wfn.org | ABCUSA: Pipkin Named Director of American Baptist-Samuel Colgate

["SCHRAMM, Richard" <Richard.Schramm@abc-usa.org>]

Library      

American Baptist News Service (Valley Forge, Pa. 1/9/03)--The American
Baptist Historical Society has announced the appointment of the Rev. Dr. H.
W. Walker Pipkin, a pastor, educator and historian, as director of the
American Baptist-Samuel Colgate Historical Library in Rochester, N.Y.,
effective Feb. 1.  

In his new responsibilities Pipkin will oversee both the preservation and
development of the research collection and the assistance provided
researchers and other visitors to the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity
School campus, where the collection is housed.	The largest library of
materials by and about Baptists, the American Baptist-Samuel Colgate
Historical Library includes local, regional and institutional records, as
well as historical resources from other Baptist groups.  Founded in 1853,
the American Baptist Historical Society also holds the official records of
American Baptist Churches USA at its Archives Center in the American Baptist
Churches Mission Center, Valley Forge, Pa.

Pipkin brings to this position extensive experience in teaching and
researching Baptist and Reformation history and working with American
Baptist institutions.  

He has taught in the U.S. and aboard, including the Baptist Theological
Seminary in Ruschlikon, Switzerland, from 1978-1989, prior to the seminary's
move to Prague.  While there he founded the Seminary's Institute for Baptist
and Anabaptist Studies, set up an archives for the seminary library and
catalogued all Baptist and history acquisitions.  

More recently he taught at Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminaries in
Elkhart, Ind., and served as senior pastor from 1993-1995 at the Moscow
Protestant Chaplaincy, Russian Federation, through appointment as an
American Baptist International Ministries missionary. 

Pipkin holds degrees from Baylor University, the University of Connecticut
and Hartford Seminary.

He has published numerous books and articles on Anabaptists, most
extensively on the reformer Ulrich Zwingli.  He has translated Jurgen
Moltman's The Gospel of Liberation and Paul Tournier's Medicine for the
Whole Person and also has written on American Baptists, including 27
articles for the Dictionary of Baptists in America (1994).  

An ordained American Baptist Churches USA pastor, he has served on the
Baptist Heritage Commission of the Baptist World Alliance and currently is
on the Advisory Board for the Acadia Centre for Baptist and Anabaptist
Studies, Nova Scotia.  A member of Riverside Church in New York City, Pipkin
has been serving since last July as interim pastor of Park Avenue Baptist
Church, Mansfield, Ohio. 

He is the father of two daughters and widower of the late Rev. Arlene
Pipkin, Mennonite pastor.

In announcing the appointment of Pipkin, Dr. Deborah Bingham Van Broekhoven,
executive director of the American Baptist Historical Society, praised the
"passion, humor, creativity and vision that he brings to his work in Baptist
history and with scholars and laypeople from a wide variety of backgrounds."

More about the work of the Society is available at www.abc-usa.org/abhs or
by writing to the American Baptist Historical Society, P.O. 851, Valley
Forge, PA 19482-0851.

03ABN3

American Baptist News Service: Office of Communication, American Baptist
Churches USA, P.O. Box 851, Valley Forge, PA 19482-0851; (610)768-2077; fax:
(610)768-2320; www.abc-usa.org; richard.schramm@abc-usa.org