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This is a complete and accurate transcript of the oral history interview of
Carlos Rene Padilla (CN 361, T1) in the Archives of the Billy
Graham Center. No spoken words have been omitted, except for any non-English
phrases which could not be understood by the transcribers. If the transcriber
was not completely sure of having gotten what the speaker said, "[?]" was inserted
after the word or phrase in question. If the speech was inaudible or indistinguishable,
"[unclear]" was inserted. Grunts and verbal hesitations, such as "ah" or "um"
were usually omitted. Readers should remember that this is a transcription of
spoken English, which, of course, follows a different rhythm and rule than written
English.
. . . Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence on the part of the speaker.
. . . . Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence.
( ) Words in parentheses are asides made by the speaker.
[ ] Words in brackets are comments by the transcriber.
This transcription, made by Nathan Hollenbeck and Paul Ericksen, was completed in March 2000
Collection 361, T1. Interview of C. Rene Padilla by Paul A. Ericksen on March 12, 1987.
ERICKSEN: This is an oral history interview with Dr. Rene Padilla by Paul A. Ericksen
for the Missionary Sources Collection of Wheaton College. This interview took place at the offices of the Archives of the Billy Graham Center on March 12, 1987, at 8:30 a.m. Well, Dr. Padilla, I'd like to begin [pauses] talking a little bit about your life as you were growing up as a child. I understand that your father was a tailor and an evangelist.
PADILLA: That's right, uh-huh.
ERICKSEN: How did the two of those fit together for your father?
PADILLA: Well, I suppose that you could say that for most Christians in Latin America, especially at that time, some fifty years ago or more, there was no...no possibility to be a Christian and be a witness to Jesus Christ also. But my father was especially active. He [pauses] moved to Colombia because of [pauses] work. He was an Ecuadorian. We lived in Quito, Ecuador. But when I was two-and-a-half years old we moved to Colombia. And it was mainly because of [pauses] work. There was ma...more...more possibility to work as a tailor in Colombia at that time. One of the things I remember about my childhood is that my father would move from one house to another in Bogota, that is would rent a house somewhere else in the city so that we would be able to start a new church. So, he was an evangelist, and eventual...eventually he left tailoring to give himself fully to [pauses] evangelism. He worked with the...the HCJB [Christian radio station in Quito, Ecuador], Voice of the Andes Hospital for about ten years or so as a chaplain. [pauses] And then until he died years ago, he took time to evangelize, to visit people, and to [pauses] try to help people come to know...to know the Lord Jesus Christ.
ERICKSEN: How did he go about starting a new church? Do you recall that?
PADILLA: Yes, well, we were seven children, [pauses] four boys and three girls, and that was enough of a little group to start with a Sunday school class. And we would bring our friends, and he would invite the neighbors and have Bible study, and that was the beginning of a new church.
ERICKSEN: Were there any particular [pauses] parts of the Bible he liked to use as he began that work? [pauses] How did he approach the Bible study?
PADILLA: Well, he was not a highly educated man. He had, I think, three years of primary school. That was all. He read widely. That is another memory I have of him, [pauses] read on all kinds of things, and read his Bible [pauses] daily [pauses] for hours sometimes, even though he also had to work very, very hard. I remember waking up in the early hours of the morning, and my father would already be working, and would go to bed very late. But he would use the whole Bible in his work, of course, especially [laughs] the Gospels, and the Epistles. [pauses] In the environment in which he grew up, everybody had to be a Catholic, he...so he...he was a Roman Catholic before he became an Evangelical Christian, and as a result he was very anti-Roman Catholic also. [laughs quietly] And I suppose that you could say that [pauses] as in the case of most Evangelical Christians in Latin America, especially at that time, preaching against the Roman Catholic Church was a part of the message.
ERICKSEN: [pauses] Is that what you were referring to when you said earlier that to be a Christian meant that you had to be a witness?
PADILLA: Yes, very much so. In Colombia at that time there was a lot of persecution against anybody who was not a Roman Catholic. So you really had to take a stand. [pauses] I was expelled from primary school when I was in the third grade because of not attending a Roman Catholic procession. And an older brother of mine, Washington, who later became the secretary of the Bible Society in Ecuador, was spec...expelled from high school because of arguing with a priest. [pauses] So in Colombia you had to identify yourself as an Evangelical Christian, and if you did, you had to pay the consequences.
ERICKSEN: What other forms did the persecution take?
