Regarding My Father and What He Called “The Imbroglio at Green Lane …”

The Pine Crest debacle may never get a proper hearing. What forum would ever be the appropriate one? My father sent a lot a material to the A/G archives, but I doubt that stuff will appear in public in my lifetime if I wait for someone there to do something. However, I have a copy of what my Dad sent them, so I decided to take action myself. I was for a while trying to gather as much material as I could for research into the history of Pentecostal higher education in the Northeast; I had hoped to publish at least a partial overview.

Having discovered some recent correspondence between my father and a couple of former students. I am again motivated to pursue this project. I am trying to take care not to turn this into a personal vendetta, although I have my own personal history with Valley Forge Christian College that complicates such effort.

Bottom line is this - my father managed not to become cynical about the A/G and his faith remained intact. That perseverance on his part has been a major influence on my own manner of coping with the institutional follies which [others] have experienced. I may not have been able to keep the bitterness and anger at bay as well as my father, but my faith in God remains fairly firm.

I was a student at Evangel College (now University, following the recent headlong rush of Pentecostal institutions of higher education to distinguish themselves academically in order to shed the anti-intellectual heritage still clinging odoriferously to the whole movement) when I first heard my father speak about "The Making of a Cynic." He was there at the school to present a series of lectures as a Staley Scholar and I remember trying to attend as many of his appearances as my schedule allowed.

The phrase I most clearly recall is that "faith begins in one's imagination." My father emphasized that the imagination was also the beginning place for cynicism. He compared and contrasted two disciples of Jesus - Judas and Thomas. Both had followed Jesus throughout his entire ministry on earth and were especially chosen to be included in the Twelve. Both saw and heard all Jesus did and taught. Both were given, with the Twelve, authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out and to heal every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. Both were sent with the others to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing. Both were among those whose feet Jesus washed and to whom Jesus gave bread and wine symbolizing his death. Yet one betrayed Jesus while the other proclaimed him Lord and God. Why?

My father, after considering the biblical evidence, concluded that it was a function of faith as filtered through each one's imagination. I will not try to reconstruct the whole of what my father said. My point is to say that I can see in my father's life this same process of faithful imagination guarding him against becoming cynical himself. God knows he had plenty of opportunity to have done otherwise.

I want to speak the truth about how my father remained faithful in the face of institutional perfidy, but I want to speak the truth in love, else my words will just be clanging the cymbals hanging about the hallowed heads of those representing institutional hierarchy. Remembrance requires respect, so I am reconsidering all I know about my father's life and doing so in the context of his steadfastly faithful witness to the wise and loving Lordship of Jesus Christ.

- Craig R. Tavani, August 2006