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| Resources on Rural Ministry in the Church Archives |
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Being Episcopalian may connote “urban” to most people, but the Church has had a rural presence as well, dating back to the 1920s, when the concept of formal education in rural ministry first developed at the national level. Researchers interested in the history of rural ministry can find documentation on all aspects of this work at the Archives. Not only does the Archives hold the records of Roanridge Center, but additional materials on rural ministry which complement those of Roanridge may also be found in the Archives. These holdings include national Church records, personal papers, periodicals, and audio-visual records.
Of particular interest are the records of the Division of Town and Country Work, which comprise almost five cubic feet of records created by the national Church office that oversaw rural ministry development. The records date from the establishment of an Office for Rural Work in 1924 to the decline of that office in the late 1960s. The administration of Roanridge is particularly well documented in these records, as are other training programs and conferences such as the annual Convocations of the 1950s, and the Town and Country Conferences held in the 1960s. Additionally, Advisory Committee records, policy statements, internal memoranda, reports, and correspondence provide a near-complete overview of the functioning of this office throughout much of the twentieth century.
The Archives also holds the papers of several men who contributed to the development of rural ministry within the Episcopal Church. These include the Right Reverend William B. Spofford, Jr., the Right Reverend William Davidson, and the Reverend Clifford Samuelson. Although small in comparison to the records of Roanridge and the Division of Town and Country Work, these collections offer some personal insight into the issues surrounding rural ministry. Bishop Spofford, who spent some of his early clerical career in rural ministry, has donated his personal papers to the Archives, along with the film In Fertile Soil (1952), which fictionalized the life of a rural parish priest. Samuelson, who was appointed Secretary of Rural Work at Church Center in 1940, is represented by a small cache of official and personal correspondence, dating 1934-1946. Also present are the working files of Bishop Davidson, whose work with Coalition 14 and the Leadership Academy for New Directions, continued rural ministry education into the 1970s and 1980s. A recent acquisition is the archives of the Episcopal Appalachian Ministries and its predecessor body, the Appalachian People’s Service Organization.
Further, the research collections of the Reverend Edmund Dargan Butt and Leo Maxwell Brown, both of whom wrote books on rural ministry, are held in the Archives. Butt’s book Preach There Also: A Study of Town and Country Work in the Church (1954) is a seminal book on rural ministry within the Episcopal Church. Brown is the co-author (with Bishop William Davidson) of Vision Fulfilling: The Story of Rural and Small Community Work of the Episcopal Church During the Twentieth Century (1997). Together, these collections comprise well over three cubic feet of background research and historical documentation on rural work.
The Archives has in its serials collections the journals of the Rural Workers’ Fellowship, which serves the Episcopal Church in its ministry to rural areas. These serials include The Rural Messenger (1927-1949), now known as Crossroads (1949-present), and The Christian Rural Fellowship Bulletin (1935-1967), a non-denominational journal on rural ministry that supplements the publications of the Rural Workers’ Fellowship.
Other Archives’collections which contain references to rural ministry include the Photography Collection of the national Church’s Publicity Department, and reports and actions of General Convention on the subject. Together, these materials illustrate how rural ministry was taught and promoted during the mid-twentieth century, a time when America was experiencing its greatest urbanization, and a new phenomenon – the rampant growth of suburbs. In addition, the Archives' holdings provide a cross-section of rural ministry on a national, regional, and personal level.
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