Archives Position Paper:
Present Status and Future Needs
The position paper that follows was originally
presented in 1986 before the Fourteenth General Assembly of the
Presbyterian Church in America as it met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The document sets out basic theological and practical reasons for
the establishment of an archive for the denomination, provides some
details on the initial establishment of the PCA Archives and concludes
with some of the challenges facing the fledgling institution. [For reference,
this position paper is printed as part of the Minutes of the 14th
General Assembly, and may be found there on pages 241-243.]
Originally known as the PCA Archives, the
institution was established at the meeting of the Twelfth General
Assembly in 1984, following a motion by the PCA's first Stated Clerk,
Morton H. Smith. Planning for an archives had been in process for
some time prior to this, and Dr. Smith particularly had evidenced
a long-standing awareness of the need to preserve our history. Portions
of the Historical Center's local church history collections exist
largely because of his early efforts to gather these materials.
In a letter dated December 20, 1983, Dr. Will
Barker had requested the Stated Clerk to consider the Covenant Seminary
campus as an appropriate site for the PCA Archives. Some of his
reasoning included the Seminary's status as the denominational seminary,
the scholarly resources available in the St. Louis area, the related
resources to be found in the Seminary's Library, and the offer of
space for the Archives within that Library. Thus the Archives came
to be situated in St. Louis on the Seminary campus early in 1985.
Some years later, a name change took place
to reflect a larger purpose, and the institution is now known as
the PCA Historical Center. The Center operates as the official archive
for the Presbyterian Church in America, but also holds the records
of four other conservative Presbyterian denominations, as well as
the manuscript collections of some fifty individuals connected with
these church bodies. The Center, in its collection policy, seeks
to preserve and promote the story of the conservative Presbyterian
movement of the 20th and 21st centuries.
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Archives Position
Paper: Present Status and Future Needs |
Table of Contents |
Introduction
Archives in the Bible
Modern Uses for Archives
Setting Up an Archives
The Challenge
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Archives. For many people, the word
conjures up visions of piles of old stuff: leather-bound books,
wrinkled and yellowing documents, and assorted odd museum pieces,
all covered with a substantial layer of dust and occasionally molded,
stacked up in untidy mounds waiting for someone to come around once
every ten years or so to look through it and laugh at the funny
old pictures. There is nothing in this vision to indicate that any
of the material would be useful for anything except to satisfy idle
curiosity, or to keep some eccentric scholar busy up in his ivory
tower. |
If that were an accurate
description of what archives are all about, the Presbyterian Church
in America would have absolutely no business having one. But a modern
archives is much more than a place to put old things out of the way;
it is a vital part of any healthy organization; a place where history
comes alive to serve the present; where the individual Christian witness
of PCA members can remain alive and effective, long after they have
gone Home. |
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There is a good deal
of precedent for the role of archives in the Bible. The word "remember"
in its various forms occurs over two hundred times in the Old and
New Testaments, and the command for the Lord's people not to forget
is issued forty-three times. The Lord wants His people to remember: their mistakes, so they might avoid falling into the same trap twice;
the faithfulness of the saints who have gone before them, for encouragement
and inspiration; and especially to remember the Lord's covenant with
His people, and His mighty acts in their behalf. |
In Exodus 16:32-33, Numbers
17:10, and Deuteronomy 10:2, the Lord specifically instructed Moses
to put a jar of manna, Aaron's rod that budded, and the tablets of
the Ten Commandments into the Ark of the Covenant, as a testimony:
the first collection of religious archives and museum material. "And
thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee."
