H. A. Dixon's Classes at the U of Alabama

In 1988, Louise Cowan Dixon, widow of H. A. Dixon, told me that when her husband first began offering Bible courses for credit at the University of Alabama, a number of students figured these would be "crip courses," very easy classes one could take in order to raise a lagging grade point average. But they were in for a surprise. It turned out, you had to work for a good grade in a Bible class with H. A. Dixon. It wasn't an easy A.

This and That

Book Title: With some help from historian Brian M. Ingrassia (Brian and his wife live two doors down from us), I've come up with the following proposed title for my book manuscript: Making Disciples in the Chickasaw Nation: One Woman's Spiritual Odyssey in Indian Territory and Early Oklahoma. What do you think?

Sleep! The research keeps accumulating. It all says the same thing. If you want to function well, you need to get plenty of sleep. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal ("How Your Brain Recovers From Sleep Deprivation," by Aylin Woodward), when you sleep, your body conducts what might be described as housekeeping for your brain. Useless cells get taken out and, in general, the brain gets a cleaning of sorts. When you don't sleep well, the next day your body is doing some of that housekeeping work. But that means it can't do its ordinary, "awake" sort of work. It's like trying to do math problems while vacuuming. These two sorts of tasks don't go together. (If you can do math problems while vacuuming, just shut up). During the day after little to no sleep, your body and brain actually sort of shut down in order for the cleaning process to take place. It's like you came to work one morning, but the overnight cleaning crew never showed up the night before. This is why sleep deprived people often have car wrecks. The driver wasn't necessarily being negligent. It's as if the driver was temporarily asleep! So, pay attention to what's now called "sleep hygiene." Your brain, your body, and everybody else will thank you. 

Memories of Connecticut: I first arrived in Wallingford, Connecticut, in August 1993. As the new preacher for the Ward Street Church of Christ there, I was coming from a world where one's opinions about Rubel Shelley and what was known as "the new hermeneutic" would quickly peg you as being one sort of preacher or the other. I did not mention or talk about any of those things. I just wanted to help the congregation to have a positive view of Christian life. Above all, I wanted them to love and admire Jesus more and more. My first series of Sunday-morning sermons was about Him. The titles were basic: "Jesus: A Friend of Sinners" and "Jesus: Our Great High Priest." Stuff like that. After a few weeks, it dawned on me that what were "big issues" among Churches of Christ in the Mid-South were no issues at all in Connecticut. In fact, the members of the congregation didn't even know about those things. And I wasn't about to tell them! Finally, here was a church where pursuing the goals of pleasing God, becoming more like Christ, studying the Bible for all it's worth, etc., was the entire point. That's what people wanted, and that's what they were doing. The only thing I had to do was to teach them and provide the best example I could. For several years prior to the demise of my first marriage, it was glorious stuff, a golden age in my life.

Dr. Fulkerson: When I was a student at Freed-Hardeman College in Henderson, Tennessee (1984-86), one of the star professors there was Dr. Raymond Gerald Fulkerson (1941-2019). On campus, at a time when relatively-few faculty members at F-HC held a terminal degree, he was "Dr. Fulkerson." He taught courses in Communication. As I remember, he was chair of the Communication Department at F-HC. In my first semester there, I took the basic Speech Communication class, with Fulkerson as the instructor. It was obvious to me that this man "knew his stuff.." Although I was majoring in Bible, I thought he would be a good person to study with because, after all, my future would have a lot to do with communicating. In my senior year, I took what was a capstone course for all students majoring in Communication. I believe the course title was "Survey of Rhetorical Theory." That class was quite a challenge, and Demosthenes became something of a hero to me. I decided to take yet another class with Fulkerson, one titled "World Public Address." It wasn't required for Communication majors. So there were relatively few students in that class. I believe that just a few years later the title was changed to "Great Speeches," or something very close to that. Anyway, although I did not know him well, Fulkerson made a real impression on me. One thing I walked away with was the idea that speeches and sermons always have a "rhetorical situation," the context of the place and moment. Consider, for example, that Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I Have a Dream" speech was delivered before a huge gathering in the nation's capital during the March on Washington for civil rights. As a preacher, the idea made me wonder: What is the rhetorical situation in a church on an ordinary Sunday?

H. A. Dixon and Freed-Hardeman College

Not much secondary literature has been published through the years about H. A. Dixon (1904-1969). But I'm willing to argue that Dixon's successful presidency at Freed-Hardeman College (from 1950 to 1969), was absolutely crucial to the survival and growth of the school. Without Dixon's credibility, integrity, and stalwart leadership, there is no telling what might have become of Freed-Hardeman, located in Henderson, Tennessee.

In 1950, many thousands of people knew and loved N. B. Hardeman, Dixon's predecessor. Hardeman's long list of friends, some of them quite wealthy, had kept the college financially sound, with hundreds of students in attendance over many years. However, due to a crisis of confidence and the abrupt end of Hardeman's presidency in 1950, when Dixon became the next president, the college was in uncharted waters.

Apparently, Hardeman, who turned 76 that year, was distracted by a student protest and opposition at the college that bore his name. This impacted the financial well-being of F-HC. In his article on "Freed-Hardeman University," Mark W. Hamilton was right to say that by 1950, N. B. Hardeman had "placed the school on a sound financial footing" (Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 344). That was true as far as it went. Yet, there is more to the story.

During Hardeman's presidency, money had been a critical issue, as it always is especially for private schools. And through the years, Hardeman had gathered a large number of donations for the college. But it certainly seems that in 1950, questions about what was going on at Henderson and uncertainty about the school's future meant that the flow of financial support for the college slowed to a trickle. This seems to be the only explanation for something Louise Cowan Dixon, H. A.'s widow, told me in 1988. She said that when her husband became the new president of the school, he was shocked to learn that the college's operating fund contained a grand total of $2,000.

She also said that, although H. A. Dixon became the new president under circumstances nobody foresaw, Hardeman had on more than one occasion suggested to Dixon that he should be the next president of the school. Hardeman's judgment was sound. When Dixon assumed his new role, very few people among the Churches of Christ enjoyed the same level of admiration and respect. Very few people could have taken on the mantle of N. B. Hardeman to advance Freed-Hardeman over the next nineteen years as H. A. Dixon did. Freed-Hardeman was fortunate to have had him ready and able to take on that task.