PADILLA: Well, a couple of times the...there was an attempt to burn our house down. Later on many, many church buildings were burned down, pastors were killed, and Evangelicals, just Christians in general were persecuted. I [pauses] often times say that I carry on my body the marks of persecution because even now I have signs of the [pauses] stones I got when I was a child, a boy of [pauses] seven, eight, ten. It was very difficult [pauses] to be identified as an Evangelical Christian.
ERICKSEN: [pauses] How was it that...how was it that you continue...continued to...to be a visible witness in the face of that?
PADILLA: Well, that grew out of our commitment to Jesus Christ, and our vital relationship with the local church. My father came to know the Lord in Ecuador, together with my mother, before they started having children, so all of us were born in an Evangelical home, and [pauses] to people at that time there was a [pauses] clear cut [laughs quietly] decision [pauses] that meant leaving the Roman Catholic Church. [sound of approaching and passing train] As a matter of fact, the...the story is that the first one in the family to come to know the Lord was an uncle of mine, Eddie Vuerto, who was also one of the first pastors in Ecuador. He came to know the Lord through the witness of missionaries from the U.S., and [pauses] apparently he started witnessing to my folks. They rejected him, and especially my mother who had grown in a very, very Roman Catholic home. And then finally he was able to persuade them to come to church for a service, and my mother has often told us how right from the beginning she heard the message and that was it; she knew she was hearing the gospel, and committed herself immediately [pauses] to the Lord. And so there was deep conviction. Persecution, well, it was a part of being of being a Christian. It was taken for granted. [pauses] I suppose that it is only in countries where [pauses] the diff...difference between Christians and non-Christians often times is difficult to find, that you take it for granted that there is no need for...I mean, there is no place for persecution. But in a situation such as that, well, it is taken for granted: persecution is a part of it.
ERICKSEN: I understand that your father also visited the jails.
PADILLA: Well, I suppose you can say that more than he, I did. When I was a teenager, I started preaching in the jail in Quito.
ERICKSEN: How did you co.... I'm sorry, go ahead.
PADILLA: I was invited by a missionary, [pauses] a Dr. Donald Turner, who was working with HCJB with the a so-called Academia Christiana del Aire, which was a sort of a correspondence and radio [pauses] Bible study program. And he was very concerned for prisoners, so he invited me to come along with him. I must have been about [pauses] sixteen or so, and for two or three years I visited the jail with him. We baptized about thirty-four people. In fact, that was one of the ways I got started as a preacher [laughs quietly].
ERICKSEN: So that was your first experience preaching?
PADILLA: That and also in the open air in Quito. We used to have preaching meetings out on the street [pauses] or in the squares. Again, more than once we were chased out by [pauses and sighs] Roman Catholics who were encouraged by the priest to take action against us. That was in Quito. We went back to Ecuador when I was about twelve years old.
ERICKSEN: Other than being chased away, what do you remember about your first preaching experiences?
PADILLA: Well, I didn't have much...[pauses] much in...in the way of homiletics, but I had an idea that I had to explain what the gospel meant in very simple terms. I did study. Since I was a child I enjoyed reading, and I would read all kinds of [pauses] Christian books [pauses] and try to [pauses] organize a sermon the way I could. I don't really remember in detail what kind of message I presented except that it was my concern to show the centrality of Jesus Christ and the possibility of relating oneself to Him.
ERICKSEN: How did your conversion come about?
PADILLA: I was about fifteen years old. I had grown up in a Christian home. I was....I suppose you could say that I was having a sort of a crisis as a teenager, wondering if this was for me, and after thinking about it I decided to read the New Testament fot myself without anybody else talking to me about it. So I remember walking [pauses] a long corridor in my high school. Early in the morning I would go, at 7:00 or so, before classes started, so I could be alone and think about it. And walking up and down the hall I read the New Testament, the whole thing, and then I committed my life to Christ. It was a...it was a definite conscious experience for me, and then after that I started talking to my friends about Christ, taking them to church and so on, selling Bibles, and soon I was known as the pastor [laughs quietly]. Everybody...everybody knew me as a pastor...the pastor.
ERICKSEN: Was that a friendly expression or was it derogatory?
PADILLA: No, I think it was...well, it depended on who...who used it. For some people it was, you know, a friendly kind of approach, but others made fun of me. [sighs]
ERICKSEN: Was it as difficult being an Evangelical during your high school years as it had been when you were younger?
