READING
ROOM

I visited the BGC Archives on behalf of a friend whose father's and uncle's memoirs are housed there. I came to view photo albums, diaries, and letters in the collection of Phil and Louie Palermo. While at the Archives, I was able to view photo albums, diaries, and letters during my two-hour visit. It was fascinating to be able to peruse these items as the Palermos are close family friends. I have many fond memories of visits from Phil and Louie.

I came to the BGC archives in order to do research on a section of my doctoral thesis. The broader topic of my thesis is an analysis and assessment of North American Protestant missionary activity in West Germany during the first three decades of the Cold War. I am covering everything from early Post-War relief and reconstruction to a variety of evangelistic, educational and church planting initiatives undertaken during the 1950s and on through the 70s.

My goal in visiting the BGC archives was to find material on the early evangelistic activities of Youth For Christ (YFC) and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) in Germany during the late 1940s on into the early 1970s. With the kind help of Reference Archivist, Wayne Weber, I was able to identify an extensive range of resources relevant to the above topic. My visit to the BGC archives proved to be very profitable. The YFC material turned out to be more extensive than I had hoped, and the BGEA data on Germany immensely satisfying. Throughout my visit the reading room staff were most helpful, not only in having materials ready for me when I arrived, but in directing me to additional archival records pertaining to my topic, and suggesting efficient ways to prioritize the records I was examining. The staff graciously worked past closing time on several days, allowing me valuable extra hours to complete my work.

In the course of my stay I came across some interesting surprises, which I flagged as topics for future research. One of these was the YFC evangelistic duo of Louie and Phil Palermo: sons of Italian immigrants who ended up touring in North America and western Europe, holding YFC rallies.

I came to the Archives to graze through a range of materials relevant to my (still embryonic) dissertation on Youth for Christ, youth evangelism, and American culture, 1930-1950. I found a feast, and a formidably knowledgable and patient staff. Many of the archives I need have been microfilmed and are available through Inter-Library Loan, which gave me time to explore less obvious sources. One exciting find lay in the un-microfilmed boxes of Torrey Johnson, the first president of Youth for Christ. I discovered letters and itineraries from Johnson's evangelistic trips to Europe and Asia after World War II -- exactly the international connections I hoped to find, as American power promoted the evangelical "world vision." I look forward to spending more focused time at the BGCA as my project develops.

Karsten Hüttmann, Christian Endeavour, Germany

I visited the Billy Graham Center in September to learn some more about evangelism and rallies. I researched about the first attempts of Youth for Christ after World War II to start campaigns and rallies in Germany (and the rest of Europe as well). Since I work for Christian Endeavour (CE) in Germany, I was particularly interested in the role of the German CE movement whether and to what extent it was involved into these processes.

I found a quantity of letters and minutes from the first years after WW II, which were very interesting and pointed out contacts to ministers/churches from my denomination. It was very moving for me to read in those letters about the needs and the suffers of the people, but their spiritual hopes and efforts as well. Unfortunately I found very few contacts to the CE movement, but many contacts to the YMCA instead, which had a very strong passion for the lost in Germany at that time.

I was touched by helpfulness of the staff at the BGC Archives and even their care of these treasured (to me) documents. It made me more willing to think about entrusting them with the journals Dad left me before he died. In another 100 years, perhaps another pilgrim doing research at the BGC Archives will be helped to keep hoping in God's future grace and finish well.

After reading a biography about Nate Saint, we became fascinated with his life and of the other missionaries' sacrifice of their lives to spread the Gospel to the Auca (Waodoni) Indians of Ecuador. We decided this would be the topic we would present for our homeschool group's Literature Fair. After researching on the Internet, we discovered that the BGC Archives held the majority of the original writings and correspondence of Nate Saint, and then realized that the BGC Archives were located on the Wheaton College Campus where Mr. Saint and a couple of the others attended college prior to their missionary work, and that it was within driving distance from our home. Since we had never done any research outside of our local library and the Internet, we were unsure of what we would find. Upon arrival we were very warmly greeted by Mr. Shuster and Mr. Weber, both extremely willing and eager to assist us in our research. We were overwhelmed with the amount of correspondence, news articles and artifacts that were brought out to us, and we knew there was much more if we requested. What was so exciting about our discoveries was the fact that everything we were looking at was the original writings from Nate Saint, and even his very last correspondence and notes written on "Palm Beach". We were also surprised and thrilled to watch the actual movies Mr. Saint took on the beach preceding the attack. It was very powerful and meaningful to have access to the primary sources that BGC Archives held. The result of our research was a project that we presented at the Literature Fair. Our project was very interesting to those attending the Fair since we had so much original material and the fact that the lives of the Auca Missionaries was recently made into a movie and getting a lot of attention again.

Our experience was an excellent one for our first time researching in Archives due to the expertise and assistance from Mr. Shuster and Mr. Weber, and the excellent record-keeping at the BGC Archives.

My undergraduate thesis is on twentieth century evangelical feminism as represented by the Evangelical Women's Caucus. In particular, I would like to understand the extent to which the consciousness-raising efforts of the secular women's movement in the 1960s and 1970s influenced a surge of evangelical feminist biblical criticism and political action during the same period. I came to the BCG Archives to explore the records of the Evangelical Women's Caucus and its parent organization, Evangelicals for Social Action. I knew that I would probably find the official records (meeting minutes, agendas, correspondence and the like) of both ESA and the EWC at the Archives, but I wasn't entirely sure what kind of information those items would contain. As it turned out, the records gave a fascinating and detailed account of not only the origin and history of both organizations but also provided me with details about how each organization viewed the secular women's movement, interpreted the Bible, altered its goals over time, and dealt with opposition from other evangelicals as they attempted to expand their influence.

As a student of cultural history (and not religion or theology), I found quite a bit of the information I came across to be surprising! No one document stands out in particular but overall, I was delighted to find evidence that both evangelical faith and social action were, and still are, far more complex and nuanced than our contemporary cultural stereotypes reveal. The Archives provided me with a solid foundation from which I could launch an intensive study of evangelical feminism and aided me tremendously in my attempt to expand and complicate my audience's understanding of contemporary evangelicalism.

Dr. Kenneth B. E. Roxburgh, Samford University, Alabama, USA

I was researching the Billy Graham Glasgow Crusade of 1955 and the first visit that Dr Graham made to Scotland in 1946. I came to the archives expecting to use oral histories, archives of letters, etc. While there I discovered newspaper clippings, letter, reports, photos and video recordings.

The research has enabled me to write a paper on "Mission in Scotland 1940 to 1960" which surveys the evangelistic impact of the Church in Scotland, its growth through to the late 1950s and then the beginning of what has become a constant decline in church membership in all the denominations. This will be part of a wider writing project examining Christianity in Scotland in the 20th century.