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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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Department of Christian Education had its roots in the General Board of Religious Education, which was established canonically in 1910 by the General Convention for the purpose of religious instruction. As part of its efforts, it trained Sunday School teachers, developed religious curricula, organized conferences, and maintained summer schools and campus ministries.

In 1919, the General Board of Religious Education became the Department of Religious Education; instead of reporting to the General Convention, the new department now reported to the Presiding Bishop and National Council. In 1938 its name was changed to the Department of Christian Education. In 1942, the department was brought under the umbrella of the newly formed Home Department, resulting in its brief re-designation as the Division of Christian Education. It was again made a separate department in 1947.

As a result of the Executive Council’s reorganization in 1968, the Department of Christian Education was integrated into the Section I (Service to Dioceses) program group alongside the Home Department, General Division of Research and Field Study, and General Division of Women’s Work with their functions being combined and streamlined to improve organizational flexibility. From 1970 to 1973, there was no staff officer in charge of religious education. The work was briefly carried out thereafter under the direction of a Program Group on Education, followed by an Education Committee headed by an Educational Officer of Executive Council, until the Office of Religious Education was established. Today, educational responsibilities are carried out by different formation ministries within The Episcopal Church.