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At the 1973 General Convention, the Joint Commission on Church Music (JCCM) was renewed as the Standing Commission on Church Music (SCCM). The newly formed Standing Commission now served the Church in all matters pertaining to music, including serving as a link between associations of professional Church musicians and diocesan music commissions, assisting individual dioceses with courses and conferences on Church music, and collecting and collating material for future revisions of the Church Hymnal. It was also charged with reviewing The Hymnal 1940 and preparing recommendations to the next General Convention for a revision, which was ultimately approved in 1982 and published in 1985.

At the 1997 General Convention, the Committee on Structure recommended that the Standing Liturgical Commission and the Standing Commission on Church Music be merged into a single commission on worship, incorporating the current work of the two existing bodies, thus becoming the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music.

Prior to the establishment of the Standing Liturgical Commission, liturgical matters were handled by a number of temporary committees and joint commissions. Its most immediate predecessor was the Joint Commission on the Revision and Enrichment of the Prayer Book, established by the 1913 General Convention to revise the Book of Common Prayer.

On the publication of the 1928 edition, the General Convention of 1928 voted to discharge the joint commission and establish in its place the Standing Liturgical Commission for the preservation and study of matters relating to the Book of Common Prayer as well as the development of other liturgical materials. The Standing Liturgical Commission carried out this mandate until the 1997 General Convention, when it was merged with the Standing Commission on Church Music to form the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music.

The United Thank Offering (UTO) began in 1889 at the Triennial Meeting of the Woman’s Auxiliary as a special fund-raising initiative to support missionary work of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (DFMS). Since UTOs inception, they have been a form of self-organized participation by women in The Episcopal Church. The UTO has also existed as a component group of the DFMS and its women’s ministries agency, both of which were within the oversight authority of the Executive Council and its predecessor bodies.

In 1935, with annual budgets exceeding a quarter million dollars and close to a thousand grant requests, the Executive Committee of the Woman’s Auxiliary hired their first manager (called the assistant secretary) to coordinate the grant and public relations process under the direction of the National Council. In 1958, when the Woman’s Auxiliary was integrated into Church structure as the General Division of Women’s Work. The UTO staff officer was appointed directly by the Presiding Bishop for the first time. A decade later, the Executive Council introduced an important change when it subsumed women’s work and ministry under the umbrella of the Committee for Women in place of the General Division of Women’s Work. This change led directly to the recommendation to Council of two separate agencies: the Committee on Lay Ministries (for women) and a clearly independent UTO Committee to continue the fund-raising and grant allocation program. The UTO Committee was replaced by the UTO Board, with revised by-laws and a Memorandum of Understanding in 2012.

Initially the United Thank Offering was collected to fund missionaries and building projects; however, its scope expanded over its 125 year history to include grants for ministries that met societal needs, such as educational programs, childcare programs, and outreach to under-served populations.

Authorized by the 65th General Convention in September 1976, Venture in Mission (VIM) was a large scale fund-raising program resolved to provide mission development funding for the national church. VIM was put into motion by early 1979, and ultimately received the participation of 90 domestic and overseas dioceses. The 1979 and 1982 General Conventions continued the program with resolutions of commendation and appreciation. The original goal was to raise $100 million. By 1985 that goal had surpassed $170 million. The funds were dispersed to various diocesan programs that included community-based ministries for marginalized populations, education, lay and ordained ministry development, urban and rural work, health services, community development, the recruitment of black clergy, training in Hispanic ministries, and overseas missions projects in Costa Rica, Tokyo, Tanzania, and Uganda. The program formally concluded at the end of 1988, although disbursements from existing accounts continued for some years after.

Denmark Industrial School in Denmark, South Carolina was founded in 1897 by Elizabeth Evelyn Wright, a graduate of Tuskegee Institute. Its name changed to Voorhees Industrial School in1902, in honor of donors Mr. and Mrs. Ralph Voorhees of Clinton, New Jersey.

In 1929 the curriculum expanded to include post-secondary education and the school was renamed Voorhees Normal and Industrial School. The name changed again in 1947 to Voorhees School and Junior College.

