John Crocker, Jr, A Rebirth of Freedom: The Calling of an American Historian, Thomas Payne Govan, 1907-1979, Xlibris Press 2005, Hardcover, 592pp, $26.99, ISBN: 1413430627

Reviewed by David K Fly

The historian Thomas Payne Govan once said that the genius of Anglicanism is summed up in the preface to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer: "There was never anything by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in the continuance of time hath not been corrupted." In other words, says his biographer John Crocker, Jr., "No matter how perfect a creation, humans will corrupt it." As a result, reform is always and continually necessary, in church and state. Govan, historian and theologian, spent his life dealing with the question of how freedom and order could be achieved simultaneously. Crocker's excellent book comes at an important time in the history of our nation and of the church, a time of competing fundamentalisms both sacred and secular.

Govan taught American history for eleven years at the University of the South (Sewanee), interrupted by three years as an Army historian during World War II. In 1952, he left Sewanee on a fellowship. Because the University refused to desegregate its Episcopal Seminary, he never returned. On moral grounds, he had given up the history department chairmanship and a full professor's salary and tenure. After two years as an adjunct professor at Tulane, Govan became The Episcopal Church's Executive Secretary for Faculty Work, where he had a major impact on the Church's thinking about higher education. Finally, in 1962, he returned to teaching history as a tenured full professor at New York University. In 1967 he moved to the University of Oregon for his last ten years.

Govan's uniqueness lay in his evolution as a historian and theologian. As a historian, he was preoccupied with the nature of human freedom and justice and how they can be maintained within the political order. As a Hamiltonian conservative he believed that people and their institutions were sinful, governed in part by human "passions, ambitions, avarice and self interest" and therefore neither could be trusted with unrestrained power. Humans were a mixture of good and evil and therefore true human freedom was limited freedom, and it must include restraints that came from government and law, checks and balances of power. He rejected all fundmentalisms whether secular, economic, or political, because they were the enemy of human freedom and of justice.

Tom Govan's work with the Episcopal Church came at the high point of the Church's interest in and commitment to ministry in higher education. John Crocker reports that in a matter of ten years (1945 to 1955), the number of college and university chaplains tripled. The national budget for college ministry was over $1 million by the late 1950's with over 350 chaplains, many of them supported by seed money from the national Church's budget. However, the missing ingredient was ministry to faculty members. Tom was uniquely qualified. He was a layman and a university professor. He had not grown up in the Episcopal Church but had come to his faith as an adult convert who, Crocker says, "saw religion as one aspect of the multifaceted but unified and mysterious creation of God."

Govan wrote, "The church and the university are not rivals. They are allies in a common cause which is described as the service and glory of God and the freedom of mankind." He believed that the Church's focus should be upon a ministry that served the whole university. During his years as Executive Secretary for Faculty Work, he was instrumental in shifting the focus of ministry in higher education from dealing exclusively with students to ministry to the entire institution. Through regional conferences for faculty, meetings with college and university presidents and deans, and national study conferences, Tom Govan's work had a profound impact on the church's ministry.

John Crocker, former Episcopal Chaplain at Brown University and MIT, has written a remarkable biography of his friend and mentor. It is the history of a man who came to his calling as a historian early in life and whose encounter with Anglicanism deepened that calling with Christian purpose. He opens a window to offer an honest look at the journey of Tom Govan's life, the pain and isolation that sometimes comes with strongly held moral convictions, and the story of his lifelong marriage with his partner, Jane. As one of his students wrote, "his religion was not simply a series of beliefs, or simply a way of acting, but informed every aspect of himself and his world and his own place in it. So, his political philosophy arose . . . from his religious convictions rather than the other way around . . . You cannot understand Tom Govan at all without understanding that."

The historian Jacques Barzun at Columbia University once said to his friend Tom Govan that he had given up orthodox Christian faith because of the narrow sectarianism of the churches which, he felt, excluded rather than included, condemned rather than forgave, was rigid rather than flexible, and rejected paradox and irony in the name of true doctrine. Crocker concludes, "Govan surely responded that it was for all of those reasons that he was an Episcopalian." Thanks to John Crocker, Tom Govan still speaks to a nation and a church in need of his wisdom.

[The Covenant Journal, Number 24, March 2007]

David Fly, a retired priest, has served as a parish rector and as a full-time campus minister. He is the author of "Faces of Faith: Reflections in a Rearview Mirror."

Reprinted from NEVERTHELESS: A Texas Church Review, XVI, 1. With permission.