Billy Graham Center
Archives
2014 Billy Graham Center Archival Research Lecture
Thursday September 25th, 7pm
This year's Archival Research Lecture, to be delivered by Dr. Melani McAlister, chair of the American Studies department of George Washington University
The lecture will be on Thursday, September 25, at 7pm
in the Wilson Suite on the 4th floor of the Billy Graham Center, 500 E. College
Avenue at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois, USA.
How do you do historical research in an archives? What is it like to work
with actual fragments from the past, to reconstruct a picture of past from
documents such as newspaper clippings, letters, diaries, photos, and film?
These are some of the general themes of the Archival Research Lectures. Every
year a scholar who has worked in the BGC Archives talks about his/her own
experiences doing research (at the BGC Archives and other places) and describe
some of the fruits of that research.
In the early 1960s, Congo was in crisis. As the newly independent nation’s
first prime minister was assassinated and violence wracked the country, a
white American evangelical missionary was murdered in the streets of the capital
city. The story of his death became national news, and U.S. evangelicals,
white and black, struggled to understand the politics of race, religion, and
revolution that led to his death, and which would soon transform U.S. policy
in Africa as well as the global religious landscape of Christianity. Drawing
on missionary letters, the AIM archives, and other Billy Graham Center Archives
materials, Melani McAlister explores the unexpected intersection between fears
of communism and concerns about racism as American missionaries tried to manage
their relations with fellow believers in Congo, as well as critics at home
The lecture will be followed by a reception, sponsored by the Institute for
the Study of American Evangelicals (ISAE). The Archives will also have an
exhibit accompanying the lecture. This exhibit will include photos and other
materials from the Archives' holdings on missions and the Congo conflict of
the 1960s..
Click here for information on past BGC Archival Lectures.