Chair, Founder
Our story1993 — 2026
1993
A book found in a hard season
During a difficult year for his family, Harry Plantinga, then working in computer graphics in Pennsylvania, came across an electronic edition of The Imitation of Christ and read it through. Grateful for what it gave him, he scanned it and shared it online, then asked his pastor which classics to add next.
One of the first thousand websites
The Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL.org) launched that year as a set of static web pages, among the first thousand websites anywhere in the world.
1999
A home at Calvin University
The library moved to Calvin University along with its founder, who joined the computer science faculty. By then CCEL held hundreds of volumes and drew visitors from more than 100 countries, with volunteers around the world scanning, proofreading and editing texts alongside Calvin University students.
A library in a backpack
A CD-ROM of some 300 classic works carried the library where the internet could not. Of the roughly 5,000 copies in circulation, about two-thirds were in use in developing countries, including a new minister-training school in Siberia whose library had been a single bookcase.
2007
Hymnary.org
Hymnary.org launched, growing out of the Christian Classics Ethereal Hymnary once housed on CCEL. Its first major grant came from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is now the world’s largest and most comprehensive index of hymns, covering some 7,500 hymnals and 1.7 million hymns for worship leaders, musicians and scholars.
2019
CCEL, relaunched
A third version of CCEL.org made the library mobile-first, added reflowable reading even for scanned pages, introduced annotation tools and removed advertising entirely. Its roughly 1,000 books remain free to read and download.
2026
A foundation for the long run
The Christian Classics Foundation was formed to sustain CCEL.org and Hymnary.org for generations to come, so that both remain carefully maintained and freely available to the church worldwide.