PADILLA: No, no, not as bad because...well, for two reasons: One, in Ecuador there was much more religious freedom. As a matter of fact that's one of the main reasons why we moved back to Ecuador, because in Colombia it was becoming almost impossible for children from Evangelical homes to study. As I told, you, we were...two of us were expelled from school. And then also, as time went on, things loosened up and it was much easier to be an Evangelical. And even later on an Evangelical would be respected because people would say, "Well, Evangelicals are honest and hard working and so on."
ERICKSEN: How did you begun working at AC...HCJB?
PADILLA: Mainly because I needed to work. I was in high school, but [pauses] I come from a very poor home. My home was one in which we knew what it meant to have enough just for one day, or maybe not enough for one day. My father wanted me to be a tailor. He wanted everybody to be a tailor [Ericksen laughs], and I was rebellious enough to say, "Well, I don't want to be a tailor." And my mother encouraged us to study. I had good grades in primary school, so I got a scholarship for high school, a small small thing, but it helped. And it kind of convinced my father that I didn't have to start working right away. [Ericksen clears throat] And then when I was...well, it would be here the equivelent of first year of high school, I started working with HCJB, first typing (I didn't know how to type to begin with, but I learned to), and then helping in dramatizations of biblical episodes, and then writing for certain programs, and ended up having three or four programs every week for fifteen minutes. I don't know how they tolerated me, but I made it. So I preached for, oh, it must have been about three years or so [pauses] over the radio. And I guess in a way people took it for granted that...that after Wheaton I would go back and keep on preaching, but [pauses] I saw the limitations of radio work: lack of contact with people and so on.
ERICKSEN: Who were the programs that you were preaching on...who were they targeted at?
PADILLA: I think most of them...all of them, really, were targeted to Christians. [Ericksen clears throat] I participated in the Christian Academy of the Air, it was called, which was this radio program to help people grow in their knowledge of Scripture, study a bit of Christian education, and receive some kind of help for Sunday school teaching, that kind of thing. I took all the courses that they [pauses]...that they offered. And then [pauses]...I was never alone. I working with a team of people led by Dr. Donald Turner.
ERICKSEN: Okay. How'd you decide to come to Wheaton?
PADILLA: Hm. [pauses] I wanted to study, go to university. I could perhaps done it in Ecuador, but with great difficulty because...because of finan...finances. Besides, I really wanted to combine some kind of a career with Bible and theology. I was not absolutely certain as to what I would do. I thought of the possibility of studying medicine. I was attracted to medicine. I could not have studied medicine there, because it's very expensive. Well, it's much cheaper than here [chuckles], but for a child from a very poor home, just impossible. So that was one factor. I had already one brother who had come, and he wrote to me and said, "You know, if you want to study in college here, it's always possible to work." I consulted with various missionaries. Every one of them discouraged me. They'd say, "No, if you go there, you stay there." I say, "No. My intention is to go and study and come back." I was even offered an alternative by a couple of kind missionaries who wanted to keep me in the country working with HCJB. And they say, "Well, if you stay here [pauses] we'll give you some lessons on Scripture and theology and so on, and you can work full-time with HCJB." I'm glad I didn't. I talked finally with Abe Van der Puy, who at that time was one of the main staff [pauses], a missionary. He had been my pastor. And I said, "Look, I have decided to go to the U.S. I'm not consulting as to whether I should or not go. [laughs quietly] I'm going. What would you tell me with regards to a school? What kind of school would you recommend?" Well, he's a gr...a graduate of Wheaton, so he recommended Wheaton. And he said, "Well, it's difficult to get in, but we'll write and see." So I got all the papers and applied and was accepted. [pauses] When I was accepted, I didn't quite know how I was going to manage to pay the fare. I didn't have any money. But there was a man in my church who had been a military, and he was probably the only...the only one person who had more than [pauses] for daily needs. So he lent me the money, and with that I was able to buy the fare to Miami, and then from Miami I went to Denver where my brother was. (I took a Greyhound bus.) And then from Denver I came here, and arrived with practically no money at all in my pocket, and started working right away. [chuckles]
ERICKSEN: Here at the college?
PADILLA: Uh-huh, yes. I was given a job at the dining hall, and I stayed there for a couple of years, until I realized that I could make more outside the college [laughs quietly]. Yeah.
ERICKSEN: So where did you work outside?
