The General Board of Religious Education was canonically established in 1910 by General Convention to unify and develop religious education across the Church. Initially, the Board was meant to work on increasing Christian education at the primary and secondary levels, with particular emphasis on Sunday Schools. Membership consisted of the Presiding Bishop as ex officio President, along with seven bishops, seven clerical members, and seven lay members, all appointed triennially by the presiding officers of their respective Houses. In addition to these 22 members, each of the eight Missionary Departments was to organize a Sunday School Convention, at which it would elect two delegates who would also be members of the General Board.
In 1913 the canon was amended, reducing the number of representatives from each Missionary Department to one. General Convention also introduced the system of Provinces in that year, and accordingly the “Sunday School Conventions of the Missionary Departments” were renamed as the “Provincial Boards of Religious Education.” Spurred by a decline in postulants for clerical orders, the scope of the work quickly widened, including a new emphasis on campus ministries and theological seminaries. The Board organized its efforts under four new departments, which it reported on to General Convention in 1916: Parochial Education, Secondary Education, Collegiate Education, and Theological Education.
The General Board of Religious Education became the Department of Religious Education in 1919, when General Convention voted to replace the Board of Missions with the Presiding Bishop and National Council.
In 1910, General Convention established the General Board of Religious Education in response to the changing landscape of higher education in the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1913, the Department of Collegiate Education was created under the Board. In 1919, with the establishment of the National Council, the Board of Religious Education became the Department of Religious Education. In 1929, the department created thirteen separate commissions for its work, one of which was a Commission on College Work. The Secretary and Commission continued to operate under these titles through 1938, when the Religious Education Department was renamed the Department of Christian Education.
In 1940, the Division of College Work was created, and in 1942 it was placed on equal footing with the Department of Christian Education, under the newly formed Home Department. As the number of college and university students grew over the decades, the scope of the division’s work grew as well. By the 1950s, the division was involved in establishing college chaplaincies, supporting local parish work, and creating missions to young women and minorities. The division also ministered to university faculty, graduate students, and foreign students. The Division of College Work was renamed the College and University Division in 1963.
The restructuring of the Church in 1967 brought about the closure of the Home Department and, with it, the College and University Division. Higher education ministries for some time thereafter were carried on in a reduced capacity and on a largely provincial or entirely local level, supplemented with some financial grants or block funds towards stipends provided by Executive Council.
In response to urging by the Joint Commission on Ecumenical Relations, which identified the need for a single person to coordinate ecumenical efforts at the national level, the position of Ecumenical Officer was created in 1963. The first person to hold the position, Mr. Peter Day, was appointed in 1964. While initially under the Offices of the Presiding Bishop and President (1964-1971), over the decades the Ecumenical Officer shifted from one department to another: Jurisdictional Relations (1972-1974), Mission (1975-1977), National and World Mission (1978-1979), World Mission in Church and Society (1980-1990), World Mission (1991), Partnerships (1992-1994), Ecumenical and Interfaith Relations (1999-2003), Office of the Presiding Bishop (2004-2007, 2017), the Ecumenical and Interfaith division under the Partnership Center (2008-2009), the Global Partnership Team in the Mission Department (2010-2016), and Ministries Beyond the Episcopal Church (2019-current). In whichever department the office has been assigned, the Ecumenical Officer serves as the focal point for The Episcopal Church's involvement with and relationship to other churches and ecumenical organizations, both domestic and international, on common liturgical and social matters.
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.
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.
Gailor Industrial School (Mason, Tennessee) was founded in 1905 by the Rt. Rev. Thomas F. Gailor III, Bishop of Tennessee, and first became affiliated with the American Church Institute (ACI) in 1921. The school was originally named in part for the donor, Rev. Charles A. Hoffman of New York, and then renamed Gailor Industrial School in honor of Bishop Gailor after his death in 1935.
Gailor Industrial School developed into a four-year high school for girls and boys, including boarders. Fire completely destroyed the school in 1945 but it was rebuilt and continued to function. ACI appears to have discontinued funding the school in 1949. The year the school closed is not known.
