Introductory Remarks at Spoelhof Symposium, From the Heart, by James D. Bratt, Director, Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship

Welcome to Calvin College and ‘From the Heart’: A Symposium in Honor of William Spoelhof. I’m Jim Bratt, Director of the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, which has the pleasure of funding this event.

Since others are far better qualified than I to speak to the topic of this symposium, I will be content with noting the perennial importance of the Devotio Moderna in the narratives of Western intellectual and religious history and in the history of the Netherlands and its international diaspora. Our speakers have come here to treat a subject that has shaped the heritage of Calvin College and of many people in the audience, and we thank you for sharing your learning and insights with us.


Special thanks go to the organizers of this event, Henry Luttikhuizen and John Van Engen. They came up with the idea for this symposium, drafted the proposal, and assembled so stellar a list of lecturers as to make our funding decision easy. Thank you, Henry and John, for your initiative, vision, and attention to detail. A word of thanks also to the Program Coordinator at the Calvin Center, Donna Romanowski, for her able assistance in these matters—it’s customary by now, but always appreciated.


The rest of my remarks are by way of introducing and reflecting upon our guest of honor, William Spoelhof. William Spoelhof was president of Calvin College from 1951 to 1976, perhaps the longest college presidency of his generation and one attended by great successes—but one that came, as well, at the cost of his budding career as a historian. By attending at this event to the historical movement and epoch upon which he wrote his doctoral dissertation, we give a particular salute to that phase of his career and talent. Those of us who have been able to carry on with our own scholarship at this place or elsewhere, give him thanks for his part in making that possible.


As a historian myself, I’ll begin President Spoelhof’s story at the beginning, with his birth in 1909 at Paterson, NJ to a Frisian immigrant couple, Rense and Tjerkje Spoelhof. Friesland those days had some strong socialist districts, and Paterson would become legendary for the IWW strike at its silk plants in 1913, so we can say that President Spoelhof was born in interesting times. His father, without a strong background in church or school, became deeply committed to faith and learning, and instilled those passions in his son. The conjunction, perhaps, gave the heir a natural dissertation subject in the Brethren of the Common Life; it certainly came through in his vision for and endeavors at Calvin College.


To that college the William Spoelhof would go in 1927, graduating at the trough of the Great Depression in 1931, and so delaying his plans for graduate work in favor of paid employment teaching social studies to junior high school students for 6 years. He took up graduate studies, first at Columbia, then at the University of Michigan in 1937, and eventually received his PhD in 1946. Along the way he volunteered for military service during World War II, working in Washington DC as a research analyst for the Office of Strategic Services, and then in the European theater—London, Paris, Brussels, Eindhoven—to help prepare for the transition of the Netherlands from Nazi occupation to restored self-rule. For these services he was inducted into the Order of Orange-Nassau and awarded the Verzetsherdenkingskruis (the Dutch Resistance Remembrance Cross) from the Netherlands government.


Upon returning from Europe, Dr. Spoelhof joined the faculty of Calvin College where he taught in the Department of History and Political Science until being named president of the institution in 1951. His 25-yr administration was marked by many achievements.

First of all, there was the creation of and move to this campus; if you seek his most obvious monument, look around you.

Secondly, the wholesale revision of the curriculum and system of faculty governance. In all his work his governing commitments were three: (1) the integrity of Christian faith and practice in individual and institution alike; (2) steady, uncompromising quality; and (3) the intersection of, the mutual support between 1 & 2. Regarding his impact upon students and as a person, we shall hear eloquent testimony in a moment from Abram Van Engen. Regarding his leadership of faculty I can say that he always expected the best from them, worked his hardest to give them the resources to achieve that goal, and when facing a failure, always extended himself to effect whatever redemption was possible or necessary. He sometimes took a faculty member—or, I can testify—a student to the woodshed, but always defended them against outside attack.


Sometimes those attacks, therefore, would fall upon him personally, at no little cost. Upon his retirement he wrote, regarding the single most difficult episode in his tenure, that some of the students involved would one day be leaders in the college themselves (an accurate prophecy, it turns out), and that they would be well guided, when facing a like crisis of their own, to “remember the understanding and loyalty” that are demanded of the friends of the college in such times. We have remembered, Mr. President, and we remember best of all the model of perseverance, forgiveness, and eventual good humor that you personally have exemplified.


There is, the Carnegie Foundation tells us, a scholarship of teaching and a scholarship of service that need to be honored as much as the scholarship of publication. There is also, I would add, a scholarship of leadership. Better, there are scholars who give themselves to leadership, and whose knowledge of the thrill, the discipline, the value, and service of study is the sine qua non for the prosperity of the academic enterprise. Mr. President, you came to know those virtues from the inside, and you turned your practice of them to make possible the endeavors of so many more who have come in your wake. Please accept this symposium as our gift to you, a small token of the debt which hundreds around this country, indeed, around the world, gratefully owe to you.