PADILLA: Oh, my goodness. I had all kinds of jobs. [pauses] I worked for Scripture Press, just making packages and that kind of thing. I worked for Ideal [?] here in Wheaton distributing papers that came early in the morning, starting work at 3:30 in the morning, every day. [pauses] I also worked for a while washing trucks of United Parcels in Glen Ellyn. I did all kinds of things. I had no scholarship. I suppose at that time it was easier than now-a-days. I was able to pay everything, although I always had to work, oh, about twenty, twenty-five hours a week. But it was alright. I made it. The first semester here I didn't take any courses. I was allowed to dedicate myself to learning the language. I really didn't know much English at all. While I had knowledge of the grammar and I could read it, but not really speak it, and it was very difficult to understand what people were saying. So I worked in the dining hall and learned language...the language m...mainly by being in contact with people. I lived in the dorm. So I started classes in January of '54.
ERICKSEN: How many international students were here then when you were here?
PADILLA: Very, very, very few. I can't remember how many, but [pauses] hardly anyone.
ERICKSEN: Was there any provision for [pauses] the special needs that international students had at that point or were you just one of the student body?
PADILLA: Well, we...we met as the internationals once in a while, once a month, I think. At first I really didn't want to have many...have much contact with people who've spok...spoke only Spanish, because I made up my mind that I would learn English, and start classes right away. So, I was very, very alone, but it was a good discipline, and it helped.
ERICKSEN: [pauses] Were any of the Wheaton faculty particularly influential in your own [pauses] growth?
PADILLA: Well, I was a philosophy major, and I was led to choose that major mainly because of Dr. Arthur Holmes, who's still around. I had a great deal of respect for him, and I think he had a lot of influence on me. I didn't take many courses from him; I can't remember -- I think a couple. And Dr. Kantzer was very...Kenneth Kantzer was very open and very friendly to me...to me as a foreigner. I, in fact, had a couple of reading courses from him. I was trying to read [pauses] a bit about Latin American philosophy and Spanish philosophy, so I asked him to allow me to do that with him. He had a great deal of influence on me. And then Dr. [Berkley] Michaelson, who taught Greek, well, New...New Testament. I think I had more courses from him than from anybody else, because of my interest in the New Testament (and Greek). Then also, Dr. [Merrill] Tenny was very, very [laughs quietly] very helpful and I appreciated his courses, the Apostolic Age and a course on the Gospels (that is in the graduate school already). I think those four men were...were the ones that helped me the most while I was at Wheaton. I have oftentimes thought that [pauses] the philosophy courses I took at Wheaton were really very basic to a lot of my own understanding of life and my world view. [pauses] I wish at that time there had been courses that had helped me more in understanding the world. [pauses] I'm glad to see that some courses like that are being taught here now [pauses, takes long breath] such as the course on third world issues is one.
ERICKSEN: [pauses] What was...what was the spiritual climate of Wheaton like [Padilla breathes] when you were here?
PADILLA: [sighs] I think it marked by the presence of...of a very godly man, who was Dr. [V. Raymond] Edman [fourth president of Wheaton College, 1940-1965]. [pauses] I appreciated my own relationship with him. You know, he had been a missionary in Ecuador. He knew my parents. As a matter of fact, [laughs quietly] when I arrived in Wheaton I went to see him, and [pauses] he asked me when I was born. I said I was born in 1932. He said, "Well, then you are the child...the baby I was...I prayed for together with your mother. And since then we were in close touch. I would go sometimes to talk with him, and he invited me to his home. I think he...he was a man of great spiritual depth and the College was influenced by that. Of course, there were professors who brought together a deep devotion to Jesus Christ with intellectual understanding of Scripture and of life, and that helped. I was encouraged by, and helped by, the spiritual emphasis of Wheaton. I suppose you could say, looking now from another perspective, that more could have been done to relate the Christian life to the totality of life. One was rather disarmed when it came to facing the world with all its challenges. Questions of justice and injustice and poverty and so on didn't come into consideration. It was in some ways a rather isolated world, perhaps it still is [pauses] in suburban American...America. But I came from a background in which I was constantly challenged by Marxism, and a rather hostile environment towards anything Christian which was not Roman Catholic. In high school, my last year in high school [laughs quietly], all my teachers without an exception were Marxist, all of them. And I was constantly challenged, which was good, in a way, but it was like coming to a...[pauses] an oasis or [laughs quietly] a nice haven, when I arrived at Wheaton, started studying things from a Christian perspective. You can imagine the difference.
