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Deborah Bingham Van Broekhoven will retire as executive director of the American Baptist Historical Society (ABHS) in August 2016.  Van Broekhoven   announced her plans at the annual ABHS Board of Managers meeting October 2nd.  The Executive Committee of the ABHS board is forming a search committee to conduct a nation-wide search for her successor.

“It has been a privilege to lead the Historical Society, “Van Broekhoven said.  “When I became executive director, the archives were located in two places, Valley Forge, PA, and Rochester, NY.  During my tenure, I was able to bring the two parts together and work through the move to the Atlanta campus of Mercer University.  We are now well settled in our new home and ready to move into another phase of our development.”  One unexpected benefit of the Atlanta location has been its convenience for visitors from Myanmar, who generally include in their U.S. itinerary a visit to ABHS, as well as some of the forty Atlanta-area congregations made up of refugees from Myanmar (also called Burma).

Van Broekhoven holds a doctorate in history from Bowling Green State University (Ohio) and was a professor at Ohio Wesleyan University before being named executive director of ABHS in 1998.  She has been active in American Baptist congregations throughout her life, most recently as a member of Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta.

At the last biennial, Van Broekhoven led the kick off of the At Your Fingertips campaign, the goal of which is to raise $550,000 to move the archives into the digital age.  “I am especially proud of the digital resources ABHS has been able to make available to researchers around the world, as evidenced in the special website created for the Judson Bicentennial, www.Judson200.org.”  Many of the images and documents scanned for the website were suggested by visitors from Myanmar (also called Burma).

 

“With our strong Board of Managers and staff, I’m confident that ABHS will make the history and archives of the American Baptist Churches and the Baptist World Alliance secure and available to researchers in digital forms both currently and in the future,” Van Broekhoven declared.  “I will miss the frequent contact with researchers from around the world,” she added, “but I am sure that my activities in retirement will include historical projects.”

 

The American Baptist Historical Society launched our At Your Fingertips: Archives for the 21^st Century campaign this June during our breakfast meeting at the 2015 Biennial Mission Summit in Overland, Kansas.   Thanks to those attending the event, along with the Society’s board of managers, staff, and friends, pledges for this campaign have already reached $245,000 – of which $200,000 is already in hand! We are well on our way to our goal of $550,000.

 A major gift of $125,000 has been given by the Bauer Foundation in memory of Dr. William and Maria Staughton, ancestors of Carol Bauer and founders of the modern mission movement. Another significant gift of $62,000 has come from a bequest by educator Shirley Jones, retired executive for the American Baptist Board of Educational Ministries.

At Your Fingertips: Archives for the 21^st Century is the American Baptist Historical Society’s new fund-raising campaign to make our rich Baptist heritage collections widely known and digitally available throughout the world. Particularly for those at the far-flung corners of the globe, digitization is key to an effective ministry. Consider this request received from a researcher working in Myanmar (Burma):

“I am the researcher compiling a book on the William Marcus Young missionary family who worked in Burma and China. I have recently returned from a research trip to the old mission stations in Keng Tung, Burma, and Banna, China. The church members there were very happy to host me and were overwhelmed when I showed them some of the images you sent to me two years ago of the very first Lahu and Wa converts. The Lahu . . . were almost in tears, saying, “We have been searching for a picture of this man for over 40 years and now you have brought it. God truly must have sent you here!” It was quite an amazing moment. They are devout Christians but have very little information about the history of their church and the first missionaries, so they have asked me to return next year and give seminars on the history of the Keng Tung church, which I am very excited about! …. Have any of these [historic documents] been digitized?”

With campaign support, the Historical Society can begin saying “Yes” to queries such as these–through our At Your Fingertips: Archives for the 21^st Century campaign. Campaign funds are needed to pay for the costs of adding an archivist for digital initiatives to our staff. For more information about the campaign, call the Historical Society at 678-546-6680 or go to the campaign web pages at http://abhsarchives.org.

Rev. Brooks Andrews recently retired as pastor of Japanese Baptist Church in Seattle, the same church his father, Emery Andrews (born in 1894), was serving when WWII began. Brooks was only a small child then, but remembers that the members of the congregation were forced into internment camps along with 100,000 other Japanese Americans. Emery Andrews and his family followed his congregation to Minidoka, the camp in Idaho, where he continued to minister to them.   Rev. Andrews worked for justice for the Japanese Americans who were stripped of their property and dignity.

Following the war, Emery Andrews became involved in the ‘House for Hiroshima’ project that built homes, day care centers and other structures in Hiroshima. He made trips to Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1949 and 1951. During that time he kept a dairy, made a scrapbook and took many photographs.

This week, Brooks Andrews brought these remembrances of his father’s activities during the post war period to ABHS. He has donated them to the ABHS archives so that they can be made available to researchers.

by Shabria Caldwell

The American Baptist Churches USA has a rich history concerning its diversity, ranging from gender leadership to minority leadership. Ruth McKinney (1900-1966) is a proud representation of both as she is perhaps one of the most prominent names in ABC history. An influential speaker and leader, McKinney is the first Black woman to hold a top office in the American Baptist Convention.

McKinney’s roots were an early indication of her Baptist leadership. The daughter of a reverend, Annie Ruth Berry was born in Birmingham, Alabama to Reverend Samuel and Ada Virginia Berry. She was educated at both Spelman College and Columbia University. Ruth was working as a college teacher when she married her husband, Wade, in 1924.

Wade Hampton McKinney was born in Cleveland, Georgia, in 1892. He attended Atlanta Baptist College Academy, Morehouse College, and Colgate Rochester Theological Seminary. Furthermore, he served in the U.S. Army during World War I. Ruth and Wade McKinney can be reverenced as one of the many Black power couples of their time.

