We’re in Paul Rood’s office. Mr. Rood, do I have your permission to interview you?

PAUL ROOD: Yes I do. Yes you do. laughter

Personal Background

Coming to Biola as a Result of Sept. 11

SH: How did you and your wife Dr. Judith Rood come to Biola?

PR: About five years ago, actually before and after September 11th, you know 9-11, occurred—it stands out in my mind as an important date. We had been praying about our future direction as a family. I'd been in business for twenty-five years in corporate roles, management consulting, and working very hard. And I was approaching fifty. My wife had completed her doctorate and was involved in university teaching. We were living in the Detroit, Michigan, area and had been living there, and Chicago, and the Eastern part of the country during our married life. And we felt that the Lord was directing us to kind of be open to making a major change in terms of vocation, service, where we lived. All those things are kind of unsettling to middle aged people trying to raise a family. But we felt this awareness and we began praying about it, and over the course of the next year, both my wife and I just became open to whatever direction the Lord might have and began to seek different opportunities for teaching or employment and to consider completely new, you know, directions.

And out of that process there were several employment opportunities for my wife to teach Middle Eastern history at various Christian colleges. I think we had five or six opportunities that came up that year, which was startling because we had, throughout her whole teaching career, had a very difficult time finding employment as a teacher of Middle Eastern History. And one of those was Biola, and we had had a family connection to Biola that went way back, over fifty years, and certainly had had an awareness of Biola. But we, we explored it, and God seemed to confirm that this was, that this was an important new direction for us. And so my wife took a position as chair of the History department. And meanwhile I began wrapping up my corporate career; it took me another year to wrap things up, sell the house in Michigan, move back and join my family. But we've been here since 2002, the fall of 2002.

Wife: Judith Rood

SH: Where did your wife, Dr. Judith Rood, teach before?

PR: After she completed her PhD at the University of Chicago, she did some teaching at the University of Chicago in their extension programs. Then we moved to Detroit and in Detroit, she taught at Wayne State University, which is a big state downtown campus in Detroit—Middle Eastern history. At Oakland University, which is a suburban state university, and then we identified an opportunity with a small Christian college in a suburban area of Detroit, William Tyndale College—which, similar to Biola had a Bible Institute founding. It was founded as Detroit Bible Institute in the pre-World War II era, and then went through a transformation into a Christian liberal arts college, interdenominational. Smaller than Biola, but a special place. And she taught there for the last four years before we left. and that'd be it!

SH: That'd be it!

PR: That'd be it.

SH: OK. Can you talk about your education and career up till Biola?

Paul Rood's Education

PR: Yeah. I graduated from Claremont Men's College here in southern California—now called Claremont-McKenna college because we went co-ed after I left.. I went to Claremont Graduate School for my masters, and then began my doctoral work at the University of Chicago. I experienced kind of a long frustrating series of episodes with my doctoral studies—no money in the seventies.([laughs) There were... Prospects of employment were very poor in the 1970s also and so I dropped out of my studies and planned to resume them after I was able to work for awhile and make a little bit more money. But in the course of that I was picked up by a management consulting firm in Chicago, Ernst & Young.

I found out that I enjoyed management consulting and that they liked the work I did. And so I started a career as a management consultant and never went back to complete my doctoral studies. In addition to working at Ernst & Young, I worked for a couple of other large public accounting consulting firms. This was during a period when a lot of them—they used to be known as "The Big 8." Then we consolidated. My last stint in consulting was with the firm Deloitte & Touche, also in Chicago. And then I went into private industry. I've worked in corporate roles y'know, generally as corporate vice-president of this or that, planning merger, human resource, corporate compliance kinds of functions. The kinds of things I did as a consultant, I found corporate roles to do.

In the health care industry, I worked for the two largest health care organizations in the midwest, Henry Ford Health System and Trinity Health, which was a Catholic health care organization. And then I also worked for Bell & Howell, a corporation that was engaged in a variety of manufacturing and electronic and technical services that ultimately sold a number of their divisions and became a dot.com electronic publishing company during the dot.com boom, you know around 2000, the Y2K era. It's known as ProQuest, and I ended my career with ProQuest. I left then in 2003.