ERICKSEN: What...how would you compare your church experience in Ecuador with your church experience here?
PADILLA: Well, in a way that was one of the most disappointing aspects of my whole experience when I came to the U.S. I found the church here in general very impersonal, very adjusted to the culture around, [pauses] with a rather professionalized ministry, [pauses] with a lot of spectators. [pauses] It was rather disappointing in comparison with my own experience which was, well, as you gather, [laughs quietly] one in which every Christian was a witness, there was suffering. I mean, that was the price to be paid. And out of our poverty oftentimes I think we did more for the poor than any church I knew here. I was involved in ministry since I came, almost immediately, but the few times when I was in a...in a typical, middle class, white American church I was rather disappointed. Maybe if I had participated actively in one church and gotten into it, I would have changed my opinion. I don't know.
ERICKSEN: I guess we'll never know.
PADILLA: [laughs quietly] Uh-huh.
ERICKSEN: You mentioned that the churches seemed adapted to the culture. Can you think of any examples of that that you recall from that time?
PADILLA: Well, the...the first thing that struck...struck me was [pauses] the tremendous wealth of the churches, the luxury of it all [laughs quietly], the tremendous expense people went into to have very luxurious buildings. Perhaps I was judging, and I still think out of my own context in which if you have money [laughs quietly], you seek to use it in ways that would be more...much more fruitful than in buildings or gowns for the choir or that kind of thing. I think materialism is the one thing that is very noticeable to anybody coming from abroad. It was at that time, and I think it's even worse now. And of course that is...that is apart of the culture. That is a part of the American way of life.
ERICKSEN: When did you decide that you were going to move into the [Wheaton College] Grad School? How did that come about?
PADILLA: I was not too clear when I came as to what I was going to study. I wanted a liberal arts education. I thought of the possibility of majoring in [pauses] Bible, and also I thought of pre-med, and so on [laughs quietly]. But then, well, there were two factors. I...little by little came to the conclusion that if I was going back to Latin America I should prepare myself to serve the Lord in the...in the ministry of the Word. I think that came...I came to that conclusion within a few months after being here, just a growing conviction that that's what I wanted to do. I went to the Urbana convention in 1954, and that helped me see once again the need to prepare oneself for service to the Lord. So I decided to take a philosophy major and go on into the Graduate School. I mean the decision was taken as one decision. I made my plans so as to go on with the Graduate School. So I think when I was a freshman or perhaps when I was a sophomore, I had already decided that I would go on to graduate school. So much so that I took a number of courses that were graduate courses when I was a senior because everything was geared towards [laughs quietly] getting a master's degree in Biblical Studies, actually. (My master's was in Theology.) But for instance, a required course such as Introduction to the Old Testament, I think...no, Bible Introduction...New Testament Introduction, that was it. That was a required course in Graduate School. I already had it when I was a senior. That type of thing. That also helped in relation to the Army here [laughs quietly]. The first year I was here I got a classification, a 1A classification, 'cause I was a resident in the U.S. I came as a resident. And so the idea was that since the Korean War was on, you know, I was a good candidate to go there, and I was given that classification, and I understood that I could be drafted any time. And I had no business with that, so I protested, appealed to the appeal board, and I had to go there and explain the whole thing. And I argued and argued for about two hours with five or six old men who thought that I was [pauses] most likely to become an American citizen, and how could it be that if I intended that, I was not willing to serve in the Army. And so I argued and finally I said, "Look, if I'm not exonerated from the Army on account of the fact that I'm a student, at least I'm going to investigate the possibility to be exonerated as a theology student." He said, "Are you studying Theology?" I said, "No, but I...I am on my way towards that. As a matter of fact, [pauses] I'm sure I can get some kind of letter to prove that. So I got a letter from Wheaton saying that I would be accepted to study in the Graduate School and on that basis they gave me a...(what is it?) another classification as a ministerial student. So you see, deciding to go to the Graduate School early enough helped with regards to the draft. [chuckles]
ERICKSEN: Maybe if this is a question that should wait till later and we can defer it if you want. I wonder if you could talk about how Wheaton has changed since you were a student here?
PADILLA: [pauses] Yeah. Hmm.. Well, I guess the first big change one notices is in terms of facilities. My goodness.
ERICKSEN: We're sitting in one of them [referring to the Billy Graham Center]. [Ericksen and Padilla laugh]
PADILLA: I think of the graduate school at that time. Do you know where it was?
