News

Nov. 28, 1629:  John Bunyan was born in Elstow, England.  Bunyan was an English writer and Puritan preacher best remembered as the author of the Christian allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress. In addition to The Pilgrim’s Progress, Bunyan wrote nearly sixty titles, many of them expanded sermons. He spend 12 years in prison because he would not stop preaching a ‘nonconformist’ gospel.   ABHS has many copies of this work, the earliest dating from 1676.   The theme of the fall-Winter 2014 issue of the American Baptist Quarterly is “John Bunyan and the Baptist Academy.”

Today is Thanksgiving, and ABHS is grateful for all of you who read and follow our posts.  Thank you for your support.  We hope you have a good Thanksgiving today.

November 27, 1844:  Henrietta Hall Shuck, the first Baptist American woman missionary to China, died at the age of 27 in Hong Kong.  She and her husband, John Lewis, sailed for China in 1835, when she was just 17 years old.  She started the first Christian school for Chinese children in China.  She encouraged girls to come to her school, in fact she allowed boys to come only if they brought a girl also.  ABHS has a biographical file on Henrietta as well as several magazine articles reporting on her activities.

Nov. 24, 1910:  John E. Clough died in Rochester, NY.  Sent by the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society to the Telegues of South India, he served for 46 years.  ABHS holds published and unpublished manuscripts of his, as well as correspondence, diaries, photographs, scrapbooks and biographical information.  His second wife was Emma Rauschenbusch.  ABHS has the missionary letters of John Clough from 1864-1918 and of Emma Rauschenbusch from 1920-1940.

New in our online catalog are the papers of Charles Francis Meserve (1865-1930) which consist primarily of a working draft of Meserve’s unpublished History of Shaw University, Raleigh, North Carolina.  This history includes the dates that buildings were erected on campus, the student uprising, colored soldiers, early graduates and eminent graduates, and biographical information on Meserve.

Nov. 19, 1774:  Isaac Backus returned to Middleborough, MA, where he had been pastor of the Baptist church since 1751. Ordained in 1748, Backus became a Baptist in 1751 when he became pastor of the church.  He was a leading proponent of religious freedom leading up to the ratification of the Constitution.   He was also one of the founders of the college that became Brown University, the first Baptist school of higher learning.  ABHS has many of Backus’ writings and information about him.

 

Nov. 18, 1961:  Isabel Crawford, died in Winona, NY.   She was a missionary with the Kiowa people in the Oklahoma Territory. Crawford, who had lost most of her hearing due to an illness, communicated with the Kiowa using Plains Indian sign language. She lived among the Kiowa for about eleven years, sharing their lives and helping them build their first church and, when she died, she was buried in their cemetery. ABHS has a collection of her papers and photographs.

Nov. 17  Cardville United Baptist Church, Greenbush, ME, celebrates 100 years of faithful service, John Cheney, pastor.

Nov. 15, 1961:  The Progressive National Baptist Convention was organized in Cincinnati.  ABHS has many books and newspaper articles about the history of the Progressive Baptists, as well as the Progressive News and the Convention minutes.

 

In preparation for putting our book catalog online, we have been checking the card catalog against the books on the shelf.  This process has allowed us to re-discover many of the oldest books and pamphlets in the Samuel Colgate Baptist Historical Collection.  One of the most unusual items was a New Testament a soldier in WWI was carrying in his breast pocket when a piece of shrapnel hit him.   The New Testament stopped it and saved his life.  American Baptists have been ministering to veterans since the Revolutionary War.

Nov. 9, 1800.  Mary Webb organized the first missionary society called Boston Female Society for Missionary Purposes.  Women’s Missionary organizations started schools, training centers, community centers and other mission programs.  They also recruited and trained women missionaries to staff these programs.  Women’s Baptist Home Mission Society of the East, which was organized in Boston in 1877, was one of these. ABHS has minutes of the Home Mission Societies and their publications like Tidings.

Nov. 4, 1752.  Over 100 years after Williams’ banishment, Isaac Backus was still fighting the state church’s tyranny. His mother told of her persecution at the hands of the Puritans and it persuaded her son to fight for religious freedom. ABHS has Backus’ published sermons, correspondence and a journal of family data in our collections.

Nov. 3, 1635:  Roger Williams was banished from the colony of Massachusetts because he preached ‘new and dangerous ideas’ to his congregants. The colonists had set up a Puritan theocracy and allowed no deviance.  Williams went to Rhode Island and began the settlement of Providence Plantations.  ABHS has many volumes by and about Roger Williams.

Nov. 1, 1812:  Luther Rice, the father of American Baptist of foreign missions, was baptized in Calcutta, India.  He was ordained and sailed with Adoniram Judson; like Judson he became convinced of the rightness of adult baptism on the voyage.  After his baptism, he returned to the USA to raise money for missionaries like Adoniram and Ann Judson.  ABHS has his journals and correspondence dating from 1803.

October 31, 1517.  Martin Luther, a German monk, sent his objections to the sale of indulgences to Albert of Brandenburg, the Archbishop of Mainz.  It is commonly believed he also nailed the protestations, known as the Ninety-five Theses, to the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany.  This act marks the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Today is celebrated by many protestant denominations as Reformation Day.  ABHS has several publications by Martin Luther dating from the early 1520s.  The Samuel Colgate Baptist Historical Collection contains many items that are not Baptist in origin, but are important to Christian history.

October 25, 1962:  Ralph Elliott was fired by Midwestern Seminary (an SBC affiliated seminary) in the midst of the controversy over his Genesis interpretation. The controversy erupted at Midwestern in 1961 when Ralph Elliott, the chair of the Old Testament department, authored a book published by Broadman Press titled The Message of Genesis. Elliott used a historical-critical method of interpretation to examine the first book of the Bible, arguing that it was not literal history, but that it could be religious truth nonetheless. Elliott assumed multiple authors for Genesis and concluded it was full of “symbolic stories” not to be taken as “literally true,” such as: Adam and Eve were not actual historical figures, the flood was local, and Abraham did not actually hear the voice of God commanding him to sacrifice Isaac.    ABHS has several of Elliott’s books and holds his personal papers.