The Prairie Bible Institute has fallen on hard times since the death of its charismatic founder, L.E. Maxwell. Enrolment is down, money is tight and the place is showing its age. Now Maxwell’s grandson—a money man, not a man of the cloth—is trying to lead the institute out of the darkness.
In his powerful tenor, the man at the pulpit speaks in clipped, staccato sentences, stretching the odd word to make his point. “All his loooong life, Moses was a man of faith.” As always, the preacher has command of the room. He tells of how Moses abandoned comfort and freedom to suffer with God’s people, leading them out of Egypt. By faith, Moses endured. “Never faded. Never faltered. Never failed. Never flinched. My oh my! God, give us a faith like that, that laughs at the impossibilities and cries, ‘It shall be done.’”
At times, the preacher almost sings his words. “Only faith can carry us through, only faith can carry us through.”
I press stop on the tape deck. I am at the Prairie Bible Institute (PBI) in Three Hills, a farm town (population 3,322) about 90 minutes northeast of Calgary. The preacher on the tape is L. E. Maxwell, PBI’s charismatic co-founder. At one time, Prairie was one of the biggest Bible schools in the world, a thriving outpost of American Christian fundamentalism that churned out thousands upon thousands of missionaries and pastors in its heyday.
Though I’d never heard L.E.’s voice before, I know this place well. For three years I lived on this campus, graduating in 2001 from Prairie High School, at the time part of PBI (the grade school is now separate). Much has changed in the decade since. The tabernacle, a dreary church that sat 4,000-plus and had straw for insulation against the biting winter winds, has been demolished. The dormitory where I lived, also stuffed with flammable insulation, is gone. In the middle of the campus stands a gleaming new $5-million building, plopped atop what I remember as open, green space.
There are more changes here, most of them invisible. Bible college enrolment has dwindled from 500 to fewer than 300 students, and PBI is recovering from bitter infighting that prompted an exodus of staff in recent years. In May, the school revealed that its savings accounts were empty, and it might not make its July payroll. This place has dirty laundry, says Mark Maxwell, Prairie’s president and L.E. Maxwell’s grandson. “Do we want to hang it out?” he wonders aloud. “Well, maybe that’s the only way to get it cleaned up.”
Mark, a 53-year-old financial analyst, uprooted his family and left behind a successful career to come here last year. In Toronto, he ran management companies with billions of dollars in assets. In many ways he’s an odd fit for PBI. “For me to imagine that I would have good answers for a Bible school is a fool’s paradise,” he says. “I don’t have the schooling, I don’t have the training, I don’t have the experience.” But God led him to Three Hills, he says, and so he followed.
He grabs a walking stick leaning against the bookcase in his office to illustrate his circumstance. In the Old Testament story, God, speaking through a burning bush, told Moses to throw down his staff. Moses did so, and it turned into a snake, a sign of God’s power. After Moses picked up the snake by the tail, it became a rod again. Moses then carried that staff into the courts of Pharaoh, through the Red Sea, across the desert. Some speculate that he passed it to his brother Aaron, whose staff budded inside the Ark of the Covenant. “God gave it life,” says Mark. “It wasn’t anything to do with Moses. Which, of course, was the point.” He likens PBI’s recent struggles to that rod. “We have an amazing stick, and we’re still wrecking it. Why? Because we’re trying too hard. Our duty is not to wield the stick really well. Our duty is to give it to God.”
—
Leslie Earl Maxwell had no designs for a Bible college when he arrived in Three Hills by train in September 1922. A 27-year-old Kansan with coal-black hair, L.E. had been invited by J. Fergus Kirk, a Presbyterian homesteader. When he came to meet L.E. at the Three Hills train station, Kirk was dressed in greasy overalls (he’d been threshing a poor crop to little avail) and apologetic about his circumstance. Kirk had little to offer the American newcomer, just a class of eight farm kids and an abandoned farmhouse north of town.
As a boy in Kansas, L.E. had gone to a Sunday school class in which a hellfire preacher repeatedly threw herself on her face to illustrate sinners descending into eternal flame. The disturbing theatrics made a deep impression on L.E., but a devout aunt had a greater influence on his decision to commit his life to God. After serving in France toward the end of the First World War, L.E. enrolled at a tiny Kansas City school called the Midland Bible Institute.
Meanwhile, up in Three Hills, Kirk worried over the souls of local kids. He’d heard of the Midland Bible Institute’s founder, W.C. Stevens, and wrote asking for help. Liberal teaching is entering the church, Kirk warned in his letter. Can you send a Bible teacher our way? L.E. agreed to go join Kirk in the middle of nowhere.
L.E. quickly set the Prairies alight with his teaching and preaching. When he spoke, people listened, whether he was in a classroom or on the radio (in the 1930s, building on the success of William Aberhart’s Back to the Bible Hour, Calgary stations started broadcasting PBI services). “The Spirit of God was so evidently present in what he was saying that you just said, ‘Wow. Yeah,’” says L.E.’s son, Paul. “God was in him.” Alberta got swept up in Social Credit populism, which didn’t hurt either. From 1935 to 1971, Alberta was governed by three fundamentalist Christian premiers: Aberhart, Ernest Manning and Harry Strom, whose brother Clarence was a pastor at the Prairie tabernacle. In Western Canada, L.E. had found fertile soil for his gospel message.
In summers, L.E. travelled throughout North America, preaching and promoting the school. The first time Ruth Dearing heard L.E. preach, he was acting out the Genesis story of Jacob and Esau at a Bible camp in Washington State, speaking from one side of the pulpit for Jacob’s lines and jumping to the other side for Esau’s. Back and forth he hopped. “It was quite strange,” Dearing recalled in an interview she gave to PBI alumnus Don Richardson before her death. She came to Prairie and became one of the institute’s best teachers, preachers and administrators. Many more came because of L.E.’s passion, and enrolment shot up exponentially year after year. By 1940, PBI had 500 students. Fiercely isolationist, PBI refused to affiliate itself with any one denomination.