Teaching in the Torrey Honors Institute

I started a new career teaching coming to Biola, I started teaching as a tutor in the Torrey Honors Institute, tutoring in the Great Books Program for a couple years, really enjoyed that. My education had been a kind of great books-classical traditional education so I really enjoyed getting back into that, and then began adjuncting in Political Science, which was my graduate education, and have now just started doing that full-time. And I'm resuming now my completion of my PhD. program which I had left over thirty years ago, Steve, so I've come around full circle. But I'm really enjoying it, and I feel that, you know, God's enabled our family to be placed here at this time and we're using our gifts in a way that God would want.

SH: How are you pursuing your PhD. now, through what…

Pursuing a Ph.D.

PR: Well, uh, I'm about to nail down my decision on that. I've got one option with the University of Oslo where there is a research project that I'm interested in joining in on. This is a very big study that the University of Oslo has been doing on the History of Hebrew Christianity, but I'm focusing on seventeenth century interaction between Christian political philosophers and Jewish thinkers. That really is a story of the period of the Reformation, Reformation political thought, and their rediscovery of the Hebrew Bible, of the Hebrew language, and their interaction with the Hebrew scholars in Amsterdam, London, Prague, you know, various locations throughout Europe. There was just this incredibly robust exchange of information that really informed a lot of what we today know as Puritan Political Theory and seventeenth century English Civil War Theory, and that's an area that's fascinated me. So there's one option at the University of Oslo to do my work there. I'm exploring two other alternatives where I could do that course of study and do my dissertation on that topic and I just haven't made a decision yet about where I'm gonna, you know, nail it down. Hopefully after this interterm break I'll be able to do that.

SH: You mentioned that one of the reasons you came to Biola was there's a family connection. Can you explain that?

Relation to President Paul Rood

PR: My grandfather who’s Paul W. Rood the first, I'm Paul W. Rood II, you know, is my legal name. He came here during a period of time that was probably Biola's darkest hours in the mid1930s, and assumed the presidency of Biola for a period of a little over three years. So that was the connection. My grandfather having chosen to take on that role coming here during that time, and the fact that I actually never met my grandfather—because he passed away before I had been born, and I was named after him, but he was very ill the last seven years of his life. He'd had a stroke so he was speechless, and he was near death when I was born, so I never had the opportunity to get to know him at all. But I know him through stories that have been told to me by others that knew him.

SH: Can you talk about your grandfather and his coming to faith?

Paul W. Rood Early Background

PR: Yeah. Let me put my grandfather in the context of Biola’s founding a little bit. Biola was founded in the first century, or the first decade of the nineteen hundreds, primarily by people who were born before the Civil War, and so they were part of a tradition of American evangelical thought that was English and part of the robust evangelical tradition—primarily southern influence, southern Presbyterian, that had come out to Los Angeles and was part of the Los Angeles business social and religious community. And then there were a couple of generations that came after, and my grandfather’s generation was born in the 1880s, primarily immigrant, and my grandfather was born in Minnesota of Norwegian and Swedish immigrant parents. They entered into Western frontier society in America, moved out into the Pacific Northwest logging communities of Oregon and Washington in the 1890s.

Came to faith in a revival meeting in a logging camp outside of Portland, Oregon. He had a mother who was was a believer, but he did not personally come to faith until the moment he encountered the message of the Gospel in a revival meeting. It had an immediate impact upon him. He devoted his life then to education rather than logging, laughs And did the best he could out in kind of frontier northwest part of the country to secure a public education and then a Bible seminary training, which he secured back in Chicago through the denomination of the Swedish Covenant Church and their North Park College & Seminary, which he graduated from in 1916. I'm going to give you some dates that I may have to correct here, okay? So long as I give you some dates that's the best I can, and then we can correct those for the record, okay?

SH: Okay.

PR: After seminary he immediately went into work in churches in Chicago. He was associate minister, a youth minister kind of role, was a powerful and passionate preacher. You know, loved to preach, and quickly, at a very young age, was given a pastorate in the Minneapolis area, which was one where he was very successful in attracting a largely Swedish-speaking audience at a church in Minneapolis.

SH: Do you know rough dates on when he would have gone to Minneapolis?

PR: Early twenties, you know, I'll fill you in with the details that we can insert in the record.

