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George B. Leeder, a Pennsylvania Presbyterian with a B.S. from Lafayette College, was sent in 1926 to the Punjab to run schools performing what was then known as rural rehabilitation -- training village farmers and smallholders in modern Western agricultural methods. He rode in a station wagon called "Big Ernestine," and he brought his camera. In 1947 and 1948, Leeder and his camera saw famine and violence engulf the new states of India and Pakistan. 

One year earlier, the chief North American interdenominational Christian aid organization, the ...

In the middle of the twentieth century, Presbyterians rededicated themselves to ministry in America's inner cities. While the ebb tide of suburbanization drew congregants to new neighborhoods, urban churches were urged to tend to the people right next door. For forty years, Presbyterians' work in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles centered on the Westminster Neighborhood Association.

In 1955, the Presbytery of Los Angeles’ Church Extension Board began study of its own outreach to neglected Angeleno neighborhoods, establishing an Inner City Committee. Members were...