Prairie was always a shoestring operation, a world away from the moneyed mega-churches of today. In winter of the school’s first year, the families could barely afford a box of apples. But after a bumper crop the following summer, they gave $3,000 to missionaries. L.E. took to heart words from the gospel of Luke: “But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again…” It became a motto for L.E.: hoping for nothing. “I was to commit myself to planned poverty from that day forward,” he later said.
Austerity was the norm at Prairie, a fact reflected to this day in the campus’s Spartan (and now deteriorating) architecture. After the Prairie families bought two lots at the edge of Three Hills in the mid-’20s, they gave time and supplies to erect a crude two-storey building covered in shiplap siding. Self-sacrifice was an expectation, and people at Prairie still reminisce about seeing L.E. shovel snow as if he was part of the maintenance crew. He got paid the same as a labourer, as staff weren’t paid salaries but stipends, an arrangement that lasted until the ’90s. “Economically, Prairie in its early days was pure socialism at its best,” says Tim Callaway, a pastor at Faith Community Baptist Church in Airdrie. Callaway grew up at Prairie and recently completed his doctoral thesis on the influence of American fundamentalism in PBI’s early years. “Everything went into a general pot and was divided up equally according to need,” he says. Prairie was largely self-sufficient, hauling its own water, raising its food and heating its buildings via a labyrinth of steam tunnels that is still in use. The school followed a strict no-debt policy.
While American religious fundamentalism is today associated with Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and the religious right, the young L.E. had no use for politics. Winning souls for Christ was of utmost importance. In 1929, when the governing United Farmers of Alberta (UFA) asked to use the Prairie tabernacle for a speech on economics by Aberhart (whose Social Credit movement would supplant the UFA), the school said no. The tabernacle was for the gospel, not politics. L.E. disliked how Aberhart let politics creep into his radio sermons. “Worldly,” he called it.
Not that L.E. was silent on the issues of the day. Starting in the late 1920s, PBI published a monthly, the Prairie Pastor, in which L.E. railed against modernism (“utterly destructive of faith in God’s Word”), higher education (“the devil’s wisdom”) and Bolshevism (“a direct working of the devil”). He regularly employed the language of war: “We need militancy in our faith before we shall get anywhere fighting the forces arrayed against us in these days.” In many ways L.E.’s movement was like a military institution, with dorms that resembled barracks and draconian social regulations separating men and women, forbidding them from even speaking to each other. “Let no intending student expect a ‘flowery bed of ease’ upon coming to this Institute,” he warned in the Prairie Pastor. “We are looking only for those students who will embrace a rugged-cross life and follow Christ fully in the face of a soft, godless, pleasure-loving generation.”
Today, it seems incomprehensible that more than a handful of teenagers would sign up for such a program. But the post-war boom of the 1940s shot the Bible-college population to 900, its all-time peak. Maclean’s writer James H. Grey mused in 1947 that in certain parts of India, Africa or China, Three Hills might be the best-known place in Canada thanks to its missionary output. He observed: “PBI is a sensationally uncollegiate college whose campus knows no dating, whose boarders know no jukeboxes, soda bars or movies, whose teachers draw no salary, and whose students go to bed at 10 o’clock and believe that the fish did swallow Jonah, just as it says in the Book.”
—
Paul Maxwell, the sixth of L.E.’s seven children, lives in a small white house a few blocks west of the only stoplight in Three Hills. When I ring his doorbell unannounced, he answers the door impeccably dressed: black shirt, dress pants, thin grey hair neatly combed back. He invites me into his kitchen and takes a seat between his Whirlpool stove and a desk piled with books and CDs.
When L.E. stepped down from the presidency in 1977, the PBI board was split on who should take over. L.E. backed Ted Rendall, a brilliant Scot who arrived at Prairie in the ’50s, studied at the Bible college and became PBI’s vice-president at age 27. Then there was Paul, who served as a missionary in South America before returning to PBI to teach. “I had one more vote than [Rendall],” Paul says. “They wanted his brains and experience, and they wanted my personality and name.”
L.E. had been all Prairie, all the time. He disliked administrative duties and had no head for finances, so he left that to others (he didn’t become PBI’s president until 1965), focusing on teaching and preaching. By the time Paul took over from his dad, the administration had shifted from a committee model to more of a chain of command, making the president more like a CEO. “Daddy said to me—not disparagingly—he said, ‘Paul, I’m afraid it may kill you,’” Paul recalls. “And he was right.” Paul’s health deteriorated from the demands of the job. Leaving the presidency in 1986, Paul spent a few years in Arizona and California to recover, and Rendall took over. Under Rendall, PBI launched a graduate school (it lasted 15 years before closing in 2003) and an aviation school to train pilots for mission work, but enrolment continued to dwindle. “In other words, Ted is brilliant, but none of us are my dad,” says Paul.
Prairie’s next president, Paul Ferris, a Hebrew scholar from South Carolina, steered PBI toward the liberal arts in the ’90s, a shift that riled Prairie lifers who remembered L.E. denouncing philosophy as “foolosophy.” The old guard was also upset when, after L.E.’s death in 1984, leaders in the ’80s and ’90s made cuts to parts of PBI that originally helped keep costs low (a staff grocery store, campus bakery, the Prairie farm) but were no longer economical. “No tree likes a pruner,” says Rosalie Garwood, who was on staff at Prairie for almost 20 years and is now retired in Red Deer. “It hurts.” But the cuts made good sense, she says. “Prairie needed to change.”
Opinionated alumni and donors have long scolded PBI leaders for deviating even slightly from the status quo. Even L.E. got flak. After spending 19 years as a missionary in Japan, a Prairie grad named Marvin L. Fieldhouse returned to PBI, disliked what he saw and wrote a fiery undated pamphlet titled “Whither Bound” (described on its stark black cover as “a shocking analysis of current trends at Prairie Bible Institute”). Inside, he recalled seeing Ernest Manning, then Alberta’s premier, on the platform at PBI’s 40th anniversary in 1962, a scene that would have been incomprehensible in the institute’s early days. L.E. had warmed to politics over the years and especially liked Manning, admiring that he kept his radio broadcasts free from politics (“a wiser man than Aberhart,” he once wrote). Fieldhouse was nevertheless incensed. “I honestly wanted to vomit right where I sat in the tabernacle,” he wrote.
