News and History from Heritage Hall
Most people who know that Calvin Theological Seminary and Calvin University have had more than one campus only know about the “Franklin” campus on what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Street. A few know about the “Madison” campus, at the corner of Madison and …
When did Calvin first graduate students with baccalaureate degrees? (And who was the first student to earn one?) The question might seem straight-forward. Just get the year right. But the past is usually messier than we remember. When we tell the stories of communities and …
Calvin College’s relationship with the University of Michigan began in the 1890s. In its founding in 1876 the Theological School (as the seminary was known then) had created a “literary” program to prepare students with no high school education for its theological program. In the …
“The” Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, is not the only Calvin College there has been in the United States. There were two others. One existed in a comic book universe where a superhero, Al Pratt, AKA The Atom, was a student majoring in nuclear …
First some context. Leaders at Calvin College and leaders and members of the Christian Reformed Church worried about the morality and Christian faithfulness of students at the College. Some feared that it was becoming a hotbed of radicalism. The country was in the midst of …
The 1946-1947 school year saw the opening of the “Alexander Lodge” as a dorm for Calvin College men. It was located at 1010 Alexander Street SE. Ninety men started out the year in the dorm. “Army cots, cold showers, bleak rooms, and workmen still on …
In the 1920s, the Christian Reformed Church debated the doctrine of common grace. Synod’s affirmation of this doctrine led a small group to separate from the CRC and form the Protestant Reformed Church. But the theological defense of the potential good of non-Christian— “worldly” —culture …
Some of the Calvin College students in the cover image of this post look like they could be rascals; one or two look studious. There were troublemakers of various sorts on campus in the 1920s and 1930s, as at pretty much any school. But what …
I don’t train teachers, at least not in the way the education department and the history and social studies education majors do. But this week I’ve been thinking about training teachers. I’m teaching the capstone course in the history major, and history education and social …
During the early spring of 1911, leading Dutch Reformed folk in Chicago and Michigan were fighting about a professor. The issue was not, as you might think, unorthodox theology or dangerous ideas. It was who should be the new professor of Dutch history, language, and …