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The Social Welfare Office began in 1968 with the appointment of Woodrow W. Carter, Sr. as a senior associate for specialized field services. The office was originally attached to the newly formed section of Experimental and Specialized Services (ESS), which had formed out of the former Joint Urban Program.

The ESS unit's focus on prominent contemporary issues is exemplified by the 1968 Council decision to earmark $50,000 to “finance a counseling and legal advice service to Church members with conscience problems relating to the military draft.” One of the unit’s key duties was the provision of field services to Church agencies, “devoted primarily to the development of church programs of action in society and ministries to special groups.” At the time of his initial appointment, Carter’s position was intended to focus on issues and services relating to children and families, particularly minority children.

Following another staff reorganization of the Program Function that began in 1970, the ESS unit ceased and Carter was listed as Social Welfare Officer in 1972 in the Social Welfare Services unit of the Program area. His role was to serve as a liaison to various committees and commissions as needed.

Through Carter’s work, the Social Welfare Office grew to serve in a proactive advocacy role. In 1977 Carter organized the first meeting of an ad hoc group that became the National Commission for Social and Specialized Ministries (NCSSM), for which he subsequently became the assigned staff officer. The emphasis on supporting local ministry is found in a November 1980 Council resolution which called on the Social Welfare Office to “marshal and coordinate all possible resources available through the Episcopal Church Center in support of dioceses and parishes ministry (sic) with disabled persons.”

Following Carter’s retirement in 1983, Presiding Bishop Allin announced the appointment of Marcia Newcombe as the new Social Welfare Officer to work “with most of the Church’s agencies involved with delivery of human services: welfare, bail and criminal justice reform, and ministries among aging, deaf, alcoholics and other groups.” The release noted further that she would also monitor social services legislation and serve as an ecumenical liaison to educational and activist groups in those areas.

It is unclear when this office was dissolved, or if it changed names.

The Society of St. Margaret is a religious order of the Anglican Church with related but independent chapters on several continents. The order began in 1856 at East Grinstead, England under the guidance of by John Henry Neale. Houses followed in London at St. Saviour’s Priory in 1870 and St. Margaret’s House in Boston, Massachusetts in 1873.

The Sisters who arrived in Boston in 1873 were invited to help minister to the sick at Boston’s Children’s Hospital, a ministry that ended in 1917. The order's mission evolved into hospital care, health and wellness of women and children, education in pursuit of community, and a supportive religious enclave for independent women seeking a spiritual life and motivation. The Boston chapter purchased their first permanent site in Louisburg Square in 1881 and began to generate mission houses throughout the East and in Canada. St. Monica’s infirmary (Joy Street) and later St. Monica’s Home in Roxbury continued in operation until 1988 as a ministry to the elderly. The other nearby institution, in Duxbury, Massachusetts, was a summer camp program for girls and summer residence for the Sisters. The Duxbury property became the permanent House for the Society with the closing of the Roxbury convent in 2011.

Other houses and missions that were established are Montreal (1885), Toronto (at Bracebridge, closed in 1944), Philadelphia (1884), New Hartford (near Utica, NY, n.d.), New York (Oliver St., closed 1956), Newark (St. Barnabas’ Hospital, closed 1923, and House of Prayer, 1939), and Lexington, Kentucky (St. Agnes House, 1975). Most notably, the Sisters established a mission in Port au Prince, Haiti, in 1927, where they opened a school for children with disabilities, founded a home for elderly women, and established an orchestra, among other ministries. The Society continues its ministries in Boston, New York City, and Port-au-Prince to this day.

The Special Committee on Theological Education in the Episcopal Church (TEEC) began in 1965 as an outgrowth of an initiative originating in the Division of Christian Ministries, part of Executive Council’s Home Department, to respond to a perceived crisis in recruitment, retention, and education of candidates for the ministry, which required careful study before any recommendations could be made to General Convention.

The Committee, chaired by Dr. Nathan M. Pusey, met for the first time on March 28, 1966. As part of its work, the Committee consulted seminarians and young clergymen to understand their experiences and concerns, and shared these findings with General Convention in their 1967 report.

