Oberlin College. An educational institution with roots in nineteenth-century evangelicalism. In 1833 John J. Shipherd led a group of Eastern families in the establishment of a modified Christian communal society in Lorain County, Ohio. Shipherd envisioned his Oberlin community not as a conclave to retreat from the world but as abase for converting it. At the center of the communal enterprise was to be an institute which would train Christian teachers and preachers who would go forth as evangelists.