July 11, Anthony Elia, director of the Bridwell Library at SMU Dallas, for his commentary on the origins and future of the Methodist Museum historical artifacts now arriving at the Bridwell Library for installation over the coming months. Published in the Dallas Morning News with the heading: https://bit.ly/3hWDVjS
“Junaluska’s contributions to our cultural life will be as flexible and adaptable as the Christian spirit.”
In January 1950, Mason Crum, a professor of religion at Duke University, penned these final words to the preface of his book The Story of Lake Junaluska. The curious simplicity and beauty of the resort town in the western Carolina Smoky Mountains easily captivates the wayfarer, passerby, or motoring tourist.
Crum’s account is almost a hagiography of a town and region, something generally bestowed upon saints. But Junaluska was something clearly quite different. As Crum also noted, “For after all, Junaluska is an idea — not merely a place or an institution.”
By Anthony Elia
“Junaluska’s contributions to our cultural life will be as flexible and adaptable as the Christian spirit.”
In January 1950, Mason Crum, a professor of religion at Duke University, penned these final words to the preface of his book The Story of Lake Junaluska. The curious simplicity and beauty of the resort town in the western Carolina Smoky Mountains easily captivates the wayfarer, passerby, or motoring tourist.
Crum’s account is almost a hagiography of a town and region, something generally bestowed upon saints. But Junaluska was something clearly quite different. As Crum also noted, “For after all, Junaluska is an idea — not merely a place or an institution.”
Junaluska is a Methodist retreat, a lakeside sanctuary, where scholars, clergy and lay people from around the world gathered throughout the last century to build a more unified Methodist church with a global outlook and reach. Over the years, the caretakers of this special place put together a collection of books and artifacts that told the story of a denomination and brought the spirit of Junaluska to the world.
This week, the museum’s collections move to Dallas. The World Methodist Council Museum closed earlier this year and awarded the entirety of its collection to Southern Methodist University, from papers and personal items of church founder John Wesley (1703-1791) to gifts from world leaders. At a time when Christianity is grappling with deep disagreements and some denominations face fracture, this collection tells a story of people around the world who worked toward unity.
Five years later, the first great conference attracted well over 4,000 attendees. It was situated just to the north of Waynesville, N.C., in the newly constructed Lake Junaluska, an artificial lake and encampment with cabins that would gradually blossom into the restorative pilgrimage site for a global denomination.
The nature of the first Junaluska Conference was international in scope and mission. The decade leading up to the establishment of the Lake Junaluska Conference was punctuated by world ecumenical missionary conferences held in London and New York, before the more famous Edinburgh Conference of 1910.
The Southern Methodist delegates to the New York conference were inspired to expand their evangelism and mission efforts and carried this fervor to the mountain retreat of Junaluska. Thus were planted the seeds of a worldwide vision and expansion of the global Methodist church from a North American vantagepoint.
After the establishment of the Lake Junaluska Conference, the locale underwent fairly rapid growth, attracting more and more Methodist and other denominational tourists to the mountain resort for spiritual restoration from the fatigues of daily living.
For nearly two decades the properties and activities of Junaluska flourished, outside of a brush with bankruptcy in the 1930s that was resolved when a group of bishops undertook a fundraising campaign that raised more than $100,000 (nearly $2 million today).
With fresh renovations came more guests and a broader, more international community of visitors. In the church leadership at this time, just a few short months before Hitler invaded Poland and set off the global chaos of World War II, the Northern and Southern denominations of the Methodist Episcopal Church reunited.
The MEC had split nearly a century before over slavery, and this moment of unification proved vital to a new chapter in the history of both Lake Junaluska and the global Methodist church. At that very conference of unification, the new church, called the Methodist Church, elected Ivan Lee Holt as bishop. During his tenure, he was also named president of the World Methodist Council, which would find its home at Junaluska in 1956, the same year the World Methodist Museum opened. The World Methodist Council now reaches 80 million people in 130 countries.
With the council based in Junaluska and given its wide-reaching membership and appeal, the retreat would become a focal point of the global church.
Among the early leaders of the council was the Rev. Elmer Talmage Clark, an author and expert fundraiser whose broad interests inspired his vision to found the museum. It reflects Clark’s foresight for the preservation of the church’s heritage and the presentation of its legacy into the future.
The museum collection grew to include items related to the World Methodist Peace Prize, awarded to luminaries like Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter and Mikhail Gorbachev. Additionally, the history of Catholic-Methodist relations is represented in the museum through the historical connections between council leaders and Popes John XXIII and Paul VI.
The collection also includes John Wesley’s traveling pulpit, scores of Wesley statuettes and memorabilia, and one of only a few copies of John Wesley’s death mask (there may be only two or three in existence).
Each remarkable leader shepherded the museum within an ever-changing world, balancing the work of the church with the curatorial and historical challenges of preservation, exhibition and engagement with the public.
Now that shepherding moves to SMU, where the Perkins School of Theology and Bridwell Library were founded on similar ideas to those rooted in Junaluska.
Consider the library’s first and longest-tenured director, Decherd Turner, whose collecting acumen was second to none. He possessed a sophisticated skill at acquiring not simply archaic books and rare volumes, but expansive collections of archives belonging to Methodist ministers, occult writers, art historians, ballet dancers, modernist painters and professional typographers, among many others.
Though such collecting habits may have prompted a few head scratches, the holistic composition of his methodology and approach fundamentally underscores the balance that many such libraries and museums have had to negotiate in the last century. Very much like the World Methodist Museum, the diversity of contributions and acquisitions is a result of the skills and acuity of leadership and staff.
When the World Methodist Council awarded Bridwell the entirety of the museum’s collection, the historical legacy of Junaluska and Dallas came together, with a similar approach to local history, identity and significance, as well as global reach and import.
“We are very proud to assume the responsibility for these collections, which tell the very human stories behind the faith and vision of the Wesley brothers and illuminate the impact they have had on Christianity,” said SMU President Gerald Turner.
With this, SMU becomes one of the most important destinations for church historical research in North America, and perhaps worldwide. The collection represents a key cache of hand-written letters by John Wesley, along with items that reflect the daily religious practices of regular people throughout the history of the denomination. Additionally, Bridwell library intends to digitize the letters and documents for public use.
At this important moment, when there are both serious challenges and prayerful hopes in the Methodist church, we may hearken back to the legacy of Junaluska and its long connections to Dallas. Most notably, Bishop James Atkins, the tireless fundraiser who hosted the first meeting of the Southern Assembly in Lake Junaluska, was also the man who led the Methodist Commission on Education in 1911, which ultimately established Southern Methodist University. In 1912, he participated in laying the cornerstone of Dallas Hall at SMU.
In many ways, the connections of a century past come full circle in the re-establishment of the World Methodist Museum at Bridwell. The next few years will see the new exhibitions of the World Methodist Museum come alive on the campus of SMU. And we very much hope to see you there.
Anthony J. Elia is director of Bridwell Library at SMU. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.