Know Your Archives, Part VI: Learn the Dress Code

By Seth Dowland

I spent the month of May completing an abbreviated version of Matt’s fundamentalist/evangelical archive tour, visiting the Fundamentalism File at Bob Jones and the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton. I’ll second the multiple commendations of Patrick Robbins and the staff at BJU – coffee in the morning and M&Ms in the afternoon make a day in the archives much more pleasant. I did make a fundamentalist faux pas one morning when I showed up to the BJU track in a sleeveless running shirt – a prominently posted dress code emphasized “NO TANK TOPS.” Fortunately I had a T-shirt stowed in the car and made a quick change before I scandalized any Bob Jones coeds. Other than that, I had a great week in Greenville, mining the Fundamentalism File’s extensive collections and paging through a number of evangelical and fundamentalist periodicals.

The Billy Graham Center is, as Matt noted, unmatched among evangelicalism archives. Wayne Weber and Bob Shuster know the collection inside and out, and they are eager to help. Like BJU, The Graham Center archives offers free, unlimited scanning – a boon for any researcher. I enjoyed wandering through downtown Wheaton when the archives closed, as well; I catalogued my notes and scans at a lovely coffeeshop (where I overheard earnest undergrads debating the Sotomayor nomination) before walking over to a bar (downtown Wheaton’s one and only!) to watch the NBA playoffs.

And, to answer Randall's query, I have done research in the archives at Liberty University. My first visit was nine years ago, when I was working on an undergraduate thesis about Jerry Falwell. Beginning my trend of violating fundamentalist college dress codes, I showed up in khakis and a polo shirt at a time when ties were still required for male students. (Being an undergraduate myself, I didn’t have a tie in my car. So I spent the day absorbing cold stares from Liberty students disdainful of my rebellious spirit.) The “archives” at that time consisted of a bunch of boxes in a dusty room, almost completely uncatalogued. The librarian turned me loose and told me to photocopy whatever I wanted (for free!). I came across a trove of Falwell sermons from the 1960s (including the oft-cited “Ministers and Marches” sermon in which Falwell excoriated civil rights protesters). Inexperienced and unprepared, I made only a handful of copies and came away with a scant set of notes. When I went back to Liberty as a graduate student six years later, I showed up in a tie, only to learn that Liberty had eliminated the tie requirement. Oh well -- better to be overdressed. A newly-hired archivist was processing the old boxes, and the catalog was incomplete. But I could only look at items in the catalog, which didn't include many of the documents I ran across on my first trip. I knew what I was looking for but couldn’t find it – a supremely frustrating experience. I assume Liberty has processed many more archival boxes in the intervening three years. But for now, I’m left with sketchy notes and a sense of regret. I wish someone had told me, forcefully, to photocopy as much as I could! Still, the experience of discovery as I waded through the Liberty archives nine years ago convinced me to become a religious historian, and I’ve been thankful for that inspiration ever since.

Know Your Archives, Part V: Methodist Heaven

Continuing our series on our archival experiences, I'm pleased to guest post the following from Christopher Jones, who blogs at Juvenile Instructor and is a graduate student at William and Mary. I, too, researched at the United Methodist Archives, for 2 weeks in 1999; they arranged some very nice housing there in a nearby apartment building, and Drew is close enough to New York City for some fun side trips as well!

By Christopher Jones

In the summer of 2008, I spent a week at the United Methodist Archives and History Center, located on the idyllic campus of Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. Perhaps providentially for a poor graduate student researching Methodism, the archives are located just down the road from my in-laws in Summit, NJ, which saved me the cost of having to find a place to stay, but I’ve heard from others that the Xavier Center invites individuals doing research at Drew to stay there for relatively cheap (about $40/night). I ate each day at the student center at Drew, which had a pretty good selection of decent (but not great) food for a reasonable price (John Turner’s not lying about the quality of the lunch at the LDS cafeteria).

The reading room is small, but quiet, and the collections at the UMAHC are rich. The Francis Asbury collection and Garrettson family collection (including Catherine Garrettson’s fascinating dream journal), along with a host of diaries penned by itinerant preachers in antebellum America received most of my attention, but there is a large collection of documents dealing with 20^th century themes and issues that are waiting to be mined by interested researchers (and which were utilized by Morris Davis for his important book on The Methodist Unification). They have an especially rich collection of source material (both personal papers and institutional records) dealing with missionary efforts in India and China during the early 1900s, for those interested in international issues. And what they don’t have in document form, they have on microfilm. Plus, they had a mourner’s bench from an early 19^th century camp meeting on display in the atrium outside the reading room, which for a religious history geek like myself, was an added bonus.

