American Evangelicalism

“Who Cares for the Woman Who Toils for Her Bread?”: The Ministry of Virginia Healey Asher

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment
Portrait photo of Virginia Asher, 1905. Photo File: Asher, Virginia.

Scattered throughout the Evangelism & Missions Archives are paper fragments that tell the story of a remarkable woman – Virginia Healey Asher.

Virginia Healey was born to Irish parents in Chicago in 1869. Although her family was Catholic, she attended the church that had grown out of Dwight L. Moody’s Sunday School class and there gave her life to Christ during an evangelistic meeting when she was eleven. Her future husband, William Asher, was saved at the same meeting. When a few years later D. L. Moody called for workers, she volunteered. He assigned her to outdoor street meetings in Chicago where she sang and witnessed. She planned to go to Moody’s school in Northfield, Massachusetts when William, who had also volunteered for evangelism ministry, proposed. She was a teenage bride when they married on December 14, 1887.

Continue reading →

Life-writing and the Archives: A Conversation with Lucy S. R. Austen

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment

Wheaton Archives & Special Collections is pleased to announce that writer Lucy S. R. Austen will be our speaker for the annual Fall Archival Research Lecture! In anticipation of her upcoming visit, this month we feature a conversation with Lucy about her time researching for Elisabeth Elliot: A Life, her biography of missionary, speaker, and public evangelical Elisabeth Elliot, published by Crossway last June.

When and how were you first introduced to Archives & Special Collections?

I actually discovered the Archives & Special Collections through a Google search! In 2009, I was working on a mini-biography of missionary and author Elisabeth Elliot for a high-school English textbook featuring American Christian writers, and when I went looking for critical biographies of Elliot to learn more about her life, I was startled to discover that there were no full-length biographies of her in existence. Essentially the only published information about her life dealt with a small portion of the decade she spent in Ecuador as a young woman, working to reduce unwritten languages to writing for the purposes of Bible translation. In the process of digging around for any source material I could lay my hands on, I discovered the webpage for Elliot’s papers at Wheaton. I wasn’t able to visit the Archives at that time, but I relied on the biographical information and the list of “Exceptional Items” from the page for her papers, along with other sources, as I completed my project.

Continue reading →

Faith, Memory, and Archives: An Interview with Devin Manuzullo-Thomas

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment

Last September, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections hosted Dr. Devin Manzullo-Thomas for the annual Archival Research Lecture, where he presented “Exhibiting Evangelicalism: Exploring the History of Christian Museums in the United States.” This month, we feature an interview with Dr. Manzullo-Thomas, delving into his archival exploration of how evangelical communities engage with and commemorate their histories.

When and how were you first introduced to Archives & Special Collections?

I first visited the Archives and Special Collections at Wheaton in 2013 or 2014, to conduct research related to my denomination, the Brethren in Christ Church. (Several Brethren in Christ leaders are either alumni of Wheaton College or are otherwise represented in Archives & Special Collections materials.) While there, I also visited the Billy Graham Museum on the first floor of Billy Graham Hall, and my interest was piqued. Because of my training as an archivist/public historian and my scholarly work on the history of my own denomination, I’ve long been interested in how religious communities present their history in museums and historic sites. I started wondering: “How have other evangelical groups and institutions represented the past in public spaces?”

Continue reading →

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

/ Emily Banas / 10 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 →

The Scriptures Visualized: Archives of Christian Film

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment
Cover of the film catalog of Scriptures Visualized Films (later the C. O. Baptista Film Mission), ca. late 1940s. Collection 225, Box 1, Folder 1.

In the 20th century, Archives became museums of obsolete technology, collectors of valuable records in formats no longer commercially viable or practical. This growing list includes wax cylinders, wire recordings, analog audio tapes, audio cassettes, microcassettes, Dictaphone disks, 1” and 2” video reels, U-Matic video cassettes, VHS and Beta cassettes, as well as 8mm and 16mm films.

