Showing 88 results

Authority record
Corporate body

Advisory Commission on Ecclesiastical Relations

  • Corporate body
  • 1931-1939

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.

American Church Institute

  • Corporate body
  • 1906-1967

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.

Associated Parishes of Liturgy and Mission

  • Corporate body
  • 1946-

The Associated Parishes of Liturgy and Mission (APLM), originally called Associated Parishes, was formed in 1946 as "A fellowship of clergy and laity interested in advancing the principles of the Liturgical Movement in the life of the Episcopal Church.” The program was initially carried out by distributing printed publications useful in the parish church and by holding Liturgical Conferences throughout the nation.

Membership was by invitation only until 1963, when it became open to anyone. It was at this time that the name changed from Associated Parishes to Associated Parishes of Liturgy and Mission.

APLM members were instrumental in drafting and promoting the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, reestablishing the Eucharist’s primacy in worship and parish life, and championing Baptism as the foundation for Christian ministry. The organization continues to “develop and promote worship that shapes, defines, and empowers the church to live in the midst of the world as a sign, foretaste, and instrument of the promised and immanent reign of God.”

Bishop Payne Divinity School

  • Corporate body
  • 1878-1949

Originally called St. Stephen’s Normal and Theological School, Bishop Payne Divinity School (Petersburg, Virginia) was founded in 1878 as a branch seminary of the Virginia Theological Seminary. Its first graduate was James S. Russell, who went on to found St. Paul’s Normal and Industrial School in nearby Lawrenceville. When the school was chartered by the State of Virginia in 1884, it was renamed Bishop Payne Divinity and Industrial School in honor of the Rt. Rev. John Payne, the first Bishop of Liberia.

Enrollment decreased dramatically in the 1890s following several canonical actions by the church that marginalized their African American congregations. The name was changed again in 1910 to Bishop Payne Divinity School when the school was given the power to confer the degree of Bachelor of Divinity. Maintaining an adequate budget to operate and improve the school and competing with white seminaries which began to admit black students were constant challenges that led to the decision to close the school in 1949. Its assets were transferred in 1953 to the Virginia Theological Seminary for the purpose of recruiting and educating African Americans.

Board for Theological Education

  • Corporate body
  • 1967-1997

The Board for Theological Education (BTE) was established by canon at the General Convention of 1967 after concern over the decline in candidates for the ministry in the early 1960s caused the Division on Christian Ministries to call for a comprehensive study of the matter. The focus of the Board was to study the needs and trends of theological education and make recommendations. It was to assist the institutions undertaking the education of future clergy, assist in the enlistment and selection of candidates for ministry, promote the continuing education of both the clergy and the laity, and finally to seek support and funding for the entire enterprise.

The Board for Theological Education met formally four to five times a year, and was composed of fifteen members representing bishops, clergy, and laity. In 1997, General Convention voted to merge the Board of Theological Education into the newly-created Standing Commission on Ministry.

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.

China Mission

  • Corporate body
  • 1834-1950

At its annual Board of Directors meeting in 1834, the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society passed a resolution to establish a mission in China, and appointed its first missionaries the following year. Over the next decade, the missionaries worked to establish schools to include religious training, all while continuing their own study of the people they wished to serve.

After the appointment of the Rev. William J. Boone in 1844 as the first Bishop of China, the American Church Mission at Shanghai was established. Education remained the main focus. A boys' school was founded in 1846 followed by one for girls a short time later.

Over the next several decades, the Missionary District of China would be served by four additional Bishops and witness the establishment of several medical institutions including St. Luke's Hospital and St. Elizabeth's Hospital, both in Shanghai, as well as what would become St. John's University, later the most influential higher educational institution in China.

Soon after the end of the Boxer Rebellion in 1901, which attempted to purge China of Western influences but spared the Episcopal missions from serious harm, the General Convention restructured the Mission by defining the coastal Province of Kiangsu as the Missionary District of Shanghai, while the rest of the original missionary territory became the Missionary District of Hankow. Growth dictated yet another division in 1910, and the Missionary District of Wuhu (later renamed Anking) was created, comprising the Province of Anwhei and the northern portion of Kiangsi.

After many years of political conflict, the Communist Party, headed by Mao Zedong, won control of China in 1949, ushering in atheist policies and anti-American sentiment that prompted the foreign Episcopal missionaries to gradually vacate their stations. The National Council formally recalled all its workers from China in December 1950 at the same time that the United States made it illegal to send money to China, rendering it impossible for the General Convention to fund the China missions.

Committee on Observance of the Nation's Bicentennial

  • Corporate body
  • 1973-1976

The Committee on the Observance of the Nation's Bicentennial was appointed by Presiding Bishop John E. Hines in May 1973. The Committee was established by Executive Council and funded by an appropriation from Trust Fund 779, the Julia A. Gallaher Memorial Fund.

The Bicentennial Committee, as it was often called, was formed to assist the Church in its participation in nationwide activities commemorating the bicentennial anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, and more broadly of the founding of the United States of America as a nation and state. It directly initiated or cooperatively sponsored special issues of Anglican Theological Review and the Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church; a Church Bicentennial newsletter; a liturgy that was specially designed for the three phases of celebration; a curriculum aid for religious education; a filmstrip set; and a 16 mm moving picture film. In addition, the Committee was responsible for special programming for the General Convention 1976.

Committee on World Relief and Inter-Church Aid

  • Corporate body
  • 1950-1967

Due to the initial success of the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief (PBFWR) in the 1940s, the scope of the program was expanded over the course of 1949 and 1950. At the request of the Presiding Bishop, National Council expanded the purview of the PBFWR to encompass not only world relief, but also “church cooperation,” generally expanding the scope of its grant-funded projects and specifically enabling it to finance the costs of The Episcopal Church’s participation in the World Council of Churches. Consequently, the Presiding Bishop’s Committee on World Relief and Church Cooperation was authorized in April 1950 to make appropriations within the terms of the budget item for world relief and church cooperation.

The Presiding Bishop's Committee on World Relief and Church Cooperation formulated policy and approved grants and appropriations; however, formal grant criteria were not introduced until the 1970s. The Department of Christian Social Relations administered the operation of approved programs, which included humanitarian efforts, particularly aid to refugees, parish development, and ecumenical programs. At the February 1959 National Council meeting, it was resolved that the Committee on World Relief and Church Cooperation be renamed the Committee on World Relief and Inter-Church Aid.

One year later, in February 1960, the Committee on World Relief and Inter-Church Aid recommended to the National Council that the operational activities of the Committee become a Division of World Relief and Inter-Church Aid within the structure of the Department of Christian Social Relations.

In 1968, as the Executive Council sought to develop more efficient working structures, the Department of Christian Social Relations was dissolved, effectively ending the work of the Committee on World Relief and Inter-Church Aid.

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