Charles Benton Eavey was a university professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology and Education at Wheaton College from 1930-1942. He was mostly known as the author of diverse and widely-read Christian educational textbooks.
Background
Charles Benton Eavey was born on November 29, 1889, in Hagerstown, Maryland, United States. He was the oldest of four children born to Michael Vinton Eavey and Sadie Downs. Leaving behind the family farm while their first born, Charles Benton, was still very young, Michael and Sadie moved west, eventually settling in Brown County of Northeastern Kansas. There they had three more children, younger sisters of Benton. The Eaveys were farmers and as the son grew and became increasingly responsible for the farm, the father offered little affirmation or encouragement.
Education
Benton was educated in the Brethren in Christ Academy, Messiah Bible School. Here, from 1912 to 1916, Benton made up for lost time academically, mastering his study of the Bible, algebra, the Latin and Greek classics, and the natural sciences—the standard curriculum of the “academy” or secondary school since the late 19th century.
The year following World War I, Benton studied at the University of Strausbourg.
Benton furthered his education at Taylor University, which had been founded as Fort Wayne Female College by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1846 but became coeducational soon thereafter and, by the 1880’s, was relocated to Upland. In the decade prior to the Eavey’s arrival, Taylor University had experienced numerical growth despite its indebtedness and lack of visionary planning. Evangelists such as Paul Rader and E. Stanley Jones had commended Taylor to national audiences as one of a growing number of educational institutions committed to stemming the tide of modernism. Taylor’s long-time professor of philosophy, Burt Ayers, may have also attracted Benton’s enrollment. Once on campus, the student literary society inspired Benton’s contributions. His philosophical essay on the nature of “The Beautiful” may have received a hearing at graduation.
After just two years in Upland, Benton was able to graduate with both Bachelors and Masters degrees in hand (1922). Having focused his studies on philosophy and education, his rapid progress toward these degrees was aided by credit granted for his studies abroad and by the practice, in those days, of granting masters degrees for one year of study beyond the bachelor’s level (together with the successful completion of a research paper). Benton’s love for and independent pursuit of learning was thus awarded, and a strong recommendation from Professor Ayers would be forthcoming when Benton later needed it.
By 1925 he had begun spending his summers studying for an advanced degree—pursuing coursework at both Columbia and New York Universities—and setting his sites on new horizons. Continuing to excel in his studies of psychology and education, Eavey completed his Ph.D. dissertation—“A Study of the relation of the doctor’s degree in the field of education to preparation for the teaching of undergraduate education”—graduating from NYU before his 41st birthday, in 1930.
In 1916 Benton received an offer of a teaching position at Messiah Academy. During his first year of teaching (literature and mathematics), Benton made a favorable impression on the small Messiah student body (then only about 4 dozen students), becoming known as a friend and a counselor. He particularly impressed one student, Mabel Wengert, and received regular dinner invitations to the Pennsylvania Dutch family farm where she had been raised.
By the end of his first year as a Messiah instructor (spring 1917) Benton and Mabel had announced their engagement, but Benton also announced his plans to travel to Europe in support of the allied offensive (of World War 1). Although there was no military draft in those days, many young men of Benton’s generation felt compelled to join the fight against the powers—Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey—then known as the “Central Axis.” Firmly committed to his Church’s (Brethren in Christ) pacifism, Benton served as a conscientious objector in the French medical corps, caring for the sick and wounded while managing military personnel records.
During this brief sojourn to Europe (1918-1919) Benton learned enough French to enable him to study at the University of Strausbourg the year following the war. Keeping in contact with his fiancée by mail, Benton returned home just days before their June wedding in 1920.
Grantham would be home for the newlyweds for their first year of marriage: here, Benton and Mabel established a home on Christian principles and gave birth to their first child, Miriam, and here a teaching position for Benton would always be open. He would continue teaching at Messiah, but not before furthering his education at Taylor University. Six weeks after the birth of their firstborn, the Eaveys packed up and moved west to the cornfields of east-central Indiana, to the small town of Upland where they set up housekeeping in the tiny attic apartment of an off-campus house.
In the summer of 1922 the Eaveys returned to Grantham, Pennsylvania, home of Messiah—now chartered a Junior college—and also the Brethren in Christ who had nurtured Eavey in his youth. Here at his alma mater, then, Benton would answer the call to teach and to have his own contribution woven into the rich tapestry of Messiah traditions. The couple’s desire to put down roots in Grantham is apparent from their decision to purchase old Treona Hall, formerly an orphanage, and to open its rooms as a residence hall for Messiah students, with Benton and Mabel serving as house parents. Benton also assisted struggling students, helping them to find jobs, to improve their study habits, to arrange for transfer credit, and anything else that might keep them enrolled.
Professor Eavey became known for frequent exams and a low level of tolerance for distractions from his lectures. As preceptor (hall director), moreover, he required strict residence hall conduct, including a 10:00 pm lights out rule. On the other hand, Professor Eavey would also be remembered for his peripatetic style of teaching—leading students on “French walks” (to broaden their vocabulary with examples from nature) and exploratory hikes into the Pennsylvania countryside. His involvement with all aspects of campus life led rather naturally to administrative responsibilities, first as “college department” head (Messiah also continued to offer secondary-level preparatory studies) and later as the college registrar and vice president.
During these years at Messiah (1922-1928), Benton’s administrative style and manner of relating to colleagues set a pattern for which he would become known throughout his career in higher Christian education. Not yet seven years into his teaching career at Messiah, Benton tendered his resignation.
In the summer of 1928 the Eavey family —now numbering five (a son, Harold, was born in 1924 and another daughter, Anna Marie, in 1926)—moved to Woodstown, New Jersey where Benton took a job teaching high school French.