L.E. got sheaves of letters from similarly disgruntled American fundamentalists. A Minneapolis woman who’d heard that her niece was using hair rollers at Prairie wrote in 1966, “No wonder that in the picture which she sent home that she looked so worldly—much more so than when she left home. What is happening to your standards up there anyway??” Other letters carried a more menacing tone. After a PBI quartet visited his church in 1977, Pastor George C. Bergland of Le Roy, Minnesota wrote saying he was distressed by the singers’ appearance. “For example, last night, some of the young fellows badly needed a haircut. One of them had a moustache.” Bergland was further offended by “pictures of girls in slacks playing tennis” in a PBI publication. Then came his threat: “I am writing to say that if the trend towards worldly dress and haircuts continues I am sure that it won’t be long before our support will be discontinued. I am sure that the same will be true of many fundamental churches.”
L.E. responded generously even to the kooks. To Bergland, he wrote, “we appreciate folk who hold standards in this day—when the whole world has pretty well gone down the drain.” Yet he reminded his correspondent that “there are greater things that unite us” than moustaches and hairstyles. Still, change came slowly at PBI. L.E. himself resisted faculty efforts to relax rules forbidding male-female interaction, and TVs were forbidden in staff homes until the mid-’80s, after L.E. had died.
Always the question lingered: what would happen in the post-L.E. era? In his raging treatise, Fieldhouse weighed in on that as well: “Eternity will surely reveal that a good percentage of Brother Maxwell’s reputed Divine power was actually nothing but towering human magnetism—sparkling personality.”
Fieldhouse may have been over the top, but sure enough, PBI struggled to pin down its identity. Was Prairie a Bible college for would-be missionaries? A liberal arts college for academics? An aviation school? A grade school? A graduate school? All of the above? As L.E.’s successors wrestled with these questions while struggling to balance a changing culture with PBI’s infamous rigidity, they had no shortage of critics. “I’ve said to people that Maxwell’s personality and presence were such that I’m not sure that even Jesus himself, if he had been appointed, would have been received well by all,” says Callaway, the Airdrie pastor.
—
I meet Callaway at a Denny’s in northeast Calgary where we spend four hours reminiscing about PBI over toast and coffee. By the time I arrived at Prairie in 1998, the campus tabernacle, once packed to the rafters at annual missionary conferences, was never full and felt dead as a stump. But when Callaway was a kid, L.E. was still preaching. He remembers L.E. railing against communism and relaying a rumour about Pierre Trudeau, at the time about to become prime minister, rowing from Miami to Cuba to visit Fidel Castro. “The only thing I knew about communism was that they put Christians in jail, in work camps,” says Callaway. “Consequently, I’m sitting there in that big ol’ Prairie tabernacle as an 11-year-old kid, scared mmm-less”—that’s what he says, mmm-less—“listening to this. Good night, we’re all going to be in concentration camps by next Friday!” Callaway chuckles at the memory and adds, “It was no secret that you could not vote for Pierre Elliot Trudeau and be a good staff member at Prairie Bible Institute. And consequently, as a kid, I drank the Kool-Aid.”
Callaway and I share a lot of laughs, but not everyone who came out of PBI can do the same. “There were some bizarre things that were part and parcel of that world that have scarred people for life, just as is true of Catholicism or any kind of entity that impacts behaviour,” Callaway says. L.E. was obsessed with renouncing the self, what he called “the crucified life,” and some at Prairie felt beaten down by L.E.’s thundering proclamations against “soft” Christians who didn’t measure up. Some staff and parents took L.E.’s hardline approach too far, harshly enforcing rules and mercilessly berating wayward students. Life at PBI inflicted other wounds, too. One male staffer was fired after some kind of “sexual indiscretion” involving a female student. (The incident is cited in a master’s thesis by James Enns, a history professor at PBI who wrote on Prairie’s early years. “The exact nature of the offence was not indicated” in personnel files, he wrote.)
Callaway remembers being at school in Winnipeg in late 1978 when he heard about the Jonestown Massacre. As he reflected on his upbringing, he thought, “I can see how that happens. When a leader is never questioned and can essentially do no wrong? I understand that.” On campus, L.E. was almost a papal figure, speaking for God. Few dared question him publicly. Those who did often didn’t last long. Callaway describes in his thesis how some faculty in the ’50s wanted PBI to get academic accreditation so its programs could be recognized at other schools. “Those were the visionary types just saying, ‘We need to get with the times,’” Callaway says. “To make a long story short, it wasn’t long before they were sent down the road not necessarily rejoicing, if you know what I mean.” L.E. had no desire to accommodate worldly academic demands. “With the benefit of hindsight,” says Callaway, “there’s reason to say, ‘Was that wise? Was that good for the school?’”
When Jon Ohlhauser became PBI’s president in 2002, Prairie was still struggling to define its identity. Gone was the missionary era of yesteryear when students would flock to Bible colleges. In PBI’s post-war heyday (1946), 67 percent of Canadians attended a weekly religious service, according to Statistics Canada. That figure had plummeted to 20 percent by the time Ohlhauser arrived.
As one former Prairie staffer told me, Ohlhauser was basically given a pile of sand and told, “Here. Hold this.”
—
Highway 583, the dividing line between Prairie and the bulk of the town, cuts east-west through Three Hills, with a Super 8 at one end and a Kal Tire at the other. For many years, the road was a dividing line between “peebs” and “townies,” an invisible wall some in town refused to cross. “Prairie was Prairie, the town was the town, and never the twain shall meet, so to speak,” says Tim Shearlaw, the town’s mayor and owner of the local newspaper, the Three Hills Capital.
In the Ohlhauser era, that all changed.
Ohlhauser had been a vice-president at a Christian college in Ontario before arriving at PBI to replace Rick Down, whose life and presidency were cut short by cancer (he died in 2002 after three years on the job). “I had inherited an institution that was 85 years old, and it was more or less operating with the same mindset that it did when it was started in the 1920s,” says Ohlhauser. The faculty, however, had been drifting further toward the liberal arts, a direction many Christian post-secondary schools in Canada were taking.
