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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.

Project Verdad and the Presbyterian Border Ministry

October 24, 2024

***Harmful Content Alert: This story contains outdated and offensive language.***

For more than 50 years, the Presbyterians of Mexico and the United States have partnered in ministry in the US-Mexico border region. Navigating barriers of history, economics, and language, unearthing and redressing racism, church workers in the borderlands continue to labor in serviglesias—servant churches.

In the late 1960s, the towns of Mexico’s northern border rapidly industrialized, drawing millions of people to jobs in the maquiladoras. Cities...

Author:

David S

Tags:

Mexico, Chicano movement, Missions

Jorge Lara-Braud at the Borders of Christian Nationalism

October 7, 2024

Right: Jorge Lara-Braud, n.d. [Pearl ID: 7401].

At an August 1967 mission conference in Montreat, North Carolina, Jorge Lara-Braud offered his Presbyterian audience a vision of American exceptionalism that depended on mutuality and solidarity. He argued that the United States, at the peak of its post-Second World War power, might be uniquely redeemable by its humility...

Author:

David S

Tags:

Missions, Nationalism

Now Processed: Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations Records

August 21, 2024

Seal of the Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations, 1961. [Pearl ID: islandora:372046].

The United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (UPCUSA) Commission on Ecumenical Mission and Relations (COEMAR) Records have been processed as RG 547, and the guide to the records is now available:...

Author:

Nick

Tags:

Archival Processing, Collections, Mission History, Missions, Missionaries

Now Processed: David and Polly Miller Papers

November 7, 2022

David Miller (right) and Polly Miller (center) with Ben Masilo (left) in Lesotho, circa 1985. Pearl ID: islandora:293605 [RG 537, Box 3, Folder 8]

The David and Polly Miller Papers have been processed as Record Group 537, and the guide to the records is now available: ...

Author:

Nick

Tags:

Collections, Archival Processing, Missionaries, Missions, Mission History

The Short-Lived Texas-Mexican Presbytery Pt. 2

April 5, 2022

Still from a film featuring Texas-Mexican Presbytery's churches in central and east Texas in the 1940s. Courtesy of Texas Archive of the Moving Image. Source

This is the second blog in a two-part series of the Presbyterian Church in the...

Author:

Gabe

Tags:

Hispanic Presbyterians, Missions