With the migration of African Americans to northern cities in the 1920s and 1930s in search of industrial work, many flooded into the Cedar-Central neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. This added to the congregational numbers of neighborhood churches. Most recognizable was Antioch Baptist Church because of its leadership role in the community. Antioch provided financial support for other neighborhood churches, and supported the NAACP.

Reverend Wade McKinney was called upon to lead Antioch Baptist Church in 1928. He is revered as one of the most important and influential leaders in Antioch’s history, serving the Church for 28 years. During that period, Ruth worked as a teacher at the Church School and also served as the youth choir director for 33 years.

Ruth and Wade were pivotal figures not only in the Christian Church community, but also within the African American community as civic leaders. In 1947, Reverend Wade worked to establish a credit union to aid returning African American veterans as well as local residents in securing loans. In addition, he served as a spokesman for the community, leading many voter registration campaigns and serving on the Cuyahoga County Grand Jury.

As the wife of an esteemed minister, and as an achieved and educated woman, Ruth became active in the affairs of religious organizations across the nation. She was in great demand as a speaker. Beginning in 1952, she began broadcasting 1-minute radio “Thot-O-Grams” which included brief, inspirational messages under the supports of the United Church Women of Cleveland.

In addition, McKinney was also a member of the vice presidents board in the National Council of American Baptist Women in the Division of Christian Service during the mid-50s. Her responsibilities included enlisting women in active service within the ministry.

Independently, McKinney saw the importance of the woman’s presence in the church. In the November, 1956 The American Baptist Woman newsletter McKinney wrote, “Many [women] merely have their names on the church roll; others, attend the Sunday worship service, but their service through any organization of the church is not given. Think of this great loss in women power!”

Photo credit:  McKinney, Ann Ruth Berry:  1953, by Herman Seid.  From the Cleveland Press Notable Blacks of Cleveland collection, Cleveland State University, Michael Schwartz Library, Special Collections.  Courtesy of the Cleveland Memory Project

Archivist Jan Ballard is speaking on June 5th about Japanese American history and resources for studying it at the American Baptist Historical Society.  Part of a conference session on Asian Baptists, Ballard’s topic comes from a recent film “A Church Stands With Its People,” produced by the American Baptist Home Mission Societies (ABHMS) in cooperationn with ABHS . (http://www.abhms.org/front_center_The_forgotten_PearlHarbor_story_2012.cfm).

The conference is a joint meeting of the Baptist History and Heritage Society and the Association of Librarians and Archivists at Baptist Institutions in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.  For more information see the full conference program at http://www.baptisthistory.org/bhhs/.

Documenting American Baptist Ministry in World War II Internment Camps required digging into many parts of the library. One starting place was the records of John Thomas, Florence Rumsey, and Esther McCollough—home missionaries working with Japanese Americans through the program of ABHMS. Other valuable sources include the records of American Baptist missionaries to Japan, several of whom spent the war years teaching those incarcerated.

Records of the ministry of a Rev. Wada are also included in the ABHMS files. A minister and missionary for Japanese Baptist, Rev. Mashiko Wada (1880-1957), was a product of the Japanese church and American Baptist Foreign Mission Society work. At the invitation of the Los Angeles Baptist Mission and the American Baptist Home Mission Societies, Rev. Wada came to the United States in 1928, expressly to minister in the Japanese immigrant communities. Also instructive are the records of college students, including two children of Rev. Wada, who were able to leave the camps because of sponsorship by American Baptists. These scholarship students included a young Mari Yoriko Sabusawa, who later married the famous author James Michener.

 

 

The American Baptists’ first overseas mission was to Burma, in 1813.

It is due to our long history in Burma that the ABHS is now home to a range of photo collections from American Baptists who lived in Burma.  On the Judson200 web site, we display a selection of these early images from three missionaries.

Sydney V. Hollingworth  was born and grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  He worked for the Superior Printing Company in Akron, Ohio before being sent to Burma, accompanied by his wife and their three children, by the American Baptist Foreign Mission Society in 1921. He worked at the Mission Press in Rangoon (Yangon) and lived in the country until 1936.

Arthur E. and Laura H. Carson highlight the Chin people of the Haka Hills, where the Carsons established and operated a mission from 1899 until Arthur’s death in 1908.   After her husband’s death, Laura continued serving at the mission until 1924, when her own failing health compelled her to return to the United States

Elva Jenkins Hendershot  served from 1924 to 1927 as an American Baptist missionary nurse in Kengtung, a town in the Shan state of Burma.  She was given an  album of drawings by an artist from the nearby village of Yan Hlwa to thank her for caring for his sick wife.  Only a few examples of Shan albums still exist today, and of these, the 26-page album dated 1925 in the ABHS holdings is one of the most complete.  These albums comprise “illustrations of multiple ethnic groups, each represented by paired male and female figures in distinctive costumes, often holding an emblematic artifact which evokes a characteristic cultural practice.”

Click here for more information about the missionaries and to see the images preserved in the ABHS archives.

Catherine Raymond, from the Center for Burma Studies at Northern Illinois University, and Sherry Harlacher from Denison University Museum (Granville, OH), came to visit ABHS in order to look at one of the items in the collection of Elva Jenkins Hendershot.  After spending a day looking at the Shan Album of paintings from around 1900, Catherine wrote

 “Thank you so very much for this wonderful day at ABHS.  Your archives definitely deserves to be more known.  It was a real pleasure to finally see the album and share our expertise together.  I also enjoyed discovering some of the other treasurers of the ABHS, like the maps.”

The Shan Album has been digitized and will soon be available for viewing on the Judson200.org web site.