Once again at the start of the new year we pause to reflect on the acquisition and processing of the previous year. “New Collections” are those materials which have been fully processed, arranged, described, conserved and made available to users. “New Accessions” are materials we received and which will eventually be processed into collections.
New Collections
The new collections we opened in 2023 will only be listed here, since they are described more fully on our “New Collections” webpage.
CN074 – Ephemera of the Billy Graham, Evangelistic Association
CN237 – Records of the Slavic Gospel Association. Ministry active in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Russian speaking populations of north and South America.
CN393 – Papers of David H. Adeney. Missionary to China, and Southeast Asian the staff of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship – USA and the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students.
CN637 – Papers of Donn G. Ziebell, staff and acting president of Slavic Gospel Association.
CN718 – Oral History Interview with Thomas A. Clark IV, Chicago pastor of World Deliverance Christian Center (WDCC).
CN722 – Papers of Luis Palau, international Christian evangelist, especially active in North and South America.
CN724 – Papers of Margaret Dickinson, staff member of the Bible Club Movement, a Christian nurture ministry. She worked in the United States and Congo.
CN728 – Oral History Interview with Saruni Lemargeroi, a pastor among the Maasai people of Kenya.
Oral History Interview Transcripts
In addition, the staff transcribed oral history interviews on eleven recordings from four collections, 752 minutes transcribed into 244 pages. Transcripts of interviews of deceased people are online. Transcripts of living people can be read in the Manuscripts Reading Room.
CN337 – Oral History Interviews of Roger Malstead. Operation Mobilization’s work in Soviet Union, Turkey, Lebanon, the United States, at OM headquarters in England
CN410 – Oral History Interviews of Arthur Rorheim. Executive director of Awana Clubs, International, a Christian youth movement.
CN563 – Oral History Interviews of Robert E. Coleman. Evangelist, author and professor of evangelism. His interviews cover his entire life, including his leadership in both the Billy Graham International Schools of Evangelism and the Lausanne Movement
CN484 – Oral History Interviews with David M. Howard Sr. Missionary to Colombia, mission’s director for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, director of the 1980 Consultation of World Evangelization, and president of the World Evangelical Fellowship.
New Accessions
Every year, from kind people and organizations around the world, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections receives documents, photos, films, videos, digital files, and many other whatnots. Some of this material is more than a hundred years old, but it is all new to us. And they all tell some part of the history of Protestant Evangelical missions and evangelism. In 2023 we received 43 accessions, totaling 107 linear feet. The variety and quality of these new acquisitions are exciting. Here are a few examples.
Oral Histories
The staff recorded 19.75 hours’ worth of interviews with people involved in Christian ministry in Cambodia, China, Mongolia, and the United States. Besides talking about the life of the church and Christian outreach in those countries, the interviews also cover student ministries and, in the sessions with evangelist Leighton Ford, the history and development of both the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and the Lausanne Movement.
Evangelicalism in the United States
A core collection in the Archives & Special Collections received a significant addition in 2023. Held in Special Collections, the National Association of Evangelicals records includes the files of the World Relief Commission, founded in 1944 to respond to the aftermath of World War II. This past fall, the Archives received more than 50 boxes of administrative records, photographs, and other media, spanning World Relief’s work around the globe in the 1980s, ’90s, and early 2000s. This acquisition will be opened for research in the coming year.
The Archives also added to its collections documenting the evangelical publishing industry when it acquired over 260 boxes from the archives of InterVarsity Press (IVP). The IVP records include book catalogs, editors’ files, correspondence, and files documenting the publication process for every title published by IVP—and and some not published—by IVP well into the 2000s. The collection will remain separate from the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship Records, held in the Evangelism & Missions Archives, and is currently being inventoried for future research.
The Archives already has a very large collection of the records of the Fellowship Foundation (Collection 459) which organizes the annual National Prayer Breakfast, as well as other events. Abraham Vereide was the founder of the Prayer Breakfasts groups and this year his daughter gave us his scrapbook and other documents about the early days of the moment.
