A Radical on Campus

When I returned to school that fall, the first thing I did was drive to Manitou, and resign my position as their preacher.  My excuse was that I wanted to concentrate on academics, which was true enough.  In retrospect I think it was one of the wisest things I did during my senior year.  I could have really messed things up in the church at Manitou if I had continued to preach for them.

At school I was respectful of my teachers.  I recognized the validity of their scholarship, and I also knew I couldn’t hold my own with them if I started an argument in class.

It was a different story with my fellow students.   I badgered them and tried to get them to see my point of view.  Sometimes it created hard feelings.   There was one guy who really gave me a lot of trouble.  His name was Rollo Tinkler.  Rollo was older than me, and he had just returned to Abilene to work on his Master’s Degree.   When Rollo started that fall semester, he was a proponent of the same kind of belligerence that I had adopted.

In the middle of the first semester, he attended a debate over “the issues” and was converted on the spot.  He set out to convert me to his point of view.   I may have been a religious radical, but I was also a young, single college student.  I was interested in girls and a social life.   One of the places where my social life took place was in the “Grill” – a short order restaurant on campus.  Since I was living at home, I didn’t eat in the “Bean,” – the college cafeteria.  I usually had a hamburger in the Grill.  Rollo would spot me, pull up a chair and start hammering on me.  The “Grill” had a double meaning.  It was the place where I got “grilled.”   But he didn’t stop there.  Even though he was older, he was still single, and he was dating the girls.  I was dating a young lady who lived in Zellner Hall.  When you went to pick up your date, you left your name with the receptionist, and she would page your date.  Most of the time the girls made us wait for a while before they came down.  On more than one occasion Rollo would call for his date at the same time, and we were into it until our dates came.  I tried avoiding him, but he turned up everywhere I went.

After graduation, he wrote me an eleven page single spaced typewritten letter in which he aggressively promoted his viewpoint. I had already begun to question my radicalism before I graduated.  My first church after graduation was a congregation that was not bothered by “the issues.”  I was determined not to be a source of contention in the church, so I kept my mouth shut about the views I had picked up in Houston.  Rollo’s letter pretty much convinced me that I had (1) been wrong in my attitudes and (2) argued for positions that were untenable.  Theologically I went through a rough couple of years.