Following that, he was called out back to the Pacific Northwest to take a pastorate of a very large Swedish Covenant Church in Seattle. It was at the time the largest church in Seattle, First Covenant Church of Seattle, Washington. He was still in his twenties, started a family and had a robust ministry in Seattle, built a huge new building to house the growing congregation. During that time, in the twenties, the congregation—which was on what was called Capitol Hill in Seattle—was also close to the University of Washington. The Presbyterian Church nearby and my father's grandfather’s? Covenant Church were churches that were leading churches in the community and were also involved in that time in some of the theological controversies of the twenties. You know, this is the progressive era, the era of modernism, theological modernism, scientific Darwinism, you know, and other kinds of startling controversies and contrasts that engaged the religious communities of these growing urban centers in dialogue and debate, with university centers as well that were starting up and growing and becoming powerful centers of opinion.

So out of this encounter of the themes and controversies of the twenties, my grandfather was pulled into becoming an organized part of what was the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy. To put this in context with Biola, Biola would have been founded the decade prior, and R.A. Torrey and A.C. Dixon and the Stewarts were involved in documenting and publishing a series of books known as The Fundamentals ,which were one of the important foundations of this controversy. The books, The Fundamentals, were completed and published and distributed from 1913-15, you know, thereabout.

So my grandfather's experience as a young pastor in a large urban setting, it was very much contemporaneous with that whole event. It was during this time that he formalized his involvement in association with these movements, became part of what would be regional and national conferences in which the leading speakers and defenders of the Orthodox fundamental faith would present papers and engage in discussion and dialog and then would issue printed information. There was a real kind of battle of the minds going on at that time and my grandfather felt that it was important to join in this and support this from the pulpit and in the community and he brought it with him to his next pulpit, which was in California.

Work in the Central Valley and Scandinavian Community

In the Central Valley there was a large Scandinavian community that had a church that they wanted to grow, and my grandfather left Seattle to Turlock, California, and there helped build what was kind of, in its day, a megachurch in the Central Valley that actually had attenders that was three or four times the population of the town itself. So people came from all over the Central Valley to be part of the Beaulieu Covenant Church, preaching, teaching, and evangelistic ministry. So he had a very successful pastorate in the late twenties in the Central Valley of California. During that time he was undoubtedly aware and involved in activities of teachers and graduates and students at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, both having, you know, sending people there to be trained and visiting and speaking and having individuals who were part of the Biola community visit his church as well.

He then left right around 1930 to take a pastorate at Chicago. So he's going back to Chicago where he had kind of started out his pastorate and was pastor of the largest church on the north side of Chicago, Lake View Covenant Church. And this was also the beginning of the Depression, so Chicago, you know, we had the organized crime, the Mafia, in Chicago. We had a Depression that was seriously impacting the industry and employment in Chicago. And there was also a Chicago World's Fair, 1932-33 period, that was a great event, that was kind of a spectacular global exposition and was known as a successful World's Fair, and hoping to get Chicago back on its feet. And my grandfather was involved in preaching at Moody Church during that time. Moody Church was without a pastor. They were between pastorates during that time, and so my grandfather was invited to have a long series of teaching, preaching, and revival ministries during the time of Chicago World's Fair. And it was kind of a great experience for him and it really met with some powerful results.

Presidency of WCFA

Backing up a couple years to 1929, my grandfather had been involved in this fundamentals movement for about ten years now, and the leader of the movement, W.B. Riley was a national leader in the modernist-fundamentalist controversy. He had founded an organization called Christian Fundamentals Association which, over time, had become an international association of movements that were involved in supporting biblical faith and the essential doctrines of orthodox Christianity. Most countries in the English-speaking world at least, as well as some non-English speaking countries, had organizations that were affiliated with this World Christian Fundamentals Association. Dr. Riley stepped down from being president of that after a very bitter kind of conference in 1929 that caused kind of a split between A-Mill fundamentalists and Pre-Mill fundamentalists kind of went their separate ways, and Dr. Riley went to focus on a school like Biola that he was the head of in Minneapolis—Northwestern Schools and Seminary. And he asked my grandfather to take over the organization, which my grandfather did. And so during his time in Chicago, in addition to the pastorate, he was the head of the World Christian Fundamentals Association.