Ohlhauser was wary of following the pack. He had a different idea. “No Bible college had said, ‘Let’s attempt to intersect faith with a technical education,’” says Ohlhauser. The board endorsed the plan, PBI partnered with Bow Valley College and SAIT, and, in 2006, the Prairie College of Applied Arts and Technology began offering programs such as nursing and early-childhood education.
For some, the new school represented an exciting opportunity. But others, especially longtime faculty, were wary of the new direction, feeling the Bible college was being neglected. A rift grew between faculty and administration. “It got very messy,” says Veronica Lewis, who arrived at PBI from Oregon as a college student in the mid-’80s and now runs the college library. The administration quashed the liberal-arts direction in the Bible college, alienating faculty who felt like they finally had a good thing going. “The messy part was that when people disagreed—yeah, they were fired,” says Lewis, recalling it as a “very painful time.”
Myron Penner was among those faced with an ultimatum. A Prairie kid who got his PhD at the University of Edinburgh, he joined the Bible college faculty shortly before Ohlhauser arrived. “[Students] were really engaging philosophical theology at a level I was impressed with,” says Penner, now an Anglican priest in Edmonton. Then came the “curveball” of Ohlhauser’s reforms. “I was given a package to teach which was not what I was hired to teach and I wasn’t qualified to teach, or I could take a severance package.” Penner was disappointed but not surprised by how it ended, saying the conflict affected his wife more deeply. “The whole thing was very emotionally traumatic for her. We had to just basically get out of town.”
Ohlhauser says he was carrying out the board’s instructions by asking staff to shift direction. The board hadn’t approved the liberal-arts drift, but had given the green light to the technical school. “Are you able to turn? If you are, let’s try it,” says Ohlhauser. “If you aren’t, this is where we’ve got to part company because the vision and the direction from the board is this way.”
The conflict didn’t end there. It got worse. One of Ohlhauser’s biggest challenges was Prairie’s sprawling footprint. The aging campus, built on the cheap, had fallen into disrepair over the years, and Ohlhauser had less and less tuition revenue to work with. (PBI had just under 500 college students when he started; that number would be cut in half by the end of his tenure in 2009.) “I was paying… in excess of $600,000 a year to operate the campus, because it was old, it was antiquated, it was energy inefficient,” Ohlhauser says. So when he caught wind of a few properties available in Drumheller, including a vacant Catholic school and an empty hospital building, he took the idea to the board, which asked him to do a cost-benefit analysis on a possible relocation.
When the news leaked out it ripped through town like a prairie fire on a windy day. “The next day I had horns and a tail,” says Ohlhauser. Many in Three Hills, including most PBI staff, were outraged. Uproot L.E.’s storied school and move it to a spot many locals call Helldrummer? No way. “It was an incredibly stupid idea,” says David Nadeau, a Prairie professor who also sits on town council, runs the local food bank, and writes for the Capital. The discontent spilled onto the newspaper’s editorial pages. “It would be unconscionable to move Prairie Bible Institute from Three Hills—like ripping part of the heart out of the community,” wrote Mary Roadhouse of Mission, B.C., who had family move to Three Hills in 1964 to “serve God at PBI.” She ended her letter with a loaded postscript: “Evil prevails when good men do nothing.”
Shearlaw, who isn’t a churchgoer but considers PBI an invaluable business to the town, spearheaded a Friends of Prairie movement. “Stand up for what’s right,” he wrote in his weekly column. “Keep Prairie at home, in Three Hills.” Religion aside, losing PBI would deal a hard blow to housing prices and local businesses.
The tension culminated in an emotional meeting in the PBI dining hall on Sept. 23, 2009. Between 600 and 800 people showed up (it depends who you ask), including some who had never wanted anything to do with PBI. “There were many walls broken and bridges built,” says Nadeau, who later wrote in the Capital that attendees arrived with “history and hearts in hand, not calculators or viability studies prepared by consultants.” Tears flowed as people described what Prairie meant to them. Shearlaw (who hadn’t yet become mayor) handed members of the PBI board a petition of 1,200 signatures from locals who wanted Prairie to stay. “I got a standing ovation,” he recalls.
A few weeks later, the board quashed the Drumheller possibility and pushed Ohlhauser out the door. Ohlhauser says he doesn’t have any regrets about his time at PBI, but points out that he had the board’s backing to investigate the relocation. “I guess I would have appreciated it had the board stood up and said, ‘Look, folks of the community of Three Hills, Jon was doing what we told him to do. If you’re going to get upset with anybody, get upset with us.’” Ohlhauser is now leading an effort to start a new college in Drumheller.
—
It’s a chilly, overcast August morning. Mark Maxwell, recovering from knee surgery (skiing injury), hobbles to 8:30 chapel. The room is full of fresh young faces. Chapel opens with a video of Bible verses accompanied by a U2 song. “Take these hands, teach them what to carry,” Bono croons. In the back row, a couple of guys play Tetris on laptops. Prairie Bible Institute’s 89th school year has begun with 290 students, up from 250 last year.
The mood here is upbeat; the poisonous atmosphere that once hung over the campus has dissipated. Mark arrived in Three Hills last year to an “unhappy house,” as he puts it. He’d been chair of the PBI board during the recent tumult, and while some in Three Hills pin all of Prairie’s recent troubles on Ohlhauser, Mark believes the board didn’t provide good governance. “You can blame other people,” he says. “I think we’d rather just own it and say we messed up.” Prairie strayed, he says, by getting away from Bible-focused curriculum, and trying to do too much. “We believed too much in our own hubris, our own abilities, and suddenly we started offering things that were not on mission.”
