Thinking about Lists
Bill Long 11/5/05
Will the Real Realists Really Stand Up?
About 30 years ago, when I was a new student at Seminary, my friends and I were enthralled by Richard Quebedeaux's new book The Young Evangelicals (1974). His thesis was that a new generation of younger Evangelicals, mostly educated in the 1960s, was rising and that their agendas and faith-expressions differed from the Evangelicals who launched the established institutions such as the Billy Graham Evangelical Ass'n, Campus Crusade for Christ and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. These Young Evangelicals were more pragmatic and political than their forebears. They were not as committed to "biblical distinctives," such as the inerrancy of Scripture, and they were more interested than their predecessors to enter into dialogue with Marxists and cultured despisers of religion on peace and justice issues. Some were, drum roll, even Democrats. Many grew beards. In short, the Young Evangelicals were trying to forge a new direction for faith that reflected the turbulent world through which we had just come. All of my friends secretly wanted to be on Quebedeaux's "Young Evangelical list" when the 2nd edition came out.*
[*There was no second edition.]
And we were also delighted to see that Quebedeaux had come up with a list of whom he believed these Young Evangelicals to be. I don't have the book before me as I write, but it seemed to me he gave slightly different lists of about 20 or so of these "Young Evangelicals" two or three places in his book. We anxiously pored over the list and had heard of several of the people as we got to the G's, H's, I's, and J's. Then, we were caught up short when we got to the name "Lloyd Kalland." We looked at each other in disbelief and said, in unison, "Lloyd Kalland!?" Well, there is a little story here, so let me tell it.
Lloyd of Massachusetts
We were students at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, an Evangelical school formed though a union of a more fundamentalist Gordon Divinity School and more liberal Conwell School of Theology. This union was consummated on the new property purchased for the occasion, an old Carmelite monastery/seminary atop a hill in wealthy South Hamilton MA. We thought the name of the closest private club to the seminary was quite fitting to the surroundings: The Myopia Hunt Club. The seminary was presided over by an aging "Old Evangelical," Harold Ockenga (b. 1905). Affectionately known as "The Big O" by people who never called him that to his face, Ockenga was finishing an illustrious career after heading Fuller Theological Seminary (began 1947) in Pasadena and the historic Park Street Church on the Boston Common. His lieutenant on campus (provost) was Lloyd Kalland.
Kalland was already in his 60s at the time and, to most of us, was completely "out of it" theologically. He seemed to us to be a rather "unreconstructed Fundamentalist" (a favorite phrase we threw around when evaluating people), and was quite unaware of anything that partook of our "culture." I think the reason that Quebedeaux cited him as a "Young Evangelical" was because Kalland taught a seminar on Bonhoeffer every once in a while, and Bonhoeffer was cool at the time. So Quebedeaux must have inferred that Lloyd was also cool or progressive because of this. But, he wasn't. Sorry to be so blunt about it.
Who Were the Young Evangelicals?
But this experience taught me something about lists and characterization. Quebedeaux wanted to "invent" or "create" the "Young Evangelical" and decided to do it in two ways: by listing beliefs or actions of these people and then giving their names. None of us really asked whether all the names on the list participated in all the activities characteristic of the Young Evangelicals (for example, one of the issues Quebedeaux listed as a "moral issue" favored by the Young Evangelicals was a defense of masturbation; I don't know how he would have concluded how Lloyd or anyone else on the list thought about masturbation. Evangelicals really didn't talk about it too much in those days). We didn't even question whether the list had validity. But I think we were intrigued by the concept and the list because we knew that something was "up" in the Evangelical world and that changes were coming. It is just that it is very difficult to identify all changes and the people who are bringing them about. So there probably was a group of people whom we could call "Young Evangelicals," even though precision on beliefs and identities of these people wasn't possible.
Lists in Law
This experience in the 1970s prepared me for trying to understand one of the more vexing issues in 20th century American legal history, and that is, "What is a Legal Realist and Who are/were They?" The reason this is such a vexing question is that, in most people's minds, we are all realists today, but 100 years ago there was no such thing. What is it, then, that happened to American law or America in the 20th century that made this concept or this reality a dominant one? And, how can we understand what it is?
This is not the place to give a history of the "movement" or to try to identify the "features" or the "individuals" who made up the "movement." My "shorthand" approach is to say two things: (1) that the "Protorealists" were Holmes and Pound, with the "Path of the Law" (1897) and "Mechanical Jurisprudence" (1908) being landmark law review articles that expressed the "realist" spirit, and that: (2) the Realists themselves were individuals after WWI who taught at Columbia, Yale and (from 1929-1933) at Johns Hopkins who wanted to do empirical work on American financial and social institutions with a view toward reforming law as a result. Ok, that being out of the way, we enter now into the fun of the issue of identifying the Realists. The issue came to a head in 1931 in dueling articles in the Harvard Law Review by the Dean of Everything Roscoe Pound (born 1870) and the young whippersnapper Karl Llewellyn (born 1893). Pound was at the height of his influence, having authored probably 20 books and a few hundred articles by then, while Llewellyn had just put out his first case book (on the law of sales), even though he was destined for great things as the shaper of the hugely influential Uniform Commercial Code.
The 1931 articles had to do with the nature of a new jurisprudence that was on the scene. In the March 1931 issue Pound had gently criticized it without giving any indication of who might be part of this new "movement." In his June 1931 response, Llewellyn decided to list people who were part of this new "realist jurisprudence." The next essay speaks about these lists and then concludes with some reflection on the function of lists of "Young Evangelicals" and "Legal Realists.
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