A Pilgrimage Of Faith, J.B. Toews, 1993

prepared missionaries and nurtured a sense of communi- ty. The fact that it was not formally accepted as a conference- owned and operated school for more than twenty-five years, however, leaves unanswered questions. Not until Tabor fell on hard times and was in clanger of closing, did the Mennonite Brethren General Conference in 1933 finally recommend that the school be adopted by the conference,19 The report to the 172 MENNONITE BRETHREN EDUCATION 1936 Mennonite Brethren General Conference, however, ex- pressed deep concern that not all churches had participated in the voting on the referendum, and in those that did, only part of the congregation had voted.20 Sections of the Pacific District and the Canadian District abstained from voting. The strong traditional emphases on Bible school education raised the question-<io we need a liberal arts college? Had the conference leadership in establishing Tabor as a conference school moved beyond the wishes of its constituency? Many constituents, still culturally isolated, did not sense the need for an institution to help them define and delineate their Anabaptist heritage. Their commitment to the Bible, in what Robert Fried- mann called an "existential Christianity," made no demands on diem for creedal formulation,21 Finer questions of hermeneu- rics-"How do we interpret the Bible?"-were not being asked, and they saw little need for a school to help them do so.*2 This constricted mentality was reinforced by the appear- ance of American fundamentalism, Mennonite Brethren caught in the cross-fire between fundamentalists and mod- ernists knew that they were not modernists. While their al- liance with fundamentalism should also have been an uneasy one, they apparently drifted into that orbit with little difficulty. The extent to which Tabor College became immersed in the milieu of fundamentalism could be seen in the annual Bible Normals (a week of spiritual emphasis) with speakers like Reuben A. Torrey, James Oliver Buswell, J.G. Drowell, William Evans, Paul Ruth, Gerald Winrod and others. The degree of the college's captivity in an environment of isolation was illustrated by developments in the 1940s. Up to that time, trusted churchmen like Henry W, Lohrenz, Peter C. Hiebert and Abraham E. Janzen had been at the helm. But in 1942 Peter E. Schellenberg, a psychologist and one of the first Ph.Ds in the Mennonite Brethren Church, became president of Tabor. Schellenberg was perhaps the first Mennonite Brethren educator to seriously attempt to integrate faith and 173 A PILGRIMAGE OF FATTH learning from a