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| Historian Margaret (Peggy) Bendroth looks forward to making “the past part of the way we understand the present.” |
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Former Massachusetts resident and UCC member Margaret Lamberts Bendroth, a historian specializing in American religion and women’s history, has been named the new Executive Director of the American Congregational Association (ACA). Bendroth, whose expertise covers 20th century United States history, will begin her tenure at the organization’s Boston office in August 2004.
The Board of Directors of the American Congregational Association elected her on Sept. 15, 2003, to succeed Harold Field Worthley who retired at the end of the year. Bendroth was the unanimous choice of the Search Committee chaired by retired pastor James W. Crawford.
“ I’m struck with all of the creative possibilities that history offers churches in Massachusetts,” said Bendroth. “I look forward to working with local pastors and congregations, discovering new ways to make the past part of the way we understand the present.”
Bendroth has been “very impressed by the commitment and vision of all of the people associated with the ACA board. I am duly humbled to be following in Hal Worthley’s footsteps, and deeply appreciate the work of the library staff in making the ACA such an accessible and valuable resource for scholars, pastors and laypeople.”
Currently Professor of History at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, MI, her degrees culminated in a Ph.D. in American History from Johns Hopkins University in 1985. Bendroth has a number of books to her credit and has published scores of articles in scholarly publications. While serving on the adjunct faculty at Andover Newton Theological School in the ’90s, she collaborated on a study of “Women and 20th Century Protestantism,” funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Essays from that study were published as a book by the same name, by the University of Illinois Press in 2002. It won a Choice Award as one of the top academic books published that year. Her spouse, UCC minister Norman Bendroth, has served churches in Cambridge, Burlington, Milton, and Dedham. They have two adopted Amerasian children.
The American Congregational Association, formed in 1853, owns and oversees the Congregational Library, an archive of religion in New England at 14 Beacon Street in Boston. The Library is open to the public for research and study of its 225,000-plus volumes, and operates a books-by-mail program enabling individuals from across the country to borrow materials. The Association also owns the office building at 14 Beacon Street which serves as the home for a number of religious and charitable organizations.
The ACA relates to all the successor bodies of the Congregational and Christian tradition including: The Conservative Congregational Christian Conference; The National Association of Congregational Christian Churches; The United Church of Christ; and independent Congregational churches.
T. Thomas Boates Jr., chair of the board of the ACA, reminds interested persons that the library does research for churches which are having anniversaries and want to know about their early beginnings. “Peggy succeeds much-beloved librarian and researcher Hal Worthley. She is also a very good resource and will ignite even more interest in congregational history. The board is excited by her potential,” said Boates.
Retiring ACA executive director and librarian Harold F. Worthley praised the library’s modernized facilities such as computers with e-mail and Web-page, and microform reader-printer. “The staff continues to respond helpfully to the needs of both the pastor and the layperson, the academic scholar and the history/genealogy buff, lending books and journals, researching questions, teaching the preservation of local church records, raising consciousness of the values associated with the Congregational tradition, chronicling and informing all comers of the work of the Church in today’s world.
“ To have been a partner in that mission and those developments is a privilege,” said Worthley. “To anticipate the library and its parent association entering into ever wider service to Christ and community is a source of deep personal satisfaction and delight.”