Allen Koop is a member of the Dartmouth College History Department where he teaches courses on Modern Europe and the American Health Care System. His published books focus on the pathos and promise of the human condition: Stark Decency: German Prisoners of War in a New England Village and American Evangelical Missionaries in Twentieth Century France. He also serves as pastor at two New Hampshire village churches: the Elkins Chapel in New London and the Wilmot Baptist Church in Wilmot.
- Can you please describe your faith journey thus far?
I grew up in a Christian home, and recall a definite moment when I was 4 when I believed that Jesus took the punishment for what I had done wrong. My family attended a large urban church, known to be a center for Biblical preaching. Several of my Sunday school teachers were college students, which let me see, from elementary school through high school, that believing in Christ had a compelling intellectual dimension.
But the evangelical Christianity of that era, seeing theological adversaries on all sides, had a “circle the wagons” mentality, in which the main goal for young people, especially as they went off to college, was not to lose their faith. There wasn’t much emphasis on sharing it, or integrating it into life and learning. So I compartmentalized my faith into a private and personal place, where it only marginally influenced my studies and activities with skiing and mountain climbing friends. But then in graduate school, I realized that I had to integrate my faith with my thought and life, and began to read theology and the relatively new works by people like Francis Schaeffer who were bridging the gap between faith and thought. It was the most intellectually exciting part of an otherwise routine graduate study of history. Then all this reading and thinking had to make sense in a very real way when my younger brother was taken in a mountain climbing incident. My faith proved real and sustained me, and also made me realize that I had to use what I believed and what I’d learned to combine both in the life of a professor.
- How did your faith influence your decision to become a professor, if it did?
I had wanted to teach as long as I can remember; it took a while for me to decide what it was I wanted to teach. I suppose I chose history because of its compelling narrative dimension, and its apparently limitless possibilities. And I realized that the “Christian faith” is really all about history. So, it seemed a natural fit.
- How have your beliefs influenced or motivated your field of research?
As a student and teacher of modern European and American history, I found fascinating the conflict between Christianity and the large number of its ideological adversaries in the twentieth century, but it didn’t shape in a determining way what I did in research and writing, although studies of American evangelical missionaries in France and German prisoners of war in New Hampshire allowed me to probe the intersection of Christian belief and secular ideologies.
- Do you ever talk to your students about your faith? If so, how do you usually choose to do so and why?
Yes, over the years quite a few discussion with students. But usually only after I’ve come to know them well. Sometimes the discussion starts with an issue that has come up in class, other times when a student starts talking about a more personal quest or issue. I’m also a pastor of a church in Wilmot NH where each year a few Dartmouth students have been regular attendees (as allowed by D-Plan), and I’ve had many discussions with them, often on post-church hikes. The lifelong friendship I’ve formed with a students is the most rewarding aspect of teaching at Dartmouth.
- As a Christian professor in academia, how would you describe the relationship between faith and reason?
I’ve always thought that all “reason” requires more faith than usually acknowledged, and Biblical faith is reasonable.