I have just spent two sultry weeks at Winona Lake, Indiana, teaching theology and religious journalism to a sprightly group of summer students. Winona has evangelical interests reaching back into the past to G. Campbell Morgan and Billy Sunday. During the heyday of the Bible conference movement, this center ranked among the best. Today it’s almost as difficult to find a Bible conference worthy of the name as a pulpit devoted to brilliant expository preaching; perhaps the two trends are not unrelated. Sheep fed on ersatz fodder soon lose their taste for the real thing.
In the thirties I myself was a summer student at Winona. Our professor of New Testament Greek made us memorize passages like Luke’s Prologue and the Lord’s Prayer, and we opened classes by repeating the prayer in Greek. It’s not surprising that while forgetful students were asking for daily bread, others were seeking forgiveness of sins. Such confusion, after all, is typically modern.
There’s another Winona experience I can’t forget. When my son was still a lad, I hired a guide, rowboat, and fishing gear for a half day on the lake. We returned with one lone sunfish. Scant consolation it was when we reached our cottage that my spouse proudly escorted me to the bathtub, which had become an emergency aquarium for two dozen lively fish.
It wasn’t the fact that Helga hadn’t the heart to kill the creatures that bothered me. It was the fact that, dangling lines from the shore of our lakefront cottage, my wife and my mother-in-law had comfortably taken their quarry while father and son turned out to be the guide’s best catch.
