This month in Presbyterian history: December

Presbyterian Historical Society Fiftieth Anniversary invitation, Philadelphia, December 2, 1902. [Pearl: 82981]

As 2023 comes to a close, we have a few more moments in Presbyterian history to share with you — the first teleporting us back to our very own Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS) at the turn of the 20^th century.

PHS turned 50 years old in 1902. In the final month of that year, PHS sent out the above invitation asking friends to join in the celebration on December 2. Before the building at 425 Lombard Street in Philadelphia was completed in 1967, PHS called the Witherspoon Building on Walnut Street home. There, on the fifth floor at 2:30 p.m., attendees gathered to commemorate the society’s first 50 years.

On the program, the two-hour period between 3 and 5 p.m. was denoted to consist of an “Inspection of the Society’s Library and Collections.” Five speakers are listed on the evening’s bill, including the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America; the President of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; two pastors visiting from New York; and the President of the General Synod of the Reformed Church in the United States.

Chungwan-ni Presbyterian Church; packages delivered by Cdr. L.C.M. Vosseler, USN. [Pearl: 5545]

Chungwan-ni Presbyterian Church; packages delivered by Cdr. L.C.M. Vosseler, USN. [Pearl: 5545]

In late December 1954, Commander L.C.M. Vosseler of the United States Navy was photographed handing out packages that had arrived in South Korea, where he was stationed. The sender’s address, seen scrawled on the package at the bottom right of the image, tells viewers that Commander Vosseler was in communication with the SEC — or Sunday Evening Club — of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.

This photograph lives in the Edward L. R. Elson Papers (1920-1988). Elson was ordained in 1930, and immediately dove into his life of service to the church. That same year, he was appointed a chaplain in the U.S. Army Reserve. Prior to the outbreak of World War II in the 1940s, Elson entered active duty, completing nearly five years of service and rising to the rank of colonel. In 1946, he heeded the call of the Covenant-First Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., where he helped establish the National Presbyterian Church, building it from the foundation of his D.C. congregation. Elson served as pastor of the National Presbyterian Church until 1973. 

Simultaneous with his serving as the pastor of the National Presbyterian Church, Elson headed the Military Chaplains Association from 1957 to 1959. In 1969, a decade later, he was appointed Chaplain of the U.S. Senate, and served in that position until his retirement in 1981.

In the mid- to late-1950s, Elson made regular visits to the Middle East and was chairman of the National Council of the American Friends of the Middle East. The photograph subgroup of the archival collection of Elson’s papers includes images like the one above from his trips to Korea and the Middle East.

Tehran Community School alumni bulletin, second edition, December 1977. [Pearl: 288849]

The December 1977 edition of the Tehran Community School’s alumni bulletin includes a feature on a recent visit to the school made by the Shahbanu Farah Pahlavi, a letter from the headmaster of the school, an essay titled “The Iran of Yesterday” penned by Jane Doolittle and pages upon pages of alumni news.

The Community School of Tehran was a Presbyterian mission institution whose internationalist ethos influenced multiple generations of English-speaking students between 1935 and 1980. The school initially began as a place for “mish kids” (children of Presbyterian missionaries) to attend, but eventually expanded to Americans of all backgrounds and English-speaking students of different nationalities and faiths. By the 1960s, Iranians constituted most of the student body. At its height in the 1970s the Community School had 1,500 students attending each year.

The school’s Spanish teacher, and the ski club students he supervised, had talked to the Shahbanu while skiing earlier that year. They extended an invitation to visit the Community School, which occupied the site of the American Mission Hospital, where the Shahbanu was born. A plaque was placed outside of an English classroom, which had previously been a hospital room. It read “Her Imperial Majesty Farah Pahlavi the Shahbanu of Iran was Born on October 14, 1938 in this Room of the American Mission Hospital of Tehran.”

Another fun aspect of the Alumni Bulletin were photographs included in later pages with captions that read, “Can you identify anyone in the above picture? Is this your Graduating Class? Let’s hear from you!!!” and the like.

“We write to express our support for you and our outrage and grief that your call has again been rejected by an official voice of the Church you seek to serve. We stand with you and with all those who are shamed by this sin of the Church.”

Tricia Dykers-Koenig correspondence regarding Janie Spahr, November-December 1992. [Pearl: 144558]

So begins the letter sent to the Rev. Jane Spahr in December 1992 by 23 members of the Noble Road Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, after hearing news of the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly’s decision to deny Spahr’s call to be co-pastor at Downtown United Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New York, on the basis of her sexual orientation. The letter, above on the left, lives in the Patricia Dykers-Koenig Papers at PHS, as does Spahr’s response on the right.

The Rev. Dr. Janie Spahr became an ordained Presbyterian minister in December 1974. She served as Assistant Pastor of First Presbyterian in San Rafael, California, for a few years before becoming Executive Director of the Oakland Council of Presbyterian Churches in 1979. She was encouraged to resign once she was recognized as a lesbian.

Despite this pushback, Spahr continued to be active in her community, co-founding the Ministry of Light in 1982, which became the Spectrum Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns. She served as the organization’s executive director for a decade.

During this time, in November of 1991, Spahr was called to serve at Downtown United Presbyterian Church in Rochester. A year later, she was denied this call by the denomination’s highest court. The Rochester congregation invited Spahr to become their evangelist instead, so that she might continue to spread the gospel and fight for the inclusion of LGBTQ+ congregants within the church as a whole.

The Rev. Tricia Dykers-Koenig and congregation members who penned the above letter also sent correspondence to the session and congregation at Downtown United Presbyterian Church, to the Rev. W. Clark Chamberlain (who dissented from the commission’s majority vote) and directly to the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly.

Want to learn more about the national archives of the PC(USA)? Get to know PHS!