Guest Writer

The Jim Elliot Bible Project

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment
Ava Pardue and Mariah Sray

In November of 2024, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections collaborated with the Museum of the Bible to digitize Jim Elliot’s three college-era annotated Bibles held in CN 277: Jim Elliot Collection. After digitization was completed in February 2025, two archives interns, Ava Pardue and Mariah Sray, both part of Wheaton’s Aequitas Fellows Program in Public Humanities and Arts, spent the summer indexing all the annotations in the Bibles.

Ava Pardue just finished her freshman year at Wheaton. Along with being an Aequitas Fellow, she plans to major in English and Classical Languages. Mariah Sray is a senior at Wheaton with a major in Classical Languages integrated with Choral Studies.

Below, we feature an interview with Ava and Mariah about their work on the project.

What drew you to the Jim Elliot Bible project?

Ava: When I heard about the opportunity to work with Elliot’s Bibles, I jumped at the chance to engage with language, theology, and history in a way that could be useful to the public. One of the three Bibles is a Greek New Testament, which I was particularly interested in studying with the knowledge of Koine Greek that I’ve picked up during the last several years. And ultimately, I think the biggest thing that drew me to the project was a chance to look at Jim Elliot—a man hailed as a martyr, hero, and catalyst for modern missions—as an ordinary college student.

Mariah: An interest in exploring archival work drew me to this internship, but I was also curious to learn more about Jim Elliot. I knew the broad contours of his death in Ecuador but wasn’t familiar with the details of his life. I was also interested to how Jim interacted with his Bible, especially his Greek New Testament.

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“Show, Don’t Tell:” Introducing the Religious Postcard Collection 

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This week, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections shares a guest post from Andre-Ross Gennette, who is interning with the Archives this academic year. Andre-Ross Gennette is a junior at Wheaton College, dual majoring in History and Biblical and Theological Studies, as well as a Wheaton Aequitas Fellow with the cohort for the Fellowship in Public Humanities and the Arts. Along with his work processing Wheaton College alumni scrapbooks, Andre-Ross curated three exhibits for the Archives this spring, including one on the Archives’ extensive collection of religious postcards.

This February, Wheaton Archives and Special Collections digs into its collection of evangelical postcards, a now forgotten but vitally important resource for 20th century Christians in the United States.  

In 1873, the United States Postal Service introduced the “postal card”—a small and plain card that had its postage pre-printed on it, and cost just one cent, equivalent to about 25 cents today. It wasn’t big enough to send a full letter but was enough for a few sentences. Despite its simplicity, the postal card was a resounding success. For the first time in United States history, short form communication via cheap and accessible postal cards began to replace full-size letters.  

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Giving Old Images a New Life: Digital Preservation in the Archives

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This week we go behind the scenes of Wheaton Archives and Special Collections with a guest post from Becky Baker Halberg, who completed a practicum with the Archives last fall. Becky is an alumna of both Wheaton College and Wheaton College Graduate School and holds a B.A. in history and theology and a M.A. in History of Christianity. She is currently finishing her final semester at University at Buffalo where she is expected to graduate with her M.S. in Information and Library Science in May 2022. Becky worked at Wheaton College for the last five years while completing her M.A. before recently relocating to Minnesota. In addition to her interest in archival research related to the history of Christianity, she enjoys exploring the topic of Christian laity’s information literacy, particularly concerning the role of church libraries in fostering its growth.

This past fall, I had the privilege of participating in the inaugural Wheaton Archives & Special Collection Digital Preservation Practicum. Over the course of the fall semester, under the guidance of Katherine Graber, Assistant Professor of Library Science, and Emily Banas, Public Services Archivist, I reorganized, compiled metadata, and ingested into Preservica hundreds of slide images from Collection 278 Papers of Elisabeth Elliot.

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Getting Acquainted with the Archives: A Student Worker’s Perspective

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Hannah head shotAbout the author: Hannah Ting is a Wheaton College junior, majoring in anthropology and media communication. She has worked at the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center Archives since August 2017.

Two years ago, I didn’t know exactly what I was signing up for. As a freshman at Wheaton College, I stumbled upon the unique opportunity to become a student worker at the Archives. Naively conjuring ambiguous, exaggerated notions of what an archives was and what archivists did, I ventured into the following school year, eager to begin my adventure in the mysterious place on the fourth floor of the Billy Graham Center. Continue reading →