What made the trip to NJ especially worthwhile and valuable, though, was the staff. Chris Anderson leads a team of Methodist librarians that went above and beyond in ensuring my short stay was productive. In addition to having requested materials on hand awaiting my arrival each morning, the staff also suggested other sources that might be helpful to my research on Methodism and Mormonism (and they were right). When I left, Chris Anderson offered to send photocopies of any sources I may have forgotten to check out while there (an offer I luckily didn’t have to take him up on). For a young student making his first research trip outside of his local archives, it was a wonderful experience.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation--Know Your Archives, Part IV

BY MATT SUTTON

Indeed, I have many thoughts on archives I visited recently (while my wife and kids lounged on the California beach). Unlike those of you who experienced the beauties of an un-caffeinated Provo or the modernist wealth and splendor of the bean-town Congregationalists, I went on a fundamentalist/ evangelical greatest hits tour. And I only visit archives made of brick, as the images below illustrate.

University of Washington (I know, not exactly a bastion of fundy/evangelical truthiness): nice research room; great archivists (thank you tax-payers); and student assistants who make things interesting by not always putting the correct collection/box/folder numbers on your copies.

Moody Bible Institute: limited collections and multiple perimeters of security to navigate ninja-style before you find the archives room.

Biola University: No research room, but a friendly archivist who does her best to accommodate researchers while simultaneously attending to one of her hundreds of other library assignments.

Gordon-Conwell: it ain’t Boston, but the Puritans still live nearby. One of the best collections of early-to-mid twentieth century Christian magazines anywhere. You can stay on campus on the cheap if you want to re-live your college glory days of shared bathrooms, no TV, and sleeping on a cot.

Bob Jones University: despite my dress shirts, khakis, and short hair, everyone, and I mean everyone, knew that I was an outsider on the compound. BJU security knows when you come, when you go, and what you do. Greenville must be a more dangerous place than I realized because the campus is entirely surrounded by a gate, much of the faculty live on campus, and there are K-12^th classes on campus so that faculty and their kids never have to leave. Eating is done communally in the cafeteria--the library shuts down from 5-6 so everyone can eat together. The archivist at BJU is incredibly accommodating and will go to great lengths to help researchers. He also lets you eat donuts and drink coffee (in my case Pepsi) in the archives room--so take that Turner.

American Baptist Archives (Atlanta): $10 a day to do research; $.50/copy; and two and a half months later, I am still waiting for my copies to arrive. Enuf said.

Fuller Seminary: Beautiful research room with no windows or doors. O.K., I guess there was one door. I got in somehow. Staring down at you is a giant portrait of the late Wilbur Smith (of “The Atomic Bomb and the Word of God” fame.) It is a little eerie to read his papers while he watches.

Wheaton/Billy Graham Center Archives: still the best, most comfortable place to work on evangelicalism. Professional, smart archivists, plenty of room to work, friendly policies, and they even have trains going by outside all day, which make for a nice distraction perfectly suited for a three-year-old or the father of a three-year-old. And that is how I spent my summer vacation.

Know Your Archives, Part III -- A Confused Geek's Tour through some Southern Religious Archives

Paul Harvey

John Turner and Randall Stephens' last two posts, concerning the new Church History Library in Salt Lake and the beautiful Congregational Library in Boston, made me think that we should solicit more contributions about our experiences researching (sorry for you general readers and non-historians out there -- occasionally we like to geek out on the blog).

A number of other blogs have "how to" and advice lists for how to organize your research trip, what to bring, etc., so we won't duplicate that here. Instead, maybe we can follow our last two know your archives posts with some more that talk about other libraries, archives, museums, or other places where you've had memorable research experiences related in any way to American religious history. So if you're interested in sending me a contribution, please feel free; I'd be especially interested to hear from anyone who's been to some off-the-beaten-tracks archives that you want to tell us about. Sure, I've loved researching at the Newberry in Chicago, at the Harvard Library, at the Schomburg Center in New York, at the Denver Public Library, and at the peerless Southern Historical Collection in Chapel Hill -- all beautiful places, both aesthetically and in terms of priceless and massive collections. But it's the archives where you hit the jackpot when you least expected it that most attract my geek love.

Matt Sutton researched at Bob Jones U., so I'm expecting a funny contribution from you any time now, Sutton. And he also of course researched the life of Aimee Semple McPherson -- enough said.