The Committee saw the need for “an agency with power” to overhaul the Church’s entire system of theological education. It recommended the creation of a Board for Theological Education with members appointed by the Presiding Bishop and reporting to General Convention. The work of the Board was to find strategies for recruiting promising candidates to the ministry, to modernize the seminary system and improve its curricula, to determine necessary funding, and to expand educational opportunities to laymen and women.

The recommendation was adopted by the 1967 General Convention.

John Shelby Spong was born June 16, 1931 in Charlotte, North Carolina. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1952 from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill he earned a Master of Divinity degree from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1955. He was ordained a deacon and a priest that year.

For two years, Spong served as rector at St. Joseph’s Church in Durham, North Carolina, before assuming the rectorship of Cavalry Church in Tarboro, North Carolina, in 1957. In a city that resisted integration, Spong ministered to the Black congregation at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church alongside the white congregation at Cavalry. He continued service as a rector at St. John’s Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, (1965) and St. Paul’s Church in Richmond, Virginia (1969) before being consecrated Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark in 1976. As bishop he continued to work tirelessly on behalf of those marginalized in the Church, ordaining a non-celibate gay deacon to the priesthood in 1989 and advocating for women clergy. Spong gained recognition among lay audiences for his many books on theology, which often challenged conventional doctrine. After retiring as bishop in 2000, he continued to speak on faith, modernity, and social justice.

John Shelby Spong died on September 12, 2021.

After an appeal to General Convention of the need for a hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina for African Americans, St. Agnes Hospital and Nursing School was founded in 1896. The hospital occupied buildings on the grounds of St. Augustine’s Normal School and Collegiate Institute and served as both a hospital and nurses’ training school. By 1931 it had grown to a 100-bed hospital serving 2,000 patients annually.

St. Agnes was affiliated with the American Church Institute (ACI) from approximately 1906 until 1958, when ACI discontinued appropriations in order to conform to its mission to support only church-related schools and in anticipation of a new county health system.

St. Agnes Nursing School closed in 1959.

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.

St. Margaret's House in Berkeley, California, had its origin in a deaconess training program initiated in 1907 by Edward L. Parsons, Rector of St. Mark's in Berkeley. Called at first St. Mark's Deaconess Training School, by 1910 it was known unofficially as St. Anne's House and officially as the Training School for Deaconesses in the Diocese of California, later the Training School for Deaconesses of the Eighth Missionary Department (1912). In 1914 it moved to a new home, St. Margaret's House, and was incorporated as the Deaconess Training School of the Pacific.

The School expanded to include a School for Christian Service, a Student House for women students at UC Berkeley, and a Church Service Center. In 1930, it relocated to larger quarters near its partners in education and added a Summer School of Religion, an extension department, field service, and a retreat and conference center to its broadening spectrum of activities. Eventually it came to identify itself as a graduate school, offering, in conjunction with the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, a two-year program leading to the Master of Arts in Christian Education degree. The name of the institution was formally changed to St. Margaret's House in 1950.

By the mid-1960s, the movement toward full equality for women in the church diminished the need for a separate women's training school. In 1966 the St. Margaret's House Board voted to terminate its educational programs. The Board of Trustees became the Berkeley Center for Human Interaction and Organizational Renewal, a non-profit unaffiliated with The Episcopal Church. Renamed the Strong Center in 1979, it eventually focused on the environment and became The Strong Foundation for Environmental Values, which is scheduled for dissolution at the end of 2023.

St. Mark’s School (Birmingham, Alabama) was founded in 1891 as an outgrowth of St. Mark’s Church, with financial support from J. A. Van Hoose, a white Episcopal deacon and the 10th Mayor of Birmingham. It was the first institution in the city to offer secondary education to black students and was initially established as a girls’ boarding school.

St. Mark’s was an American Church Institute (ACI) school from 1912 to 1941 when it was dropped due to the exorbitant expense necessary to renovate its buildings. Calhoun School in Lowndes County, Alabama was brought under ACI oversight in its place. It is uncertain whether the school continued to operate after 1941.

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.