In 1962 it was accredited as four-year Voorhees College, and in 2022 it became Voorhees University. The school was affiliated with the American Church Institute from 1924 to 1967.

In 1957, Norman Wates, a London businessman, made funds available to the Archbishop of Canterbury for financing the travel and related costs of a clergy exchange program with The Episcopal Church. The immediate goal was to exchange as many as ten English and American priests and their families each year. The Archbishop of Canterbury notified the Rt. Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill, and the first clergy exchange began in 1958; however, “The Anglican Interchange Program” didn’t receive its official designation as the Wates-Seabury Plan until June 1960.

The Presiding Bishop felt that The Episcopal Church should provide additional funding so he drew upon parish, diocesan, and national church funds to support the American side of the exchange. The Episcopal Church formalized the exchanges in December of 1959 when the National Council passed a resolution providing funds for an exchange program administered by the Presiding Bishop with the assistance of the Presiding Bishop's Advisory Committee on Anglican Relations.

The program operated successfully through the 1965–1966 exchanges, but at that point it had became apparent that the Church of England was unable to contribute the funds necessary to receive Norman Wates' continued support. An attempt to prevent the demise of the program took place in 1966 with an “Inter-Diocesan Exchange.” Although The Episcopal Church on the national level aided the 1966–1967 exchange, it did not take place under the Wates-Seabury Program nor was it inter-primatial as were the prior exchanges.

Several attempts were made to revive the program but they ceased with the death of Wates in 1969. In all, between 1958 and 1967, fourteen exchanges took place with eleven of those operating under the Wates-Seabury Program.

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.

The National Graduate Training Center (Windham House), which opened in 1928, was one of several training centers that raised up a cadre of women able to minister to people in domestic and foreign venues who were in need of health care, education, and spiritual guidance. Only some of the participants went on to become deaconesses, while most took their vocational interest as a serious lay calling.

The history of Windham House falls into three periods.

From 1928 to 1943 the program of living, worshiping, and studying together was initiated and developed, and some basic convictions and groundwork about the program were established.

From 1944 to 1959 the two-year, fourfold program of study was inaugurated and carried out.

In the years 1959 to 1967 the program took a more exploratory path in an effort to stay current in the midst of rapid cultural change.

The Windham House program was terminated on June 30, 1967 and the property was leased and eventually sold to the Parish of Trinity Church, New York City for the operation of Trinity Institute, a center for the continuing renewal of the ministry of the Church.

The Office of the Suffragan Bishop for the Armed Forces grew out of the Army and Navy Commission established by General Convention in 1919 "to press upon the attention of Congress the need for Army and Navy Chaplains." For the next 25 years the Commission raised money to aid churches near military camps, provided portable altars and communion sets to chaplains, distributed A Prayer Book for Soldiers and Sailors, paid the pension premiums of chaplains when needed, and contributed to chaplains' discretionary funds to help them respond to emergencies among service men.

In September 1945, the Commission decided to dissolve the existing body and on January 1, 1946, the Army and Navy Commission became the Army and Navy Division of the National Council, reporting to the Presiding Bishop. Since WWII had ended there was no longer an immediate need for chaplains, allowing the focus of the work to shift from wartime ministrations to reintegrating the soldiers into a peacetime society.

In 1946, General Convention determined that a position of Suffragan Bishop for the Armed Forces was required. However, the call for a bishop was not made until 1964 with the election of Arnold M. Lewis, which was due in part to the Unites States becoming fully involved in the Vietnam War. In 1988, the office expanded its scope, and was renamed under the umbrella of Federal Ministries.

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.

Daniel Corrigan was born October 25, 1900 in Rochester, Michigan. He received his Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1925 from Nashotah House in Wisconsin, and in May of 1925 he was ordained a priest. Subsequently, Corrigan received a Master of Sacred Theology degree in 1943 and a Doctor of Divinity degree in 1955, also from Nashotah House.

