Robert McAfee Brown

Related Sources

Robert McAfee Brown's books and some of his articles can be located in libraries or on online databases. At least one book,  Reflections Over the Long Haul: A Memoir, can be viewed on Google Books. Many of his articles, especially for The Christian Century, are available on the ATLA journal database or at a journal's website..

To add to these materials we have uploaded additional recordings, talks and lectures that are not readily available.

Preferring to improvise as little as possible,  Brown carefully prepared his talks, lectures or sermons.. The archival collection contains over a hundred of these talks in typed form.

A sample of these have been uploaded to our digital content site:

Related Collections

Special Collections and Archives at the Graduate Theological Union contain many related materials on the role of religious individuals and organizations working to bring about social justice, peace and revitalize the church during the later part of the 20th century. Listed below are some of the collections that support and supplement the Brown collection.

In 1964-65, while working for the Secretariat for Christian Unity, Daniel O'Hanlon, S.J. (1919-1992) was assigned to be the interpreter/guide, the "ciceroni", for the Protestant and Orthodox English speaking observers at the Vatican Council, living with them and attending daily proceedings. He did simultaneous translations for them from the Latin proceedings. He came to Berkeley when Alma College moved to join the GTU and became the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley in 1966.

Albert Gleaves Cohen served as campus minister with United Ministries in Higher Education at California State University Fullerton (1965-69) and California State University in Los Angeles (1969-97). The collection contains his activities on campus and off for civil rights, minority causes, social justice, population, student issues, and intelligent stewardship of the environment. Posters from his collection were used to help document the Brown Exhibit in the library.

During the Sixties campus ministers faced a new role providing direction on civil rights and social justice issues, as well as counseling for draft, drug issues and unplanned pregnancies. A number of campus ministers became mediators between groups in conflict. The collection documents the role of campus ministry during events such as the San Francisco State Strike in 1968-69 and the failed tenant collective at the Westminster House in Berkeley in 1970. Local congregations often disagreed with the social activism and the new initiatives promoted by the campus ministry, resulting in additional conflict within denominations and greatly reduced local contributions and support.

The Berkeley Free Church (South Campus Community Ministry), 1967-1972, Richard York, Pastor, operated a service ministry to the Berkeley, CA, Telegraph Ave. area transients, runaways and hippies. Services included a referral switchboard, counseling, health care, crash pads, and free food. Support came from area merchants, local churches, and the Episcopal and Presbyterian denominations. The Church and its clergy were involved in all the radical and social justice issues of the late 60's including local Berkeley issues, campus riots, and People's Park; peace and draft resistance issues of the Vietnam War; and radical church renewal in the mainline Protestant denominations.

Gustav H. Schultz was born 1935 in Foley, Alabama, receiving his education at Concordia Theological Seminary and Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. He served pastorates in Georgia and Illinois before becoming pastor of the University Lutheran Chapel, Berkeley, California in 1969. This period saw a growing movement against participation in the Vietnam Conflict as an immoral, illegal, and undeclared war, and the increasing identity of the church with the moral and ethical issues of choice within the individual conscience. The majority of the collection concerns the sanctuary movement for Central American refugees. Sanctuary for military personnel is a small, though significant, part of the collection.

An oral history of the sanctuary movement based on interviews with religious and lay leaders in the Bay Area conducted by Eileen Purcell during 1997-1998. The interviews cover the beginning of the sanctuary movement during the Vietnam Conflict (1971-1972) and the much more extensive movement assisting Central American refugees in the United States (1982-1987).

In June 1963, the California legislature passed AB 1240, the Rumford Act, a fair housing bill banning discrimination in the sale or rental of housing and to forbid lending institutions, mortgage holders, real estate brokers and others to practice discrimination in housing transactions. In April 1964, a "Realtor's Initiative", Proposition 14, was put on the state ballot. Its text stated that it was an initiative to prohibit the State from denying a person the right to rent or sell property "to any person as he chooses." In effect, the initiative would repeal the 1963 Rumford Act and amend the California constitution. Proposition 14, or the California Fair Housing initiative, became a focal point for the issue of racial discrimination and the civil rights movement in California. Proposition 14 won overwhelmingly in the November 1964 election. In 1966 the California Supreme Court invalidated the amendment because it violated federal guarantees. The Rumford Act was reinstated. In 1967, the US Supreme Court agreed with the state Supreme Court. Subsequent efforts by Governor Ronald Reagan and members of the California legislature failed to replace or modify the Rumford act.

This collection includes Anne McGrew Bennett's papers on peace issues and the movements to end the war in Vietnam; and, following the end of the war, the issues of women's ordination -- the place of women in the church -- and inclusive language. The papers include her speeches and articles and papers of other persons having to do with Bennett's subjects of interest and research. Her husband, John C. Bennett, was president of Union Theological Seminary (1963-1970) and a friend of Brown.

The collection contains the working, task, project, and correspondence files and materials concerning the career and ministry of Virginia Ramey Mollenkott (1932 - ), an English professor and advocate of women's and gay and lesbian rights. Raised a fundamentalist Christian, she became active in progressive evangelical organizations.