The Living Church Foundation, Inc. began in 1928 as the Church Literature Foundation. This non-profit religious corporation was established with two purposes: to publish Episcopal literature and, more specifically, to support The Living Church in the years the publication operated at a loss.
In the Spring of 1952, after over two decades of this financial relationship, Morehouse-Gorham Co. transferred ownership of the publication to the Church Literature Foundation. Clifford Morehouse resigned as editor on April 30, ending fifty-two years of his family’s editorial oversight, and on May Day of that year, The Living Church became the Foundation’s flagship publication.
Eleven years later, in 1963, the Church Literature Foundation changed its name to The Living Church Foundation, Inc. to reflect its continuing stewardship of The Living Church. It still operates today as a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that publishes twenty issues of the magazine a year.
Born (circa 1858) and raised in New York City, Agnes P. Mahony graduated from the New York City Training School for Nurses in 1881. For the next twenty years, Mahony served in various nursing positions throughout New York.
Mahony entered missionary work upon her appointment to Liberia on March 12, 1901. She served as a nurse/missionary in the Episcopal mission in Liberia from 1901 to 1902 and from 1904 to1906. Mahony resigned from the mission in 1902 because of failing health, but she returned to the United States in 1904 only to retire for the same reasons in 1906. During her work in Liberia, Mahony founded the House of Bethany at Cape Mount.
The Rt. Rev. William T. Manning was born in Northampton, England in 1866. He received his theological training at the University of the South in Sewanee, where he served as a professor of dogmatic theology from 1893 to 1895. Manning became rector of St. Agnes Chapel in New York in 1908. He became the fifth Bishop of New York in 1921.
A staunch theological conservative, Manning prevented the Rev. Percy S. Grant from marrying a divorcee in 1921 and became embroiled in a bitter battle of recriminations with Judge Ben B. Lindsey on the issue of "companionate marriage" in 1930; however, on other issues he took a more liberal stance, particularly regarding integrated congregational worship. Bishop Manning retired in ill health in 1946.
William T. Manning died in 1949.