In 1930 Eavey family would undertake a second journey westward, this time to Wheaton and to a position that must have seemed like miraculous provision given the times. In the fall, Eavey would begin serving as Professor and Chair of the Department of Psychology and Education at a substantial salary increase. Eavey’s administrative gifts and his burden to help struggling students came together in his organization and management of an Appointment (placement) Bureau for Wheaton undergrads, and through his service to the Student Personnel division of the college.
Eavey’s service at Wheaton during the early to mid-1930s was busy and fulfilling as he contributed to the securing of various accreditations, while developing his own department and courses. On his arrival he was invited to address the faculty on “the improvement of teaching” and the incoming freshmen on “how to study in college,” and he would continue to offer these seminars throughout his years at Wheaton.
Under Eavey’s administration, the Department of Education and Psychology expanded, adding courses and eventually a major in Christian education. Since no national honor society for the discipline of Christian education existed, Benton founded and sponsored Chi Sigma Theta, by which he planned to involve his own students in a national network of evangelical Christian educators. His reputation as Professor of Psychology grew such that, by the late 1930s, most Wheaton College sophomores were required to enroll in Professor Eavey’s Mental Hygiene course. When the time came for him to make his case for tenure, Eavey had published his first textbook, Principles of Teaching for Christian Teachers (1940).
Despite these and other significant contributions to Wheaton College, Professor Eavey never received tenure and in fact was forced to resign from his position in 1942. Eavey’s lost bid for tenure at Wheaton, however, should not be interpreted as a personal failure. As early as 1935, circumstances which formerly made Wheaton a good match for Eavey had begun to change. These circumstances centered on the withdrawal of support for the administration of President Buswell, whose public advocacy of radical separatism in reaction to modernizing trends within the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. had outraged some influential Wheaton College constituents. While the negative press concerning Buswell’s Presbyterian Church struggles may have had little effect on Eavey’s daily experience, memos he exchanged with the President throughout the later 1930’s point to increasing tensions in their working relations.
After ten years as President, Buswell had seriously overextended the college on several fronts, including financially (the College’s enrollment outran its endowment), and spiritually (Buswell’s administration tended to subordinate spiritual concerns to collegiate advancement). In 1936, for example, Eavey wrote to advise the President to give Coach Smith (an internal candidate) a “free hand” as head football coach instead of seeking “an outside expert.” Buswell’s decision to hire the “outside expert” became controversial and the new coach became a foil for criticism aimed at the President. In 1938, for another example, in order meet the needs of rapidly increasing enrollment, Buswell asked Eavey to teach French (as Eavey had done at Messiah) until a slated financial drive could secure the necessary funds to add new faculty.
When Eavey objected that his administrative duties (in the College Personnel and Student Appointment Bureaus) made compliance with the request impossible, Buswell simply recommended that Eavey no longer consider himself an administrative officer, noting “your future personal development really lies in the teaching field”. For his part, Eavey responded negatively to Buswell’s 1939 survey regarding faculty satisfaction with the President. And in 1940, a letter from Eavey to the trustees was one of several calling for Buswell’s resignation. The trustees replaced Buswell with V. Raymond Edman that very year, but the year following Eavey and several of his faculty colleagues were notified that they would not be receiving contracts for the following year. This decision was in keeping with the new president’s fiscal restraint but perhaps also with his desire to reshape the faculty along new lines. Eavey had found a home at Wheaton during an era of educational progressivism but would not be invited to remain under the new administration. As a parting concession, President Edman granted all three Eavey children tuition exemptions at Wheaton.
A final letter from Eavey to President Edman mentions his “gathering up the broken pieces” as he searched for a new position. At age fifty-three, with a questionable (to conservatives) educational pedigree and no tenure, there were in fact few places in academia that would welcome him now. Although Eavey took with him a strong letter of recommendation from President Edman for another academic position, he worked odd jobs as a laborer before securing a salaried position in the personnel department of a large, Chicago-based corporation. In his new place of business, no longer inundated by the many people and projects that occupied his time at Wheaton, the former professor was free to reorganize his teaching notes into textbooks, of which he published more than a dozen before his death, at age 85, in 1974.
In his youth, Benton encouraged his family to join the Pleasant Hill congregation of the Brethren in Christ Church. There he encountered Christ in a life-changing way, and was likely discipled by the pastor or another adult male of the congregation.
Personality
Eavey had a keen intelligence, goal-driven orientation, and diligent work ethic. A “late bloomer” in Christ, the advent of God’s grace in Eavey’s late adolescence enabled him to glean much good from his challenging early-life experiences. In farming he discovered gifts of administrative management and acquired a love for gardening that would stay with him throughout his life. The quality and success of his later writings show that he likely read and journalled extensively throughout his youth. Out of the necessity of encouraging his sisters in their education, he found that he was able to teach. The importance of teaching and of “shaping” the young, moreover, became foremost in his thinking. His own struggle to grow up in Christ against a tide of negative influence had opened his eyes to the need for a systematic understanding of parenting and developmental psychology. Parental influence, in his view, had nothing less than an eternal impact.
His European experiences seasoned Benton’s teaching with interesting stories and a dry sense of humor. His natural inclination to befriend students found many opportunities. His steadfast desire to serve and to be helpful was not always balanced with relational or conflict management skills. His authoritarian approach to leadership, moreover, was perceived by some to be harsh and controlling. E. Morris Sider’s Messiah College: A History, notes that before accepting any position, Eavey “laid out the conditions by which he would operate—in other words his own job description.” It should be recalled, however, that Eavey was also nurtured in a Brethren culture known for its avoidance of conflict in order to keep peace.
Connections
In 1920 Charles Eavey married Mabel Wengert, daughter of Adam Henry Wengert and Mary Spayd. The couple had three children - Miriam, Harold, and Anna Marie.