Course:ARST573/Religious Archives

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Religion in Canada and The United States of America is characterized by a diversity of religious beliefs and practices. However, the vast majority of the population identifies as Christian. 86% of American adults identified as Christians in 1990 and 76% in 2008. In Canada, The 2001 Canadian census reported that 77% of Canadians claim adherence to Christianity, followed by no religion at 16%. Although there is a wide spectrum of religious representation in Canada and the U.S., due to the overwhelming adherence to Christianity, the vast majority of Canadian and American religious archival repositories have Christian affiliations. There are over 500 archives and historical institutions in the U.S. and Canada holding exclusively religious materials. These religious archives can also be referred to as church archives, ecclesiastical archives or denominational archives. There is diversity among these institutions in terms of size, collection policy, and operational structure. Reasons for the accumulation of records are also numerous. Religious records can be deposited by denominational officers, individual collectors, church history professors, historical societies, seminary libraries, among others. Some records have been deposited on behalf of deceased church members or officials, some have been gathered by private collectors or religious historical societies. However, as a rule there are four basic types of religious archives within any given denomination: 1) National denominational archives 2) denominational administrative archives 3) State or province diocesan archives 4) Parish level archives.

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History and Nature of Religious Archives

Archivist Bob Stewart describes the history of the development of church archives in what he calls “anthropological” terms. The main activity of the first, or “hunter-gatherer” stage is the hunting down and and gathering records relating to the founding stories of the church. The second phase is the “planter-settler” period, involving the creation of a proper, permanent “store house” for the records. Third is the “Professional development” stage denotes the hiring of an archivist and the development of professional policies and practices. (112)

1970s and 1980s saw a rapid increase in the number of religious archives throughout the United States and Canada. and these institutions have much in common with non-religious archives. For example, religious archives generally adhere to the same basic principles and methods of practice as the rest of the archival profession. This is true in respect to appraisal, accessioning, arrangement and description, providing reference service. As well, basic administrative functions such as budgeting, staffing and facilities are the same as those of non-religious archivists. Religious archives have much in common with repositories of public records in terms of the types of records that they carry. Birth or baptism, adoption, marriage, divorce, and death records in religious archives are comparable to the records of these event in public state, provincial, county, and municipal archives.

Religious archives are largely private and denominational in nature, and they most closely resemble other institutional or organizational archives such as those of Universities, businesses, and museums. This is true because religious archives preserve artifacts associated with their group's history, and frequently engage in education and outreach programs.

Despite the similarities, there are many factors that differentiate religious archives from other kinds of archives. The most distinctive of these differences is that religious archives necessarily reference a particular and external set of beliefs, ideologies, and values, otherwise termed religious faith. Related to this problem posed by external, non-archival beliefs is a second major difference among religious archives, and that is the goal is to document these beliefs, ideologies, and values that do not leave behind a tangible trace or evidence, in the way that a paper record or document might. The concept of faith is perhaps in the end un-documentable. Part of the difficulty is that information that pertains to believe may be “lost in Translation.”

In recent history, many denominations have been more actively engaged in the archival community, as well as participating in educational initiatives at conferences and meeting of the church. In addition, the preservation of historic buildings and houses, historical tours, and proper observance of significant dates all fall under the umbrella of a religious archives. A broad involvement in all facets of the denominational community enables an agency to effectively answer a range of research and reference queries.

The Role of the Religious Archivist

Religious archivists typically fulfill numerous functions, including reference and research services, participating in educational programs such as publications and exhibits, providing counsel to users who are preparing parish histories or special events, overseeing maintenance of church records, offering lectures on historical subjects and conducting historical tours. Due to budget restraints, many religious archives rely on volunteers and part-time help. Ideally, archivists with professional training should be hired. The religious archivist will need to fulfill many roles in accordance with policy and archival best practice. The archivist must not necessarily be a member of the denomination they serve, providing that they have the ability to operate professionally within the ethos and ideology of the sponsoring denomination, and “acting as a mediator of theological tradition” Church archives are responsible for contributing to the health of the church, as well providing services to non-church users such as historians and genealogists. Religious archivist must, therefore, reflect new religious practices, theological tendencies and historiographical trends. The religious archivist must somehow define himself in relation to the beliefs of his organization, whether by subscribing to them or by making a "separate peace" with them.

