Cynthia Pearl Maus and regions in the Disciples of Christ, pt. 1

One of the most under appreciated figures in our history

“Looking backward over more than two decades of service, one of the contributions in which, as the Pioneer Young People's Superintendent, I have had the greatest joy was the initiating of the seven-day summer Young People's Conference movement among the Disciples of Christ.”

(“Time to Remember” pg. 130)

Cynthia Pearl Maus was, in her day, a powerful and influential figure in the Disciples of Christ before Restructure. The work she began and took such joy in during the 1910s & 1920s I would argue became the single most influential factor in our wider life as Disciples right down to the present day.

Willard Wickizer is probably the single most influential factor in shaping the congregational life of Disciples from after World War II into our present moment, and I hope to write more about him and his impact very soon. Dale Fiers and Ken Teegarden jointly crafted the post-Restructure general life of our communion, as is well known and more discussed and documented.

But the “Mausolina,” as her friends and colleagues called her, gave us our regions as we largely have them, or so I would argue. By the way, you should know that Benito Mussolini was compared often to Theodore Roosevelt in the 1920s, and to their mutual benefit; progressives in the United States saw much to commend in Mussolini’s brand of what we now call “fascism” but was then seen as a renewal movement that cut across class boundaries. I bring this up to point out that the frequent references to “Mausolina” are jarring to a modern reader in the records of the 1920s, but it was in its day a way to acknowledge a powerful and forceful leader shaping a broad social renewal, which was indeed what she was doing.

To this day, we don’t talk about just “camp” but “camp & conference” around our summer youth programs, and the weeks themselves are still called in most regions “conference” or CYF conference weeks. The nature of the conference event has changed from 1915 to the present, but the role of Youth or Young People’s Conferences in the “middle judicatory” or regional life of our church has been, I would say, determinative.

When Cynthia Pearl Maus wrote her autobiography “Time to Remember” in 1964, she had been retired from the “general offices” of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) longer than she had worked for the church in various forms. She moved after four years with the Christian Board of Publication (CBP) in St. Louis to Cincinnati in 1914 with the then-American Christian Missionary Society (ACMS), and worked through the transition and merger of a number of church boards and structures into the United Christian Missionary Society (UCMS) in 1920, which moved briefly to St. Louis and then relocated to 222 Downey Avenue in Indianapolis in 1928, to the former College of Missions buildings, as Butler University moved to its current location in Fairview Park on the north side of Indianapolis. Her early retirement in 1931 was a result of the Great Depression and reduced giving to missions work, both Home and Foreign Missions of the UCMS, and Maus’s desire as a single woman to not see anyone with a family cut from the Home Missions staff due to budget issues, so she stepped down. She was only 53, but said at the time and later on (she was 86 when she wrote her autobiography) that her frugality while working had been such that she could retire without anxiety, and this before the existence of Social Security as well.

So her working life in the official structures of the Disciples covered a total of only twenty-one years, even if an eventful short stretch in our communion’s organizational life, from CBP in St. Louis to ACMS in Cincinnati to its becoming the UCMS, and finally from St. Louis again briefly, to Indianapolis. Her role within the developing general structure of the UCMS was actually quite limited, but it was how her work to create Young People’s Conferences indirectly shaped the evolving “state societies,” now regions, that gave her a legacy into the present day.

During her time with CBP she worked with an existing program of education that traveled across the United States called the “School of Methods,” aimed in 1912 and 1913 at Sunday School teachers. No doubt these meetings helped sell curriculum product, but they also met a huge need in bringing teacher training closer to the churches, in a time when communications was still mostly mail and telegraphs.

from “Time to Remember,” pp. 114-115

As you can read here, these were five day teacher training events, staffed and managed by the “national team” (at this point, the term “general” was not in use and Canada is rarely if ever mentioned). The Bible School Department of the ACMS took the lead, with CBP & Standard Publishing contributing staff; state society staff likely were involved, but you will read more about participation in various locations from the nearest Disciples colleges or universities. Many state missionary societies at this point were still separate from state-level Sunday School societies which had their own meetings and officers and budgets, and likewise for the state Christian Endeavor societies, which were a form of young adult ministry which was regarded with some tension by Disciples groups, as the national and state Christian Endeavor organizations were entirely independent, one of the earliest US parachurch organizations . . . but quite popular in Disciples churches.