The Depression was about mid-course during this time, 1934-35 were actually the deepest points of the recession nationally, and word was coming back from the west coast that the Bible Institute of Los Angeles that had been founded by Torrey and Horton and the Stewarts was teetering near bankruptcy. Moody Bible Institute itself, which my grandfather was very familiar with and involved with locally there in Chicago, was also experiencing difficulties as every church and Christian organization was, but was on much more substantial footing in Chicago. But Biola was in very deep straits. And there were a number of individuals on the board of directors at Biola who knew my grandfather from associations and World Christian Fundamentals, who knew him because of his pastorate in the Central Valley of California at Turlock. And they asked him to leave back in ‘31 or ’32, if he'd consider coming to Biola to be president and he declined, but in ‘35 they asked him again. And I think his view at that time, you know, just looking at Biola's ministries…

Connecting With Biola

I mean not only was it a Bible institute with five hundred or so students, it was a downtown organization that had a number of urban missions that had foreign missions. It was a book publishing company, they had the Biola book room was a huge Bible Christian book and religious publication distribution company, a hotel. They had radio, magazine. You know it was really the core of the evangelical witness in Los Angeles, which was the core of the west coast. It was just very significant part of the evangelical witness in America. And I think that the importance of Biola and the meaning of Biola to the evangelical church here in the west convinced my grandfather to pick up family and move out here to Los Angeles to see what he could do to help raise money, rally support, encourage the people who were involved in trying to keep Biola going. And my grandfather, although he was a pastor, was always involved in numerous other things. He was always on the boards of missionary organizations, he was involved in evangelism, he was involved in starting community organizations. He started a lunch fellowship meeting in Chicago that was for businessmen—downtown Chicago—that ultimately led to the founding of Christian Businessmen’s Committee, which was a movement of businessmen in America before and during World War II and continues to this day, CBMC. And my father grandfather? was involved in starting things like this, so it seems that it would be normal and natural for him to see this as an important opportunity for him to be involved, and to do what he could. I think that Charles Fuller, who was chairman of the board at that time, was a very close friend of my fathers, my grandfathers, and was on the board of World Christian Fundamentals Association and probably had a significant impact on him deciding to come out here.

SH: Let me clarify a few things before we move on. When was your grandfather born, do you remember?

PR: How about if, at the end, I pull out his biographical information, and we'll put some dates for the record, okay?

Eschatological Differences

SH: Okay. The A-mill versus Pre-Mill dispute that caused a split in the Christian Fundamentals Association?

PR: Right.

SH: Okay, and your father, your grandfather was apparently on the correct side of that?

PR: Well, my grandfather was a Pre-Mill theologian as far as eschatology goes, and he was a dispensationalist in that it was a form of Pre-Millennial interpretation that had identified a importance of the role of Israel in biblical history in the Dispensations, and that looked to the future as being a time in which many of the prophetic promises related to Israel would be fulfilled. Whereas the A-Millennial, or other even Pre-Millennial theologians, tended to interpret Israel and the promises to Israel as either having already been fulfilled or having been broken due to Israel's rejection of the Messiah and had been transferred to the church. So this issue of the role of Israel in eschatology and prophecy was a divisive one, especially among Presbyterians who had a big dispute over this. They were predominantly A-Mill and others that were uncertain as to how to account for Israel. Now this is all before Israel's restoration in 1949, but there was I think a growing awareness that the world was heading in a direction in which the people of Israel had survived and were about to claim a national identity for themselves. There was an expectation about this. This is before the Holocaust had occurred as well. So there was little awareness that that was in the future. But that eschatological aspect was part of the break up of the fundamentalism into various streams from which it has not ever reunited.

SH: When your grandfather came to Biola, he had a lot of difficult decisions.

Biola in Financial Trouble

PR: Well, based upon what I've read in the publications of Biola, like The King's Business, of the time and various historical accounts, salaries were significantly behind—three months behind to be exact—when my grandfather arrived. Just think about that! Three months behind in pay, you can imagine the anxiety that we have today if we don't get the payroll check on time and all the repercussions. Three months shows an incredible amount of forbearance and faith on the part of the people who were laboring here, but you can also imagine there must have been incredible anxiety and frustration and some despair—a million dollars in debt by the institute. The Church of the Open Door, which was the sister organization, was also deeply in debt, as well. But the Bible Institute itself had a million dollars in debt at the time that my grandfather arrived. So these were very desperate times.