I spent the better part of one year (1988) following the archive trail around the country for my first book, but most of it was spent at a really great place that ought to get more use by scholars, the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives (SBHLA) in Nashville. It's not set in a grand old building like the Congregationalist Archives, and no I'm not going to do any RiAH TV for this particular post like Randall did for his. But the SBHLA is really a treasure trove for anyone doing anything that relates, directly or indirectly, to Baptists. Besides wonderful archival resources, they've also microfilmed seemingly everything from every other repository that has Baptist material. I found there an incredible collection of local black Baptist church, association, and convention minutes (some held in hard copy at the American Baptist archives in Rochester, and some just collected from God knows where), as well as black Baptist publications that you just can't find anywhere. One of my former students (Sue Marasco, who has blogged here before), combed through correspondence there concerning Nannie Burroughs, the black Baptist woman's leader and founder of the National Training School for Women and Girls. We know about her life until 1920 from Evelyn Higginbotham's Righteous Discontent, but not much about her afterwards -- the material is there, a good deal of it at the SBHLA.

Also, recently on our blog and elsewhere we've had considerable discussions of John Stauffer and Sally Jenkins, The State of Jones, about Newton Knight and Unionism in Mississippi during the Civil War. Knight may have been a Primitive Baptist, and his parents probably were before the war. We were discussing what his Primitive Baptism would have had to do (if anything) with his dissent from Confederate and Redemptionist views. Further work through the Primitive Baptist materials there (I did a little bit of that, but not all that much) would help further answer some of those questions. The SBHLA has a grant program to help fund research there.

More recently, about ten years ago I think, I spent a little bit of time at a very different kind of place, the small library at the headquarters of the International Pentecostal Holiness Church in Oklahoma City. In the basement of their headquarters was a small and, I admit, most unpromising looking library. If the SBHLA had the look of a really well-run, professional archive, with outstanding material and a full lineup of personnel, the IPHC archive was in one small room presided over by

Pentecostal historian Harold Hunter. After a short conversation with Harold, he began pulling out some of their materials (including the great early Pentecostal paper Live Coals of Fire, whose articles carried all sorts of awesome fire and dynamite metaphors for explaining the work of the Holy Spirit), and I had a feeling that I'd hit the jackpot. While not voluminous, the materials were the one-of-a-kind stuff that any geek historian dreams about.

Not all experiences are so wonderful, of course. At the Virginia Baptist Library at the University of Richmond (back in 1988 again), I was scared off from some of their rich material from an archivist who rather haughtily told me that my topic had been done before, and he wasn't quite sure what I was doing there. As a novice researcher, not actually sure what I was looking for other than just to snoop around and read, I just kind of slinked off and wondered if I should find another line of work. Probably I just misunderstood the archivist and was too inarticulate to explain what I was doing. Too bad, because that place has a peerless collection of early (especially eighteenth century) material; just ask Rhys Isaac.

But leaving there led me to stumble into the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention. There was no "archive" there at all in 1988, just a room with a bunch of busy people and a microfiche machine in the middle. The librarian there, Edie Jeter, got me set up reading microfiche of missionary letters from the 19th century -- not what I was in Richmond to work on, but I am naturally nosy and like to read other people's letters (a pre-requisite of being a historian, I think), so there you go. They were hard to read on those old microfiche, and not made easier by the fact that it was a bustling office in which this ill-fed, ill-housed, and ill-clothed researcher happened to be sitting in the middle (fortunately this was in the South, where people tend to be polite even to confused geeks, and I won't even go into what I probably smelled like). From the couple of days I spent there I spun out an entire book idea based on these letters, which were incredible and very personal. I later moved on to other projects and never got around to pursuing this idea, but in the meantime I believe this material has moved to the SBHLA, where it awaits its historian.

There's plenty of good stuff out there for you geeks, so get busy. Write me with your archival finds and experiences and I'll post them here.

Know Your Archives: The Congregational Library

Randall Stephens

[Cross posted at the Historical Society blog.]

Henry Ward Beecher, America’s most well-known 19th-century preacher, was into books and libraries. “A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life,” he famously remarked. Fortunately for historians and all those interested in America’s past, Beecher’s Congregational denomination was also into books and libraries.

Last week I paid a visit to the impressive Congregational Library, located right next to the State House

on Beacon Hill in Boston. The Library has an extraordinary collection of historic documents, books, maps, and a range of material related to the congregational church, world cultures, and America. Established in 1853, with a modest 56 books, the Library now holds 225,000 items that chronicle the history of one of America’s oldest denominations.

The Library ranks with some of the more beautiful archives in the states. Its interior reminds me of a miniature version of the grand Jefferson reading room at the Library of Congress, with arched ceilings, paintings, and historic furnishings.

