Culver, Elsie Thomas

Biographical/Historical Description

Elsie Thomas Culver (January 3, 1898 - August 21, 1988) was born in Connecticut to Dudley and Orie (Streeter) Thomas, and raised in Oakland, CA. She received an A.B. in political science (with honors) from the University of California, Berkeley. She married and had a daughter, Helen. While raising her family, she did part-time commercial journalistic and promotional work to 1935. She then began studies at the Pacific School of Religion (M.A. 1941, B.D. 1942). During her time at PSR, she continued to work: on the school's publicity, publicity for the 1939 World's Fair, and assignments for various religious papers. She was widowed sometime in the 1930's.

During World War II, in 1941, Culver was called to New York to handle promotion for the Committee on Foreign Relief Appeals in the Churches. This was an organization established in the United States by churches and other participating organizations which included the Foreign Missions Conference, the YMCA, and the YWCA to coordinate war relief efforts. This committee was changed, and its charge expanded in 1942, to become the Church Committee on Overseas Relief and Reconstruction. (This Committee later became Church World Service in 1946 under the National Council of Churches.) She was in charge of planning and creating material for fund raising campaigns.

Culver was ordained a Congregational minister in New York, 1943, to a writing and ecumenical ministry.

In the fall of 1945, Culver went to Europe under CCORR auspices to consult "with church leaders, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration officials, and others... . Articles and stories I wrote and pictures I took appeared in leading secular magazines and in church publications of practically all denominations." She continued to serve Church World Service as publicity director until 1948. She then resigned "to undertake an around-the-world trip [1948-49], speaking, writing and taking photographs for a number of interested agencies and editors. ... Primarily, I was looking for evidence that essentially, around the world, people are friends."

Culver accepted the position of Director of Public Relations for the World Council of Churches in 1950, working in the New York office and traveling extensively. Her many responsibilities included writing articles for church and secular press, editing the Ecumenical Courier, and preparing film strips, radio scripts, press folders, posters, etc. She retired in 1957 to return to Berkeley, CA.

She continued to be active in issues of aging and the churches' responsibility to older persons, serving on various committees and commissions. She was also founder, director, and newsletter editor (The Cornerstone) of Senior Peacebuilders, an incorporated non-profit educational organization. She continued to write articles, including some work for the GTU, for various organizations and publications, and published a book, Women in the World of Religion (Doubleday: 1967).

After a ten-year battle with Alzheimer's disease, she died in Santa Rosa, CA, August 1988. (For further information, see: Box 1, ff 1, Biographical material.)

From the guide to the Elsie Thomas Culver Collection, 1945 - 1979, (bulk, 1945-55), (The Graduate Theological Union.)