Christian History articles from May 2000

Christian History archives from May 2000

Did You Know?(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... What a famous painting reveals about America's move west. As North and South clashed in the Civil War, Americans saw hope in one direction: West. This mural study was commissioned during the Civil War for the House Wing of the U. S. Capitol...

FROM THE READERS.(Letter to the Editor)
May 1, 2000... Personal picks I wouldn't have been disappointed to see Jim Elliot on the "top ten" list, or maybe even Jim and Elisabeth Elliot. Jim's incredible story of missionary martyrdom, told so beautifully and movingly by his wife, is probably...

Corrections.(Correction Notice)(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... In my article on William J. Seymour, I erred in asserting that Florence Crawford had a romantic interest in Seymour (page 19). In fact the lady in question was Clara Lum, who did editorial work on the Azusa Street paper Apostolic Faith. I offer...

Preparing a Way in the Wilderness.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... In 1890 William D. Bloys, a Presbyterian Army chaplain at Fort Davis, Texas, began a regular outdoor service in a pasture 19 miles from the fort. Officially the "Bloys Camp Meeting," his motley gathering of cowboys and ranchers became known as...

A CHURCH OF THEIR OWN.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... ETHNIC CONGREGATIONS WERE ESSENTIAL FOR BUILDING COMMUNITY IN THE NATION'S MOST DIVERSE REGION. As immigration boomed between 1840 and 1920, the central plains attracted Europeans from agrarian backgrounds, while the West Coast and the...

No Rest for the Weary.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Few pioneers possessed strong enough resolve to keep the Sabbath on the Overland Trail. In 1857 William Clark and three friends joined up with a firm in Leavenworth, Kansas, that was to haul freight to army posts in Utah. The four men...

TESTED ON ALL SIDES.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... MARY RICHARDSON WALKER In May 1838, Mary Richardson Walker was newly married, pregnant, and riding horseback in Missouri on her way to Oregon. She was traveling with her husband and three other missionary couples to take up ministry with...

Yesterday's Christian Woman.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Pioneer wives held their households together with a blend of grit and grace. When Nutter and Nancy Murphy and their family came to Shawnee, Kansas, in October 1859, the first thing they did after finding temporary lodging for the night was...

Forty-Niner Faith.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Traditional Christianity didn't stand much of a chance in the California gold fields. Standing on a hill overlooking San Francisco in 1849, adventurer Bayard Taylor saw scattered houses, a crowded harbor, distant mountains, and the...

GROWTH OF THE WEST.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... 23,191,876 Population of the United States in 1850 Center of population: 23 miles southeast of Parkersburg, western Virginia 62,947,714 Population of the United States in 1890 Center of population: 20 miles east of Columbus,...

"Out Yonder, on the Edge of Things".(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... The most controversial, and most effective, missionary to the West and Alaska, Sheldon Jackson was always pushing the boundaries. Before the automobile or airplane, Sheldon Jackson managed to log nearly one million miles from 1858 to 1908,...

ALTERNATIVE RELIGIONS.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... MANY NON- AND SEMI-CHRISTIAN GROUPS ALSO LAID CLAIM TO THE WEST, BUT NONE MORE SUCCESSFULLY THAN THE MORMONS. As a young girl, Katherine Westcott (later Tingley) dreamed of leaving New England to build a White City in the golden West....

The West That Wasn't Won.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Protestant missions to Native Americans had few shining moments. The Cherokees are nearly all prisoners. They have been dragged from their houses and encamped at the forts and military posts all over the nation." Thus Baptist missionary...

DYING TO SAVE.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... THE "WHITMAN MASSACRE" REVEALS MUCH OF WHAT WAS NOBLE AND FLAWED REGARDING MISSIONS TO NATIVE AMERICANS. Some say the sorrow began when Narcissa Whitman, just after lunch on November 29, 1847, went to the mission's kitchen. She found the...

Local Heroes.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... The wide-open West was served, state by state, by brave and sometimes beleaguered ministers and missionaries like these. Montana's Evangelist-at-Large Brother Van (William Wesley Van Orsdel) 1848-1919 After stepping off the steamboat...

Land of Crumbling Myths.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... Why the twentieth-century West--urban and explosive--ain't what it used to be. A CONVERSATION WITH RICHARD ETULAIN So far we've focused primarily on how the Christian church came to the American West in the nineteenth century, but what...

How the West Was Really Won.(Brief Article)
May 1, 2000... The American West is such a vast topic, you need a general reference (or several) within arm's reach. We found these especially helpful: Howard R. Lamar, ed., The New Encyclopedia of the American West (Yale, 1998); Clyde A. Milner II, Carol A....