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
PADILLA: [Padilla clears throat] And now this rather luxurious Billy Graham Center. [pauses] And a lot of the buildings are new. The new chapel and the new dorms, and the science building. I guess those are the externals. In some ways Wheaton hasn't changed. It's still in suburban Wheaton with all the limitations that that has, of which many people are not even aware. I have appreciated the greater openness towards [pauses] world issues. That is very healthy, I think. [pauses] I don't think when I was here you could have had a HNGR program [Wheaton College program which places students in Third World contexts for a six-month internship with a Christian organization involved in holistic responses to poverty]. And from my own perspective that is one of the very best things Wheaton could have, to help students become aware of world needs, and to enable them to become world citizens rather than just American citizens. And I know that some courses would help in the same direction. My own daughter in college, Elisa, has been enjoying some of these courses, like the course on third world issues, and now she's taking a course on development, is one. I think that is healthy and that is a big difference. In my own day I think the College was much more parochial, much more restricted to the U.S. Of course the college was also smaller, and that meant that probably you had [pauses] more students who were committed to service to Jesus Christ, at least [?] had more clarity as to the relationship between their education and their own contribution to the kingdom. I don't know. Of course, I'm not studying at Wheaton. I just get an impression on the basis of my being here as a visitor and also from my daughters who are a part of Wheaton. [pauses] I don't really know about how you would compare [pauses] on the question of faculty. Seems to me there are highly qualified peoples who are still teaching here. A lot of the old teachers are not here anymore, of course [laughs quietly]. A few are still. The ones that were just starting...some of the ones that were just starting when I came.
ERICKSEN: When did you meet your wife?
PADILLA: We met...well, I was a freshman and she was a senior. I came to Wheaton rather late. I was already twenty years old when I came. And I think our main contact was through FMF, at that time, Foreign Missions Fellowship. We prayed together in the Latin American prayer group, but our relationship did not develop until much much later. She graduated in '54 and then left for Philadelphia where she worked, near Philadelphia she worked in a...in a school for delinquent girls for three years, and then she came back. And we were together in the Graduate School. So in 1958...59 we were together and had several courses together and she helped in the ministry that I had together with other Wheaton students, in Elgin among Hispanics...Hispanics. We went there every Sunday. So she joined the team for the second semester. In fact, she provided transportation and played the piano, then I preached. And we became much more acquainted that way. But a lot of our relationship developed even after that. She joined the staff of the IVCF, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, in this country, and [sound of approaching and passing train] I joined the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students. And we corresponded, corresponded for about two-and-a-half years, and then decided to get married. [laughs quietly]
ERICKSEN: Let's back up to the...the team that went to Elgin. What...was that something that you started or something that had been going before?
PADILLA: It had been going before. I really don't know who started it. At least I don't recall. There was a...there was a Graduate School student here, [pauses] Gerry [Geraldine] Smith, who has been a missionary in Mexico for many, many years. I think she's still there. She was the one who invited me. I had been going to...into Chicago every Sunday, sometimes more than Sunday too, and with other two Latin American...well, you would say missionary kids, I suppose: Paul Clark and Michael Hemans. Mike was from Chile and Paul was from Peru. And the three of us would go every Sunday to Chicago to Christ Mission, I think it was called, on Clarke street, one block away from Moody Bible Institute. And we held services there. But then the team there grew and there were people enough to divide up the team, so I decided to go to Elgin because Gerry didn't have anybody to help. And eventually I was in charge of the ministry there. And [pauses] the interesting thing is that a few of those people actually became the core for a church, which is still there as a part of the First Baptist Church, I think it is. I preached a couple of Sundays ago there, and some of the people that I met over twenty years ago are still there.
ERICKSEN: How did you find the...the receptiveness to be among the Hispanic community [pauses] to the work that you were involved in?
PADILLA: Well, some of them were Christian people, and we also tried to reach others. There was openness in general. [sound of train approaching and passing by] You know, the Hispanic population even now is [laughs quietly] looked down upon, and they feel it. They feel very much [pauses] they belong to a...an oppressed class. And there is openness, [pauses] especially, of course, if you come from the same background. I have often se...oftentimes said that what I received from Hispanic people here is far more than I ever gave them, and I'm very thankful for it. I was able to keep in touch with my own people while I was at Wheaton. And if you live in a foreign country for more than two, three years, then you realize how much being in touch even with the language makes a difference. I mean, I met at that time (when I was a student here)...met Latin Americans who were beginning to lose their fluency in Spanish. Amazingly enough [laughs quietly] they were forgetting the lo...their own language. That didn't happen to me, but it was be...because I was in contact with Spanish-speaking people every week, practically. I preached in Spanish and so on. It may have meant that I was not as proficient in English, I g...as I could have been. But I'm not sorry at all, because I was going back to Latin America.