My grandfather had a great sense of humor. I hear stories about, he was always telling humorous stories, and always getting people to laugh, and he had this huge kind of positive aura about him, and I think that that was probably a tonic for people, but also a passionate man of prayer and public faith. When he arrived, he asked the classes to be suspended and that there be a week of prayer. And just signal how desperate the situation was, and we were beseeching God's help during a very difficult time. And I know that the prayer activity was around-the-clock kind of prayer activity that was organized and mobilized, really seeking for God's special answer and provision, because the school would be faced with some very difficult decisions. You just can't continue to go on with no salaries and just keep pretending that we can move forward. We needed a direction, to find direction. In addition to things like that, I know a symbolic thing that was done was putting the "Jesus Saves" sign up on the big Biola building downtown L.A.

The funds that were raised to do that, you know, interesting, with all the other debts that we had, and salaries and what have you, God did bless in such a way as they could begin to pay the back-pay that people had, but also spent money to put up a sign of "Jesus Saves." They put one up on one tower and then tried to raise funds to put one up on the other tower. I know a number of individuals stepped forward to help make that happen that were the part of Biola at the time. I think that that was kind of a turnaround point at Biola, that they would turn the lights back on, and put the signs up at the two towers. And they slowly began to address the financial problems that were here. There was no one big benefactor that came to the rescue. You know that would have been great if someone could have, you know, come to solve Biola's financial woes in one fell swoop. That would have been miraculous. But what was even more miraculous is that it was hundreds and thousands of small gifts that came in, in just the right way at just the right time to continue to keep the doors open.

Raising Financial Support

So they next three years that my grandfather was here were years that were largely spent travelling around the country talking about Biola, preaching the gospel, getting people to be concerned and aware, to help Biola's plight. And then in the community of southern California, reaching out to sources of financial support that helped keep the doors open. So it was a continuous effort to locate the support, step by step, and bit by bit. There are a number of incredible stories that I've heard about people who appeared—that they had had no known contact with—who had just been praying and asking for direction about what to do with an insurance settlement that they had received on a claim, and they had money all of the sudden in the midst of the Depression, and they asked God, God, what do you want us to do with this windfall. And someone made known to them the need of Biola. And they came down to, you know, meet the President of Biola and say, God has just laid on our hearts the needs of Biola. We didn't know, laughs we didn't know about Biola, but somehow we have this money that we want to make available. Ten thousand dollars came in, you know, that way from one source, which was enough to make payroll that next day. Other checks came in miraculous ways. So I would have to say that that was a large part of what my grandfather's tenure was about.

Internal Doctrinal Controversies

I know that there were other internal controversies that dealt with denominational things, that dealt with Pentecostalism, and which sides were drawn that dealt with the extreme interpretations of theological doctrine. My perception is that my grandfather was a man who tried to make peace between contending parties, that was personally a man of very strong doctrinal conviction, but felt that in our laboring together, and part of interdenominational ministries—the mission field, urban ministries—we had to demonstrate a spirit of tolerance, love, and loving admonition, and loving embrace toward our fellow laborers. I know sometimes he was criticized for being too friendly with Pentecostal evangelists that during that time in Los Angeles were quite prominent, and also with established denominational leaders, you know, the Presbyterian and Methodist church which were suspect. My grandfather was a true fundamentalist. All during this time he continued to be the head of the World Christian Fundamentals Association, but he had a very temperate heart, and was embracing to try and pull the church together during difficult times and define bases of unity.

Relationship with Billy Graham

He was an early supporter of Billy Graham. In fact, Billy Graham, as a very young man at Wheaton College, had developed a friendship with my grandfather in Chicago, who was a prominent evangelist at the time. And they stayed closely in touch, and during the time that Billy Graham began his public ministry that was interdenominational, he began attracting some criticism from some of the more extreme fundamentalists.

SH: Billy Graham did?

PR: Billy Graham did, yeah. And my grandfather was very encouraging and supportive of him, continued to be the remainder of his life. And so I think it was very fortunate for Biola, as it was emerging and developing and trying to find its way, and fundamentalism and evangelicalism, and also people like Billy Graham who were emerging from that into broader ministries to have the benefit of my grandfather's good heart, and desire that God's plan and purpose not be thwarted by our very small, narrow, human disagreements and blinders.

SH: I think we've reached the end of our time.

PR: Yeah, let me give you some dates from the record while I look at it, and if you want to stop the tape…

SH: Yeah, we can add that.