Special Forum • Curatorial Challenges 5

Expressions and Encounters: Experiencing the Histories and Theologies of African Christianity in the Collections of Pitts Theology Library

An Essay on Curatorial Challenges and Responsibilities

by Jennifer L. Aycock

Former Margaret A. Pitts Professor Emeritus of Theological Bibliography of the Pitts Theology Library Channing Jeschke’s cursive scrawls across the lined sheets of legal paper. The copied letter addressed to Reverend Jerisdan Jehu-Appiah, pastor of an independent Ghanaian church Musama Disco Christo Church meeting in London, reads no less poignant than the drama of Jeschke’s penmanship. In the letter, he invites Appiah to consider archiving the church’s materials in an international computer database.1 Jeschke reasoned, “What the African churches are doing in Britain and elsewhere is a story that needs to be more broadly known and preserved for future generations of persons yet unborn to learn.”2 Jeschke spent significant time and energy tracking down published and obscure African church periodicals and records both in continental and diaspora communities in efforts to increase Pitts’ holdings in African sources. He also envisioned a bibliography of African Christian periodicals that could be accessed and used collaboratively between research institutions.

Jeschke’s development of the Sub-Saharan African Collection was one initiative among many that positioned Pitts as a premier theological research library during his tenure. Jeschke’s correspondence and personal notes convey a strategic collecting vision to build Pitts as a competitor with the “Harvards and the Yales,” as he wrote it.3 However, weightier theological matters beyond the limited impetus of institutional competition motivated him to recognize this effort as an ecclesiological concern that required international institutional partnership.4 He observed that beyond North American and European Christianity, “new linguistic and ethnic differences” could have the adverse effect of perpetuating ecclesial fragmentation rather than promoting the “realization of a universal church of one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Saviour to us all.”5 He understood his collecting responsibility as developing a means to serve this changing ecclesial landscape in concert with other institutions.6

History of the Collection

1 Jerisdan Jehu-Appiah was the grandson of Musama Disco Christo Church’s founder Joseph William Egyanka Ap-piah (1893-1948) in Ghana, Africa.

2 Jeschke hand-written copy of letter to Appiah, August 10, 1984, Pitts Theology Library Records 1914-2016, Box 5, African Serials Project Correspondence 1982-1985 (Pitts Special Collections).

3 Jeschke’s handwritten notes, Pitts Theology Library Records 1914-2016, Box 5, African Serials Project Correspon-dence 1982-1985 (Pitts Special Collections).

4 Channing R. Jeschke, “Acquisitions and the African Project at the Pitts Theology Library: A Reflection” (presenta-tion, American Theological Library Association, 1986), 86.

5 Channing R. Jeschke, “Acquisitions and the African Project at the Pitts Theology Library: A Reflection,” 86.

6 Channing R. Jeschke, “Acquisitions and the African Project at the Pitts Theology Library: A Reflection”, 87. Jeschke called for “a model of cooperation and coordination of efforts on an international scale that can make a difference in the total resources available to scholars in the future and one in which all institutions can share responsibility.”