Expressions of gratitude for Randolph Crump Miller

Religious Education, Fall 2002 by Little, Sara A

On March 11, 2001, Randolph Crump Miller wrote me a letter which I cherish (along with many others). He says, "My typewriter is gone and my handwriting shows my age (90). . . ." Then he went on to write about his life in the retirement center in Hamden, about his wife Lib's driving him to see their five daughters who lived within 40 to 50 miles from them. He wrote about other things in his letter too, primarily about a visit Charles (Chuck) Melchert and I and several others were trying to work out with him. I wish we had gone!

Two or three personal memories may help set the stage for a brief look at his contributions to religious education. I remember our conversations about the hours he spent at his manual typewriter where he produced his books and did his editorial work for Religious Education. I remember him doing his proof-reading himself (he was good at it) to save money for Religious Education. And I especially remember our annual dinner at APRRE and REA meetings, when he always took me as his guest to the delightful places he chose. At our last three-hour dinner in Chicago, we talked about many things-life and death and hope and the Hemlock Society and own feelings about what was going on in educational ministry.

Another memory: after I retired from Union Seminary in Richmond, I spent 2 1/2 years as professor and then interim dean at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. My office looked out across "Holy Hill" to the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, the Episcopal School where Randy taught for many years before going to Yale in 1952. As I was working on an article for the issue of Panorama dedicated to Randy, in 1990-91, I thought of all I had learned, first hand, about his time there, from Donn Morgan, dean and president, and others. Randy had been campus minister for the University of California at Berkeley, as well as professor and parish priest. The current priest spoke of Randy's days there as remembered by parishioners with enthusiasm for their church and appreciation for Randy's leadership.

I must not leave personal memories without recalling the hospitality of the Miller home. Randy and Lib Fowlkes were married in 1950. His first wife, Muriel, died of polio. A new chapter began in 1952, when Lib and Randy and their combined family of six children moved to Yale. Lib was so crucial to the hospitality students experienced at Yale, so much a part of who Randy was, that we honor her with affection and admiration. Yale students still remember the evenings of Miller hospitality with good food, good conversation (Luther Allan Weigle was often a guest and a part of that conversation, as were other visitors), jazz music, and fellowship. Those evenings are a part of the Miller heritage.

Because Randy's ways of relating and working are so consistent with what he wrote and did in his professional work-so much "all of a piece"-it is easy to turn to that part of the heritage we know through his writing, teaching, and speaking, look briefly at the context in which he worked, and then at some of his emphases. Behind the book by which he is still probably best known, The Clue to Christian Education (1950), lay some of his work in writing curriculum resources for the church, including those for the Seabury Series, with which he worked as a member of the National Council of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He was engaged in a struggle for theoretical clarification as he taught theology, a struggle reflected in his early writings, showing the influence of Douglas Clyde Macintosh, his doctoral adviser at Yale, and of people like John Dewey, Henry Nelson Wieman, Alfred North Whitehead, and others. Empiricism and pragmatism were important for him. So was the tradition of the church and its Emphasis on worship. Working through issues that educators were facing then, Randy moved to a moment of clarity in The Clue for the large number of people who had emerged in a lively, growing field of religious education. This field was marked by the birth of the Religious Education Association in 1903. It had grown through many phases, beginning with what is known as progressive education, highly influenced by general education, liberal theology, and the social sciences, before it was challenged by neo-orthodox theology. The drastic shift that then occurred in content and method of religious education raised many questions and controversies. New hope came to a field, young but already in trouble, with Randy's definitive word in The Clue. Looking back, what seems to me to be the case is that people thought the theological question was settled. But Randy had provided the approach to theology and education, or the clue to education, rather than the clue to theological doctrine. As religious education leaders faced that fact, they knew they must come to terms with their own theological position, and what they viewed as its role in the educational process. A productive, almost exhilarating period occurred around the '50s as individuals, schools, and organizations moved ahead in their relating of theology and religious education.