Religious archivists prior to the 1980s generally had no formal archival training, either through apprenticeship at establish repositories of any kind, or through academic programs. Most religious archivists were detached from the wider archival community. Today, the completion of a master’s program in Archival studies is a foundational qualification to work in the archival profession, including in religious archives.

The archivist much have a thorough understanding of his denomination's history, as well as its current and past organizational structure. This knowledge will help the religious archivist to be aware of gaps in archival holdings and to take initiative in seeking out lost records. The archivist must also have the authority to request inactive records from officers and agencies of the church, and he or she is typically tasked with obtaining the private papers of deceased church leaders. These may include diaries, journals, sermon notes, and private letters. In light of this, the archivist is generally responsible for preparing and distributing publicity materials to church leaders, reminding them of records policies and reporting the progress being made in the archives.

There are many non-religious, or secular uses for religious archives. Religious archivists have a responsibility to publicize and promote the use of collections they also have a responsibility to inform secular researchers about potentially useful material.

Uses for Religious Records

Religious archives have recently transformed into secular teaching and learning centers. They are no longer strictly religious family history/genealogy centers and institutional memory repositories. Religious records have contributed to scholarly research and teaching in subject areas having little or nothing to do with religiosity. Robert C. Ray defines seven broad areas of secular history in which religious archives may offer resources. These are ethnic history, women’s history, genealogy, economic and business history, social history, politics, and education.

In terms of ethnic history and immigration, records that pertain to immigrants’ acculturation, as well as social, political, and economic issues can be found in religious archives. In terms of women’s history, religious archives may hold resources that allow for documenting women’s issues and activism, as well as women changing their social role from subjects to participants in both society and church functions. During the settlement of North America, the church was often the first presence in new communities. Historians have employed preachers' diaries, for example, to reconstruct life during the settlement of Canada. Social historians have utilized ministers' diaries and parish registers to develop profiles of communities. Catholic diocesan records enable qualitatively or quantitatively based demographic and ethnicity studies and are particularly well suited to the analytical methods of social historians.Religious records are rich sources of community heritage and pride and can reflect social and cultural movements and concerns.

Genealogical records in religious repositories have been been vital for research at the University of Utah’s Center for Historical Population Studies. The center conducts scholarly research on issues such as mortality, aging, demography, migration, changing family structure, and other historical, social, and medical concerns. The university’s College of Medicine has used Mormon Genealogical records to create a computer resource to study inherited diseases among Utah descendants of early Mormon pioneers. This resource has contributed to a greater understanding of coronary heart disease, various forms of cancer, hemochromatosis, strokes, and other medical problems. Also, expansion of the research use of records documenting ascetic religious communities has occurred in the area of medical research. Opportunities for researching religious subjects in the archives of monastic communities, convents, and other religious orders have been numerous. The Nun Study took place in 2004 This was a longitudinal study of Alzheimer’s disease and aging in 678 nuns of the School Sisters of Notre Dame community.

Even research by church administrators is conducted for nonreligious purposes, for example, accountants seeking financial data, engineers needing blueprints, and other instances involving management of administrative or organizational affairs. Those researching religion and writing religious history are, for the most part, writing little about a particular religious “belief” and more about a particular religious “people.”

Ray also states that religious records have more to say about bureaucratization theories and the development and evolution of large organizations than they do about the development and evolution of religion. Religious records also have uses for issues of modern psychology such as human personality and the “self.” There has been an explosion of popular evangelical literature in the last 50 years, and the proportion dealing with the problems of the self has risen dramatically. Common themes in the literature are self-improvement, self-actualization, and self-realization, within a larger contexts of psychological and emotional balance and the desire to find happiness in this world.