Like his predecessors, Mark has made changes of his own. When he arrived, PBI had 125 full-time equivalent staff for about 250 students. Donations were being spent to cover payroll. “That’s just really, irritatingly bad business,” he says. Mark cut down to 75 staff and doubled up jobs. When it looked like Prairie might not survive last summer, he asked staff to sacrifice a month’s worth of pay, a request he believes infused people with a sense of urgency and ownership. Mark and his wife Elaine, who works in finance at PBI, took the hit like everybody else. For some staff who couldn’t afford to skip a paycheque, the Maxwells opened their wallet to help them through. But in the end, Prairie didn’t need the whole month’s worth of staff pay to survive. Enrolment for the fall looked promising and donations had tripled, from $1.1 million last year to $3.4 million. Staff call it a miracle.
On campus, people speak highly of Mark. He is by all accounts a demanding leader, but he’s made a point of being accessible. Visitors to his office step over a welcome mat and pass beneath screw holes where a “president’s office” sign once hung. “There’s no sense of fear,” says Lewis. “I’m not afraid of him, but I know that if he didn’t think I was doing something right, he would come over and tell me and make me fix it. But I don’t find myself intimidated by that. I find myself encouraged by that.”
People here keep saying PBI is going back to its roots. That’s the campus buzzword. L.E. always stressed the primacy of Bible study, and the school has introduced more Bible content, integrating it with the technical programs. PBI’s current motto is also a throwback to the past: “To Know Christ and Make Him Known.” When Mark’s administration was trying to clarify its vision for the school, somebody found the phrase in a 1923 document L.E. had written. “That’s what we’re about, so we adopted it,” says Mark. “Why reinvent the wheel that works?”
It worked in the 1920s. But will it work nine decades later? Staff here seem to think so. “We’re getting people from small-town, evangelical, conservative homes and they want the values that Prairie has, because it’s a reflection of what they grew up with,” says Nadeau.
Mark points to the walking stick in his office, the analogy of Moses’ staff. Prairie’s future, he believes, is in God’s hands. “Let’s see what he wants to do with it. If he wants to give it life, good. If he wants to burn the stick, good. No worries.”
Shawn
1:36 PM
Given what was said publicly by the board while I was a student at PBI, it will come as quite the surprise to them that Ohlhauser was acting with their backing.
livinginhebel
11:07 AM
hahaha So true, Shawn!
-Katie L.
Pingback: For the love of God: A report on Prairie Bible Institute | Jeremy Klaszus, freelance writer
Paul
5:10 PM
When I was 9 or 10 (as I recall)I was forced into attending a PBI revival meeting where the elder Maxwell displayed his amazing evangelical prowess.
I was an agnostic then and still am. Nonetheless the memory is indelibly etched into my mind.
livinginhebel
11:10 AM
I appreciate this article, being one of the students who was at PBC during Ohlhauser’s time. I enjoyed hearing the history from an objective perspective, although I must admit I noticed Ohlhauser still refuses to own up to his own huge mistakes.
I have great hope for PBI.
Caz J
12:00 PM
Wow. What a history! I am currently a BTh – Pastoral student at Prairie and it is very clear that we are in a transitional period, one that is full of potential. I Believe that ol’ Marky Max and the Faculty bunch are leading us into a blindingly bright future. People like Mark, and especially Mark himself, are the ones who are absolutely responsible for just about anything positive that is happening to Prairie right now. It is really encouraging to be a part of the good changes that are happening here on campus.
Ken W
11:39 PM
Learn from history so the negative part doesn’t get repeated. We are a people in a process, hopefully positive by taking more steps forward than… back.
With Mark taking over the “reins” PBI will continue to make God known in Three Hills and in the Regions Beyond – Lord willing.
Merle W(ilkins)
3:06 PM
As alumni and ex-staff still living in Three Hills we tried to convince ourselves that we no longer cared what happened at Prairie – too many ups and downs, too much conflict. However, when the possibility of losing it altogether came up, we found we did love the place after all, and got involved. We deeply appreciate the leadership of Mark and Wayne (Dir. of Development), the enthusiasm and passion of the students, and the commitment of the staff. Prairie will continue to make its mark on the world, Christian and otherwise, through staff and students dedicated to serving their God and exalting Christ as Lord.
Benjamin Chung
5:30 AM
I have to say that, as a graduate of Prairie High School (class of 1985), and as a former Board member who served during the period 2003-2004 (during the release of General Education – Prairie High School), I would like set the record straight for my own sakes. I cared a lot about this place, and my high school, gave money and time until the High School was dead. As a first time board member, I did notice that many Board members were afraid to speak against the president’s recommendations, primarily, Ohlhauser had things only his way, and not many were able to speak up. In my experience, the Board rarely had the courage or the nerve to oppose such. Not many people are smart enough to see the result of their action.
So when you mentioned that the Board should have been behind Ohlhauser, how could they? It was not something that came from the Board, I suspect, but rather a political move by Ohlhauser. He was so sure that he could quickly move this through the board, and I was surprise to see Mark Maxwell had the courage to stand up to this man. And furthermore, I was surprise that the entire town stood up and got rid of this man. Now that is courageous. As for me, I am not longer a supporter of Prairie, nor do I believe in a personal god that could have allowed such a man to ruin the lives of so many with lies and political moves. I am ashamed that god did not do anything about it. It was the community of these folks of the bible school people and the town people who felt their vital interests were offended, stood up and got rid of this none-sense.
Cheryl
11:58 AM
God did do something. Ohlhauser is no longer at Prairie.
Adrian Martens
12:13 AM
You stopped believing in God because he didn’t get rid of a certain leader of a small insignificant bible college in a town that is virtually unknown outside of southern Alberta?
