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1951 ALC International Luther League convention, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan.
The ELCA Region 6 Archives is grateful to the staff and people of the North/West Lower Michigan Synod, Southeast Michigan Synod, and Indiana-Kentucky Synod for their work, dedication, and hospitality during the synod assemblies.
The Archives has been added to the ELCA’s YouTube and we’ve uploaded our first video.
Light Time was a 15-minute syndicated TV program that was produced by the National Lutheran Council in Chicago, starring Jim Stewart, and from time-to-time, some puppets. We’ve only transferred a few of the programs from 16mm film, but we’ll upload those we have.
A couple of years ago, the figures used in the stop-motion animation production of Davey and Goliath’s Snowboard Christmas — along with a built-to-scale snowcat model – were delivered to the archives from the ELCA’s Communication Services unit – the producers of the animated special. This past Monday, I decided it was time to change the exhibits in our display cases. For one shelf in a case, I decided to go with these Davey and Goliath figures. I thought, “how fun – most people think of old, musty, slightly boring things when the think of an archives. This is a chance to showcase the archives’ fun and quirky side of Lutheranism.”
My training is not in museum studies, so creating a display is new to me. I wanted the scene to look semi-realistic, so for snow I placed thin sheets of packing foam on the glass shelf. I discovered that while a character as posed on a table surface seemed stable, when I placed it on the “snow” it became a little wobbly. After several attempts at posing the figures with their snowboards I thought I had succeeded in getting it right. Many of the characters from the special were there: Davey, Goliath, Sally, Jonathan, Sam, Cisco, Yasmeen, Ranger Ava, the owl, the bear, and a person described in the credits as “Smug Kid.” Sally kept falling over so I posed her sitting in the snow — she is wearing snowboard pants so she can handle sitting in the snow for the duration. When I left for the night, everybody was in place and looking, well – animated.
When I arrived at work the next morning, the first thing I did was check the case. Bummer. Sometime during the night, Sam had done a face plant. Everyone else was still in place, but what would happen when the room gets vacuumed and the case is bumped? Would everybody hold their ground and maintain their pose or would they all topple over? My co-worker Joel suggested replacing the foam sheets with packing peanuts which I could sprinkle in after posing the figures directly on the glass shelf. It seemed to work. Everyone was on much more stable footing right on the glass and sprinkling in the packing peanuts made it look a little more like they were all gathered at the base of the mountain after a fine day of shredding (for you non-snowboarders, shredding basically means to slide down the mountain). But the test would be overnight. If I arrived the next morning and found Sam in the same face-plant position as before, I would be totally discouraged. 
The next morning when I checked the case, Davey and friends were just where I had left them – all waiting to take a ride on the ski lift to begin another trip down the mountain. Ranger Ava was corralling the owl and the bear was in the middle of deciding whether or not it was worth it to try and disrupt the afternoon’s snowboarding activities.
The success of a more stable surface for Davey and his friends got me thinking about what it means to be Lutheran. Faith is about a having a sure footing. And for Lutherans, knowing that God’s grace through faith is present every day in our lives is our stable foundation – the thing that keeps us from continually doing face plants in the snow. About this Martin Luther would say to all snowboarders, “this is most certainly true, dude.”
One thing about our display – those looking closely at the photograph will notice Davey is missing one eye. At the archives we don’t alter anything that is sent to us. So that means no repairs to the Davey figure. Instead, I’ve given him the backstory that he lost his eye in a freak snowboarding accident. Oh Davey.
At long last we continue with the life of Muhlenberg.
Twelve years have passed in comic-strip time, just a few weeks in blog time. As always, click on the image for a larger version. Muhlenberg finished his studies at the University of Göttingen in 1738. Established in 1734, it had only opened for classes in 1737.
We have a new coffeemaker at the archives – maybe I should say “new.” It’s a Bunn Pour-Omatic® commercial coffeemaker and we’ve been able to date its age at circa-1985. I remember my parents having a similar household version of the Pour-Omatic® (it was my family’s first automatic coffeemaker – before that our coffeemaker was a model you may be familiar with – the Mom). The archives’ other coffeemaker gave up the ghost last month and this one was in storage at ELCA headquarters. All it needed was dusting off, cleaning out and now it’s good to go – we think. We haven’t actually made a pot of coffee yet. We’re letting it get used to its new surroundings.
The arrival of our vintage coffeemaker got me to thinking: it’s fitting that the archives would be the recipient of a circa-1985 coffeemaker. This is the one place where old is new again. In addition to this coffeemaker, we have many other “appliances” hipsters would call vintage. We have a 16mm film projector, reel-to-reel tape player, filmstrip projector, turntable, u-matic video recorder, a variety of slide viewers, and a magnifying glass that reminds me of something Sherlock Holmes would have used.
What I think is so cool about this stuff is that we use it in our daily work. Just yesterday I was using a slide viewer, aiming it at the overhead light so I could look at some slides taken in the 1940s that we received from a donor. Sure, I could have used our light board, but using this small viewer reminded me of when I was little and I would look at the slides my grandparents took of their trips overseas. And today Joel is using the turntable to play a record of Augustana Luther League conventions from 1951, 1953, and 1955 from which he is making a digital recording.
Every day one of us here is using some piece of this equipment – whether it is the reel-to-reel to player to play recordings of LCA and The ALC conventions, or using the magnifying glass to read handwriting on the back of a late 19th century photograph. We use the various viewers and players to appraise audiovisual collections and also access audio and video content which we digitize using sophisticated scanners and computer software.
