“The Christian is joyful, not because he is blind to injustice and suffering, but because he is convinced that these, in the light of the divine sovereignty, are never ultimate. The Christian can be sad, and often is perplexed, but he is never really worried, because he knows that the purpose of God is to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.” ~ Elton Trueblood
David Elton Trueblood, author, educator, philosopher, and theologian, was a lifelong member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). At some point in Trueblood’s life, he found a note in a diary he kept when he was younger, “I don’t know what I should be: an educator, writer or preacher.” Without a doubt, Elton Trueblood experienced great success in all three areas.
Trueblood’s ancestors settled on the coast of North Carolina in 1682 at the site of the present town of Elizabeth City. In 1815 a large Quaker group, including the Truebloods’, emigrated to Washington County, Indiana, to become a vital part of a new Friends community. In 1869 his grandfather and other family members moved to Warren County, Iowa, where he was born on a small farm near Indianola on December 12, 1900, the son of Samuel and Effie Trueblood.
Elton Trueblood showed great promise even before college. He graduated from William Penn College, Oskaloosa, Iowa, in 1922, winning praise as an outstanding student, debater, and football player. After preliminary graduate studies at Brown University and Hartford Theological Seminary, he earned a graduate degree of bachelor of systematic theology at Harvard University in 1926 and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in 1934.
He soon found his career in the academic world. His first teaching assignments were at two Friends institutions, Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Haverford College near Philadelphia. Then, in 1936, mainly due to a 1935 summer appointment as acting chaplain at Harvard, he became chaplain at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
Elton Trueblood’s years of public service and literary success began during his tenure at Stanford from 1936 through 1945. Stanford provided the public visibility and financial freedom that made a national ministry possible. During the Stanford years, Elton Trueblood was drawn into friendships with several distinguished individuals.
Former President Herbert Hoover and his wife, Lou Henry Hoover, were close neighbors and often attended the Quaker (Friends) Meeting for Worship held monthly in the Trueblood home. As a result of this friendship, Trueblood conducted services for both of the Hoovers after their deaths, including Mr. Hoover’s public burial before a crowd of 75,000 on a hillside overlooking the Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa.
In 1945 he felt a strong calling to a public ministry through writing and speaking and a desire to serve a small Quaker liberal arts college. Earlham College’s struggle to rebuild after World War II was aided by the arrival of solid leadership. His skill and national recognition helped increase the public’s application of Earlham and hundreds of other church-related and independent colleges across America. He saw them as ideal places for undergraduate education, where teaching was emphasized and where close faculty-student relationships could be naturally fostered.
As time passed at Earlham, he and others became more and more aware of the need for a Quaker seminary. In addition, Friends churches were hiring pastors either with training from other denominational seminaries or with nothing more than a college degree with a religion major.
Unprogrammed Friends meetings often hired staff with no theological training. He saw a need for a seminary to train young Friends for service to the Society of Friends in both programmed and unprogrammed traditions. Funds were limited, and the college had many other priorities, but the Earlham School of Religion was finally opened in 1960. Today the school is thriving and serving all branches of the Society of Friends.
Upon his retirement from Earlham in 1966, Trueblood was named “professor at large,” a position he held until his death. He built a home on the campus where he lived until 1988. During these years, he enjoyed the role of counselor and encourager to faculty, students, and others who visited him at his home or in Teague Library next door. He particularly enjoyed helping young writers through constructive criticism and encouragement. Many educators, writers, pastors, and business people recount stories of Trueblood’s significant role in their careers.
The first six of his 33 books (those written before 1943) were directed principally at theologians, philosophers, and other academics. Then, in 1944, with World War II increasingly shaking the lives of millions, Trueblood produced The Predicament of Modern Man. He decried “the failure of the power culture” and warned against the dangers of what he called “our cut-flower civilization.” Although dealing with sober and profound issues concerning the future of human society, it was written in simple, quickly understood language, and it gained a broad and responsive audience.
As a public speaker and author, Trueblood was an advocate for simplicity, clarity, and brevity. He looked his audience straight in the eye, speaking without manuscript or notes, yet his words came out in carefully crafted and vivid sentences and paragraphs. He generally limited his sermons to 20 minutes. He could close a session on the minute without using a timepiece. He once said, “If you want people to come hear you, you must stop on time.”
When he once asked theologian Reinhold Niebuhr who he thought was the most original thinker in American history, he received an immediate and unexpected reply. “Abraham Lincoln.” As a result, Trueblood researched and eventually wrote Abraham Lincoln: Theologian of American Anguish.
Elton Trueblood was not a believer in a “wall of separation” between religion and politics. He had some familiarity with the White House through visits there with several presidents, Democrats and Republicans. He drafted several presidential proclamations dealing with religion, including Thanksgiving Day proclamations. He served the Eisenhower administration as Chief of Religious Policy for the U.S. Information Agency, spoke at a national Republican convention (1972), delivered prayers at the opening of various Congressional sessions, and addressed one of the annual presidential prayer breakfasts.
