Head, Heart, and Hand: John Brown University and Modern Evangelical Higher Education.

Head, Heart, and Hand: John Brown University and Modern Evangelical Higher Education. By Rick Ostrander. With a foreword by George Marsden. (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 2003. Pp. xiv, 277. $29.95, ISBN 1-55728-761-9.)

Rick Ostrander is a talented historian who is making important contributions to our understanding of American religious and cultural history. Head, Heart, and Hand: John Brown University and Modern Evangelical Higher Education, his second major book, is at once an institutional history of John Brown University (JBU) from its beginnings in the early twentieth century to the present and a slice of religious and cultural history of the upper South. Ostrander ably achieved his purpose of presenting a carefully documented history of John Brown University cradled firmly in the religious, social, and cultural history of American evangelicals in the twentieth century. Although he is a history professor and academic dean at JBU, the author manages to present a remarkably clear, balanced, and at times critical portrait of the leaders and the school. Ostrander relies on the growing wealth of secondary historical literature on higher education, religion, and evangelicalism. He draws what he can from the sparse and sometimes biased secondary literature relating to JBU, and he judiciously pans treasures from numerous primary sources, among them papers of college and accreditation organizations, newspapers, and oral history interviews.

The book's title provides a glimpse of the author's major theses. Beginning with the intentions of its founder, John Brown Sr., an evangelist, the school's purpose has always been to nurture the head, heart, and hands of each student. This three-part purpose, according to Ostrander, is still in place after more than eighty years. To be sure, emphases have changed. The academic orientation--or the head goal--is now solidly liberal arts, whereas it was much more practical and applied in the early decades. The hand dimension of education has evolved into preparation for careers in today's service and information-based economy rather than in the agricultural and industrial economy of pre-World War II America. In this same vein the old vocational model of education has been replaced by a curriculum that prepares people for careers and professions in a markedly changed nation and world. And finally, the heart emphasis of the curriculum has remained the most consistent emphasis--always staying in step with the changes in multi-traditional evangelicalism rather than separatistic fundamentalism. In brief, JBU has more in common with northern evangelical institutions like Wheaton College and Calvin College than with the likes of Bob Jones University in the South. Indeed, the author argues that his university is in the mainstream of modern evangelical higher education rather than the smaller pool of fundamentalism.

Overall, this is a well-organized book that is exceptionally readable for an institutional history. For the most part, Ostrander has presented persuasive evidence for his theses. But three questions seem to be worth raising. First, do as many JBU graduates, per capita, enter Christian ministry and missions now as in the past? Second, what do these statistics tell us about holding on to the heart dimension of the school's educational purpose? And third, how do these statistics compare with other institutions of higher learning that still claim to be evangelical?

LYLE W. DORSETT

Beeson Divinity School, Samford University