Month: October 2024

“As This is our First Broadcast…”: Percy Crawford and the Birth of Televangelism

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment
PF: Pinebrook Camp

Known to friends as “The Pioneer,” Percy Crawford (1902-1960) was an American evangelist and entrepreneur, who founded, among other things, the Pinebrook Bible Conference, Pinebrook Christian camps for boys and girls, a radio ministry, King’s College, a mission, and a chain of Christian radio and televisions stations. He also produced the first nationwide evangelism television program. These were in addition to the evangelistic tours and “Youtharama” rallies he led across the United States. His restless energy, vision, and strong personality made a deep impression on those who knew or worked with him.

When Crawford committed his life to ministry at Los Angeles’ Church of the Open Door in 1923, radio was just beginning to emerge as a powerful national platform for entertainment, news, politics, and religion. Inspired by Christian radio pioneers like Paul Rader in Chicago and Walter Maier in St. Louis, Crawford began broadcasting in 1931 with The Young People’s Church of the Air. During the summer months, these broadcasts often came from Pinebrook in Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains.

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“Could You Say More About That?”: Oral History as Process and Document in the Archives

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment

This month, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections features a post from long-time Wheaton archivist, Paul Ericksen. Since joining the then Billy Graham Center Archives in 1982, Paul has interviewed more than 125 individuals and processed and transcribed dozens of oral history interviews with missionaries, evangelists, and Christian leaders.

Archivists are primarily skilled facilitators as they focus on gathering, arranging and describing primary source materials, and assisting researchers in using their collections. Through archival “finding aids,” archivists help create the intricate web of descriptions, subject headings, and box lists that guide a researcher to identify which collections will contain relevant documents for their study, and in which boxes or folders they will find these documents. While gathering existing historical documents and preparing them for optimal access and use by researchers forms the core of archival work, archivists also collaborate to create historical documents through oral history interviews. An oral record of a person’s life and career, these interviews offer a stimulating window into the unique narratives and experiences of individuals.

Our earliest interviews were captured on reel to reel tapes like those pictured above, using Wollensak portable recorders.

Over the course of the almost fifty years since the Billy Graham Center Archives (now the Evangelism and Missions Archives) was formed in 1975, its archivists have continuously managed an informal oral history program to further enrich its resources on global evangelism. Archivists have interviewed more than 370 individuals, compiling over 1,200 hours of sound recordings on analog reels, cassette tapes, and as digital files. Through further transcription of recordings, researchers also gain the benefit of reading or searching the full-text accounts for information on a topic, person, or location. One of the earliest of these interviews was with Andrew Wyzenbeek about his memories of Billy Sunday meetings at the turn of the century. Most recently, a few current Billy Graham Scholarship recipients were interviewed in the past year about their experience and ministry in several Asian countries.

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