Special Collections

“Nothing new but that which hath been before”: 2025 Accession Review

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment

With the start of a new year comes a favorite tradition at Wheaton Archives & Special Collections – taking a moment to look back at some of the fascinating “new” old materials that found their way to the Archives over the last year. Below is a review of selected highlights from the Archives’ 2025 acquisitions:

Evangelism & Missions Archives

Overhead showing the relationship of foreign missions to local ministry for the Brazil field of Unevangelized Field Missions. (Crossworld)

Perhaps the most significant additions to the Evangelism & Missions Archives were the large accessions we received from evangelical foreign mission associations. SEND International (formerly Far Eastern Gospel Crusade), Crossworld (formerly Unevangelized Field Mission), The Evangelical Alliance Mission (TEAM), and SIM International are each multimillion dollar organizations that between them have thousands of workers on five continents. SIM, in particular, was born out of the merger of several different missions active in North and South America, Africa, Asia and Europe. Together these mission organizations gave more than 100 linear feet of their files to the Archives (TEAM has been donating materials since 2022) with other large accessions from SIM expected in 2026. In addition, the family of John Gration, a missionary of Africa Inland Mission and long-time professor of missions at Wheaton College, gave his files on the history of AIM, including the manuscript of his dissertation. Together these different accessions give an extraordinarily detailed pictures of North American Protestant missions around the world in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Continue reading →

Shakespeare on Display

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment

One of the jewels of the E. Beatrice Batson Shakespeare Collection is a copy of Henry the Fourth, taken from the fourth folio edition of Mr. William Shakespear’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies (1685). The play was donated to the College in honor of Dr. Batson’s retirement from the English Department in 1990. In celebration of the fourth folio turning an impressive 340 this year, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections revisits a 2015 feature from former Wheaton Library Metadata Associate, Brittany Adams, on the history and unique textual features of Wheaton’s “Henry.” The folio will be on display throughout the 2025 fall semester in the Wheaton College Library.

Continue reading →

In the Beginning Was the Song

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment
Book cover of The Singer with original illustrations by Chicago artist, Joe Devalsico.
The Singer with original illustrations by Chicago artist, Joe Devalsico.

April is National Poetry Month! To celebrate, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections features Calvin Miller’s The Singer, a poetic allegory of the life of Christ, published by InterVarsity Press in 1975.

Along with original manuscripts of The Singer, SC 24: The Calvin Miller Papers includes extensive correspondence and other records that highlight Miller’s life and work as a pastor, artist, author, and professor.

Building on the rich Christian tradition of allegorical writing—from Medieval morality plays and Dante’s Divine Comedy to John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Hannah Hurnard’s Hinds’ Feet on High Places, and C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia—The Singer offers a vivid retelling of the Gospel story as a longform narrative poem.

Continue reading →

A Global Chorus Before the Lord: Remembering Ethnomusicologist Vida Chenoweth

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment
Vida Chenoweth
Portrait of Vida Chenoweth, c. 1950s. SC114, Photo-08.

This March, in honor of Women’s History Month, Wheaton Archives and Special Collections remembers Vida Chenoweth—a concert marimbist, Bible translator, and pioneering ethnomusicologist. From the glittering concert halls of Europe to the remote highlands of Papua New Guinea, Vida’s life and ministry combined a love of music with a deep commitment to the dignity of all peoples and a celebration of the unique traditions of diverse musical cultures. SC 114: Vida Chenoweth Papers showcase the breadth of her remarkable career, featuring recital and field recordings, photographs, press clippings, original research, correspondence, and diaries.

Continue reading →

New Old Stuff in the Archives: 2024 Edition

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment

As we celebrate the start of a new year, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections looks back at some of the interesting accessions of historical documents that the Archives received in 2024 and the new or updated collections we processed and opened to researchers.

New Accessions

For almost seventy years, the story of missionaries’ attempts to bring Christianity to the Waorani people of the Amazon (called the Aucas by their enemies) has been well known to American evangelicals. This year we received the files of Dr. Kathryn Long, who wrote God in the Rainforest (2017), which tells the story from the killing of the five missionaries who first made the attempt to reach the Waorani in 1956 through the development of an Indigenous Christian community among the Waorani in later years. She generously gave her voluminous research files and relevant books to the Archives, including material from her own trips to Ecuador and documents about her work on the staff of Campus Crusade in South America in the 1980s.

Boat used for Unevangelized Fields Mission (later CrossWorld) for river ministry in Brazil.
Continue reading →

It’s a beautiful day in Chicago!

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment

Along with hundreds of collections on global missions and evangelism, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections also holds records documenting the history of Chicagoland, from institutions like the historic Moody Church, Chicago Gospel Tabernacle and the Chicago Sunday Evening Club to individuals like William Leslie, Herbert J. Taylor, Vaughn Shoemaker, and Harold “Red” Grange. This month, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections features one such collection, the papers of hymn singer and radio broadcaster Everett Mitchell, best known for his memorable opening line, “It’s a beautiful day in Chicago!”

Continue reading →

‘Oswald in His Presence’

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment
Oswald Chambers, 1917. Photograph #SC112-068.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of Oswald Chambers’ birth on July 24, 1874, in Aberdeen, Scotland. Chambers’ best known work, My Utmost for His Highest, has remained in print since its first publication in Britain in 1927. The daily devotional has been translated into over forty languages and ranks in the top ten of religious bestsellers in the United States, with millions of copies sold since the first American edition was published in 1935.

Continue reading →

Pages of Wonder: A Journey Through the William S. Akin Rare Book Collection

/ Emily Banas / 2 Comments
William S. Akin
William Akin (SC-01, Folder 2-91).

In this day of technology, AI, and rapid information growth many decry the extinction of the printed book. But when someone handles a fine rare book, one does not easily look to its demise. Books are wonders. They are thoughts distributed to the world. They are invitations to new possibilities and new horizons.

Wheaton Archives & Special Collections has many wondrous examples of the power of the book – as presenter of ideas and as art. Special Collections’ foundational rare book collection, SC-01, was a gift from collector William Sanford Akin. The collection numbers over 2,000 monographs, with a special emphasis on British literature, including James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Lewis Carroll, and John Bunyan.

Continue reading →

‘A Prophetic Document’: The 1973 Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern

/ Emily Banas / 25 Comments

This November, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections commemorates the 50th Anniversary of the Thanksgiving Workshop on Evangelicals and Social Concern and the resulting “Chicago Declaration.” At a time when many American evangelicals were increasingly grappling with the role of political action and social justice in American religious life, the 1973 Chicago Declaration emerged as a call for action – and a point of controversy – for a new vision of American evangelicalism grounded in social, economic, and racial justice.

Ronald J. Sider, ca. 1980s. (Photo File: Sider, Ron).

Several collections in Archives & Special Collections document the development of this movement, including Collection 37: Records of Christians for Social Action and newly received papers from Ronald Sider (Accession 2022-053), which contain many folders of correspondence on the workshop planning, as well as the extensive discussions and disagreements surrounding the first drafts of the Chicago Declaration.

Continue reading →