North American Evangelism
Throughout the year Phil Shappard, former staff member with Moody Radio, gave the Archives recordings of significant radio programming, including sessions of InterVarsity’s Urbana Student Missions conferences and press conferences and speeches by Evangelical leaders.
Uldine Utley in the 1920s and 1930s was one of the better-known evangelists in the United States. Beginning to preach at the age of twelve, she would eventually hold meeting in Madison Square Garden in New York. In 2023, her family gave the Archives her papers (Acc. 2023-033), including sermon manuscripts, pamphlets, books, photographs, posters, and a scrapbook of ephemera from her campaigns.
Acquisitions from more recent events include the Spanish language notebooks of two congresses (one in 1989, the other in 1993) held in Los Angeles. One was sponsored by the BGEA, the other by the Lausanne Movement.
Global Missions
Donations of materials relating to global missions efforts continue to be a core collecting focus for the Wheaton Archives & Special Collections, and 2023 yielded some unexpected treasures as well as long-anticipated donations from mission agencies and individual missionaries alike.
In April, archivists were thrilled to acquire the personal papers of Lilias Trotter (1853-1928), missionary to Algeria with North African Mission (later Arab World Mission) for four decades. A gifted artist, Trotter’s fascination with the people, culture, and landscape of North Africa is evident in the sketchbooks, journals, and watercolor paintings now held in the Lilias Trotter Papers in Special Collections through the generosity of the Lilias Trotter Legacy.
In terms of size, the most significant missions acquisition this year was the records of Crossworld, formerly Unevangelized Field Missions, which merged with many other mission agencies. UFM missionaries have served all over the world, specially in Barbados, Austria, Brazil, Congo, Commonwealth of Independent States, Cuba, Dominica, Ecuador, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Ireland, Irian Jaya, Italy, Kosovo, Mexico, New Zealand, Hispanic North America, Philippines, Scotland, and the United States.
The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM) gave us their voluminous archives in 2022. This year we received additional boxes from them, some going back to the beginning of the 20th century and describing the work of their missionaries in a dozen countries.
Years ago, the Archives received and opened to researchers the records of the Woman’s Union Missionary Society (Collection 379). The WUMS was the first mission, in 1860, to accept single women as field workers. This year we received the papers of Beth Jaderquist Paddon who for many years was the president of the organization.
We also received the papers of individual missionaries, such as Richard Gehman (teaching pastor and church leader in Kenya), Constantine Lewshenia (broadcasting Christian programing to Russia from radio station HCJB in Ecuador), and Linda Panci (composing worship music in France with Youth with a Mission, YWAM), as well as added a recording by missionary Margaret Thompson in which she described the experiences of herself and over 100 other missionaries onboard the ship Zamzam, which was sunk by a German commerce raider in 1941 on its journey to Africa.
Billy Graham
The collections formerly in the Evangelism & Missions Archives documenting the history of the BGEA are now held at the Billy Graham Archives and Research Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. However, the E&MA still has significant collections from additional sources about Rev. Graham’s life and work. This year we added to them, including pictures from the 1971 Heart of America Crusade in Kansas City, Missouri; photo books of the BGEA’s activities in 1961 and material about the Billy Graham pavilion at the 1964-1965 World’s Fair, and a 1957 Billy Graham radio interview
Other
We had three rather specialized acquisitions this year. Scholars can spend a lifetime studying a particular subject and acquire many files, often including rare documents, on that subject. In 2023 the Archives received from three authors the documentary sources they used in their publications or classwork. Dr. Grant Wacker gave boxes of the materials he collected while researching his books and articles on Billy Graham. Lucy Austen gave us digital copies of a variety of sources she used in writing her biography of missionary and Evangelical author and speaker Elisabeth Elliot. And retired missionary Randy Posslenzy gave us his substantial folders of documents he collected on the South China Mission, which ministered to the millions of people living on boats in the harbors of China and Southeast Asia.
All in all a rich group of sources were added to the Archives in 2023 and we are grateful to all the donors who so generously entrusted us with these valuable documents.
From the Vault 