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The Rt. Rev. Joseph Cruikshank Talbot was born in Alexandria, Virginia on September 5, 1816. In 1841 he began his course of preparation for Holy Orders and was ordained to the diaconate on September 5, 1846 and to the priesthood on September 6, 1848.

He moved to Indiana in 1853 and became rector of Christ Church, Indianapolis, where he served for seven years. In 1859, he was elected by General Convention to serve as Missionary Bishop of the North West and was consecrated the following year. The Missionary District of the North West covered nearly nine hundred thousand square miles and included Nebraska, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Montana, and Idaho.

In 1865, Talbot was elected Bishop Coadjutor of the Diocese of Indiana, serving for five years before becoming diocesan bishop in 1872 after the death of Bishop George Uphold.

Bishop Talbot died in Indianapolis on January 15, 1883.

Henri Alexandre Stines was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on October 29, 1923. He completed his theological training at Seminaire Theologique, the Episcopal seminary in Port-au-Prince, and was ordained in Haiti as a deacon in 1945 and a priest in 1947. The following year, Stines received his Master of Divinity from General Theological Seminary.

After immigrating to the United States in 1950, Stines first served as vicar at St. James Episcopal Church in Charleston, West Virginia. In 1953 Stines began a long career of revitalizing struggling churches when he assumed leadership of Grace Episcopal Church, Detroit, Michigan. Under eleven years of his stewardship, Grace Church grew from fewer than 100 members to over 1200, making it one of the most active multiracial Episcopal churches in Detroit.

After a stint as Director of Southern Field Service for the Episcopal Society for Cultural and Race Unity (1964-1966), during which time he led protests against segregation and coordinated Southern congregations involved in justice ministry, Stines returned to direct ministry by accepting a position at the Church of the Atonement in Washington, D.C. In 1969, he moved to All Souls Episcopal Church in Berkeley, California, broadening its membership to the entire Bay area and offering educational programs attuned to social concerns of the community. Stines returned to Chicago in 1972, this time to Trinity Episcopal Church, growing it from fewer than 25 members in 1972 to more than 225 members by 1984 with a committed vestry, innovative liturgies in French and Spanish, and special ministries to the elderly and homebound. Stines retired from parish ministry in 1986, although he continued to serve as an interim priest in Chicago and New Jersey until 1990.

Henri Alexandre Stines died on March 8, 1995.

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.

John Shelby Spong was born June 16, 1931 in Charlotte, North Carolina. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1952 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill he earned a Master of Divinity degree from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1955. He was ordained a deacon and a priest that year.

For two years, Spong served as rector at St. Joseph’s Church in Durham, North Carolina, before assuming the rectorship of Cavalry Church in Tarboro, North Carolina, in 1957. In a city that resisted integration, Spong ministered to the Black congregation at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church alongside the white congregation at Cavalry. He continued service as a rector at St. John’s Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, (1965) and St. Paul’s Church in Richmond, Virginia (1969) before being consecrated Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark in 1976. As bishop he continued to work tirelessly on behalf of those marginalized in the Church, ordaining a non-celibate gay deacon to the priesthood in 1989 and advocating for women clergy. Spong gained recognition among lay audiences for his many books on theology, which often challenged conventional doctrine. After retiring as bishop in 2000, he continued to speak on faith, modernity, and social justice.

John Shelby Spong died on September 12, 2021.