This month in Presbyterian history
The historical society throws a party, an alumni bulletin tells all, a letter of support is received, and a D.C. church sends gifts overseas
As 2025 comes to a close, we have a few more moments in Presbyterian history that we’d like to share with you — the first one teleporting us back to our very own Presbyterian Historical Society (PHS) at the turn of the 20th century.
PHS turned 50 in 1902. In the final month of that year, the Society sent out invitations asking friends to join in the celebration on December 2. Before the building at 425 Lombard Street in Old City, Philadelphia, was completed in 1967, PHS called the Witherspoon Building on Walnut Street home. There, on the fifth floor at 2:30 p.m. on Dec. 2, 1902, attendees gathered to commemorate the Society’s first 50 years.
On the program, the two-hour period between 3 and 5 p.m. was given to an “Inspection of the Society’s Library and Collections.” Five speakers are listed on the evening’s bill. The speakers included the Moderator of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America; the President of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania; two pastors visiting from New York; and the then President of the General Synod of the Reformed Church in the United States.
In late December 1954, Commander L. C.M. Vosseler of the United States Navy was photographed handing out packages that had arrived in South Korea, where he was stationed. The sender address seen scrawled on the package at the bottom right of the image tells viewers that Vosseler was in communication with the SEC — the Sunday Evening Club — of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C.
This photograph lives in the Edward L. R. Elson Papers (1920-1988) in the archives of the Presbyterian Historical Society. Elson was ordained in 1930, and immediately dove into his life of service to the church. That same year, he was appointed chaplain in the U.S. Army Reserve. Prior to U.S. involvement in World War II in the 1940s, Elson entered active duty, completing nearly five years of service and rising to the rank of colonel. In 1946, he heeded the call of the Covenant-First Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., where he helped establish the National Presbyterian Church, building it from the foundation of his D.C. congregation. Elson served as pastor of the National Presbyterian Church until 1973.
Simultaneous with his serving as the pastor of the National Presbyterian Church, Elson headed the Military Chaplains Association from 1957 to 1959. In 1969, a decade later, he was appointed Chaplain of the U.S. Senate, and served in that position until his retirement in 1981.
In the mid- to late-1950s, Elson made regular visits to the Middle East, and was chairman of the National Council of the American Friends of the Middle East. The photograph subgroup of the archival collection of Elson’s papers includes images like the one above from his trips.
The December 1977 edition of the Tehran Community School’s alumni bulletin includes a feature on a recent visit to the school made by the Shahbanu Farah Pahlavi, a letter from the headmaster of the school, an essay titled “The Iran of Yesterday” penned by Jane Doolittle, and pages upon pages of alumni news.
The Community School of Tehran was a Presbyterian Mission institution whose internationalist ethos influenced multiple generations of English-speaking students between 1935 and 1980. The school initially began as a place for “mish kids” (children of Presbyterian missionaries) to attend, but eventually expanded to Americans of all backgrounds and English-speaking students of different nationalities and faiths. By the 1960s, Iranians comprised most of the student body. At its height in the 1970s, the Community School had 1,500 students attending each year.
Apparently, the school’s Spanish teacher and the ski club students he supervised had run into the Shahbanu while skiing earlier that year. They extended an invitation to visit the Community School, which occupied the site of the American Mission Hospital, where the Shahbanu was born. A plaque was placed outside of an English classroom, which had previously been a hospital room. It read “Her Imperial Majesty Farah Pahlavi the Shahbanu of Iran was Born on October 14, 1938 in this Room of the American Mission Hospital of Tehran.”
Another fun aspect of the Alumni Bulletin are photographs included in later pages with captions that read, “Can you identify anyone in the above picture? Is this your Graduating Class? Let’s hear from you!!!” and the like.
“We write to express our support for you and our outrage and grief that your call has again been rejected by an official voice of the Church you seek to serve. We stand with you and with all those who are shamed by this sin of the Church.”
So begins the letter received by Rev. Janie Spahr in December 1992. It was signed and sent by 23 members of the Noble Road Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, after hearing news of the General Assembly's decision to deny Spahr's call to be co-pastor at Downtown United Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New York, on the basis of her sexual orientation. The letter lives in the archival collection of the Patricia Dykers Koenig Papers at PHS, as does Spahr’s response on the right.
Spahr became an ordained Presbyterian minister in December 1974. She served as assistant pastor of First Presbyterian Church in San Rafael, California, for a few years before becoming executive director if the Oakland Council of Presbyterian Churches in 1979. However, she was soon encouraged to resign once she was recognized as a lesbian. Despite this pushback, Spahr continued to be active in her community, co-founding the Ministry of Light in 1982, which became the Spectrum Center for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns. She served as the organization’s executive director for a decade.
During this time, in November of 1991, Spahr was called to serve by the Downtown United Presbyterian Church in Rochester, New York. A year later, she was denied this call by the denomination’s highest court. The Rochester congregation invited Spahr to become their evangelist instead, so that she might continue to spread the gospel and fight for the inclusion of LGBTQ+ congregants within the church as a whole.
The Rev. Tricia Dykers Koenig and the congregation members who penned the above letter also sent correspondence to the session and congregation at Downtown United Presbyterian Church, to the Rev. W. Clark Chamberlain, who dissented on the commission's vote, and to the Permanent Judicial Commission of the General Assembly directly.
As 2025 melts into the rearview mirror and 2026 blooms into being, take a moment to reflect on the history made this year. With the new year comes the continued opportunity to create beautiful moments of meaning, purpose, and faith together. We'll see you in January with more Presbyterian history hits!
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