Showing 88 results

Authority record
Corporate body

Conference on the Religious Life

  • Corporate body
  • 1949-

The Conference on the Religious Life (CORL) is an affiliation of religious orders in the Anglican Communion established in 1949 to spread knowledge about the religious life, present a united voice to the Church on issues, and as consultants to bishops or new communities in formation. By 1982, the Conference represented 24 member communities and 75 houses in the United States, Canada, West Indies, and Liberia. The Conference's Advisory Council served as its plenary body until 1986, when this role was assumed by the Superior's Council. In 2001, at the Annual Leaders’ Meeting in Racine, WI, the operating name of the conference was changed from the Conference on the Religious Life (CORL) to the Conference of Anglican Religious Orders in the Americas (CAROA), the name under which it operates today.

Episcopal Women’s History Project (EWHP)

  • Corporate body
  • 1980-

Founded in 1980 as an independent national organization of Episcopal women, the Episcopal Women's History Project has played an important role in recovering and documenting the lives of women who have made outstanding contributions to The Episcopal Church. The Project aims to raise awareness about the historic place of women in the Church and their ethnic, racial, regional, and class diversity. Since its formation, the group has produced historical resources, conducted oral history interviews, published a newsletter, distributed grants, and supported and encouraged research and scholarship related to the historical role of women in The Episcopal Church.

Executive Office of the General Convention

  • Corporate body
  • 1970-

The Executive Office of the General Convention (GCO) is one of the three offices of The Episcopal Church. The others are the Office of the Presiding Bishop and the Office of the President of the House of Deputies.

The GCO administers the governance of the Church in a variety of ways, including organizing and overseeing the triennial General Convention, supporting the activities of the various interim bodies of the General Convention, participating in official meetings of the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies, generating the Church’s annual Parochial Report, and promoting the ministry of the ecumenical, inter-religious, and inter-Anglican bodies of the Church.

In addition, the GCO supports the Executive Officer in their role as corporate Secretary of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, Secretary of the Executive Council, and Registrar of the General Convention.

Office of the Suffragan Bishop for the Armed Forces

  • Corporate body
  • 1946-1988

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.

Special Committee on Theological Education in the Episcopal Church

  • Corporate body
  • 1965-1967

The Special Committee on Theological Education in the Episcopal Church (TEEC) began in 1965 as an outgrowth of an initiative originating in the Division of Christian Ministries, part of Executive Council’s Home Department, to respond to a perceived crisis in recruitment, retention, and education of candidates for the ministry, which required careful study before any recommendations could be made to General Convention.

The Committee, chaired by Dr. Nathan M. Pusey, met for the first time on March 28, 1966. As part of its work, the Committee consulted seminarians and young clergymen to understand their experiences and concerns, and shared these findings with General Convention in their 1967 report.

The Committee saw the need for “an agency with power” to overhaul the Church’s entire system of theological education. It recommended the creation of a Board for Theological Education with members appointed by the Presiding Bishop and reporting to General Convention. The work of the Board was to find strategies for recruiting promising candidates to the ministry, to modernize the seminary system and improve its curricula, to determine necessary funding, and to expand educational opportunities to laymen and women.

The recommendation was adopted by the 1967 General Convention.

Calhoun School

  • Corporate body
  • 1892-1945

Founded in 1892 as an industrial and teacher training school by Charlotte Thorn, Calhoun School (Lowndes County, Alabama) was patterned after the Hampton Institute, an industrial school for African Americans in Virginia where Thorn had taught for a short time. Thorn served as the school’s first principal until her death in 1932. Support of Calhoun was taken up by the American Church Institute in 1941 after the Institute dropped its support for St. Mark’s School in Birmingham. In 1945 the school’s property was deeded to the State of Alabama and it became a Lowndes County public school.

St. Agnes Hospital and Nursing School

  • Corporate body
  • 1896-1959

After an appeal to General Convention of the need for a hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina for African Americans, St. Agnes Hospital and Nursing School was founded in 1896. The hospital occupied buildings on the grounds of St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute and served as both a hospital and nurses’ training school. By 1931 it had grown to a 100-bed hospital serving 2,000 patients annually.

St. Agnes was affiliated with the American Church Institute (ACI) from approximately 1906 until 1958, when ACI discontinued appropriations in order to conform to its mission to support only church-related schools and in anticipation of a new county health system.

St. Agnes Nursing School closed in 1959.

United Thank Offering

  • Corporate body
  • 1889-

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.

President of the House of Deputies

  • Corporate body
  • 1785-

Beginning with the Rev. William White in 1785, the President of the House of Deputies was elected at the start of each General Convention and held that office from the beginning of one convention to the beginning of the next. No canon made any provisions for this election until 1904 when Title III, Canon 1 was amended and changed to Canon 46 (in 2023, this is Title I, Canon 1). In 1946, the canon was amended again to specifically state that "The President, so elected, shall continue in office until the next meeting of the General Convention" (Title III, Canon 1.1(a)).

It appears that throughout the period of 1785-1961 there were no Vice Presidents of the House of Deputies. The 1904 canon only speaks to the election of the Secretary and President, and no mention of a Vice President is made in the journals. This changed in 1964 when the canons were amended to provide for the election of the President and Vice President, with terms running from the adjournment of one Convention to the adjournment of the next. In 1967, it was added that no person elected as President or Vice President could serve for more than three consecutive terms.

The primary role of the President of the House of Deputies was originally to preside over meetings of the House and ensure that necessary work was accomplished during the interim. Today, the role of the President includes presiding over the House of Deputies, serving as the Vice-Chair of the Executive Council, and as one of two Vice-Presidents of the DFMS. The president makes the majority of appointments to interim bodies and has been increasingly involved in their deliberations since 1990.

Retiring Fund for Deaconesses

  • Corporate body
  • 1927-1972

When the Church Pension Fund was established by the General Convention in 1913, no provision was made to include deaconesses. To rectify this, deaconesses formed their own not-for-profit corporation and began to raise funds.

On September 30, 1927, the Retiring Fund for Deaconesses (RFD) of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America was formally incorporated to provide financial assistance to retired and disabled deaconesses who were unable to provide for themselves.

Forty-five years later, on September 27, 1972, the RFD voted to change its name to The Retiring Fund for Women in the Diaconate in the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America to reflect the ordination of women to the diaconate after the General Convention of 1970. It began operating under this name in 1973.

The RFD has since changed names twice more, both times to acknowledge an expanded membership. In 1998 it changed its name to The Fund for the Diaconate of The Episcopal Church in the United States of America, following a 1990 vote to admit male deacons. In 2018 it changed its name to The Fund for the Diaconate of the Episcopal Church, emphasizing its availability to all deacons of The Episcopal Church and continues to operate under that name.

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