Exodus 25:16. |
On several occasions, the Lord instructed
His people to set up a memorial to help them remember, most notably
in Joshua 4:1-7, when He told them to take stones out of the bed of
the Jordan River after they had crossed over into the Promised Land
as the Lord held back the waters. "That this may be a sign among
you, that, when your children ask in time to come, saying, 'What mean
ye by these stones?' then ye shall say unto them, 'Because the waters
of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord;
when it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut
off; and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of
Israel forever.' " |
There is also an illustration of the
practical uses of archives in the Bible. In the book of Ezra, in the
fifth and sixth chapters, is the account of the rebuilding of the
tempt in Jerusalem after the Babylonian captivity. Enemies of the
reconstruction effort successfully halted the work for a number of
years by questioning whether Zerubbabel and Joshua had any authority
to rebuild the temple. Zerubbabel tried to explain that they had been
commanded to rebuild it by the Emperor Cyrus, but as that gentleman
was now dead, he could not be appealed to in person. The Jews appealed
to the Babylonian governor of the province, who in turn wrote to the
current Emperor, Darius. Darius had somebody go down to the royal
archives, where they found the original scroll containing the decree
Cyrus had issued so many years before, commanding that the temple
in Jerusalem be rebuilt. The protests against the work were shown
to be unfounded, and the reconstruction was completed. |
The Israelites also had documentary archives
other than the contents of the Ark. There are several references in
the Old Testament to chronicles of the history of Israel, which unfortunately
have not all been preserved for the benefit of modern generations;
parts of some of them have been unearthed in archaeological excavations
in and around Qumran, however. Some of these Chronicles are: The
Book of Nathan the Prophet, [I Chronicles 29:29 and II Chronicles
9:29]; The Book of Gad the Seer, [I Chronicles 29:29]; The
Book of Jasher, [Joshua 10:13, II Samuel 1:18]; The Book of
the Acts of Solomon, [I Kings 11:41]; The Prophecy of Ahijah
the Shilonite, and The Visions of Iddo the Seer, [II Chronicles
9:29; 12:15; 13:22]; The Book of Shemaiah the Prophet, [II
Chronicles 12:15]; Isaiah's The Acts of Uzziah, [II Chronicles
26:22]; and The Sayings of the Seers, [II Chronicles 33:19]. |
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Modern day uses for archives are similar
to the Biblical ones: some help us to remember, and some are purely
practical. The archival records of the Presbyterian Church in America
are a witness to what the Lord has done in and through its members,
individually and corporately, and many different kinds of people will
benefit from using them. |
At the turn of the Twentieth Century,
the entire yearly paper output of the PCUS General Assembly and all
its Executive Committees could have been put in a medium sized box
and shoved under a desk somewhere. Nowadays, the output of just one
of the PCA's Permanent Committees measures in the dozens of boxes
each year. Any organization that ignores its records production and
storage practices is inviting financial disaster. Those who do not
control their records soon find that their records are controlling
them. |
At present, several PCA committees are
storing their semi-current and non-current records in off-site warehouse
space in the Atlanta area. The warehouses are not climate controlled,
leaving the records exposed to extremes of temperature and humidity,
and there is no systematic plan for which records are put there or
when. In order to find information from those records, someone from
the office has to go out there to dig through them. This is one of
the most expensive ways ever invented for the care and access of older
records. |
The PCA Archives can supply denominational
committees, presbyteries, and even local churches with information
about records management, helping
them to design a cost-effective system for the preservation of their
older records that will make them accessible whenever they are needed,
and insure that vital records will not be lost to future generations.
In the Presbyterian Church, U.S., there was no system for saving records
until 1972, with the result that the only existing records of any
of the church executive committes or agencies for the period preceding
the mid 1950's are official minutes. There are no correspondence or
offic files left anywhere; ninety-five years of the history of these
offices is almost completely undocumented. |
One important example of the effect of
this lack of information concerns the PCUS restructure of the late
1940's, when the traditional executive committee structure was abandoned
in favor of boards and agencies. What led up to that? How were the
day to day operations of those offices affected? Did the earlier restructure
in the late 1920's consciously set the stage for this move? The official
minutes and articles in church periodicals give little evidence to
help answer these questions. Those in the PCA who wish to avoid the
mistakes the PCUS made have nothing to guide them in this case except
hearsay and conjecture. |
Another group of people who will benefit
tremendously by having a PCA archives available, is Presbyterian and
Reformed scholars. More and more, conservative scholars are concerned
about having a solid historical basis for their research. Those working
on the current controversy about the power of the state over individuals
and families, for instance, borrow heavily from American church history
to document the changes that have taken place in our society. |
There is a great need for a place for
conservative Presbyterian and Reformed records to be gathered together
and made available for scholars to study. At present, the only other
conservative Presbyterian or Reformed archives in existence is the
Christian Reformed Church's collections at Calvin College. While the
mainline liberal Presbyterian denominations have large and relatively
well-funded archvies, without the PCA Archives recent establishment,
there would be no appropriate archival repository in the world for
the papers of such men as Francis Schaeffer, Gordon Clark, G. Aiken
Taylor, or William A. McIlwaine. |
The archives can serve the children of
our denomination, by making historical resources available to those