Founded in 1902 by Wallace A. Battle, Okolona Industrial School (Okolona, Mississippi) did not become affiliated with The Episcopal Church until 1920 when the Diocese of Mississippi and the American Church Institute (ACI) assumed oversight. When Battle became Field Secretary for ACI in 1927, his wife Effie T. Battle took over as administrative head of the school and remained until the arrival of A.M. Strange in 1933.
The school had been renamed Okolona College in 1932. Strange is credited with most of the modernization of Okolona’s physical plant and equipment. In 1965 the Diocese of Mississippi decided to transfer its funding from Okolona College to areas of the state it considered having greater need. The school closed that same year. The campus remained unused until 1990 when the National Council of Negro Women purchased the site with plans of reinstating educational and other support programs for the African American community. The Okolona College site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002.
St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute (Raleigh, North Carolina) was founded in 1867 by the Rev. J. Brinton Smith of the Freedman’s Commission and the Rt. Rev. Thomas Atkinson, Bishop of North Carolina, from the beginnings of a day and Sunday school for African American children of Christ Church Parish. Smith served as the first principal and Atkinson as the president of the Board of Trustees.
In 1893 the school changed its name to St. Augustine’s School. In 1919 the school became known as St. Augustine’s Junior College, then in 1928 as St. Augustine’s College. For some time it was the only four-year liberal arts college for African Americans sponsored by the Episcopal Church. It was one of the first schools to be affiliated with the American Church Institute (ACI) in 1906 and remained under that organization until ACI dissolved in 1967. It remains a four-year liberal arts college.
The Rev. James Solomon Russell founded St. Paul’s Normal and Industrial School in Lawrenceville, Virginia in 1888 and served as its principal until his death in 1935. He was succeeded by his son, the Rev. J. Alvin Russell.
In 1941 it began to offer a four-year degree program and changed its name to St. Paul’s Polytechnic Institute. The school’s name changed again to St. Paul’s College in 1957. At one time it was the largest of the American Church Institute’s (ACI) schools with over 1,500 students.
The school was affiliated with ACI until its dissolution in 1967.
St. Philip’s Normal and Industrial School in San Antonio, Texas was founded in1898 by the Rt. Rev. James Steptoe Johnson, Bishop of West Texas, and was headed by Artemesia Bowden as its dean from 1902 to 1954.
St. Philip’s was never administered by the American Church Institute (ACI), though appropriations were made to it from 1918 to 1931. It was incorporated into the San Antonio Independent School District in 1942 as St. Philip’s Junior College, affiliated with San Antonio Junior College under the control of the San Antonio Union Junior College District from 1946.
It began admitting white students in 1955; in 2003 the majority of its student body was Latino.
In 1957, Norman Wates, a London businessman, made funds available to the Archbishop of Canterbury for financing the travel and related costs of a clergy exchange program with The Episcopal Church. The immediate goal was to exchange as many as ten English and American priests and their families each year. The Archbishop of Canterbury notified the Rt. Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill, and the first clergy exchange began in 1958; however, “The Anglican Interchange Program” didn’t receive its official designation as the Wates-Seabury Plan until June 1960.
The Presiding Bishop felt that The Episcopal Church should provide additional funding so he drew upon parish, diocesan, and national church funds to support the American side of the exchange. The Episcopal Church formalized the exchanges in December of 1959 when the National Council passed a resolution providing funds for an exchange program administered by the Presiding Bishop with the assistance of the Presiding Bishop's Advisory Committee on Anglican Relations.
The program operated successfully through the 1965–1966 exchanges, but at that point it had became apparent that the Church of England was unable to contribute the funds necessary to receive Norman Wates' continued support. An attempt to prevent the demise of the program took place in 1966 with an “Inter-Diocesan Exchange.” Although The Episcopal Church on the national level aided the 1966–1967 exchange, it did not take place under the Wates-Seabury Program nor was it inter-primatial as were the prior exchanges.
Several attempts were made to revive the program but they ceased with the death of Wates in 1969. In all, between 1958 and 1967, fourteen exchanges took place with eleven of those operating under the Wates-Seabury Program.