News Tags: presbyterian historical society
Heritage Sunday 2024
Fifty years ago, at the 1974 General Assembly of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA), David Sindt rose from his seat and bravely and hopefully held up a sign with a single question: Is Anyone Else Out There Gay?
PHS hosts exhibit and talks on missionaries to Persia
Through April 30, the Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS) is hosting a traveling exhibit, “Assyrians from Persia (Iran) to the United States, 1887-1923: Assyrian Education, American Missionaries, and the Search for a Home.” In conjunction with the exhibit, PHS welcomed Dr. Hooman Estelami of Fordham University for an event and talk on March 21.
2024 PHS research grants awarded
PHS’s Research Fellowship program awards travel grants of $2,500 for scholars, students and independent researchers who demonstrate a need to work in the society’s collection for a minimum of one week and whose normal place of residence is farther than 75 miles from Philadelphia.
African American Leaders and Congregations Collecting Initiative
The Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS) continues to make progress on its effort to document the Black Presbyterian experience through the African American Leaders and Congregations Collecting Initiative (AALC).
Through a lens: Black History Month
As staff members at the Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS) further familiarize ourselves with the contents of the Religious News Service Photograph Collection, we have discovered powerful photos that speak to the experiences of African American Christians. These images, these moments captured by a lens, allow us to time travel, revisiting the tumultuous and varied history of the mid-20th century, as the collection spans the years 1945 to 1982.
This month, in celebration of Black History Month, we want to share some of the images that grabbed our attention and pulled at our heartstrings. We encourage you to browse digitized RNS images and our African American History Digital Collection in Pearl Digital Collections to find your own.
Archives sneak peek: Florence Helen Ray Boyes papers
After visiting Lebanon’s Kennedy Memorial Hospital in 1950, Dr. Paul S. Rhoads, working for the Board of Foreign Missions of the PCUSA, typed up a descriptive account of all he’d witnessed. The report is full of praise for the clinic, its staff and the medical missionary couple who ran it. Through Rhoads’s words, we are offered a glimpse into the world of Kennedy Memorial — the world of Florence and Henry Boyes.
Now processed: Presbyterian Peacemaking Program records
The Presbyterian Historical Society has processed the Peacemaking Program Records as Record Group 542, and the guide to the records is now available for researchers: https://www.history.pcusa.org/collections/research-tools/guides-archival-collections/rg-542.
The collection totals 59 boxes, with a scope covering the history and actions of the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program (PPP) and its staff as they worked to find ways for the denomination to respond to Christ’s call to be peacemakers. Additionally, there are records of the Presbyterian United Nations Office (PUNO) and the files of the Rev. Donald J. Wilson, chiefly documenting his work in peacemaking and international affairs before the creation of the PPP.
This month in Presbyterian history: December
As 2023 comes to a close, we have a few more moments in Presbyterian history to share with you — the first teleporting us back to our very own Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS) at the turn of the 20th century.
This month in Presbyterian history: November
The ‘Revolutionary Pastor,’ John A. Mackay, and the National Black Presbyterian Caucus
Dean Lewis and the Advisory Council on Church and Society
At a 1987 consultation held at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, Dean Lewis, head of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) office charged with developing social policy, fielded a question about the theological basis of implementing statements of the General Assembly: Under what basis does the Church act in the world?
Lewis answered, in part: “It comes from the fundamental principles of both our predecessor denominations, remember those principles? One is, ‘Truth is an order to goodness.’ We should want to do something about that which we believe. Else, why would it be of any consequence to try to discover the truth?”