by ProfDave, ©2024
(Aug. 9, 2024) — My Alma Mater just died! After 124 years! We knew all small colleges were in trouble post-covid, but missed any desperate warnings. The Board of Trustees met in late June and voted unanimously to shut it down! It was announced on Monday, June 24th, and the District Assembly held an emotional service of lament – a funeral, really – on Thursday night. What exactly precipitated this drastic measure was not revealed, nor how exactly they propose to “carry on the mission.” We were told arrangements had been made with three other Christian colleges for the students to continue their programs. Small consolation for the class of 2025, having missed their high school graduations for Covid, now having their college graduation on a strange new campus. Not to mention tenured faculty having their careers ruined.
Personal grief. I am a second-generation graduate. Never considered going anywhere else after high school. There I met and courted my wife of 46 years. The nostalgia hangs thick over the bench where we sat and talked under the trees – still there. Lifetime friendships. Role models, like Prof Delp, who lived just off campus, took some of us guys jogging and welcomed us for tea and cookies afterwards. We were on first-name basis with the faculty (first name “Prof” – this was the 60’s). It was a compact but beautifully arbored (by Prof Babcock) campus, just a couple blocks from Wollaston Beach (“blue Quincy Bay”).
My experience was pivotal to my life and career, exceeded only by the spiritual ‘coming of age’ in anticipation the summer before. I determined to belong to Jesus Christ, lock stock and barrel as I left home for the first time – the first of the big questions. Vocational plans were changeable, but the mission of ENC presented during orientation week captivated me (to this day!): the integration of faith and learning.
In those days, public education was friendly towards Christian values at arm’s length from faith itself. “Civil religion” it was called. Information was information, faith was faith. At ENC everything from elementary education to physics to history was taught and learned from a Christian worldview – and with “little Harvard” rigor. “There is no conflict between the best of learning and the best of Christian faith,” as the venerable Dean Bertha Munro was frequently quoted. This ideal was exemplified by 45-year veteran Dr. E. S. Mann in The Things That Count.
In my senior year, I settled on Marie Yates as the love of my life (Big Question 2) and history/higher education as my vocation (Big Question 3).
Historically, higher education in the West began with a fusion of the independent philosopher with his disciples and religious scholars living together in monasteries and cathedral chapters in the Middle Ages. For example, most of the colleges of Oxford University began more or less as faculty housing, requiring celibacy and subscription to the articles of the Church of England until the mid-19th century. The core objective of university education until recent times was character development and clergy (“clerical”) preparation. Vocational training was secondary. This was and is the meaning of the Christian College experience.
In the 20th century, under the influence of continental European standards, career preparation first, then later fragmentary specialization, cut higher learning free from the character development of liberal arts and finally from practical career preparation. Today, we have the woke phenomenon among prominent universities returning ideology – a new civil religion – to the college experience. Christian colleges attempted to march to the beat of a different, faith-based drummer. I grieve for the loss of Eastern Nazarene College.
Liberal Arts Colleges were (and are) especially important in the rise and life of the Church of the Nazarene and the Holiness Movement. Heart holiness had been a major theme of the 19th century revivals, across denomination lines, but coalesced around the turn of the century into several distinct churches, including the Church of the Nazarene (1908). Distinctive was the role of half a dozen liberal arts colleges, ENC (1900) being one of the oldest.
In March there were 16 such colleges and universities worldwide – and 34 other institutions of higher education! The United States was divided into six, then eight zones, each with its official Nazarene College. ENC was particularly important as a center for New England assemblies and continuing education for Nazarene clergy. Nazarenes are a church that values liberal education. Now the Eastern zone is vacant. Where are we going to go next year? Our youth and prospective leaders will find other colleges (there are other faithful Christian colleges in the Northeast and Nazarene colleges in Ohio and Tennessee), but the church mourns the loss of Eastern Nazarene College.
David W. Heughins (“ProfDave”) is Adjunct Professor of History at Nazarene Bible College. He holds a BA from Eastern Nazarene College and a PhD in history from the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Holiness in 12 Steps (2020). He is a Vietnam veteran and is retired, living with his daughter and three grandchildren in Connecticut.