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St. Margaret's House in Berkeley, California, had its origin in a deaconess training program initiated in 1907 by Edward L. Parsons, Rector of St. Mark's in Berkeley. Called at first St. Mark's Deaconess Training School, by 1910 it was known unofficially as St. Anne's House and officially as the Training School for Deaconesses in the Diocese of California, later the Training School for Deaconesses of the Eighth Missionary Department (1912). In 1914 it moved to a new home, St. Margaret's House, and was incorporated as the Deaconess Training School of the Pacific.

The School expanded to include a School for Christian Service, a Student House for women students at UC Berkeley, and a Church Service Center. In 1930, it relocated to larger quarters near its partners in education and added a Summer School of Religion, an extension department, field service, and a retreat and conference center to its broadening spectrum of activities. Eventually it came to identify itself as a graduate school, offering, in conjunction with the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, a two-year program leading to the Master of Arts in Christian Education degree. The name of the institution was formally changed to St. Margaret's House in 1950.

By the mid-1960s, the movement toward full equality for women in the church diminished the need for a separate women's training school. In 1966 the St. Margaret's House Board voted to terminate its educational programs. The Board of Trustees became the Berkeley Center for Human Interaction and Organizational Renewal, a non-profit unaffiliated with The Episcopal Church. Renamed the Strong Center in 1979, it eventually focused on the environment and became The Strong Foundation for Environmental Values, which is scheduled for dissolution at the end of 2023.

World Mission in Church and Society has been known by a number of titles over the years. Initially called the Foreign Mission Department of the National Council, it was changed to the Overseas Department after the reorganization of National Council in October of 1942. From 1969 to 1971 the office was known as Overseas Relations, and from 1972 to 1974 it was called Jurisdictional Relations. In 1975, it became the Department of Mission under the executive direction of Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning. In 1978, the department became known as National and World Mission, and finally in 1980, World Mission in Church and Society.

As the Church’s conception of overseas work evolved, so did the work of the office. While it continued to support schools, hospitals, and missions established during the Church's early involvement overseas, the focus increasingly turned to the cultivation of networks of support between independent churches in the Anglican Communion. The Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence (MRI) program of the early 1960s committed the Church to sharing its resources generously with struggling Anglican dioceses around the globe seeking their footing in newly-independent nations. The Overseas Department (as it was still known at that time) was heavily involved in coordinating funding, sending workers, and setting up channels of communication with these groups.

From the MRI program, other initiatives evolved, including Partners in Mission and Companion Diocese relationships, intended to connect the American church with Anglican partners across the globe on a personal basis through cultural study, discussion, and mission work. While much of the work in these programs was diocesan, the office coordinated these efforts on the national level. It also administered a certain amount of funding from the Venture in Mission program as seed-money to aid overseas dioceses with much-needed infrastructure and other projects.

Apart from its work with the global Anglican Communion, the office also worked on ecumenical matters, participating in initiatives of the Church World Service, the National Council of Churches, and other ecumenical organizations. In 1989, World Mission in Church and Society became the International Ministries sub-group of the Witness and Outreach Committee of the Executive Council.

A fourth-generation minister, Samuel Orr Capers was born August 2, 1899 in Anderson, South Carolina. He attended the University of Texas and then the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, where he was ordained to the diaconate in 1926 and to the priesthood in 1927. He received an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee in 1959.

His first pastoral assignment was Trinity Episcopal Church in Pharr, in the Rio Grande Valley of southern Texas, where he served during 1927 and 1928. After working briefly as rector at Saint Mark’s Church in San Marcos, Texas, Capers transferred to Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio, where he served from the end of 1928 until 1930. He then became the rector of Christ Episcopal Church, also in San Antonio, where he remained for the next thirty-seven years. He retired as rector emeritus in 1967. During and after his career he was active in numerous service organizations such as the Salvation Army and the San Antonio Association of the Blind, as well as working on behalf of the San Antonio military community. Capers died on June 17, 1984.

John Rowan Claypool, IV was born on December 15, 1930 in Franklin, Kentucky. In 1952 he earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Baylor University and ordained a Baptist minister in 1953. He subsequently went on to earn two degrees from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville: a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1955, and a Doctor of Theology degree in 1959. His first ministry assignment after receiving his doctoral degree was as associate pastor at First Baptist Church in Decatur, Georgia. In 1960 he became pastor of Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky. For eleven years he held this position and, under his leadership, Crescent Hill was one of the first congregations in the area to integrate.

Over time, Claypool found himself increasingly disenchanted with the Baptist Convention. In 1985 he sought admission to the Episcopal Theological Seminary of the Southwest in Austin, Texas, where he completed a Certificate of Individual Theological Studies in 1986. He was ordained deacon and priest in 1986 in the Diocese of West Texas and began his first job as an Episcopal priest as Associate Rector of Christ Episcopal Church in San Antonio, where he had served as Theologian-in-Residence while completing his certificate program. Claypool’s next assignment took him to Birmingham, Alabama, where he served as rector of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church from 1987 until his retirement from full-time ministry in 2000. While at St. Luke’s, Claypool took the riskier path of hiring the first two female priests in Birmingham to work with him.

In the years following his semi-retirement, Claypool served as Theologian-in-Residence at Trinity Episcopal Church in New Orleans, Louisiana; a Priest Associate at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Atlanta, Georgia; and as Professor of Homiletics at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology in Atlanta. Claypool died on September 3, 2005.