“The doctrine of the established Church, its organization, are both very good indeed. Oh, but then our lives: believe me, they are indeed wretched” Kierkegaard
Benjamin Chung
4:56 AM
I always like to dialogue with a fundamentalist (one who believes in a personalistic God, inerrancy and miracles etc). I said that I no longer believe in a personal god (small capital) because of his inactivities in human affairs. god was not present when Jews were gased, and certainly not present when schemes were formed to reduce Prairie to its truncated form, and certain not present if you read what happened to countless many Prairie staff kids who were sexually and physically abused during the years of Prairie. Just check the websites such as Facebook ( We Were Prairie Bible School Kids ~ TCK’s, Family, Friends & Supporters). Every time I mentioned that, I always get a circular argument about there is a purpose in God’s ways and design. It makes no sense, why a god of yours murders so many in the Bible (say massive genocide of Cananites, and commands to do so even with Saul and David, these biblical heroes). The death codes written in the Leviticus cannot be practiced in a civilized society such as Canada, otherwise you might have to put to death gays, rebelled teens and victims of rape. You have to ask what kind of God or god is in this Prairie? Is it about an angry god who propels Ohlhauser to reduced and humiliate the entire department of Bible, high school and Tab congregation? What purpose is there? Or Is there a god who is absent during the sexual abuse of little 6 year Prairie staff girl? Where is this god during the beating of a staff wife?? And the purpose of these atrocities? For the love of God would someone help me to see why I should hold to a god that is sadistic and angry and vengeful?
I propose here that (using a Gnostic formula, that “Jehovah” is a lower class god, and there is a God higher nobler behind these imageries, and perhaps in His inactivities, He is present, and He is not knowable or perosnal like these folks who believe in a god that is so personal but always loves and wants money, just cannot handle the money, that’s all. Many of our people became atheists or deists after Prairie. Just check with this author and see whether he is still one of “yours,” thank you.
Donna L. Carlaw
10:14 PM
I am happy to see that Prairie is getting a second chance. It is a school that has meant a lot to me. Like others, I had quit paying attention to all of the ups and downs of recent years. Too much drama. Besides, I live far away.
Mark seems to be doing a good job. I am once again interested in what happens on campus. It is exciting to see the Phoenix rising out of the ashes. I hope and pray that all goes well, by the grace of God. Even if only one more year were all that God were to give to Prairie, it would be worth it. I expect that our “personal God” will give Prairie more years than just one more.
This is a good article. Thank you for publishing it.
Benjamin, I am sorry that you had such a deeply wounding experience.
I can understand what you are saying. I am not sure why you would blame God for the actions of men, but your reaction is not uncommon. I wish you well, and hope for happier times for you.
BTW, I don’t think that you like to dialogue with us fundamentalists. I think you like to preach to us. You must have learned the preaching part at Prairie, so all was not a waste of time. Even so, I am sorry that you had a bad experience. That is terrible. I wish you all the best, even though I am not one of “yours” and you are not one of “mine.”
CK
7:34 AM
This is a really interesting article; Bible colleges are as much entwined with Alberta’s history, but as the province’s makeup is changing, so must these schools. I’m sad that other schools such as NABC (aka Taylor) in Edmonton have not survived, despite thriving in the past. I’m glad that Prairie is recognizing the need for change, and to meet the needs of modern society. Because of that, I think they’ll survive.
glenn
9:14 AM
Great story!
Good luck to PBI.
Donna L. Carlaw
11:47 AM
One more point. The comparison of PBI under Maxwell to Jonestown is pretty wacky. Maybe some people wish that their lives had been more interesting and dangerous than they actually were?
Besides, I am pretty sure that Mr. Maxwell’s preaching was no scarier for a child than, say, the ghost in Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the Little People. I remember diving under the seat in the theatre when I was a little kid when that ghost appeared.
LE was certainly no more terrifying than the slasher and horror movies that other children were allowed to watch. Forget the scary movies. What about the nightly news? Just to put things in perspective.
Prairie was an unusual place, but it was not a house of horrors as some would like us to believe. Even so, I am glad that it is now more mainstream 21st century Evangelical, yet not forgetful of the good things about its past. I may even go visit campus in the future. It sounds like good things are happening there once again.
Bill
2:28 PM
To Benjamin – First and foremost I must tell you how sorry I am that you feel that way. The problem with Jon Ohlhauser must have been the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back as far as your faith was concerned. The issue you have with the God of the Christian faith is not new and many have abandoned the faith because of the apparent evil in this world. For the Christian,however,God is not some distant creator or impersonable “Ground of Being” but a loving Father who hurts with us and who enters our pain through Christ on the cross; Jesus endured suffering beyond comprehension. When we comprehend his suffering, it put the problem of evil in a different perspective. The problem is not how can God justify himself to us rather the problem is how can we be justified before God. Even though we might not fully understand the problem of evil, ultimately God is the only solution to the problem of evil. If God does not exist we would be locked in a world of pain and unredeemed suffering. He redeems us from evil and invites us into a fellowship with him.
Benjamin Chung
3:12 PM
I must take the time to thank Bill and Donna. It is evident these are people with integrity and sincerely believe in an Evangelical God/god. I am trained the same way, and the answers you have given here, are the ones I am familiar with, with one different note, it is no longer intellectually tenable anymore for me. What I would say is that, we thank god/God for good people with integrity, but we each must be responsible and courageous enough to stand in the face of evil, such as child/wife abuses that people suffered through at this place, or have the courage enough to say, enough with this, God/god or no god. Do the right thing by facing up to a suffering humanity, and do so with such grace and dignity that people out of your faith will wonder what type of a god you worship. So far, with the rescue of Prairie, there is a lot to be done, but the answers that I see comes from a community of people not in a belief in a God/god. That is irrelevant to me. The god talk no longer has any significance, but the love for the earth, animals, and the people whom we live with as neighbours. And if the belief in a personal god causes one to be abused as a child, I see that belief negated, and should be thrown out, as the words of Jesus, by their fruits you shalt know them. These are the fruits of bitterness, I am not sure the tree is worthwhile saving. For me, this fundamentalist approach is nothing other than an anachronistic way of life in the face of modernity. God/god, I hope will transcend all this and survive, not in the memory of the past, but as the scriptures says, he is not God of the dead, but of the living. The sacred words of Scriptures are dead to the dead, but the spirit is alive and brings life. In this mystery I still profess, but I no longer believe in this Evangelical God of Prairie. I see the inactivities of God but I seek no more of his personal side so many of you profess. But as I said before, I place my faith in the human relations and communities, and in the earth and the animals we share this place with. The evangelical zeal has died with me, but a new form to appreciate others has been reborn, of gays, sinners, and molesters. While the last ones should be put away, but the first two categories are fine with me as they were with Jesus.