Throughout his life, he had contacts with leaders in government, business,, religion, and education. He could easily have devoted his time to the well-paying lecture circuit. Instead, he limited his speaking engagements to those audiences he wished to reach or help, thereby leaving time for teaching and family. He spoke without fee for those who could not afford it but charged the standard amount for those who could. He usually included his expenses in his fee since he had found that it often took more time to prepare an expense account than to write a speech. He never charged a reduced fee, saying, “I don’t want anyone to think that I am a fifty-dollar speaker.”
Although he served on many committees of the Religious Society of Friends, his views were not always consistent with Friends’ thinking. His generally strong pro-Republican views, and his strong anti-communism caused discomfort to some of the more socially active segments of Friends. He avoided the terms “conservative” and “liberal,” finding each simplistic and divisive. He believed that the Society of Friends, though a small denomination, was big enough for widely divergent points of view.
Precise labeling of Trueblood was difficult. He liked to say that the most important word in the language was “and.” On many matters of controversy he would insist, “we have to say both-and-together, not either-or.” By word and action, he demonstrated what some saw as contradictory beliefs and habits; liberal and conservative, traditional and contemporary, compassionate and tough-minded, generous and demanding. He saw this as being human, trying to be realistic and honest.
On a central Quaker belief, pacifism, he was clear as to the importance and complexity of the issue. He struggled openly over the personal dilemma of how government can effectively stand against tyranny. He wrote and spoke eloquently against war, for international reconciliation, and in support of the rights of conscience for objectors to military service. He emphasized that the non-violent way should be central to human relations and ongoing international policy. If a government does not successfully practice peaceful relations with its neighbors, then it will be faced with a choice among evils in times of crisis. During World War II, he reluctantly concluded that military resistance was necessary.
His emphasis in his books on the importance of family life was not theoretical but reflected his role as husband and father. He and Pauline Goodenow had met while at William Penn College, and they were married in 1924. Two sons were born during their early years, Martin, in 1925 and Arnold in 1930. Two more children came later, Samuel in 1938 and Elizabeth in 1941. Elton’s children remember him as a loving and devoted father who found ways to be available to his children despite his heavy speaking schedule. He did not want his children to pay a heavy price for his public ministry.
In 1954, it was discovered that Pauline was suffering from an inoperable brain tumor. The family was still in the process of moving to Washington D. C. at the start of Elton’s work with the USIA, when it became clear that something was seriously wrong. Somehow he was able to care for the two younger children still at home, tend his sick wife, and start a new job. Pauline had been an inspiration to him, providing needed criticism of what he wrote, pushing him to fulfill his opportunities for a national ministry, and managing the household as well as she could in spite of years of chronic illness. She died early in 1955.
Virginia Hodgin, a widow with two children, had become his secretary in 1950 and had moved to Washington to serve in the same capacity at USIA. In September 1956, Elton and Virginia were married at the Washington National Cathedral. Virginia proved to be a valuable partner as well as a wife. With her help, he published 17 books in the next 18 years, ending with his autobiography, While It Is Day, in 1974. Virginia died in 1984.
In 1988 he felt the need to move closer to his children in the Philadelphia area and into a protective environment. He chose Meadowood, a continuing care retirement community near Norristown sponsored by members of the Schwenkfelder Church. He organized a weekly prayer meeting and guest speakers.
Among many other qualities, Trueblood should be remembered for his discipline, which made his high productivity possible. During his most productive years, he rigorously divided his day into periods of meditation, writing, exercise, and family life. He wrote most of his books in a small cabin at the family summer home in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania during the summer break at Earlham. He often said, paraphrasing Mark Twain, that the way to write is to apply the seat of your trousers to your chair and pick up your pen without waiting for inspiration.
David Elton Trueblood died on December 20, 1994, at 94 years old. His obituary is featured in the New York Times. His cremains are interred at Teague Library in the Lily Building on the campus of Earlham College.
References:
James R. Newby. Elton Trueblood: Believer, Teacher, and Friend. (San Francisco: Harper and Row) 1990.
Elton Trueblood. While It Is Day: An Autobiography. (Richmond, IN: Yokefellow Press) 1974.
Senator Richard Lugar. Memorial Statements made before Congress. (Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 20 (Wednesday, February 1, 1995)]
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1995-02-01/html/CREC-1995-02-01-pt1-PgS1872.htm
Saxon, Wolfgang (23 December 1994). “Elton Trueblood, 94, Scholar Who Wrote Theological Works”. The New York Times. Retrieved March 25, 2022
Notable Works by Elton Trueblood:
The Predicament of Modern Man, Alternative to Futility, Foundations for Reconstruction, Signs of Hope, The Logic of Belief, Philosophy of Religion, Robert Barclay, Abraham Lincoln: Theologian of American Anguish, The Idea of College, The People called Quakers, The Incendiary Fellowship, The Trustworthiness of Religious Experience, A Place to Stand, Your Other Vocation, and The Humor of Christ.
