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I Was There, but It Wasn't Nice: The Closing of
Goshen College in 1923
by Paton Yoder
 *Photo
caption: Goshen College President Irvin R. Detweiler, 1922 (Credit:
Maple Leaf, 1922)
It happened in the spring of 1923. That was the time when
the Mennonite Board of Education closed Goshen College for a
year. It was also the year in which schisms were occurring in
a number of the "Old" Mennonite congregations in Indiana
and Ohio. My father, Silvanus Yoder, an active layman in the
Clinton Frame congregation east of Goshen, had only recently
been appointed to serve on the "Local Board" of Goshen
College. In that capacity he freely supported the decision to
shut down the college for a year, although his daughter, Rhea,
a senior at the college, vigorously opposed this step. Not very
conservative himself, he was, and would always be, a supporter
of The Establishment. He had inherited this stance from his father,
who had been very critical of what he thought were the quarrelsome
dissidents in the Oak Grove (Wayne County, Ohio) crisis of 1890.
I, Silvanus' youngest, turned eleven years old that spring.
Even at that tender age I understood something of what was occurring
in church affairs. I knew that some of my uncles and aunts were
liberals and were ready to allow women to wear hats and to make
other changes in their lifestyle. And I knew that Rhea was rejected
by the Mission Board for foreign missionary service possibly
(but not certainly) because she had been on the side of these
liberals during her college years. On the other hand, I knew
also that many of those in leadership positions suspected that
"modernism" (which was raising some questions about
the inspiration of the Scriptures) was creeping into the library
and curriculum of Goshen College. Father was very much opposed
to modernism.
But my next older brother Samuel, he who was to be a professor
of English at Goshen College in the early 1930s and again from
1945 to 1970, had graduated from high school that spring. He
would be ready for college in the fall. Sensing the situation,
a student recruiter from Bluffton College came to our farm home
near Middlebury. I remember the visit almost vividly. If Goshen
was to be closed for the 1923-24 school year, would Silvanus
consider sending his son to Bluffton?
Silvanus and wife Susie had extended full hospitality to this
Bluffton recruiter, but when he posed this question on the way
to the supper table, after a polite visit in our living room,
Silvanus responded quickly and with deep conviction: "I'd
rather send my son to a state university than to Bluffton College!"
One can understand Silvanus' caustic (but unaccented) reply
to the Bluffton recruiter with a degree of sympathy only in the
light of the feelings and fears then circulating among the Old
Mennonites. Father feared that Samuel's education at Bluffton
would be laced with undetected traces of modernism. At a state
university, on the other hand, the poison would be openly administered
and easily detected.
I wish I knew the identity of that Bluffton recruiter!
Postscript. Rather than send Samuel to Bluffton College in
1923-24, Silvanus sent him to Manchester College, the Church
of the Brethren school about 45 miles south of Goshen. But the
next fall, when Goshen College was reopened, Samuel was waiting
at the registrar's office! By 1935 all of his four siblings were
to have graduated from Goshen. Further, ten of the next generation-the
grandchildren-likewise graduated from Goshen College. Only one,
because of different interests, would choose another educational
track.
Paton Yoder, Goshen, Ind., in his retirement has written
extensively about Amish Mennonites. Among his books are Tennessee
John Stoltzfus: Amish Church-Related Documents and Family Letters
(1987) and Tradition and Transition, Amish Mennonites
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