Lockney Christian College (4): The Return of Showalter and Later Developments

The summer of 1904 must have been an exciting time in Lockney, Texas. Several issues of the Firm Foundation carried announcements that Lockney Christian College would begin its tenth session on September 6, and that G. H. P. Showalter was returning as president.

Even before the start of the new school year, on August 25, Lockney played host to a debate between a Baptist preacher named J. N. Hall and one of the greatest debaters among the Churches of Christ, Joe S. Warlick. Approximately 1,500 people, roughly three times the population of the town, attended, and the president of the college served as Warlick's moderator. In addition to his debating, Warlick preached three sermons in Lockney. Within days, 40 people were baptized into Christ.[1]

It likely came as a blow when, in 1906, Showalter announced for a second time that he would be leaving Lockney to help establish yet another Christian school. This time he was going to Sabinal, Texas, about 70 miles southwest of San Antonio on the Southern Pacific Railroad. There Showalter would help to found Sabinal Christian College.[2]

Showalter was succeeded at Lockney by James A. Sisco, whose tenure lasted only a year and a half. Not long after Sisco resigned in the middle of the 1907-08 school year, a certain J. F. Smith visited the town and observed the college, now under the direction of its new president, James L. German. The February 27, 1908 issue of the Gospel Advocate included Smith's impressions. Lockney was a town of five hundred people, he wrote. About 75 percent of the people in the town and the local area were "faithful Christians." The school was off to a good start with its new president, and several young men in attendance were studying to preach. In addition, a number of supporters of the school were planning to construct "a good school building, estimated to cost ten thousand dollars, which is very much needed in this undertaking."[3]

Notes

[1] Robert M. Platt, "A History of Lockney Christian College," 21-22. For a brief description of the Hall-Warlick debate, which appears to be a contemporary report, see the following URL, accessed Feb. 17, 2019, http://www.thelordsway.com/site19/custompage.asp?CongregationID=1202&CustomPageID=1025#.XGoCS-hKjIU

[2] Platt, "A History of Lockney Christian College," 23. For a brief history of Sabinal Christian College (1907-1917), see M. Norvel Young, A History of Colleges Established and Controlled by Members of the Churches of Christ (Kansas City, MO: Old Paths Book Club, 1949), 158-61.

[3] J. F. Smith, "Lockney Bible College," Gospel Advocate (February 27, 1908), 139. Platt, "A History of Lockney Christian College," 23-24.

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Yuck! Raining again today. So for the afternoon, this big group of extended family I'm with is planning to get out and go shopping.

We did much the same thing yesterday. Packed up and went to the mall in Holyoke, Mass. Of course, once we were about halfway there, the sun came out and we knew we should have gone swimming. So on the way home, we consoled ourselves by stopping at a roadside stand that had freshly-picked ears of butter-and-sugar corn. That and burgers cooked on the grill. Mmm Umm.

At the mall, I finally wound up in the Borders Bookstore. I remembered that in a couple of weeks, I'm supposed to do a presentation on "The Existence of God." So I was looking through the Religion section and came to that book I'd heard so much about a year or two ago: There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, by Antony Flew.

I've read the first section so far. All along, I was hoping to find a section on Flew's debate with Thomas Warren of the Churches of Christ. Here's an excerpt:

The 1976 debate with Thomas Warren in Denton, Texas, had an audience, on different days, from five to seven thousand. . . .

Debates in the United Kingdom typically took place before small academic audiences. Thus my first exposure to a mass audience in the context of a debate was my encounter with the late Professor Thomas B. Warren, a Christian philosopher. The debate was held on the campus of the North Texas State University, now the University of North Texas, in Denton, on four consecutive nights starting on September 20, 1976, dates that coincided with the first of that year's U.S. presidential debates between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Before an enthusiastic audience, Dr. Warren wielded an impressive array of charts and slides.

Interestingly, a good part of his case was an attack on the theory of evolution, which at that time seemed to me to be a novel undertaking. When Dr. Warren asked if I believed there could be a being that is half ape and half human, I responded that this was sort of like determining whether someone is bald. My supervisor Gilbert Ryle was positively egglike, and there is no doubt that everyone must call that bald. But if we go one hair at a time, it is not easy to define who is bald and who is not.

However, given my current views, a few of my very declarative statements from that debate may be of interest in depicting the fervency of my atheist convictions at that point:

"I know there is no God."

"A system of belief about God" contains the same "sort of contradiction" as "unmarried husbands or round squares."

"I myself am inclined to believe that the universe was without beginning and will be without end. Indeed, I know of no good reasons for disputing either of these suggestions."

"I believe that living organisms evolved over an immeasurably long period from nonliving materials."

I was impressed with the hospitality of my hosts, but the debate ended with both Warren and I sticking to our guns (pp. 67-69).

By the way, here's the homepage for the Warren-Flew debate on video.