The Good and the Beautiful: Charles and Laura Thigpen’s Commitment to Excellence
In April of 2015, I was privileged to spend two days with Charles and Laura Thigpen in their beautiful Byron, Georgia home. I interviewed them about their time at Free Will Baptist Bible College. During my visit, we covered everything from institutional planning to course work. Since then, my appreciation for them has only deepened. The Thigpens are committed to giving their best to God in everything they do, always striving for excellence. This emphasis is evident in their lives and in their work at Free Will Baptist Bible College, where they tried their best to instill an appreciation for the good and the beautiful.
The Path to Free Will Baptist Bible College
Charles Thigpen and Laura Coker graduated from Bob Jones College (now Bob Jones University; hereafter BJC) in 1947. Charles earned a B.A. in Bible and English, while Laura’s degree was in speech and English. Their years at the Christian liberal arts college were formative for both of them, encouraging a life of excellence and appreciation for high culture in the areas of, for example, art, drama, literature, and music. Laura recalls that this reinforced and expanded on the cultural heritage she had received during her childhood in rural South Carolina.
After graduation, the couple married and moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where Charles had pastored a Southern Methodist church during his senior year at BJC. Once there, the couple saw many come to Christ under their ministry. During this time, they also worked with young people and felt that God was leading them further in that direction.
This calling was confirmed a year later when L.C. Johnson sent them a telegraph, asking if they would consider teaching English, Bible, and Christian education courses at a small Bible college in Nashville, Tennessee. After meeting with Johnson and praying seriously about the opportunity, Charles and Laura accepted the positions at Free Will Baptist Bible College.
The couple moved to Nashville in 1948. When they arrived, they taught a wide range of courses, and Charles found himself heavily involved in administration. In 1953, the Thigpens left the college to pastor Highland Park Free Will Baptist Church in Michigan. However, four years later they returned to the college where they remained until 1991.[1]
The Thigpens maintain that Johnson established the overall character and emphasis of the college. However, they reinforced the work he began and helped expand the school into new directions. Part of this work involved cultivating in students a concern for beauty and excellence, incorporating these qualities into the academic and social lives of the students.
Charles’s Demand for Excellence
Charles filled a variety of important roles at Free Will Baptist Bible College, including professor, registrar, dean of students, president, and chancellor. While his work in each of these fields is worth studying, this essay will focus on his stint as academic dean. He held this position for over twenty years (1957-79). As academic dean, Charles oversaw the academic and social lives of students, as well as curriculum development and faculty hiring.
Charles always looked for ways to expand the curriculum. He thought that the female students of the college ought to be prepared for acquiring good paying jobs. For this reason, he pushed for the college to expand into teacher education (TE). He worked tirelessly to develop this program, making sure that the state of Tennessee would accept their graduates in the public-school system. Public schools provided good incomes for women and opened doors for reaching unsaved children.
However, expanding the college’s curriculum didn’t mean that the college was abandoning its purpose. Rather, the school was enhancing its ability to train Christian workers.[2] In his 1979 inaugural address, Charles emphasized the theistic worldview that undergirded everything taught at Free Will Baptist Bible College. He stated that the Bible was the “integrating principle for the entire curriculum.”[3] Beyond providing Biblically-based education, he argued that 1 Corinthians 10:31 required Christians to approach each subject and class period with excellence.
Charles wanted the college be excellent in every way, including in its administration. As academic dean, he supervised the work of teachers and hired new employees. He was always looking for potential professors who could help develop and expand the school’s ability to train students. During his tenure, he hired Laura Bell Barnard and Laverne Miley to teach missions and William Henry Oliver to lead the fledgling TE program.
Part of Charles’s responsibilities also related to faculty remuneration. Although he rarely critiques his alma mater, Charles felt that BJC did not pay its faculty well enough. Therefore, he tried his best to make sure that Free Will Baptist Bible College paid its employees as much as possible. In addition, he made sure that women were paid on the same scale as men with the same qualifications because he thought it wrong to do otherwise.
