bMS 603
Adams, James Luther, 1901-1994. German Church Leaders, Films, ca. 1930s.
Summary Information:
- Call Number: bMS 603
- Title: Adams, James Luther, 1901-1994. German Church Leaders, Films, ca. 1930s.
- Repository: Andover-Harvard Theological Library, Harvard Divinity School, 45 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138-1911
- Quantity: 4 boxes
Administrative Information:
- Access: There are no restrictions on access to this collection.
- Acquisition Information: Gift of the James Luther Adams Foundation.
Biographical Information:
James Luther Adams (1901-1994) is considered to be the most influential theologian among American Unitarian Universalists in the twentieth century. He was born in Ritzville, Washington, and graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1924 and Harvard Divinity School in 1927. He was ordained as a Unitarian minister in 1927 at the Second Church in Salem, where he served as minister until 1934. He was also a minister in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, from 1934 to 1935. Adams taught at the Meadville Lombard Theological School in Chicago from 1936 to 1943, and in 1946 he earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. In 1957, he left Chicago to join the faculty of Harvard Divinity School, where he was Professor of Christian Ethics. He retired from Harvard in 1968, but continued to teach at Andover Newton Theological Seminary and Meadville Lombard. In his teaching, Adams promoted the works of Paul Tillich, Ernst Troeltsch, and Karl Holl, and focused on the theology of social ethics.
Scope and Content:
In the mid-1930s James Luther Adams went to Germany, where he observed how the Nazi government crushed dissent as it moved across the continent. Using a home movie camera, Adams filmed Karl Barth, Albert Schweitzer, and other religious leaders, as well as pro-Nazi leaders of the German Christian church. This collection consists of three films created by Adams during his time in Germany. The titles are "James Luther Adams, 1936 Christian Leaders," "Strasburg," and "Christian Leaders of Nazi Germany." In 2007 these films were reformatted to digital betacam preservation copies and DVDs. This collection includes the original eight-millimeter black-and-white film and these reformatted copies. The James Luther Adams Foundation used these films to create The Adams Tapes, which is a documentary about prominent church leaders in Germany in the 1930s. These tapes include commentary by Adams and George Huntston Williams (the films in this collection do not include soundtracks). These films were also used in the production of a film entitled Storm Troopers of Christ: Baptism and the Jews in Nazi Germany, which was written, produced, and directed by Steven D. Martin in 2007. A copy of this film (in DVD format) is included in box 4 of this collection.
Container List:
- bMS 603/1 "Christian Leaders of Nazi Germany" two reels, three DVDs, one digital betacam preservation copy.
- bMS 603/2 "James Luther Adams, 1936 Christian Leaders" one reel, three DVDS, one digital betacam preservation copy.
- bMS 603/3 "Strasburg" one reel, three DVDs, one digital betacam preservation copy.
- bMS 603/4 Original containers for films (now empty). This box also includes one DVD copy of Storm Troopers of Christ: Baptism and the Jews in Nazi Germany.