The Henry Martyn Centre blog has a World War One entry on Archdeacon Tom Dennis, translator of the Bible into Union Igbo (a Nigerian language). He went down when S.S. Karina was sunk by a German U-Boat in August 1917.
SS Karina, sunk 1 August 1917. Photo from E.D. Fleet History
http://www.clydesite.co.uk
The Imperial War Museum is heading the First World War partnership. The website www.1914.org highlights centenary events and resources from across the world.
Many religious institutions, including those holding archives, are included among the partner organisations.
Digital Religion was the title of a conference held last year at the Center for Religion, Media and Culture at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
The pre-conference discussion paper suggested three ways of seeing the interplay between religion and digital media: the use of such media to convey traditional religious practices, the novel forms of religious life made possible by new technologies and, thirdly, a ‘large, fluid, and evolving category beyond these’ in which ideas of what is and what is not religion are being challenged and redefined.
The conference website, featuring presentations and other material, is being mounted online at http://cmrc.colorado.edu/the-natural-history-of-the-digital-religion-conference/. So far the plenary videos are available, that by Heidi Campbell of particular interest in highlighting the range of ways in which religion is conducted online.
Although the issue of how to capture and preserve these manifestations of faith was not a concern at the conference, the proceedings are a reminder of how even traditional aspects of religion are being affected and will potentially be transformed by digital technology.
One aim of this blog is to draw attention to relevant advice and guidance from outside the UK. This time, it’s from the Archives Research Centre of the Presbyterian Church of Aotearoa New Zealand at http://www.archives.presbyterian.org.nz/
The Centre has a pro-active archives collecting policy (http://www.presbyterian.org.nz/archives/collectionpolicy.pdf) and its website offers a number of useful resources, including a guide to records management for the parish and church organisations at http://www.presbyterian.org.nz/archives/recordsmanagement1.pdf
and a guide to archives management at http://www.archives.presbyterian.org.nz/whatarewetokeep.pdf
The introductory lines of the archives management guide summarize what archives can offer the church, and are worth quoting:
“Our parish archives are valuable and delicate documents:
they are strands of memory
they are collective memory
they help us converse with our Presbyterian past
they convey visions
they tell of hope
they tell us about the progression of faith in the community
they act as reminders where we have erred
they are important in charting a future of Christian witness“
Archives are central to the Bahá’í faith. The original writings (tablets) and letters of The Báb , Bahá’u’lláh and Abdu’l-Bahá are of profound spiritual importance and the faith has always attached significance to its historical records. Shoghi Effendi, its head from 1921 to 1957, noted,
American Bahá’ís have an impressive National Bahá’í Archives, while the Bahá’í International Archives was first of the buildings to be erected in the Arc, the Bahá’í headquarters buildings in Haifa, Israel.
The Bahá’í International Archives building
The archives of the British Bahá’ís may have a new home shortly. The website of the Wilmette Institute, a US Bahá’í centre, reports that the Afnan Library is due to move into a former Baptist chapel in Sandy, Bedfordshire.
The Afnan Library was established in the will of Hasan M. Balyuzi (1908-1980), an eminent scholar and a descendant of the Báb to be a central research resource for the Bahá’í faith in Britain. It is currently in temporary housing. The report suggests the new Library will house 10,000 books, ‘vast quantities of manuscripts, handwritten letters, maps, documents, periodicals, and unpublished items’ and also temporarily hold the archive of the Bahá’í National Spiritual Assembly of the UK.
Religious Archives Group 