Excellence was a touchstone for Charles Thigpen as academic dean. He tirelessly worked to expand the college’s curriculum so that an ever-broader swath of Free Will Baptist students could be served. However, he was also determined to hold the college to its organizing principles and thus made sure that each course was taught from a Christian worldview. For him, doing all things to the glory of God extended even to the college’s administration.
Laura’s Demand for the Good and the Beautiful
When Laura graduated from BJC in 1947, the administration invited her to return as a speech teacher the following year. However, because she and Charles thought BJC’s remuneration was not sufficient, she declined their offer. She was nonetheless very eager for opportunities to teach. When Johnson approached her and Charles about coming to Nashville, she was elated about the opportunity.
Laura’s influence was felt immediately. Prior to her arrival, English literature courses focused on “literary personages and works most related to the history of the Christian Church and to the history of the English Bible.”[4] In these early courses, literature’s importance was limited to its Christian content. The beauty and excellence of the work wasn’t a central concern.
Under Laura’s teaching, literature was studied, not only for its content, but its aesthetic excellence. The college catalog description for her 1948-49 World Literature course highlights this change: “An outline study of some of the world masterpieces with a view of creating taste for and interest in the minds of the students for gaining a knowledge of the worthwhile literary gems of ancient medieval and modern masters.”[5] Her approach to literature shifted away from engaging art merely for its Christian content. Instead, literature was also important for cultivating aesthetic appreciation and cultural awareness.
Beyond teaching speech and literature, Laura directed two, three-act plays each year. The plays were performed under a tent next to Davidson Hall, because there was no auditorium. Laura worked around these difficulties to create the most excellent production possible. For example, she was determined to have a light dimmer for her stage. After working on the problem for a while with her light man Billy Melvin, they discovered that by dipping the electrical cord for the light into a bowl of salt water they could sufficiently dim the light to meet their needs—a dangerous but creative solution.
Once a month, she directed a Vesper service on Sunday afternoon, inviting people from the area to come. These programs incorporated music, speech, and drama to teach Biblical subjects. She taught students to evangelize and edify through drama that was excellent in quality. Out of her work in drama, Laura developed the Evangels travel team. She intended for the group to perform dramas that could be easily adapted to local church settings, in hopes that they would encourage churches to perform their own dramas with excellence.
Laura Thigpen’s influence on the development of Free Will Baptist Bible College cannot be overstated. She was a demanding professor who expected the best from her students. Her courses were designed to stretch students and introduce them to new worlds. In the process, she cultivated in them an appreciation for the good and the beautiful, to be pursued with excellence. She expected nothing less from the creative output of the school. Drama productions were not simply about evangelism, but were works of art to be performed to the glory of God. Her efforts dovetailed well with Johnson’s and Charles’s aims for the college and fleshed them out before the student body.
Closing
Charles and Laura Thigpen are a unique couple. Their commitment to excellence is an act of obedience to God. For them, bringing Him glory in all things meant that their work as educators must be excellent. Charles applied this to the college’s administration for decades, helping to build a strong college that taught every subject from a Christian worldview. Laura applied the Christian worldview in her courses, emphasizing the good, excellent, and beautiful in literature and drama. Both continue to serve as wonderful examples for me and for all who have had the privilege to know them.
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[1] For further biographical information on the Thigpens, see Jackson Watts’s excellent sketch of their lives in ONE Magazine.
[2] See Free Will Baptist Bible College Charter.
[3] Charles Thigpen, “The College Drama,” presented October 2, 1979, Nashville, TN, in Free Will Baptist Bible College Bulletin 27, no. 5 (September/October, 1979).
[4] Free Will Baptist Bible College Catalog: 1943-1944 (Nashville, TN: Free Will Baptist Bible College, 1943), 10.
[5] Free Will Baptist Bible College Catalog: 1948-1949 (Nashville, TN: Free Will Baptist Bible College, 1948), 24.
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