From the mid-1930s through the late-1980s, 16mm film was a very popular medium for schools, businesses, churches, and parachurch organizations. The Evangelism & Missions Archives has hundreds of movies in these formats (especially 16mm), as well as the production and correspondence files of evangelical film companies. Meant to be shown in church or at church events, these movies were particularly thought to be a means of attracting young people to church. 

Continue reading →

The Shadow of a Modest Man

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment
Stereo slide of Taylor and his wife Gloria, ca. 1930s. (Photo File: Taylor, Herbert J.)

One of the earliest collections opened by the Archives (in 1978) and one of the most heavily used (over 360 times at last count) is Collection 20, the papers of Chicago businessman and philanthropist Herbert John Taylor (1893-1978).

Taylor’s life was in many ways a typical American success story. He started out as a salesman in Oklahoma. After service with the YMCA in France, assisting servicemen during World War I and then a shore post in the Navy, he moved to Chicago and eventually became president of Club Aluminum Products, a near bankrupt company he rescued and made into a multi-million dollar enterprise.

Continue reading →

E. J. Carnell and the Mad Race for Relevance

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment

Because Wheaton College is frequently associated with C.S. Lewis, whose papers are archived on campus at the Marion E. Wade Center, the popular English author is often humorously invoked as its patron saint. But the appellation could just as aptly fit Dr. Edward John Carnell, whose academic objectives, directly or indirectly, color the mission statements of nearly all accredited American evangelical liberal arts institutions. As theologian, philosopher and professor, Carnell played a crucial role in the development of contemporary evangelicalism, believing that conservative Christians too often failed to intellectually engage with the challenges posed by modernism. Widely networked among prominent American evangelicals of the mid-twentieth century, the movements of his extraordinary career can be seen in the various collections, books and files maintained by Wheaton Archives & Special Collections.  

Continue reading →

Jazz Age Evangelism: Paul Rader and the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle

/ Emily Banas / Leave a comment
Advertisement announcing the Steel Tent, which became the Chicago Gospel Tabernacle,1922. (CN 38, Folder 1-52)

Wheaton Archives & Special Collections holds the stories of many an unsung figure in the history of evangelism, people who made an impact in their own time but are little remembered today. Such a one is Daniel Paul Rader, more widely known by his middle name Paul. The Chicago Gospel Tabernacle he started in the 1920s was a center of innovation and excitement, launching the ministries of several significant evangelical Christian figures of the next generation.

Rader was the son and grandson of ministers and was one himself for a few years, before a loss of faith led him to resign his pastorate. After leaving the ministry, Rader worked as a boxing promoter and then as an oil company representative. Around 1912 Rader experienced a renewal of his Christian faith. He became active in the Christian and Missionary Alliance, eventually serving as an assistant to C&MA founder A. B. Simpson on Simpson’s evangelistic tours. The next year Rader became an evangelist himself and preached around the United States. In 1915, he accepted the pulpit of Moody Church in Chicago and in 1919, upon the death of Simpson, Rader became the second president of C&MA.

Continue reading →

A Call to United Action: Commemorating 80 Years of the National Association of Evangelicals

/ Emily Banas / 1 Comment

Wheaton Archives & Special Collections holds the records of many national evangelical organizations – From Youth for Christ (CN 48) and Christianity Today (CN 08) to Christians for Social Action (CN 37) and Prison Fellowship Ministries (CN 274). These collections provide valuable and fascinating insights into the history of evangelical Christianity in the United States. But few offer as broad a view of American evangelicalism in the last half of the 20th century as the National Association of Evangelicals (SC 113), which celebrates the 80th anniversary of its founding conference this month.

Meeting on April 7th 1942, the group of 147 evangelical pastors, leaders, and educators gathered together in St. Louis to answer: Who could speak for evangelical Protestantism in America?

St. Louis Conference, 1942. (SC113, Folder 10-6)
Continue reading →