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The American Church Institute for Negroes, begun in 1906 and renamed as the American Church Institute in 1961, was the institutional Church’s response to the alarming disparity between educational opportunities for African Americans and privileged whites within the church. The organization’s strategy was to train African Americans to be successful tradesmen, businessmen, teachers, and clergy who would return to their communities and spread the benefits of their education to others.

The ACI made it a practice to give support to only one school in any state, although exceptions were made for Virginia and North Carolina. Six other southern states were homes to the ACI schools (Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and South Carolina), and one school in Texas received funds from ACI but was never officially brought under its oversight. The eligibility criteria for a school to qualify for ACI support included that the school be located in the area of greatest concentration of African Americans in its state and that it receive financial support from all of the dioceses in its state.

The ACI was formally dissolved in 1967 after a reevaluation of the usefulness of its mission in light of integration.

John Maury Allin was born April 22, 1921 in Helena, Arkansas. He attended college and seminary at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in History in 1943 and a Master of Divinity in 1945. He was ordained to the diaconate in 1944 and to the priesthood in 1945.

Allin began his career at St. Peter’s Episcopal Mission in Conway, Arkansas, eventually moving to Louisiana where he spent 8 years serving in various pastoral roles, beginning with a curacy at St. Andrew’s Church in New Orleans. In 1952, he was called to serve as rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Monroe, Louisiana and then, in 1958, agreed to serve as president and headmaster of All Saints College in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

In 1961, Allin was elected as Bishop Coadjutor of the Diocese of Mississippi, which began his progression within the leadership of The Episcopal Church. On the retirement of Bishop Duncan Gray in 1966, he became the Sixth Bishop of the Diocese of Mississippi, a position in which he served until 1974. During this time he helped found the Committee of Concern, an ecumenical and civic alliance organized to raise funds for the rebuilding of over 100 African American churches that had been burned by white racist groups.

In 1973, at the 64th General Convention in Louisville, Kentucky, the House of Bishops elected Allin the 23rd Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church. He was installed on June 11, 1974. Allin’s tenure commenced at a time of considerable turbulence and change in The Episcopal Church, which he approached with a talent for compromise and a resolve to promote reconciliation. During this time, the Church approved the ordination of women (1976), an issue to which Allin was firmly opposed; began the Venture in Mission (VIM) campaign, a major fundraising effort for special mission and ministry (1976); adopted a new Book of Common Prayer (1979); and established the Office of Black Ministries.

Allin retired as Presiding Bishop in 1985, but remained active in the Church until his death in Jackson, Mississippi on March 6, 1998.

The Advisory Commission on Ecclesiastical Relations was created by the authority of the General Convention in 1931 in its revision of Canon 59(v)(v). The National Council subsequently added the Advisory Commission to its bylaws to replace the earlier Committee on Ecclesiastical Relations, that had been set up in 1927 to consider matters of expanding ecumenical relationships.

By 1935, reduced budgets made it necessary to discontinue the salaried officer. A 1937 revision to Canon 59 dropped the Commission and left oversight of this work to the Presiding Bishop and Council. The Commission and an unsalaried officer were continued with a small budget allocation. The broader ecumenical purview of the Commission was extended by Bishop Tucker in 1939, who renamed the body as the Advisory Council on Ecclesiastical Relations.