Benjamin Chung
6:47 PM
One more thing here. if God/god were the answer to the problem of evil, I propose here we negate the ability and responsibility of each acting human. In the example of Ohlhauser, is was his action trying to sell Prairie and move to another town, and in this only way approach, he roused a strong reaction from a sleepy town and fearful bunch of staffs/students of Prairie, that the Board finally caved into popular will of the people. God/god did nothing, for he has not appeared in the skies, nor did he remove Ohlhauser like he did in the OT by striking him dead, or caused the ground to open up and swallowed Ohlhauser alive. None of these things happened. God did absolutely nothing, it was until the godless townies and most of the god fearing folks who rebelled at Ohlhaquser did this actually happened. I think you can also place the same circular argument that Nazis were gassing Jews, a lot of them, but it took the US to join the war and actual men and women who fought to release and save the remaining Jews. No acts of God can be found, no thunders, no lightening, no direct slaying of God-fearing German Nazis. None of that ever did happened, except men in uniforms who liberated this. I might add, that it is Ohlhauser’s own inability to inspire the Albertan government to fund his Hope College. He has not been able to sway these unsuspecting townies of Drumheller. Just hang in there and watch, Ohlhauser has not changed, the school he proposed, now it is not about God anymore, it is about duplicating healthcare and training that is not needed in a time of recession. I see this is the best example how humans have a lot to do with it, not a belief in a God.
Donna L. Carlaw
7:58 PM
Benjamin, you have a lot of dark thoughts in your mind. Maybe you could take up a sport?
Relax. Be happy. Desires for revenge will destroy you. You worry me. You need to develop a mechanism that enables you to move on. Life is good. Life is precious. Do not waste yours in meaningless disputes. You are a valuable human being who is suffering more than you need to.
Donna L. Carlaw
8:14 PM
PS
Benjamin, I hear your pain. I really do. You were wounded in battle, so to speak. I understand. Take care.
Benjamin Chung
2:14 PM
Dear Donna, are you one of those fundamentalists? I love fundamentalists. I argue with them often as a sport
. Thank you, and I am going to dig some quahogs for sport with my kids. I have plenty of things to do and enjoy, but the ones about Prairie, I just wish they would have refunded my money so I can now spend it on my own kids and neighbours who need help. 
Donna L. Carlaw
7:45 PM
Benjamin! I hate you!
Just kidding. You had me worried. I understand what you are saying. I often hate the way government throws money down the drain. Oh, well… What are quahogs? Are those fundamentalist quahogs? Take care, kiddo kidder.
Donna L. Carlaw
8:21 PM
PS
I’m debating whether or not to take back all those fervent prayers I said for you. Hmmm. I think I’ll just let them stand, and you will have to deal with the blessings I prayed for you! Revenge is sweet!
Benjamin Chung
1:45 AM
This is becoming a social event here! I love to blog about my former Evangelical-fundamentalist self on the net. Thank you, Donna and countless others when they read these dark thoughts about me and Prairie.
I am no longer involved like I was with Prairie. But out of that experience, I learn to love my kids more and to pay attention to the needs of my neighbours and the animals or the environment. Instead of giving money to Prairie, I vowed to buy cameras and take pictures of my own children. That was 4 years ago (I quit Prairie in 2005), I have joined my local Farmers Market, grow veggies, raise chickens, and having a blast! 
. After all, if God/god is not directly responsible for myself, I am. So I am going to have a great time at it. The past is gone, and as the Kung Fu Panda’s Ou-quay taught, “Tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift, that is why it is a present.”
Donna L. Carlaw
12:18 PM
I still hate you, Benjamin!
Seriously, though, I hope you enjoy your family and spend lots of time with them. They are a precious gift of God. Not sure how many countless others read your dark thoughts, but you never know. It may be in the millions!
And, as the good fundamentalist I am, I will ask you to not forget about eternity. We will all be somewhere at the end of the day. We will all stand before our Maker and give an account. The Lamb’s Book of Life is the one that makes all the difference.
Hey, take care. It’s a beautiful Fall day here where I live. I hope it’s not too cold up where you are.
Christopher Morton
10:11 PM
When I began at Prairie in 2003 Dr. Ohlhauser had been @ prairie for exactly one semester. When I graduated Dr. Ohlhauser was fired by the board the following semester. In fact, I was on the Student Union and remember some of the difficult confrontations I faced with administration, but certainly I did not have some of the same issues that others had since I was only a student at the time.
There is no doubt that the board was equally as culpable as Dr. Ohlhauser for the changes in direction. This all came to a head when the dean of the college along with the majority of the faculty actually presented to the board directly to appeal the Ohlhauser’s change in direction.
I find some of Prairie’s detractors difficult probably because I can identify with them, having been guilty of secretly hoping (on occasion), that the school would fail. I have many friends employed there and I believe that the detractors are ignorant of the people there and what is currently happening at the school. It is easy to see how some people came out of Prairie, bitter from the “poisonous atmosphere” but I am glad that I haven’t yet moved out of the area, or I probably could care less what happens to the school. But now that I am here I only wish I had more to do with the school instead of farming being on the outside. I no longer have anything to do with the school but I have moved on, forgiven the institution and I may recommend the school to the right person.
When I heard that Mr. Maxwell would become the new president I was initially quite depressed about the decision and believed that soon I would have a Bachelor of Arts in Theology from a school that no longer existed. I am so glad that Mark has had a positive effect at Prairie. I still live in the area and I hear good news from Prairie about the direction that the school is going. The school is going in a slightly different direction than it was when I began my studies, but I agree with Mark that the school is returning to the formula of faith which is what has worked for the school in the past. I am very impressed with the sacrifice of the faculty and staff at Prairie for their sacrifice and I hope that the school is richly rewarded.
Donna L. Carlaw
11:44 AM
Christopher, I think that it is a normal reaction to have some disappointment in how things turned out at PBI. I, too, hope that the school is richly rewarded according to the riches of God’s grace. It is easy to claim grace, and then be unwilling to extend grace to others, so it is good to see your gracious attitude towards PBI.
