In 1919 John Brown and his wife committed their three-hundred-acre farm in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, as the site for the school known today as John Brown University. Brown’s vision was to educate the underprivileged students of the rural Ozarks in a morally wholesome spiritual environment and to instill in them his Christian religious faith and his conception of meaningful work.
Head, Heart, and Hand is the history of how this university became a distinguished academic institution that changed with the times while maintaining its original evangelical character. Rick Ostrander illustrates how JBU resembles and differs from other Christian colleges as he places the institution in historical context and connects it to the larger currents of American education and religion.
Rick Ostrander is Vice President for Academic Affairs and Professional Programs at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities. He is the author of The Life of Prayer in a World of Science: Protestants, Prayer, and American Culture, 1870–1930 and Why College Matters to God: An Introduction to the Christian College.
George Marsden is Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of many books, including the Bancroft-Prize-winning Jonathan Edwards: A Life.
“A carefully documented history of John Brown University cradled firmly in the religious, social, and cultural history of American evangelicals in the twentieth century.”
—Journal of Southern History
“An illuminating book about the contemporary evangelical community.”
—Church History
“A deeply researched and gracefully written history. Few, if any, works with which I am familiar have so clearly and succinctly stated the nature and meaning of American religious fundamentalism. . . . Ostrander assesses, always with an even hand, the triumphs, the failures, and the shortcomings of JBU and its leaders, and makes no attempt to gloss over disparities between reality and the official image of the institution.”
—Willard Gatewood
“A solid contribution to a historical understanding of religiously oriented higher education in the South. . . .”
—Randal Hall, author of William Louis Poteat: A Leader in the Progressive-Era South
