In 2023, PHS was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize 22,500 photographs and supporting documents from the Religious News Service Photograph Collection. Work began during the summer months of 2023, and will continue through December 2025. Learn more about the project.
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Digitizing the Religious News Service collection requires us to search the Library of Congress Subject Headings. This controlled vocabulary allows us to appropriately describe photographs in the collection while creating metadata. Metadata refers to information which describes the record (photographs, in this case), including elements such as photographers, the date when the image was taken, and subject information describing what is happening in the photograph. Within my first week of searching the Library of Congress Subject Headings, I found an interesting one that read: “clown ministry.” I remember chuckling to myself, naturally assuming that this bizarre heading was some strange anomaly.
I was quickly proven wrong. While there are only four photographs which use this subject heading within the Religious News Service Collection on our digital repository Pearl, I have seen more than my fair share of photographs that utilize the subject heading “clowns.” Clowns have resurfaced enough times in the collection that I am no longer shocked by their appearance in a religious archive, and it is something that the other project archivist and I can joke about while we are processing the collections.
The photographs that require the subject heading “clown ministry” range from the early 1970s to the early 1980s, although that is not to say that there were not later occurrences in the collection as the Presbyterian Historical Society only has records up until 1982. While completing some research about the phenomena known as “clown ministry,” I was further shocked to find that there was a book entitled The Clown Ministry Handbook written by Janet Litherland that was first published in 1982, which falls into the same timeline as the photographs in the collection. The book includes information such as makeup and wardrobe tips (see the image of nuns applying makeup and clown costumes), but more importantly it gives details on how to organize and participate in this type of ministry. The handbook also provides guidance to help ministers learn methods to connect with the people they are ministering to.
If someone is reading this and is currently thinking, “why clowns?,”…the best answer that I can give you is that this ministry is seen as a way to share the message of Christianity while also entertaining individuals. According to the article “Clown Ministry” on the World Clown Association website, clowning often uses educational skits which translates well to teaching lessons from the Bible whilst performing as a clown. An example of this can be seen in the image “Mime is minister’s specialty, 1980,” in which Barbara Weatherspoon uses mime to illustrate Biblical teachings while dressed in a cheery fashion. In a video titled Clown Ministry with Floyd Shaffer, Shafer describes two key elements of clown ministry theology: “1. God has a sense of humor… 2. God is not rational by human standards.” This justifies that clowns allow ministers to express their teachings using comedy and that while this may not appear to be a rational approach to ministry, God himself also does not follow what we consider to be rational standards for ourselves.
This form of ministry allows ministers to spread the message of God to audiences that they might not have emotionally connected with otherwise. In “Clowning around, seriously, 1974,” Peggy Williams found that the expressions required to act as a clown, including hand and facial movements, allowed her to communicate better with children who are hard of hearing.
The collection does not stop at clown ministry; there are images in the collection that relate to clowns and religion in other ways. In another photograph, Father Edward S. Sullivan serves as a chaplain to people in the circus throughout the country, and is a member of the Circus Fans Association which aims to end the stigma towards people in the circus. I am sure there will not be any shortage of clowns in the future as we continue to process and digitize this collection.
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View the RNS digital collection in Pearl, which is being updated regularly as our archivists work to scan and rehouse the collection.
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