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Elizabeth Griffin was born on January 23, 1890 in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. Prior to becoming a missionary, she attended Atlantic Collegiate Institute, graduating with a business degree in 1907, and worked as a secretary and bookkeeper.

From 1931 to 1955, she served as the treasurer of the Missionary Diocese of the Philippines. In 1942, she was captured and placed in a Japanese-run internment camp at Los Baños Agricultural College where she remained until her rescue in 1945. After a year’s rest in New Bern, North Carolina, she returned to the Philippines and continued her missionary duties, which lasted another twenty-five years.

Ms. Griffin retired on August 1, 1955 and returned to New Bern, where she was active in the Episcopal Church Women (ECW) at Christ Church.

Elizabeth Griffin died on September 25, 1968.

The Guild of Scholars of the Episcopal Church (the Guild) emerged in 1939 when Robert Root, Norman Pittenger, Thomas S.K. Scott-Craig, and William Eddy agreed to call together like-minded Churchmen into an association of college and university contacts with the common goal of promoting the Christian faith and scholarship in institutions of higher learning. At the first conference, held in 1940 at Hobart College and attended by fifteen scholars representing eleven institutions, the decision was made to establish a formal association within The Episcopal Church.

After a second conference, also held in 1940, the group met in 1941 under the name of the Easter Conference of the Guild of Scholars. The current name was adopted in 1949, just a year before the Guild began to hold its annual meetings exclusively at the General Theological Seminary. While there were initially hopes that regional chapters would be formed as a nucleus of a national association of Episcopal teachers and scholars, by 1950 the Guild had relinquished the idea of an expanded association of local chapters in favor of a single national conference.

In 1966 Virginia Harrington of Barnard College was the first woman invited as a guest; she became a member in 1968. In the succeeding years other women were invited first as guests and eventually to membership. The membership was also extended later to those in the scientific, medical, and technical fields. Membership is limited to the laity, unless a member is ordained after being admitted, with the one exception being the honorary membership granted to one of the original founders, the Rev. Norman Pittenger. The Guild continues with members from a wide range of academic and creative disciplines meeting annually to share their work, although meeting locations now vary.

English by birth, the Rev. Augustus Reginald Hoare went to Alaska during the Klondike gold rush of 1898. He began working as a missionary for the Rt. Rev. Peter T. Rowe in 1902 and was ordained to the diaconate. In 1903 he was ordained to the priesthood and, by 1904, was simultaneously directing four missionary stations in Alaska due to a shortage of missionaries in the area. He assumed rectorship of the Point Hope Mission in Alaska in 1907, but left ten years later as a result of illness. After a period of convalescence in California, he returned in 1920 only to be murdered by the man whom he had taken on as an assistant.

In October of 1942, National Council created the Home Department, which inherited the work of the pre-existing Department of Domestic Missions and combined that work with four other pre-existing divisions of the National Council: Christian Social Relations, Christian Education, College Work, and the Youth Division. In December of 1945 the Army and Navy Division was added, and in December of 1948 the Town and Country Work Division was created.

Because it oversaw the entire domestic missionary program of the Church, the work of the Home Department was wide-ranging. Ethnic ministries were led by secretaries for Native American, African American, and Japanese mission work. It also focused on providing financial support and competent clergy for African American and Native American parishes, which were often neglected or underfunded by their dioceses.

Rural work was carried out by the Town and Country Division until 1962, when the work was returned to the oversight of the newly-formed Division of Domestic Mission. The Army and Navy Division (later renamed the Armed Forces Division) primarily supported chaplains in the Armed Forces. Other domestic work included Braille books for the blind and support for clergy serving deaf Episcopalians. The Home Department also sent women workers out into the field in various capacities. In the 1960s, most of the department’s resources was directed towards urban ministries.

In 1968, a complete restructuring of Executive Council dissolved the Home Department. The work formerly grouped under the Home Department umbrella evolved into a series of “Program” groupings, under the direction of the Deputy for Program and the Presiding Bishop.

The House of Bishops (HoB) was established in 1789, four years after the election of The Episcopal Church’s first Bishop, Samuel Seabury. All bishops of The Episcopal Church, active or retired, make up the House of Bishops, with the Presiding Bishop as president. With nearly 300 active members, the HoB comprises half of the Church’s governing body. Eligible members include all diocesan and assisting bishops elected or canonically appointed from the dioceses, area missions, and special jurisdictions of the United States and nineteen other countries, including a number of churches in Europe, Latin America, Taiwan, and Haiti.

Along with the House of Deputies (the other governing body of The Episcopal Church), the HoB meets every three years to adopt legislation. Between conventions, they meet twice a year in a non-legislative capacity and, acting in their pastoral and teaching mode, may explore issues of theological, social or mission concern.