Policies

All religious archives should utilize statutes and regulations that reflect the ideologies of the institution, as well as archival best practice. These policies should denote acquisition policy, scope of the collection, schedules for the transfer and disposition of records and policy regarding personnel. Relationships with the denomination should be clearly defined. The establishment, authorization, and provision for a denominational archives should come from the highest governing person or committee within the institution. Ideally, an religious agency should attract as many historical and archival resources into a single collection as possible.

Acquisition

The work of religious archival agencies frequently includes the acquisition of materials such as nonofficial and private papers, denominational publications, periodicals, worship books, and histories Regardless of type, most religious archives collect records such as minutes, correspondence, reports from their various bodies, financial ledgers and reports, audit reports, records of appeals and adjudication, interoffice memos, charitable records, appointment books, registers, charters, constitutions and bylaws, legal papers, deeds, articles of incorporation, agreements, and statistical reports.

Facilities for Storage

Most religious archives have been established as private institutions. The religious archival condition in North America has similarities to the situations to those in France and England. Religious archives are widely scattered and while most are in denominational depositories, others may be found in public archives in cases where the denominations are not able to maintain them. An effective religious archival records program should be properly authorized and maintained by a denomination or its geographical subunit that has created the records, such as a diocese or a parish. Cooperative ventures between several agencies within a denomination is not uncommon, and competition between institutions should be avoided. In terms of building and facilities, the most important consideration is that facilities provide maximum protection to the records. Location and geographical proximity to the headquarters offices and potential users is important, as well as the potential for future expansion. Accessibility, stack storage climate control , as well as space for exhibitions, appraisal and reference should be considered. 228

The United, Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches in North America have all been reasonably careful in conserving their records. The United Church has established an integrated system of central and regional archives. The Anglican Church has a central repositories in both The United States and Canada, but its diocesan structure allows for considerable decentralization. This model of decentralization to regions is also evident in the Roman Catholic system of archives.

Public archival institutions on both the federal and provincial levels have been relatively inactive in the acquisition of religious records. This is in part due to the desire of religious institutions to house their own records. However, public archival institutions are well-suited to the acquisition of interdenominational and non-denominational records, because their own non-denominational status negates any theological disputes. Should a public archives acquire religious records of any kind, it is quite possible to engage highly competent religious archivists. Where a religious institution cannot maintain its own suitable repository due to budgetary or other factors, it is preferable to place its documents in the care of a public archives than in potentially hazardous storage conditions (an attic or damp basement, for example). Considering that religious and non-religious archivists undergo similar training, and that parish registers have long been the subject of acquisition by public archives, public archives have the capacity to properly care for religious records.

Several North America Universities hold religious archives and either began as, or continue to be denominational institutions. Some Canadian examples are St. Paul University, Ottawa (Roman Catholic); Knox College, Toronto (Presbyterian); Victoria College, Toronto (United); Acadia and McMaster Universities (Baptist).

Challenges and Solutions

Like all archival institutions, religious archives face several challenges. These include Questions of Access versus privacy, Ideology versus Archival Best Practice, Exclusivity versus inclusion, and Budgetary concerns.

Access versus Privacy of Records

The issue of access has been a controversial one in many religious archives. One of the responsibilities of an archivist is to mediate between access to records for research purposes and privacy considerations. As keepers of these records, they are responsible for the timely and appropriate release of information. For religious archivists, this responsibility of allowing access to the records in their care can prove troublesome for several reasons. Firstly, facts which people tend to want to hide can be revealed in church records, such as illegitimacy, adoption, incest and infidelity. The records produced from the traditional activities of the church (baptism, marriage, burials, and counselling), can therefore be problematic in terms of access.