Upon his ordination in 1925, Corrigan served as rector of various churches until 1958, when he made history in the Episcopal Church for simultaneously being elected Bishop of Quincy (Illinois) and Suffragan Bishop of Colorado. He accepted the latter appointment and was consecrated on May 1, 1958. Just two years later, in 1960, he resigned the Colorado ministry and began employment as director of the Home Department of the National (Executive) Council. As a result of his professional involvement in issues of social justice, he became active in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Upon his resignation from the Home Department in 1968 Corrigan became first a minister to Amherst College in Massachusetts and then dean of Bexley Hall in Rochester, New York. While at Bexley Hall, Corrigan became active in the anti-Vietnam War movement. The culmination of this activity came during the interfaith Mass for Peace held on the steps of the Pentagon where many participants in this service, including Corrigan, were arrested.

In 1974, during his retirement, Corrigan participated in the irregular ordination of 11 women to the priesthood in Philadelphia. Along with four other bishops, Corrigan ordained these women, an act which broke with the tradition and interpretation of the Canons of the Church at that time.

Corrigan died on September 21, 1994.

Julia Chester Emery was appointed secretary of the Woman's Auxiliary to the Board of Missions in 1876, after her sister Mary Abbott Emery resigned the position. During her forty-year tenure she directed the expansion of the Woman’s Auxiliary into every domestic and missionary diocese of The Episcopal Church and was key to the founding and growth of the United Offering (now the United Thank Offering). She traveled overseas extensively to promote the Auxiliary by addressing the woman’s missionary congress in London in 1897, representing the Diocese of New York at the Pan-Anglican Congress in 1908, and visiting mission stations throughout Europe and Asia. In addition, she authored several books, including “A Century of Endeavor” (1921), the centennial history of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. Julia Emery is commemorated in the Episcopal Calendar of the Church Year on January 9th.

In addition to Mary Abbott and Julia Chester, their sisters, Susan Lavinia Emery (1846-1914) and Margaret Theresa Emery (1849-1925) were involved with The Episcopal Church and the Woman’s Auxiliary, although to a much lesser degree.

In 1871, Mary Abbott Emery was appointed secretary of the newly formed Woman's Auxiliary to the Board of Missions and was chiefly responsible for its early development. Though she resigned as secretary in 1876 to marry the Rev. Dr. Alvi T. Twing, she continued to be actively involved. After her husband died in 1882, she was appointed honorary secretary of the Woman's Auxiliary. One of her greatest achievements was assisting in the passage by the 1889 General Convention of the canon that recognized and set standards and qualifications for Deaconesses. In addition, Emery taught a course on church missions at the newly created New York Training School for Deaconesses and visited missionaries around the world, later reporting on their work in articles that she assembled in the book, Twice Around the World (1898).

Mary Abbott Emery’s sister, Julia Chester Emery, was heavily involved with the Woman’s Auxiliary, taking over as secretary when Mary resigned in 1876. In addition, their sisters–Susan Lavinia Emery (1846-1914) and Margaret Theresa Emery (1849-1925)–were involved with The Episcopal Church and the Woman’s Auxiliary, although to a much lesser degree.

William Chauncey Emhardt was born in Philadelphia on January 29, 1874 and educated at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Divinity School, Columbia University, and General Theological before being ordained as a priest in 1898. After serving in various schools and parishes in Kansas, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, he was rector of St. Luke's, Newtown, Pennsylvania from 1907-1920.

In 1920, Emhardt resigned from the parish of St. Luke’s to become Field Director for Church Work Among Foreign-Born Americans, a position he held for ten years. During that time, he also served as Secretary-in-Charge of the Near East Chaplaincies and became a trustee of Near East Relief (formerly the American Committee for Armenian and Syrian Relief).

In addition to his involvement in several other charitable organizations, Emhardt was a member of the Eastern Orthodox Relations Committee of the Federal Council of Churches, and the Commission to Confer with the Orthodox and Old Catholic Churches of the General Convention. He was American Chairman of the Russian Orthodox Seminary in Paris, France (1928-1934) and Chairman of the Hill School in Athens, Greece (1931-1936). From 1936 until 1943 he was vicar of the Pro-Cathedral of St. Mary, Philadelphia.

Ermhardt died in Oceanville, New Jersey, on August 4, 1950.