A Season to . . .
Celebrate!
100 YEARS
of Baptist Student Union at Wake Forest University
By Chris Towles CBFNC Campus Minister at Wake Forest University
T
here are many like me, for whom collegiate ministry has had a meaningful impact during our formative years. Thus, I have long admired the vision of CBFNC for emphasizing campus ministry. Back in the early 90s my own college minister asked me questions that helped me grow spiritually and broaden my view of faith. Collegiate ministry stretched my view of faith beyond myself and my local church community to examine what it means to incarnate the mission and love of Christ. The ministry I do now is a continuation and re-visioning of the ministry I received as a student. Through the work of CBFNC, Baptist campus ministry continues to have a presence on North Carolina college campuses as Cooperative Baptist Student Fellowship and other ministries. This year, we celebrate a milestone of Baptist campus ministry at Wake Forest University: the 100th anniversary of the Baptist Student Union (BSU). As we are planning ways in which to mark this milestone, I reached out to some alumni of Wake Forest BSU and asked what were some of the critical issues during their time in college. Looking through the experiences of our alumni spanning from the 50s to the 2000s, it looks like the threads that tie our celebration together involve the places where our ministry has been on critical issues, the inclusivity of the group and the broader world views students gained as a part of their spiritual maturing. Several responded back about their time when segregation was the main issue. One talked about how in 1957 a major issue was dancing, but that by 1960 the issue was WFU students’ participation with WSSU students in the sit-in demonstration at Woolworths protesting racial segregation. This reminded me of how the late, long-time Chaplain Emeritus Ed Christman would often talk about the subversive role Baptist students played in integration at Wake. 12 | The Gathering
Wake Forest Baptist Student Union memories through the years as seen in past yearbooks.
Because the Board of Trustees at that time did not want to desegregate, Chaplain Christman and others decided to bring a student from Africa to Wake. “Surely the school could not object to a student who had been the result of Baptist missions!” Christman would say. Edward Reynolds from Ghana was this student, making Wake Forest University the first private college in the south to integrate. Reynolds’ faith had been nurtured by Baptist missionaries in Africa so Christman arranged to have him room with Joe Clontz, who was the BSU president at the time. The other suitemates were also BSU members. Some alumni remembered the period when Wake Forest struggled with its relationship to the NC Baptist State Convention, changes in the Southern Baptist Convention
