Mars Hill University will host a discussion and book signing with Dr. Charles W. Deweese, a 1967 MHU alumnus and author of Baptist Mountain Mission Schools,
on Tuesday, April 12. The discussion portion of the program will take
place at 4:00 pm in Broyhill Chapel, with the book signing and
refreshments to follow, at 5:00 pm in Bentley Fellowship Hall.
Baptist
Mountain Mission Schools, published by Mars Hill University Press earlier this year,
deals extensively with the work of Rev. Albert E. Brown, the son of the
university's first president, W.A.G. Brown, and the Department of Mountain
Mission Schools, established by the Baptist Home Mission Board in 1904.
The
book traces the history of Mars Hill University, and other institutions which,
in the early 1900s, were products of this program and its hardworking
superintendent. Those institutions, a few of which still survive as colleges
and universities, dramatically affected the life and character of the mountain
regions.
Deweese,
who spent his career as a historian, writer, and administrator for the Historical
Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and for the Baptist History and
Heritage Society, said he came across information about the Baptist Mission
Schools program many times during his research. He was intrigued by the program
and by its hardworking administrator, A.E. Brown. He said he began to collect
the information with the intent of eventually writing a book. Finally,
after his retirement, he decided to take that step.
"I
have always been intrigued by trying to elevate the man who never sought, and
never got, a high level of exposure," Deweese said. "A.E. Brown
worked under the radar, and he is a man who has never gotten an adequate amount
of exposure in the historical writings. So, one of my goals was to give him an
audience that he would never have asked for, but he really deserved to
get."
In
a time of poor communication and horrible transportation conditions, A.E. Brown
administered 49 Baptist mission schools over a 20-year period in the
Appalachian and the Ozark mountains. That, in itself, is a remarkable feat.
The
importance of those schools to the region was enormous, Deweese said.
"Without
those schools, a lot of the people living in the mountains would never have had
a formal education of any kind. But because they existed, and because public
schools were very scarce at that time, they helped these young people get an
education and helped them move out of poverty, which was rampant in the
mountains. Later, when public schools came along, many of their teachers had
been educated in the Baptist mission schools."
In
addition to A.E. Brown, the book focuses on Mars Hill University, which was
founded in 1856 as a secondary school called French Broad Baptist
Institute. Two years later, the institution was renamed Mars Hill, a
reference to the Apostle Paul's sermon in Acts 17. According to Deweese, Brown
considered Mars Hill a model institution and perhaps the consummate example of
a mountain mission school.
The
rise of public schools in the 1920s and early 1930s and financial woes (not
caused by Brown or his successor J. W. O'Hara), eventually led to the demise of
the Baptist mission schools program. However, many of the schools founded by
the program continue today as universities. In addition to Mars Hill
University, those include North Greenville University (SC), the College of the
Cumberlands (KY), and Southwest Baptist University (MO).
Deweese
said the existence of the Baptist Mission Schools program, challenges a stream
of modern thought that sees Baptists as representative of the anti-intellectual
tradition in Christianity.
"The
very fact that so much focus was being given to developing education in the
most remote areas was a very positive and healthy contribution of the
denomination at that time," Deweese said.
Dr.
Guy Sayles, visiting professor of religion at Mars Hill University, is helping
to plan the book signing event. He, too, said that the book will help to
challenge the myth that Baptists as a whole were anti-intellectual and
anti-education.
"The
book makes it clear that Baptists, even at the turn of the 19th century
and up through 1930 or so, were investing in education in very remote
places," Sayles said. "It’s a reminder to Mars Hill University, and
to modern Baptists, that our origins were with people who found in their faith
a call to education. They didn't see any conflict between faith and education,
and we don't need to see a conflict between our commitment to higher education
and the practice of faith either."
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