| In 1957, Abilene Christian College (ACC), supported by the Church of Christ, launched its first series of summer refresher courses for high school teachers named the American Studies Program. The idea of teaching “Americanism” and free enterprise from a conservative perspective followed the lead of George Benson's National Education Program and other similar educational efforts sponsored by the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce. The NAM believed that it was engaged in a battle for the soul of American education and sought to promote its version of the American way of life on the college campus. These efforts coincided with a post-war boom in higher education that offered both opportunities and financial challenges for an increasing number of small colleges like ACC. Consequently, the introduction of colleges to corporate and foundation leaders who could help improve the effectiveness of their development programs became an important incentive for starting an American Studies program.;Influenced by Benson's methods and by the utilitarian values that a rapidly growing church and a dramatically changed post-war society seemed to demand, ACC development officials and administrators built a “case for giving” around the American Studies Program. It became an important promotional tool and indicates the extent to which the post-war evolution of ACC—including appeals to corporate America, a drive for academic respectability, and political activism—helped shape the future of the school and the supporting church body. While continuing to proclaim the principles of the restored church, the Church of Christ, the more sectarian wing of the Stone-Campbell Movement, organized, built buildings, supported missionaries in foreign fields, embraced war and politics, and fought what it considered to be one of the greatest threats to Christianity: atheistic communism. Ironically, these efforts undermined the separateness that had defined the denomination. The sanctification of conservative politics was a part of this process, but William Whyte's “organization man” also characterized the pragmatic values that ACC officials brought to the task of building a college. By the 1960s, some students and faculty at ACC recognized this irony, calling for a more radical separateness from what they considered to be a morally bankrupt culture. |
