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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.

New Oral Histories: Puerto Rico

October 8, 2024

This summer, PHS visited Puerto Rico to record oral histories with ten ordained women. Each participant was introduced to the Society by Rvda. Blanqui Otaño, the first woman ordained in Puerto Rico.

The video interviews, available in Pearl Digital Collections, are connected by each woman’s deeply Caribbean ministry. From Costa Rica to Venezuela, from the Dominican Republic to Nicaragua, their experiences with seminary, ordination, and their personal challenges and accomplishments have been documented and added to PHS’s collection of over 200 oral histories. Compelled by their faith,...

Author: 
Kristen
Tags: 
Presbyterian Heritage
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Religious News Service Exhibit Report

October 8, 2024

In early 2024, the Presbyterian Historical Society was awarded a $94,750 grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc. to develop a traveling exhibit prototype of photographs from its Religious News Service Collection. The exhibit, Faith & Justice in the 1960s: Religious News Service Covers Civil Rights, provides a window into news coverage of the Civil Rights Movement from 1961 to 1965, illuminating some lesser-known stories of people of faith who fought for justice, transforming the United States.

The first venue for the exhibit prototype was the Religion News Service’s 90th...

Author: 
Natalie
Tags: 
Religious News Service, Presbyterian Heritage
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Illuminating the Past: More Light Presbyterians Records

October 8, 2024

--by Nick Skaggs and David Staniunas

This Spring, PHS received 48 cubic feet of original More Light Presbyterians (MLP) records from Rutgers University Special Collections and Archives. The records, which date back to the organization’s founding in 1974 are now processed and accessible to the public for the first time.

What were the records of the chief grassroots LGBTQIA+ advocacy organization in the PC(USA) doing at Rutgers in the first place? At...

Author: 
PHS Staff
Tags: 
Presbyterian Heritage, LGBTQIA+ History, Archival Processing, Collections
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The Shedd Family Papers: Documenting Dedication in Urmia

May 31, 2024
Memorial Service for Armenian Catholicos, 1907. [Pearl ID: 139161].

A woman floats in Lake Urmia. An American doctor poses next to a Kurdish leader. A group of Assyrian women gather in a home in Urmia.

This spring, descendants of the Shedd family prepared boxes of records and delivered them to the Presbyterian Historical Society archives. The records, which were...

Author: 
Kristen
Tags: 
Presbyterian Heritage, From the Archives, Mission History
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Prophetic Witness: Dean Lewis and the Advisory Council on Church and Society

September 26, 2023

--by Nick Skaggs and David Staniunas

At a 1987 consultation held at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico, Dean Lewis, head of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) office charged with developing social policy, fielded a question about the theological basis of implementing statements of the General Assembly. Under what basis does the Church act in the world?

Lewis answered, in part: “It comes from the fundamental...

Author: 
PHS Staff
Tags: 
Presbyterian Heritage, Collections, Archival Processing
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