I spoke to Peggy Bendroth, executive director of the Library, about the work being done with the collection, the kinds of material housed there, and the role of the Library. (Bendroth’s publications on evangelicalism and her intimate knowledge of American Protestantism benefits those researchers who work at the Library.) I post here the video I made of my visit. Call it “Religion in American History Television.” (Real original title, I know.)

The Congregational Library has much to recommend it. I’ve been to plenty of cramped, denominational archives nestled in southern and midwestern industrial sections of suburbs. Most have hung ceilings, florescent lights, and church-like, indoor/outdoor carpet. So what, I’ve figured. I’m here to do research, not meditate on interior design. Yet, a nicely lit, pleasant environment does add something to the experience. (It’s the Boston Public Library appeal.)

Beyond that, there’s the issue of scope/time frame. The Congregational Library spans the ages as few other denominational archives or research libraries do. And since it’s been around for eons, it’s collected an avalanche of material. It all makes for a great experience for the casual visitor or the dedicated researcher.

Temples, Archives, and Apostates

John G. Turner

I've been meaning to blog about our nearly three months in Provo, Utah, and environs. For anyone writing Mormon History, a trip to the former Deseret means entering archival heaven (well, at least the Terrestrial portion). It's also both somewhat bizarre and exhilarating to emerge from academic isolation and suddenly meet scores of people who share research interests.

Hopefully without too much self-indulgence, here are several of my not-too-coherent summertime thoughts on Mormonism and Mormon History:

▪ Temples are important. That sounds obvious, but in general, historians of Mormonism (like historians of American religion more broadly) still do not pay nearly enough attention to religious practice (as opposed to the politics, economics, and theological / ecclesial development of the church). Granted, the sacred nature of Mormon temple ritual poses particular challenges. But it occurred to me that one gets a very limited sense of Mormon spirituality from, say, visiting sacrament meetings or watching church conferences. Serendipitously, the recently dedicated Oquirrh Mountain Temple had its months-long open house during our summer stay. We accompanied a Mormon friend and his family through the open house, saw the baptismal font, the changing rooms, the sealing room, and the endowment room. The contrast (paraphrasing another Utah friend) between the remarkably low-church sacrament meeting and the liturgical nature of the temple is striking. That contrast has certainly existed since the Nauvoo period of the church. Visiting the temple rammed home the lesson that there is an entire side of Mormon spirituality and practice that I'll never understand, but it's nevertheless good to keep in mind that it's there. If you teach or study American religion and there's ever a temple open house in your vicinity, don't miss it.

▪ The new Church History Library is a much-improved facility for research. The edifice itself testifies to the significance of the church's history for the Latter-day Saint faith. Can you imagine any other religious group in the United States unveiling a new library / archive like this in the midst of an economic downturn? You can find a thorough discussion of its virtues and shortcomings here. Biggest improvements: more light (much easier to stay awake), better technology, and evening / weekend hours. On the downside, you now have to walk across the street to obtain the cheap and tax-free LDS cafeteria lunch, but it's still worth it. The nearest coffee I could find was in a basement McDonald's just south of Temple Square. I tried to wean myself because of enforced abstinence while at BYU but gave up. The flesh is weak.

▪ We were based in Provo, the only place I've lived where the grocery featured Emergency Food Preparedness sales (my wife is taking her cues from the Saints and is stocking up in the midst of hurricane season on the Gulf Coast) and storytime for children. Strangely, though, we attended a Pioneer Day event at Pioneer Park in Provo and never heard or saw anything pertaining to Mormonism. Those weren't just any old pioneers, you know. Maybe I missed something.

▪ In terms of Mormon History publications, you can't blink without missing significant books. After a near-decade book-ended by two major books on the Mountain Meadows Massacre and centered around Richard Bushman's magisterial biography of Joseph Smith, I'm trying to figure out what's coming next. This year appears to be the year of apostasy (historiographically), with books on the subject by Polly Aird and Edward Leo Lyman. I haven't read either book yet, but I'm curious to learn more about why and how people left the church. To return to the first point above, I do think we'll see more books that foreground Mormon religious practice. For an example of innovative and diligent research on the subject, see the article on Mormon ritual healing by Jonathan Stapley and Kristine Wright in the current Journal of Mormon History (link to Table of Contents only).

Religious Pluralism at the Tea Parties

Paul Harvey

From "Morons Holding Signs," a visual essay of post-racial America's vigorous culture of religious pluralism. One local religious spokesperson here after the election had asked for prayer for Obama because God could make good use even of pagan rulers, and for that reason I had thought they had moved on from "secret Muslim" to "pagan." Perhaps not.