Princeton Theological Seminary Hosts a Carl McIntire Day
From The Voice of Thanksgiving of MAR/APR 2004

The Voice of Thanksgiving
“That I may publish with the voice of thanksgiving and tell of all thy wondrous works.” Psalm 26:7

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On April 6, 2004 Special Collections of Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries hosted a “Carl McIntire Day” with family and friends of Dr. Carl McIntire invited, where many of his Beacons, letters, and papers of all the organizations he was a part and ‘instrument in forming. They said, “Me event is our way of keeping friends and family of Carl McIntire involved in the work of preserving and interpreting his legacy”. The men wanted to show the work the Seminary has done and is planning to do with these documents of valuable information. These not only show the operation, but the character, person and work of this great man, a prophet ‘in his own time.

The presenters were Randall Balmer, Steve Crocco, and Robert Benedetto.

The arrival and coffee was 10:00 a.m.

After the welcome and introductions from 10:45 to 12:00 p.m. the keynote lecture featured Randall Balmer, author of the Encyclopedia of Evangelicalism (2002) and other works. Randall Balmer is Professor of American Religion at Barnard College, Columbia University. ‘Me title of his lecture was, “Down to the Sea in Ships: The irrepressible Carl McIntire and Radio Free America”. His speech was well presented, informative, and entertaining with glimpses of Dr. McIntire’s work, faith, stand for his beliefs, and determination to carry on the work of his Lord. He ‘included the derogatory opinions of Dr. McIntire by the modernists of that day and the liberal press.

Better still Dr. Balmer has promised to send me a copy of his speech, which I will publish in next month’s Voice of Thanksgiving. They provided a lovely lunch for us.

We were then taken on a tour of the Luce Library vault and the McIntire Papers. Entering the ante room were tables with pictures of ICCC Congresses, copies of Vic Lockman’s cartoons, books, pamphlets, etc. We then entered the climate controlled vault room where the rows of shelves are on easily maneuvered tracks to make aisles which showed the more than 650 boxes of the documents and papers. It has taken two to three people two years to go through and organize, but they need oral history to fill in the gaps plus textual material from his birth.

Session II was, “A Roundtable Discussion of the Papers of Carl McIntire: Current Assessment and Future Needs,” led by Steve Crocco and Robert Benedetto.

Here we learned that the Seminary Library has and is spending thousands of dollars putting the disintegrating documents on acid free paper to preserve them. They are happy to have the privilege to preserve these for research and future generations. They consider this an on going project, so if anyone has any letters or documents of importance they will be happy to receive them. They also indicated they were willing to share their information with Faith Theological Seminary or others, and anticipated that they would do the same for the promotion of scholarly research. The Library has some resources to finance all this work, but will welcome donations from any interested in this project. The address is, Robert 1. Benedetto, Director of Special Collections, Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries, P.O. Box 111, Princeton, NJ 08542-0111.