Before the turn of the 20th century, religious authorities were responsible for many of the services which have now been taken over by governments, such as the registration of vital statistics, or the provision of social services for the poor. Churches also maintained hospitals, created colleges, built homes for unwed mothers, ran residential schools for First Nations children, managed orphanages, and administered sheltered houses for troubled youths. Records produced from these activities contain information on medical conditions, criminal activity, educational ability, etc. Many of these records are being kept today by religious archives which are not obligated by any governmental laws either to disclose or to withhold that information. According to a survey conducted in 1988, each denomination has different access policies: For the denominations which have only one central archives there was a general consensus on assessing each access request on its own merits:

• The Congregational, Lutheran, and Presbyterian archives stated that their records were open with the archivist's permission unless restricted by the congregation which donated the records. The decision to allow the archivist to determine access was made by the archivists themselves in most cases.
• Baptist records are open up to 1920; for access to documents created after 1920, the researcher must obtain written permission. Because of the split in the church in the 1920s, which created two separate Baptist organizations, the minutes of governing church bodies record offenses and misdemeanors which may still prove to be sensitive for some people. These minutes are therefore closed.
• The Foreign Mission Society records are open with permission. This decision was arrived at by Society superiors.
• The Moravians, allow only limited access.

With the larger denominations which have multiple archives serving various levels of church organizations, the results of the survey were not as consistent as with the smaller denominations:

• The Anglican Church archivists gave a variety of responses to the question of access, and many decisions relied less on policy but on the decisions of individual archivists. There was general agreement that personnel records, including those concerning the appointment and election of church officials and clergy discipline cases, were closed, or had at least limited access. Generally restricted records could be opened at the discretion of the archivist or a church official (including the bishop, the executive secretaries, parish rectors and wardens), depending on the nature of the request. Since the time of the survey, the Anglican Church has created a national access policy in order to relieve individual archivists of access decisions, and to achieve a more standard access policy within its many repositories.
• The United Church archives reported generally open access conditions. Only one archives reported that all of its records were closed.
• In the case of the Roman Catholic archives, most reported that records were only open with permission and each access request must pass the scrutiny of the archivist. While many archivists granted liberal access for "serious researchers" there generally was more caution among the respondents from the Roman Catholic archives than among either the Anglican or any of the single archive denominations.

The survey indicated that religious archivists are generally in favour of public access to their records. There is not universal agreement among denominations regarding the public or private nature of certain record types, such as baptismal, burial or marriage registers. This disagreement has resulted in different access conditions. Other factors that the archivist must consider regarding access are:

• The concept of public responsibility vs. private accountability.
• The nature of records generated by private individuals. Traditional access conditions to private papers have been set by the donors of the papers, and it is occasionally difficult for the archivist to keep track of the donors.
• The nature, beliefs and ideologies of the parent institution. In the case of religious archives, the archivist’s responsibility is to the spiritual authority that guides the denomination, and then to the rest of the denomination.

A religious archives should have an access policy that provides guidelines which consider both research demands and the protection of privacy.

Ideology versus Archival Best Practice

To a greater degree than other kinds of archival repositories, religious archives necessarily have reference to religious faith, or, in other words, to a particular set of beliefs, ideologies and values.There is a direct connection between the overall record keeping process and a specific tenets of belief. The religious archivist is required to make decisions in relation to the ideologies of his or her sponsoring organization. The goal to document something spiritual or intangible, and perhaps inherently "undocumentable" is a challenge particular to religious archives.

Exclusivity

A problematic issue facing religious archives pertains to the housing of records created by groups which are not accepted into their own denominations or that are wary of church archives. For example, records of cross-denominational religious movements, and of interdenominational coalitions. The accidental exclusion of records is also problematic. Although many denominational archives do acquire both corporate and private material, the holdings in religious archives are largely official in nature. Baptismal and marriage registers, minutes of committees, and annual reports are transferred to archives as a matter of official protocol, whereas personal material is often neglected. In addition, the majority of religious organizations have traditionally administered by men, the acquisition of official records makes the role of women in churches difficult to study.

Some religious ideologies have precluded inclusion of records in religious archives produced by groups and individuals with philosophies, lifestyles or orientations that are viewed as controversial or undesirable by any given denomination. For instance, the attitude of religious denominations regarding homosexuality had generated much controversy.Specialized services are provided by several organizations to help gays an lesbians who wish to remain active in religious denominations, particularly Roman Catholic ones. (The Communications ministry, based in New York City, and the New Ways Ministry, among other, provide resources and promote dialogue to homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. Similar services are provided in the United States, Canada and abroad by the Brethren/ Mennonite Council for Lesbian and Gay Concerns. There are also Lesbian and Gay chapters of Christian denominations, and Jewish gay and lesbians have been well represented across Canada. In addition to these chapters and organizations several archives to house gay and lesbian materials associated with them.