in the Committee on Christian Education and Publication who design
Sunday School curricula. Our children need to learn not only about
Calvin and Knox, but also about Thornwell, Dabney, Hodge and Warfield;
and they especially need to learn about the founding of the PCA, because
if they do not, the PCA could easily end up in the same shape as the
PC(USA), in only two generations. |
Finally, the archives would benefit secular
researchers, too. In the last fifteen years, in particular, social
historians have discovered that any social history is incomplete without
at least some attention to the religious attitudes and activities
of the people they are studying. Often, they are ignorant of what
Christianity is all about in the first place; they may never even
have attended a church service, let alone understand the structure
and function of a denomination. These researchers are also part of
the "fields white unto the harvest," and a good archivist
can help them see the profound Christian witness in the archival materials
they study. |
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In 1984, the General Assembly adopted
two resolutions regarding the PCA Archives: that Covenant Seminary
be designated as the temporary site for the Archives, and that the
"Brief Principles of Records Management and Archival Responsibility"
be followed. These "Principles" include the provision that
"all records, files and other archival material will be placed
in the Archives after five years. In unusual circumstances the Archivist
with the Stated Clerk may allow specific parts of materials to be
left out of the General Assembly Archives beyond five years,"
but the Minutes go on to state that all records should be in the Archives
after ten years. |
The initial step in setting up any archives
is to collect historical material. Three hundred cubic feet of records
have already come to the Archives from Atlanta, and nine hundred more
cubic feet are yet to be transferred up to St. Louis. After this initial
transfer of non-current records, the flow from the Committee offices,
Covenant College, and Covenant Seminary to the Archives is estimated
to be about one hundred cubic feet per year. In addition, the Archives
has received approximately one hundred cubic feet of private papers,
and the annual acquisition rate will probably be around fifty cubic
feet. With the one hundred cubic feet of Reformed Presbyterian Church,
Evangelical Synod records already at Covenant Seminary, this makes
for a grand total of 1400 cubic feet already there or soon designated
to come, and an annual acquistiion rate of approximately one hundred
fifty cubic feet. |
Once it reaches the Archives, all of
this material must be processed; an archivist goes through the material
to see what its permanent historical value will be, then puts it in
properly labeled acid-free folders and acid-free boxes. All metal
fasteners, such as staples and paper clips, are removed, and any of
the papers that have been torn or damaged are cleaned and repaired.
The archivist prepares a Finding Aid, which includes a folder-by-folder
inventory of the collection, and any appropriate indexes, such as
a correspondents index. If there are non-manuscript materials in the
collection, such as photographs or cassette tapes, they are stored
with other like materials. |
This processing takes time, people, space,
and equipment; the current Archives situation makes for a very limited
amount of all of those essential items. Covenant Seminary Library
has been most generous in providing some space for the collections
on its lower floor, but even so, that space will be completely full
in three more years, at most. While space for storage is adequate
for the present, the work space is cramped and inadequate, making
it difficult to do the job right. |
Currently, all of the Archives staff
members are part-time, including the Director. Since it usually takes
from twenty to forthy hours to process one cubic foot of material,
the staff are falling further behind every day. By hard work and ingenuity,
they have kept the backlog to a minimum, but as long as the number
of work hours and personnel are so limited, it will keep gaining on
them at an increasing rate. |
The Archives' equipment needs are presently
being met by the loan of a word processor, personally owned by the
Stated Clerk, which has helped greatly in the output of correspondence.
But there will soon be need for a computer, which is essential for
preparing finding aids and catalog cards for the processed document
collections. Audio-visual equipment is the other pressing need. Archival
film, video, and audio tape must be handled with great care on the
very best of equipment, because the older it gets, the more easily
it is damaged. |
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Through the Archives, the Presbyterian
Church in America has a wonderful opportunity ahead, both to serve
its own membership and to reach out to others. But this opportunity
requires financial and administrative commitment. |
The Archives will be able to raise some
of its own support, through the newsletter it publishes and other
appeals by mail and in person; but it would be unrealistic to expect
the director to raise the entire budget by himself. Given the backlog
of work to be done, and the lack of any full-time staff, it would
be impossible for the director to spend much time travelling to churches
to ask for support. |
It would be more appropriate for those
committees and agencies who will be making use of the Archives' services
to help support it. In the long run, it will actually save them money,
because their records keeping practices will be streamlined. It costs
$15.85 to keep one cubic foot of records in a file cabinet in an office
for a year; but that same cubic foot will cost only 95 cents to keep
in a box on steel shelving in a climate-controlled records center
for a year. |
Administrative commitment is just as
important as financial commitment. The Archives cannot solve the records-keeping
problems of the church all by itself; it has to be done in partnership
with the records producers. PCA Committees need to agree to work with
the Archives staff in developing records management policy and procedures;
not just because it would be a nice thing to do, but because it is
important to the health of the church as a whole. |
"I remember the days of old;
I meditate on all thy doings;
I muse on the work of thy hands."
Psalm 143:5
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