ERICKSEN: You said that the Hispanic community felt [pauses]...I don't remember the exact words you used.
PADILLA: Well, they were the underdogs.
ERICKSEN: [unclear]...or...?
PADILLA: They were the underdogs. [laughs quietly]
ERICKSEN: Did they feel that as much then, more now? How does...?
PADILLA: No, I think the...the situation hasn't changed. They are at the b...at the very bottom of the social scale. Sometimes people don't even have their papers in order, and that means that they can be exploited, easily exploited. Now with the changes in the law, I don't know what ...what is going to happen. A number of people are becoming jobless. But at that time I met some farm workers from Mexico, for ins...for instance, who were getting far less than the minimum wage. Sometimes they would come for the harvest, harvest of tomatoes or something like that here in this area. I visited some of them, and they really...rea...really lived in a very, very poor kind of situation, isolated from their families, just men, who had left their...their family back in Mexico. [pauses] I...I was very thankful for this type of contact when I was in college. I guess my education was completed by that kind of experience. I can't re...forget for instance a lady who used to be a cook at Wheat...at Moody Bible Institute. She was a Mexican. She had come to know the Lord through a missionary, an old lady that she...this lady introduced to us at...at one point because this lady, the missionary, was living in...in Chicago. So we went to see her. An old lady. I can't remember her name. But this woman who was a cook at Moody was such a wonderful Christian, really really inspiring to us. I think she gave almost all that she earned, almost all of it, to people who were in...in...in the ministry in Mexico, serving the Lord in Mexico. A very humble woman. She had a little room under a stairway in Chicago. [pauses] A cook. Oftentimes she said, "Do you boys have enough for the...for your train fare" [laughs quietly] And she always took us there to give us something to eat and a cup of coffee [pauses] after we held this service for Spanish speaking people on Clarke street. Very inspiring.
ERICKSEN: [pauses] Shifting gears a little, what led to your going for your doctorate at Manchester? I know you'd been an IFES [International Fellowship of Evangelical Students] already and I anticipate covering IFES more...
PADILLA: Uh-huh.
ERICKSEN: ...in a few minutes.
PADILLA: Well, I guess it was [pauses] my contact with university students in Latin America. I had worked for four years with the IFES. I had always liked the idea of studying the New Testament in depth. And after being in the ministry for four years I decided that...well, we decided (with my wife) that it was a good time to go to...go for a doctorate. It was not necessarily Manchester. We...we chose Manchester because we saw that it was possible to do it there under Professor [F. F.] Bruce, but we wrote to Harvard and Chicago, and, I guess, New College in Edinburgh and then Manchester. And so we went there when we already had two children, [pauses] with not much assurance as to how we were going to support ourselves, but it was a wonderful experience, not only because of the studies, but because of ministry with international students when we were there, and also because of the way the Lord provided for us. I got a scholarship, a very nice scholarship from the university that we had not expected to have.
ERICKSEN: What did you do your dissertation on?
PADILLA: It was on [pauses] the relationship between the church and the world in Paul's teaching, was restricted to Pauline epistles, just trying to show what that relationship meant theologically and in terms of ethicals...ethics.
ERICKSEN: Were there any parts of your thinking that were [pauses] developed while you were there in Manchester?
PADILLA: I suppose you could say that much of my own thinking [pauses] carries the imprint of my experience in Manchester. I saw the importance of the eschatological di...dimension of the gospel, but not eschatological in the sense of [laughs quiety] the future and nothing else, but in the sense of a future that has been inserted into the present in Jesus Christ. And I...I studied that in depth and it helped me a lot. Even now I can...I cannot get away from this basic emphasis in the New Testament that we are living between the times, and this is the time where when we experience the tension between the already and the not-yet of biblical eschatology. That really was very much a part of my thinking as a result of my work at Manchester.
ERICKSEN: I guess maybe...I'm gonna switch tapes a minute.
END OF TAPE