Budgetary Concerns

A decline of religious belief and practice presents some problems for the religious archives which are not present in other archives. With increased competition for scarce funds, the archives are losing out to activities, such as social welfare programs for the benefit of the poor, that are considered a more central part of some religious organizations' missions. In order to conserve limited funds, some religious archives will share facilities. For example, although administratively separate, both Anglican and United Archives are housed at the School of Theology Archives at the University of British Columbia.

Non-Denominational and Interdenominational Archives

North Americans in recent years have been influenced by diverse movements such as Protestant Evangelicalism, Catholic liberation theology, "new age" spirituality, and religious environmentalism. Lambert has noted what he calls an “anti-secularist” trend in North America manifested outside the Christian tradition. Satanist groups, witchcraft and the occult in general, and mind science movements are examples. Research indicates that North American adults are not abandoning churches. On census returns, almost ninety per cent are still indicating their affiliation with the denominations to which they belonged as children.

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Whereas a continuous church record exists for most well-established religious denominations, that is not the case for these smaller or newer religious groups. Although public institutions carry a limited cross-section of religious records, the current organization of religious archives in North America is in large part denominational and private, and is carefully segregated from government and other secular records. This model does not adequately reflect the religious developments of secularism, non-denominationalism and inter-denominationalism. A problematic issue is that of determining how current religious archives will preserve a record of the existence of esoteric, often ephermeral, religious groups with no ecclesiastical structure of denominational affiliation or to decide which denominational archives could claim the right to preserve the records of inter-denominational bodies. An example of this is the Spiritualist movement. Spiritualism is a universal religion which draws from the teachings of Christianity and other world religions and philosophies, rather than relying on any one tradition or particular book, ancient or modern. Since its peak about 1930, the influence of Spiritualism in Canada has been declining. The number of Spiritualist churches, ministers, and members is small. When a church has closed, the records have most often been lost, presumably remaining with the church members who last had responsibility for the secretarial and treasurer's duties.

Other examples are Pentecostal churches, which do not have their own archives, as well as ecumenical charismatic groups should place their papers in public archives. However, these groups tend to be averse to housing their records in a public archives. The likelihood of Satanist and other occult groups donation their records, should they be produced, to a public archives is low, considering that they practice in secrecy. Many spiritualist groups are unstructured and, hence, do not produce archival records. Provincial, university, and other archival repositories hold papers which are pertinent to the study of the above groups. However, it may be that most of the material which archives manage to conserve regarding these movements will be about them rather than by them.

Links to Canadian Religious Archives

This list is not exhaustive, but a representational cross-section of religious archives in Canada

Anglican

Diocese of Saskatchewan Archives

Archives of the Diocese of New Westminster and Provincial Synod of BC & Yukon

Anglican Diocese of Ottawa Archives

Anglican Diocese of Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island Archives

Baptist

Atlantic Baptist Archives

Buddhist

Shambhala Archives

Jewish

Canadian Jewish Congress Charities Committee National Archives

Jewish Archives and Historical Society of Edmonton and Northern Alberta

The Jewish Heritage Center of Western Canada

Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia

Ontario Jewish Archives

Lutheran

Central District of Lutheran Church-Canada Archives

Mennonite

Canadian Conference of Mennonite Brethren Churches Archives

Mennonite Archives of Ontario

Mennonite Heritage Centre Archives

Mennonite Historical Society of Saskatchewan Archives

Presbyterian

Presbyterian Church in Canada Records and Archives Office

Redemptorist

Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (the Redemptorists) Archives

Roman Catholic

Archdiocese of Halifax - Yarmouth Archives

Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto

Archives of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Winnipeg

United

Maritime Conference of the United Church of Canada Archives