Take a look at some of our digitized resources http://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/History/ELCA-Archives/Audiovisual-Resources.aspx as well as some of the archives’ digitized photographs http://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/History/ELCA-Archives/Photo-Collection.aspx
Yes, this is the perfect home for the circa-1985 coffeemaker. Like all the other pieces of old equipment here, it has found a new lease on life.
The adventure continues as we find out that young Henry Muhlenberg‘s life has taken an early turn for the ministry.
Muhlenberg was born September 6, 1711 in Einbeck, Germany, to Nicolaus Melchoir Muhlenberg and Anna Maria Kleinschmid. We’ll meet Mother in the next installment.
To be continued…
In honor of the upcoming 300th anniversary of Henry Melchior Muhlenberg’s birth in 2011, here is the first installment of An Eagle of the Wilderness, a comic-strip version of the life of Muhlenberg. After all, what better lends itself to comic strip treatment. The strip was published in 1946-1947 in issues of Quest, an eight-page newspaper published for Lutheran youth by the United Lutheran Church in America.
To be continued…
How many of you have seen a papal indulgence? In confirmation class we learned that Martin Luther objected to the Catholic Church’s practice of selling indulgences and that he turned that objection into one of his 95 Theses which were instrumental in bringing about the Protestant Reformation. But in all of the study and discussion about Luther and the Reformation, do you ever recall seeing an indulgence? If not, you’re in luck — among the many records and artifacts in the ELCA Archives is an actual papal indulgence. A photograph of it is at the right.
It is dated 1516 and was issued on behalf of Pope Leo X. Below the text of the indulgence hangs the remains of tin holders for wax seals attached to the envelope with hemp strings. The artwork on the document depicts Jesus and his mother Mary, St. Peter on the left and St. Paul on the right. Given the size of the document (approximately 27” x 17”) it may have been used to make a public pronouncement as sometimes the indulgence was affixed to the doorway of the church.
This indulgence is part of a larger collection of records from the National Lutheran Council, a cooperative body that comprised several of the ELCA’s predecessor church bodies. We think the indulgence was displayed in the offices of the NLC and then its successor agency, the Lutheran Council in the USA (LCUSA). Since the ELCA Archives is the archives of the LCUSA and the NLC, the indulgence was transferred along with the rest of those collections when the ELCA formed in 1988.
The NLC received the indulgence from a German film production company that worked with the NLC and Lutheran Church Productions (LCP) on the 1953 feature film Martin Luther. This film was the first production of LCP which was a cooperative film production company that comprised representatives of several of the ELCA’s predecessor church bodies in addition to the National Lutheran Council. Martin Luther had commercial and critical success and was nominated for two Academy Awards — for art direction and cinematography. Unfortunately, it lost out to From Here to Eternity for cinematography and Julius Caesar for art direction. We may not have an Academy Award in the archives, but we do have an important piece of history from the Reformation.
Note: if you click on the image you will see a larger version.
Last week in the news was coverage of the Washington Nuclear Security Summit attended by 47 nations where discussions took place about the need to secure loose nuclear material, recover stolen nuclear material, and maintain secure nuclear weapon arsenals.
All this talk about nuclear weapons got me thinking about an ELCA member’s request in 2008 for a copy of an article that appeared in the February 1, 1967, issue of the Lutheran Church in America’s (LCA) magazine, The Lutheran. “Scientists Are People” was written by the Rev. Raymond Tiemeyer who at the time was pastor of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, an LCA congregation in Los Alamos, New Mexico. Bethlehem’s membership included many scientists who worked at the Los Alamos National Laboratory — famous for its contributions to the development of the atomic bomb, but since that time had moved into other areas of scientific research.
Pastor Tiemeyer wondered if Bethlehem members who were scientists would believe anything they couldn’t prove. His article attempts to answer questions he had about the effects of scientists’ work on their faith, what questions would future scientific discoveries raise for the faith of all, and did scientists believe they were bringing in the kingdom of heaven?
Sometimes we wonder if science and religion complement or contradict each other or even compete against each other. It’s interesting to read from one pastor’s unique perspective of ministering to a congregation filled with scientists, his attempts to answer questions about scientists and how they see their work affecting their faith.
If you wish to read “Scientists Are People”, click on the link in the second paragraph for a PDF of the article as it appeared in The Lutheran. One caveat: the author consistently uses the male pronoun to refer to the scientists – this was common for 1967.
A person called the archives a couple of weeks ago wanting to know if we had a pamphlet on dancing published by the Lutheran Church in the 1940s. We didn’t have that specific pamphlet, but my colleague Joel Thoreson discovered one distributed by the Augustana Lutheran Church on not only dancing, but also card playing and going to the theater. “A Christian and His Amusements“was written circa-1945 by the Rev. John P. Milton a pastor trained in the Augustana Lutheran Church who transferred to the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America in 1942.
Nowadays worrying that our youth might be dancing, going to the theater, or playing cards might be seen as quaint. But back in the 1940s the church saw these activities as potentially leading its young people down a path of “moral delinquency and spiritual indifference.” Times have changed and so have the worries of society for its youth and the dangers they face — bullying, underage drinking, distracted driving, and the list goes on.
Not that variants of these dangers didn’t keep some parents up at night in the 1940s, but it sure would be nice if all that parents had to worry about today were their teens dancing too much, playing clandestine games of Hearts or Spoons, or sneaking out to see the latest Errol Flynn picture. But time marches on, the church continues to pray for the guidance and protection of its youth, and today’s multitasking teen, while using their laptop to watch the movie Footloose and play a game of computer solitaire, asks ”who’s Errol Flynn?”
(If you would like to see the pamphlet, here is a link to a PDF: ”A Christian and His Amusements” )
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