It was an exciting day for me, the father of two beautiful girls (ages 4 and 2) when, on June 5, 1970, the doctor who attended the delivery of our third child at Baylor University Hospital in Dallas, Texas, announced, “It’s a boy!” There was no way of knowing, back in those days, what gender one’s child would be until after the birth. I was elated, and at the first opportunity made my way to a department store to buy an infant baseball outfit for our newborn son to wear home from the hospital. It was indeed a glad day. I would have loved a girl just as much but of course was hoping for a son, too!
We called him “Teddy” for the first few years of his growing up, the early years being spent mostly in Kansas—first Wichita, until he was seven, and then Newton until he was going on 10. Newton was an idyllic little Mennonite community just about 40 minutes north of Wichita, where I pastored a start-up church for two and one-half years after having shepherded a flock in Wichita for a bit over six years. Ted and I loved to play catch together at every opportunity in our back yard on Pershing Avenue, and later on Broadway Avenue in Newton. He became an ardent Dallas Cowboys fan when the legendary Tom Landry was coach there, and a Kansas City Royals fan when Hall of Famer George Brett was putting on the uniform each day and near the peak of his career.
When we moved to Indianapolis in 1979, his junior-class Sunday School teacher, Don Harris (who is still a faithful member of Thompson Road Baptist Church) welcomed Ted on his first Sunday in the junior department greeting him with “Good Morning, Teddy.” Ted promptly responded that his name was Theodore Marvin. That encounter was the beginning of a long friendship between the two of them that continues to this day.
One weekend, a businessman in our church, knowing that Ted loved the KC Royals, and that the Royals were playing in Cleveland one Saturday, got tickets for both our families to attend the game. We arrived plenty early, and the two teams were warming up, with the Royals on the first-base line. We spotted George Brett close to the first-base chalk line, and of all people, Hall of Famer (1991) Gaylord Perry was playing catch closer to the dugout and fence, between us and Brett. Our host said, “Ted, ask Perry to holler at George Brett for you to see if he will come over to give you an autograph.” We did just that, getting Perry’s attention; but wouldn’t you know that when we kindly asked Perry to wave Brett over to the fence so we could get his autograph, the great hurler walked away from us in apparent disgust! We never got Brett’s attention, but it was fun to see him in person and up close that day.
Ted, as we called him during those years, joined a little league baseball team, and he enjoyed playing in the Bechtal League baseball program. We told him when he began playing that he should notify his coach that any practices or games that were played on Wednesday evenings or Sundays he would miss because of his priority of church attendance. I do not know if that was his conviction, but he knew it was ours, and we never exchanged any contrary words with each other about it. He still has some trophies of championships won on his LL team. Later, our church had a softball team that played in a church softball league. Ted played third base (like Brett) on that team, and TRBC won a good number of trophies during those years. Their most memorable game was two weeks before he left for college, when they won the championship on a last-inning, two-out hit by his friend Gary Brown, which allowed Ted to score the winning run from second base. A longtime member of the church, John Isom, was the team’s ace pitcher and captain that season.
Ted grew up at TRBC, attending Southport High School and graduating in 1988. He was editor of the school newspaper. He never played any school sports, though I think he would have liked to have played football. But he would have had to do so having gotten around his mother’s roadblock. I don’t remember him ever pushing the subject. During his high-school years he was active in the bus ministry of TRBC, bringing in boys and girls for Sunday school.
Ted applied to attend BJU in the fall of 1988, and in late August he attended an Indianapolis Indians ballgame at the old Bush stadium on 16th street. He was not aware of it, but that happened to be “Used Car Night,” and during the 7th inning stretch an announcer told every ticket holder to check his ticket # as he read off a string of ten numbers. Those who had one of those announced numbers on their ticket were told to report to a certain location behind the field and pick up the car they had won. Ted had one of those numbers and picked up a 1984 Ford Escort—a diesel stick-shift, taxes paid. He came home, woke us up, and said, “Dad, come take a look at my car.” Not knowing what he was up to, I followed him to the driveway and saw what looked like a new car! He got about 50 miles to the gallon (he never turned on the AC in order to save gas!), and drove that car for four years to and from Bob Jones University and for several more years through grad school. We had not even given much thought as to how Ted would get back and forth to Greenville, SC, but the Lord took care of it for us without any worries on our part!
Ted graduated from BJU in 1992 having majored in Journalism, and he stayed on a year following graduation to work at the BJU Press before enrolling in the masters program at IUPUI in Indianapolis as a history major. During these years Ted did quite a bit of research and writing for Polis, funded by the Eli Lilly Endowment, studying and writing about people, trends, and movements in Indianapolis-area churches. He then attended Yale University on a fellowship and graduated with a Ph.D. in history, focusing on twentieth-century U.S. religious, political, and intellectual history.
Before attending Yale, Ted met with us one afternoon to share with us that somewhere along the way he had come to the conclusion that he did not see the need for a relationship to a God that one prays to each day. His attitude was serious, somber, with no arrogance or hint of pride; he was near tears during our conversation. We were, of course, pretty much stunned by that conversation, but thanked him for his honesty. In the next few years it became apparent that Ted’s political views had become “liberal.” Again, it was not a rank, arrogant liberalism, but a sincere conviction, I believe, that liberals have a more compassionate view to the needs of the downtrodden. He believes that Christianity’s alliances with political parties and power structures are a betrayal of Jesus’s radical teachings about the corrupting influence of wealth, power, and worldly gain. We still have an amicable relationship, and he visits us several times a year. We respect the point of view of each other and have learned how and when to discuss issues.
In the past several years Ted has chosen to be called “Theo,” and he writes under the name Theo Anderson. He still does research and writing, much of which is published under someone else’s name, for graduate schools of business, university think tanks, companies, and various other organizations, including a high-speed-rail advocacy group. He’s also writing a non-fiction book, The Game, about how American politics became so corrupt, and a novel, May and October, about the midlife recollections of an ex-minor-league baseball player. He lives in Chicago, is a vegetarian, does not own a vehicle, and has a passion to see high speed trains (and rail transportation generally) become widely available. Many of you have assured Ellen and me that you pray regularly, some of you daily, for our family, including Theo. We are deeply grateful.
I believe my little baseball buddy was saved as a child, baptized, and active in our local church until he was, in his pursuit of higher education, infected by liberalism. Ellen and I and others are praying that Theo will return to the God of his youth and use his pen as a powerful tool for the cause of liberty, truth, and Biblicism. Thanks for joining us in our prayers to this end.
*This brief bio was posted with Theo’s permission.
YOU and GOD 