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News, events, updates, and tidbits from the Presbyterian Historical Society. Use tags to read related articles or sort by author for similar posts written by PHS staff members and volunteers.

July 11, 2019

--by Julia Flynn Siler

Donaldina Cameron (1869-1968) captured the nation’s imagination at the turn of the 20th century by running a “safe house” for vulnerable girls and young women on the edge of San Francisco’s Chinatown. She was a tall, auburn-haired woman with a Scottish lilt who fascinated headline writers and the public alike.

Cameron wasn’t the founder of the Presbyterian Mission House in Chinatown, nor did she run it single-handedly. The home opened in 1874, more than two decades before Cameron first arrived as a sewing...

September 27, 2018

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is made up of many different denominations that came together over time. Some were large, such as the United Presbyterian Church of North America or the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Others were small, such as the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church that started in Wales and joined the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (PCUSA) in 1920. All connect back to the Reformed theology that emerged in Europe in the sixteenth century.

Beginnings

In the eighteenth century a lack of colleges and seminaries in Wales forced many...

September 19, 2018

Presbyterians celebrate the half-millenium of tradition that grounds their faith on Reformation Sunday. It is always the last Sunday in October, marking the occasion in 1517 when Martin Luther posted his 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg, Germany.

For this year's October 28th Reformation Sunday celebration we've prepared four images to download from ...

August 24, 2018

A common conception of Protestant mission work is that it went hand in hand with colonial and imperial projects in the Global South. Indeed, some of the most frequently accessed collections at PHS reflect the extensive presence of Presbyterian missionaries in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. Less known is how American Presbyterians responded to Europe's desolated social fabric and broken people in the wake of the Second World War by organizing the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Europe Mission, an effort headquartered in Geneva. Ninety-eight cubic feet of records of the...

January 5, 2018

Old Tennent Church in Manalapan, New Jersey, stands as a landmark not only of Colonial and Revolutionary America, but of early Presbyterianism in America. Referred to by a variety of popular names through the years, the congregation was initially known as Old Scots Church, then Freehold Church, and later, Old Tennent Church—in memory of Rev. John Tennent and his brother, Rev....

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