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Wayne R. Rood Collection
GTU 92-7-02  
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Collection Details
 
Table of contents What's This?
  • Descriptive Summary
  • Access
  • Publication Rights
  • Preferred Citation
  • Acquisition Information
  • Biography / Administrative History
  • Scope and Content of Collection
  • Arrangement
  • Indexing Terms
  • Related Material

  • Descriptive Summary

    Title: Wayne R. Rood collection
    Dates: 1946-2002
    Bulk Dates: 1963-1992
    Collection number: GTU 92-7-02
    Creator: Rood, Wayne R.
    Collection Size: 2 linear feet (2 record boxes)
    Repository: The Graduate Theological Union. Library.
    Berkeley, CA 94709
    Abstract: Wayne R. Rood (1915 - 2000) taught for 44 years at the Pacific School of Religion. He wrote, directed and acted in religious plays, taught courses on theater and theology, and supervised many theses and dissertations on the subject. Rood was raised and ordained in the Seventh Day Baptist tradition. He received his AB and BS from Salem College; BD, Alfred University; MRE, Hartford Seminary Foundation; and ThD, Pacific School of Religion.
    Physical location: 4/D/6
    Languages: Languages represented in the collection: English

    Access

    Collection is open for research.

    Publication Rights

    Copyright has not been assigned to The Graduate Theological Union. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Archivist. Permission for publication is given on behalf of The Graduate Theological Union as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the reader.

    Preferred Citation

    Wayne R. Rood collection, GTU 92-7-02. Graduate Theological Union Archives, Berkeley, CA.

    Acquisition Information

    The Collection came to the Graduate Theological Union Archives as a direct donation by Wayne Rood in July 1992.

    Biography / Administrative History

    Wayne Ray Rood was born in Neillsville, Wisconsin, on June 24, 1915, and raised in the Seventh Day Baptist tradition. His family moved to Riverside, California,where he attended public schools from the second grade through Junior College. He completed undergraduate work at Pacific Union College in California and Salem College in West Virginia before enrolling in The School of Theology of Alfred University in New York where he graduated with a Bachelor of Divinity in 1940. Rood was ordained in the Seventh Day Baptist Church in Riverside where he served as pastor. He attended the Hartford Seminary Foundation in Connecticut where he earned a Master of Religious Education in 1943. In 1949, he achieved a Doctor of Theology degree, graduating magna cum laude from Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California.
    Rood was trained in the U.S. Military Chaplain School and served as Army Chaplain from May 1944 until September 1946. He was stationed variously in New Caledonia, New Hebrides, Okinawa and Japan during the war years. These experiences were later privately published 2002 in You Okay, Chappy? Memories of Infantry Field Chaplain WWII, and his Wife on the Home Front. Upon discharge as a Major in 1945, he taught Historical and Systematic Theology at Alfred University. 19521981, he was Professor of Religious Education at Pacific School of Religion, continuing as Adjunct Professor of Theater and Theology until his retirement in 1996.
    Rood developed an early interest in theater arts. He participated in the development of the Religion and the Arts program at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. He was founder and artistic director of BARDS (Bay Area Religious Drama Service). Using liturgical readings and performances to teach Christian education, he served as lecturer, director and/or actor. He staged dramatic productions on Christian themes and figures in churches throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
    In addition to his teaching career, Rood also held Baptist pastorates in Rhode Island and New York, and served as interim pastor for Swedenborgian and Baptist churches in El Cerrito and Berkeley, California. He taught at The College of Theology at Silliman University in the Philippines, served as Acting Dean of the Chapel at Stanford University in Palo Alto, and acted as Resident Theologian at the University of Colorado and the Lilly Visiting Professor at Berea College in Kentucky. He was also a Student of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom for two sabbatical years.
    Rood authored three books published by Abingdon Press, The Art of Teaching Christianity (1968), Understanding Christian Education (1970), and On Nurturing Christians (1972). He created numerous lectures, addresses, articles, sermons, theater scripts and autobiographical ruminations.
    Rood met Anna Loofbourrow while he was a seminarian in New York, and they married in 1940. They had two children. He died on May 20, 2000, in Berkeley, California.

    Scope and Content of Collection

    The Collection consists of materials for lectures and seminars for teaching purposes; dramatic readings and dramatizations adapted from liturgical sources; service materials and sermons; articles, criticisms, essays; books and autobiographies, published and unpublished. All materials in the Collection are mimeographed, Xeroxed, or laser-printed copies. Dr. Rood did not include personal papers in the Collection.

    Arrangement

    The Collection is divided into five series: Series 1) Academic: Lectures, Seminars, Addresses, Curricular materials. Series 2) Theater: Readings, Performances, Dramatizations. Series 3) Worship: Services, Sermons, Convocations. Series 4) Articles: Articles, Essays, Criticisms, Other Writings. Series 5) Books: Books, Autobiographies.
    Rood often adapted liturgical sources for readings and theatrical productions. He included a brief preface for many of these materials in the Collection that helps to place their origin and purpose. Materials that he reworked over time will show the original dates and the reworked dates in the Container Listing.

    Indexing Terms

    The following terms have been used to index the description of this collection in the library's online public access catalog.

    Subjects

    Rood, Wayne R. (1915-2000)
    McPherson, Aimee Semple, (1890-1944)
    Pacific School of Religion (Berkeley, Calif.)--Faculty.
    United States. Army--Chaplains.
    Theology--Study and teaching--California--Berkeley.
    Christian education--Teaching methods.
    Christian education--Outlines, syllabi, etc.
    Theater--Religious aspects--Seventh Day Baptists.
    Drama in Christian education.
    Seventh Day Baptists--Clergy--Biography.
    World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American.
    Seventh-Day Baptists--Missions--Nigeria.
    World War, 1939-1945--Chaplains.

    Related Material

    See Remembering Theological Education in the Sixties  for Wayne Rood's oral history on the beginnings of GTU and his experiences teaching.