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Following his election as Presiding Bishop in 1985, Edmond Browning created the Deputy for Anglican Relationships (also known as Anglican Relations and Anglican Affairs). The office was part of the Senior Executive Group of the Presiding Bishop’s staff at Church Center, and its purpose was “to provide consultative and coordinative support” to the Presiding Bishop in affairs dealing with the Anglican Communion. The Rev. Charles Cesaretti was the first to be appointed to the position in January of 1986. The Rev. J. Patrick Mauney took over the office in January of 1989.

The Deputy acted as liaison to other members of the Anglican Communion and as a close advisor to the Presiding Bishop on Anglican matters, traveling to Anglican church conferences and meeting with representatives from the global Anglican Communion. As such, the Deputy was responsible for keeping abreast of world events and international crises and advising the leaders of The Episcopal Church on framing the Church’s responses.

Following budget cuts within The Episcopal Church in 1991, the position of Deputy for Anglican Relations was not renewed and much of the work was transferred to the Partnerships Office.

Frederic Whitney Fitts was born in Lowell, Massachusetts on April 11, 1872. He graduated in 1893 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned his B.D. from the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, in 1901 before completing his education with a degree from Harvard University in 1902.

From 1902 to 1907, Fitts served as an associate priest of St. Stephen’s Church, Boston, and as an associate rector of St. John’s Church in nearby Roxbury. Both parishes, which served primarily poor and minority communities, were among the leading Anglo-Catholic congregations of the otherwise low and broad churches in the Diocese of Massachusetts at that time.

He became rector of St. John’s Church in 1908, a position he held for 37 years, where he was known for his instructional classes. He mentored Massey Shepherd, who was an assistant at St. John’s Church in the early 1940s. Fitts was a lecturer of interest on Church symbolism; well-known for using the Sarum ritual and scheme of liturgical colors, which was rarely practiced in the United States; and he maintained a close relationship with the Order of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge.

Frederic Fitts died in 1945.

Walter Righter was born on October 23, 1923 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After serving in the Army during World War II, he earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1948 and a Bachelor of Sacred Theology degree from Berkeley Divinity School in 1951. He was ordained in 1951 and served at All Saints Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh, where he led the racial integration of the parish, effectively doubling the size of the congregation. Several years later, he took a call to be rector of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Nashua, New Hampshire, where he was active in interfaith and ecumenical work.

In 1972 he was elected Bishop of the Diocese of Iowa. At his first General Convention, that same year, Righter cast the deciding vote in favor of ordaining women to the priesthood and the episcopate. The resolution was passed in 1976 and in December of that year, he ordained the first woman in Iowa, the Rev. S. Suzanne Peterson. Righter retired as Bishop of Iowa in 1988.

From 1988 to 1991, Righter served as the assistant bishop to John Shelby Spong in the Diocese of Newark. In 1990, at the behest of Bishop Spong, he ordained an openly gay priest, Barry Stopfel. Six years later, just before the statue of limitations expired, ten bishops brought a presentment against Righter, charging him with heresy for violating a doctrine of the church and his own ordination vows. After a short hearing in May 1996, all charges against Righter were dismissed, thus opening the door for partnered gay clergy to be accepted into The Episcopal Church.

Walter C. Righter died in Pittsburgh on September 11, 2011.

In the fall of 1911, deaconesses gathered for a week long retreat at St. Faith’s House for Deaconesses in St. Louis, Missouri and began to create a more formal organization. The National Conference of Deaconesses originated with the Central Committee of Deaconesses that first met in St. Louis, Missouri on October 21, 1916. The deaconesses used this Central Committee as an annual gathering prior to the triennial National Conference. The first National Conference was held in October 1919, in Detroit, Michigan and met every three years at the same time and city as the Church’s General Convention.

From the beginning, the deaconesses lobbied the General Convention for revisions to the Canons of the Church to establish clear requirements and responsibilities for their Order, just as any other clerical office requires. This line of reasoning evolved to the point that the deaconesses desired the same rights and privileges as their male counterparts. The Conference remained active throughout the 1950s. By the 1960s and 1970s, the Conference was advocating a canonical means to allow women deacons to become priests. Following a change to the Canons in 1970 that allowed women to be ordained as deacons the Conference became less active, but remained listed in the Episcopal Church Annual until the 1978 edition.