Ostrander, Rick 1965–

views updated

Ostrander, Rick 1965–

(Richard Ostrander)

PERSONAL:

Born 1965; married; children: four. Education: University of Michigan, B.A., 1990; Moody Bible Institute, B.A., 1990; University of Notre Dame, M.A., 1992, Ph.D., 1996. Hobbies and other interests: Cycling.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Office of Academic Affairs, John Brown University, 2000 W. University St., Siloam Springs, AR 72761. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, educator. Grand Canyon University, Phoenix, AZ, former assistant professor of history; John Brown University, Siloam Springs, AR, assistant professor of history, 1997-2002, dean of undergraduate studies, 2002—. Fulbright Seminar Scholar, University of Wurzburg, 2004.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Teagle fellow.

WRITINGS:

The Life of Prayer in a World of Science: Protestants, Prayer, and American Culture, 1870-1930, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2000.

Head, Heart, and Hand: John Brown University and Modern Evangelical Higher Education, University of Arkansas Press (Fayetteville, AR), 2003.

SIDELIGHTS:

Rick Ostrander is dean of undergraduate studies at John Brown University, a private, Christian university established in 1919 in Siloam Springs, Arkansas. He has written The Life of Prayer in a World of Science: Protestants, Prayer, and American Culture, 1870-1930, and Head, Heart, and Hand: John Brown University and Modern Evangelical Higher Education. "Ostrander," Lyle W. Dorsett wrote in the Journal of Southern History, "is a talented historian who is making important contributions to our understanding of American religious and cultural history."

Ostrander was inspired to write The Life of Prayer in a World of Science by a 1930 article from Christian Century magazine. The article stated that Protestants had long used prayer as a way to ask God to intervene in their affairs. But after Charles Darwin, few leading Protestants believed that prayer could change something like the weather, which was controlled by scientific laws. Ostrander wondered why Protestants had come to disbelieve that prayer could affect the material world. In his introduction to the book, Ostrander raised the assassination of President James Garfield in 1881 as an example of unanswered prayer that particularly shook the nation. Wounded by an assassin's bullet, Garfield lingered for months while the nation prayed for his recovery. But the president finally died from his wound, leaving many to wonder about the power of prayer. "Twenty years later," Ostrander wrote in the introduction to The Life of Prayer in a World of Science, "another American president, William McKinley, was shot by an assassin. Once again, the nation was overcome with schok and outrage, and prayers rang out for the president's recovery. In the days following, doctors confidently predicted that McKinley would survive, but he died a week later. TheIndependent, a mainline Protestant magazine, undoubtedly spoke for many American Christians when it asked in its editorial, ‘But What Became of the Prayers?’" Ostrander argues in his study that modern Protestants adjusted their conception about how God intervened in their lives. Instead of violating natural laws, God worked through those laws. "Prayer as an active means of communication between individuals and a personal God is deeply embedded in classical Western religion," wrote the critic for the American Historical Review. "How changing cultural and intellectual assumptions transformed it is the crux of Ostrander's story, and it is a central story in the great early twentieth-century debate over religion and modernity." "Ostrander makes an excellent contribution to the history of liberal Protestantism as well as the history of the theology and practice of prayer," P.C. Kemeny wrote in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History.

In Head, Heart, and Hand, Ostrander wrote a history not only of the school where he teaches but a history of evangelical education in the twentieth century. As George M. Marsden wrote in the book's foreword: "The history of John Brown University, which Rick Ostrander here engagingly portrays, is part of a larger history of a recovery of a Christian heritage…. The story of John Brown, with some details changed, could be the story of any one of dozens of evangelical colleges in America today. It is the story of a small but significant revolution taking place at the grassroots of American higher education." The title of the book refers to John Brown University's traditional emphasis on intellectual, spiritual, and practical training of its students. The school has also taken an open-minded approach to religious teaching, tolerating a range of beliefs. Ostrander points out that because of this approach, the university has more in common with northern evangelical institutions than with those in the South. "This is a well-organized book that is exceptionally readable for an institutional history," Dorsett concluded.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, December, 2001, review of The Life of Prayer in a World of Science: Protestants, Prayer, and American Culture, 1870-1930.

Church History, June, 2004, James Findlay, review of Head, Heart, and Hand: John Brown University and Modern Evangelical Higher Education, p. 454.

Journal of Ecclesiastical History, April, 2003, P.C. Kemeny, review of The Life of Prayer in a World of Science, p. 385.

Journal of Religion, July, 2002, Heather Curtis, review of The Life of Prayer in a World of Science, p. 459; April, 2005, Stephen R. Haynes, review of Head, Heart, and Hand, p. 320.

Journal of Southern History, February, 2006, Lyle W. Dorsett, review of Head, Heart, and Hand, p. 219.