I have been dismayed to see the vengeful attitude, words, and actions of some others. In fact, some have engaged in character assassination and libelous accusations. Any complaints of real substance need to be taken to the proper authorities and investigated seriously. Instead, some have been disrespectful and verbally abusive to others, using their alleged hurts as an excuse for their bad behavior. That is a shameful thing. I hope that will stop and that proper means be used to clear up any such accusations. Here on the Internet, unfortunately, anyone can say anything they want to, and that without any kind of accountability or clarity. I believe that we are better than that kind of thing.
So, thank you, Christopher, for demonstrating a different kind of reaction, even though you were negatively affected by the way things played out. I hope and pray for better things in the future of all involved.
Benjamin Chung
6:09 AM
I am guilty as charges, Donna. But on one note, there are silent people out there, and without a dramatic and often irrational rant, voicing something that has been hidden for some many……I am glad to see that RCMP and the Herald take this matter of sexual and physical abuses seriously to investigate and soon the matters will be more impartial. Donna, when all avenues are closed to a dialogue in the past and its patriarchal and paternalistic atmosphere, you will see why a great corruption has been committed to Prairie’s finest. I merely a pure nothing, would like to root for those who were silent for these many years. For survivors of any cult or cult like organizations, there is such thing as cognitive dissonance, please check into that. Thanks.
Donna L. Carlaw
8:19 AM
Hi, Benjamin,
I am quite familiar with cultlike groups. In fact, often Internet discussion groups exhibit cultlike characteristics. Anyone who dares to question the powers that be is thrown off and maligned by the group. A “we vs. they” mentality develops. Doctrines unique to the group are touted. One or two become authorities for the rest of the group. Narcissism abounds, and so forth. I used to partcipate in such an online group, and have recovered and now recognize the signs and symptoms. I was brutally treated on such a group when I began to question what was being said, and began to ask for evidence. I have become very interested in cultlike behavior in religiously oriented online discussion groups, especially ones that focus on the topic of abuse.
I am absolutely in agreement with you that any alleged crimes committed need to be investigated by the RCMP and other proper civil authorities. Yes, newspapers also have a role to play. It does not matter how long ago the alleged incidents happened. They need to be investigated and any criminals brought to trial, no matter who they are or where they are.
Also, those falsely accused have the right to self defense. Libel and slander are also crimes.
Besides, those who have already taken their cases to the courts and lost need to accept the ruling of the courts, it seems to me. Of course, in our day, anyone can try anyone else in the court of public opinion. The Internet is one of the best ways to promote the destruction of people and organizations if that is one’s intention.
If you Google any group, company, organization, politician, ministry, or probably even this newspaper, you will find a group dedicated to “exposing” them. It is part of our culture.
Thank you for your response, Benjamin. I am in total agreement with you on the involvement of proper authorities in any alleged criminal activity.
Take care,
Donna
Donna L. Carlaw
9:52 AM
BTW, Benjamin, I read the recent article in the Calgary Hearld and thought it was quite fair and well done. This is a matter that needs to be investigated, and those who have really been hurt need to get help and healing wherever possible. No one disputes that.
I am also sure, Benjamin, that you have the best of intentions and empathy for those who may have been hurt. Just make sure that you are not victimized by crusaders whose agenda my not be pure. Remember, I have been concerned about you as a valuable human being. I wish all the best for you and your family.
Mike
10:21 PM
I really like this article. For someone who is currently in Prairie (and loving it), I would like to say that I appreciate Jeremy Klaszus for reporting this in such a way as to show both sides of the story as much as he could. You really did your homework.
I actually remember some of the things that were talked about because I was there. I came right before Dr. O. left so I have seen the progression of Prairie up to this point and it will be interesting to see what happens next.
I am deeply grieved to hear about the pain that many people have endured, and my prayers go out for them with a tear soaked face.
These three remain; Faith, Hope, and Love…
Let us believers remember what love is and live it, no matter what happens as we live by faith in the hope of Jesus Christ.
Jeff Gulleson
1:22 PM
I have read the whole article and all of the comments. It is interesting to be brought up to date.
I graduated from PBI in 1963. I became a Christian from a non-churched background 30 days before I enrolled in PBI in 1959. I have absolutely not one bad memory from my four years at PBI. In many ways it was the best time of my life. The rules kept me focused on studying the Bible and developing a relationship with the Lord. I received a call / leading to be a missionary and spent 30 years in Indonesia.
I returned to the USA in 1997 and started an international health insurance business, “Good Neighbor Insurance” (www.gninsurance.com). So I have not just been involved in “Christian” ministry.
What I learned at PBI prepared me for life, but “Christian” and “secular”. I am so thankful for those four years at PBI. It was an absolutely glorious experience!!!
Throughout my life I have wrestled greatly with the questions and challenges that have been stated by Benjamin Chung. I may not be as intellingent as he is but I have come to clearly different conclusions about the existence of a personal loving God, even in the light of evil. Of course some great thinkers have also made their way through these tough questions, just one being C.S. Lewis. Needless to say there are some good answers for those who deny the possibility of a loving, personal God in a dark and evil world.
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Suzanne Sode-Sahl
3:41 PM
I attended PBI from 67-71 and remember L.E. Maxwell. He was the main teacher for Bible. The school was strict and had high standards. I like the best the method Bible was taught without using any commentaries. It would have been nice to have had it credited at that time as when I returned to the States and entered a State Univeristy I had to enroll as a Freshman.
I have mixed feelings about PBI. Like the last poster I have good memories and really do not regret investing 4 years of my life at that school. However, I do have turmoil over something that LE Maxwell did as it was very painful to be called into his office ans scolded for me having a nightmare in which I must have spoken in my dream. I had a very abusive early childhood and would often go to bed before I entered PBI in fear. My room mate reported the nightmare and I was embarressed to have LE Maxwell scold me out. That was not necessary. He did ot believe in any type of showing emotions. He often said the hardest thing in the world is to keep balanced. I pray that PBI comes to terms with some of the past and keep a balanced.