This is part of why the School of Methods model was soon employed by Miss Maus as the “Pioneer Young People’s Superintendent for the Disciples of Christ” after her move from CBP to ACMS in 1914, to launch “Week-end Young People’s Conferences,” to do for young adults what the “School of Methods” had done for teachers.

By 1919, these had been so well received, especially in the state of Kentucky, Miss Maus got the idea to hold week-long Young People’s Conferences in the summer, when school was out of session. She and her direct supervisor, Dr. Robert Hopkins, aimed at the summer of 1920 to launch a trial set of seven-day youth conferences at locations across the United States.

In fact, the locations of these first six are rather hard to pin down. Beyond her reference below, I’m fairly certain from oblique references that among the first were Bethany Park in Indiana (a long ago campground used regularly by the Indiana Christian Missionary Society), Eureka College in Illinois, Keuka College in New York (then a Disciples school, later sold to Baptist interests), and the Lexington, Kentucky College of the Bible (now Lexington Theological Seminary) hosted, but it may have been held at Mammoth Cave, not on campus. Ohio may have one at Hiram College in this initial group, but if not 1920 for certain in 1921, with Wilmington College right behind in 1922, and Lakeside Conference Center jumping in by 1929 as you’ll see at the end of this installment. [For Ohio folk, the historic “four CYF Conferences” trace their roots before Camp Christian in 1949 to those three, and a fourth amalgam of a Youth Conference at Camp Oyo by Portsmouth which started somewhere before 1933, and a Camp Philo south of Zanesville which is also the birthplace of the middle school Chi Rho model, a story for another day — but Philo and Oyo blend to become the former Phyo Conference. Phyo love, y’all!]

In any case, Maus says “Therefore, the first six to be initiated were . . . [as follows]”

One battle she fought and won with her supervisors in the ACMS now becoming the UCMS was the question of coeducational Young People’s Conference events, versus sex-segregated ones. Her feelings were strong, and ultimately prevailed:

I really don’t think we can underestimate just how significant this stance was in shaping what our CYF Conference program would become. Having just been part of council-level leadership in Scouting as we went to a coeducational model for youth participation in the last few years, I have the scars to show about how those who think boys and girls should be kept apart for most youth developmental events are vehement and convinced, even in 2024. But in 1920, Cynthia Pearl Maus said young women and young men can and should learn and plan and work together, and that became our model for youth and young adult ministries nationwide from that point forward, now over a century later.

The program grew, and grew, like wildfire on a dry plain: there was a hunger in 1920s America for a good youth development program. Scouting had a dramatic era of growth in that decade, as well. Beyond Scouts and Christian Endeavor, there wasn’t much.

An early Scout event in my own Licking County, Ohio in 1924 on courthouse square.

Maus was indeed the Mausolina, the stern and steely administrator, dean, and director, taking the Young People’s Conference model from Kentucky out across the nation, from six to fifty-six in eleven summers. I can only begin to imagine how many miles she put in riding trains back and forth across the continent.

Yes, youth events were racially segregated at this point in our history. A sad chapter in our records which does not significantly change until after World War II even in the North, mostly after 1948. Also a further essay for another time. We do see Canada pop up (but with little detail, darn it), along with conference events in China and Puerto Rico. Maus was present and largely in charge at almost all of them over the first few years, but she was willing to let go of her effort and let others take over — otherwise it could not have grown as it did.

Rev. Dr. Thad Allen was kind enough to share with me a Yearbook page from 1924, in the middle of this period of expansion, and you can see the development of the model, from six in 1920 to seventeen in 1924, and at work in these far-flung locations:

You also have a glimpse at the bottom of Thad’s page from the Yearbook here of how a Young People’s Conference model was somewhat different from what most of us know today, a subject I’ll pick up in the next installment, as the model moves from a general office, UCMS control into the hands of the state societies, which are looking for ways to bring their local churches together and means through which to fulfill their mission as a “middle judicatory” between a national/general church body and the congregation.

And a hat tip to Heather Schimmel and Michael Doerr for the chance to take a picture of this piece of Ohio history . . . but NOT the first Ohio youth conference! Note that Ohio is, of course, going its own way, and we are talking about a “Preparatory Conference” instead of a “Young People’s Conference” as it is almost everywhere else. Therein lies a tale . . .

And the conference director at Lakeside is Gaines Cook, the executive secretary for the OCMS, or what we might call today a regional minister. There, too, is a tale to be told.

[To be continued!]