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.
The educational agency of the Executive Council has had a variety of titles and roles within the organizational structure of the Church over the years. From 1947 to 1968, it was known as the Department of Christian Education. In 1968, major elements of Council’s educational program were combined with divisions of the Home Department and other bodies as the “Services to Dioceses section” of Council; in subsequent years it seems to have been renamed the “Program Group on Education,” until about 1975, when it became the Office of Religious Education.
An Education Officer, David Perry, was appointed in 1973. Other aspects of the Church’s educational program were handled by ad hoc committees during this period, such as the Program Advisory Committee on Higher Education. Another major restructuring in 1976 eliminated ad hoc committees in favor of a system of standing committees and subcommittees. In 1979, a further wave of consolidation brought the staff and work together under the cluster title of Education for Mission and Ministry.
The Education for Mission and Ministry Unit was listed in The Church Annual up until 1991, with David Perry as its Executive Director. In 1992,the name was changed to Education, Evangelism, and Ministry Development, with David Perry still listed as Executive Director. It is unclear how and why the named changed and if the program functions also changed.
The first issue of “The Witness was published on January 6, 1917. The Rt. Rev. Irving Peake Johnson, of Colorado, was the first editor-in-chief and also formed the first board of directors for the publication. William B. Spofford succeeded Johnson as editor. In the earlier years, The Witness combined traditional church news and advertising with impassioned editorials concerning workers' rights and other issues of religious and social consequence.
Sometime in the 1940s, Irving Johnson and William B. Spofford, along with several other men, established the Episcopal Church Publishing Company (ECPC) that continued to publish The Witness. After Spofford’s death in 1972, publication temporarily ceased. Resuming in 1974 after the formation of a new board of trustees, the first issue featured the irregular ordination to the priesthood of 11 women deacons in Philadelphia.
Although it had undergone changes in frequency of publication and appearance, The Witness retained its emphasis on social action and justice in light of the gospel. Its roots remained Episcopal, but its readership ecumenical. Publication ceased in 2003.
Originally authorized by the General Convention in 1871 to coordinate the work formerly conducted by a large number of isolated women’s missionary societies, The Woman’s Auxiliary to the Board of Missions initially served in an advisory role, however, the Auxiliary evolved into a planning and promotion group. The first General Meeting of the Auxiliary was held in 1874, when the women resolved to meet concurrently with General Convention and came to be known as the Triennial Meetings of the Woman’s Auxiliary.
During the 1956-1958 triennium women’s work in the Church was reorganized. The Auxiliary transitioned into a division of National Council and was renamed the General Division of Women’s Work. Rejecting the auxiliary status, diocesan organizations began to name themselves the Episcopal Church Women. Symbolic of the turbulent social climate of the late 1960s and 1970s, the Church initiated structural reorganizations aimed at integrating women into the Church on every level. As part of these changes, the General Division of Women’s Work was dissolved in 1968.
Subsequent Triennial Meetings were organized by various ad hoc committees until the 1985 gathering, at which time bylaws were adopted forming the Episcopal Church Women (ECW) at the national level. This organization reclaimed its right as the successor body to the Woman’s Auxiliary and assumed responsibility for coordinating the women’s activities in the Church and for organizing the Triennial gatherings.
A resolution was filed at the June 1986 meeting of Executive Council confirming that the newly formed Episcopal Church Women “is the same or successor organization to the Woman’s Auxiliary, the General Division of Women’s Work, the Committee for Women, the Triennial Program and Planning Committee, and the Triennial Committee.”
The Episcopal Church in the Dominican Republic began as a mission for English speaking residents. Responding to a call to minister to US occupational forces and to the British West Indian laborers of Anglican background who worked in the sugar and banana industries, Benjamin Isaac Wilson, a self-taught priest, founded the Church of the Holy Trinity, which was consecrated by the Right Reverend James T. Holly, Bishop of the Orthodox Apostolic Church in Haiti, in 1897.
This initial Dominican congregation, headed by Father Wilson, was at San Pedro de Macoris, and operated under the episcopal jurisdiction of the independent Haitian Orthodox Apostolic Church. In 1913, both the Dominican church and the church in Haiti were received into The Episcopal Church of the United States, although both were remained under the supervision of the Diocese of Puerto Rico for some time.
In 1928, jurisdiction over the Dominican church was transferred to the Bishop of the Missionary Diocese of Haiti. Though a Missionary District of the Dominican Republic was formed by General Convention in 1940, the Bishop of Haiti continued as Bishop-in-Charge, under the direction of the Presiding Bishop. In 1961, the Rt. Rev. Paul Kellogg became the first Bishop of the newly recognized mission diocese of the Dominican Republic.
The Episcopal Service for Youth was formed in 1911 as The Church Mission of Help (CMH). Its original purpose was to promote family life by assisting unwed mothers to remain with their families and make it possible for them to take care of their children for at least the first two years. The scope of its case work grew through the 1920s to include preventative care for at-risk children. By 1930, it had not only expanded its scope, but also added 13 more societies to its mission field.
The Episcopal Church continued to support CMH, but in the face of declining diocesan funding, the General Convention cut its appropriation by half in 1934. As a result, the bylaws of the organization were radically amended along with a substantial reduction in staff. In 1945, after much discussion, the name of the organization was changed to The Episcopal Service for Youth to better reflect its purpose and better appeal to the young people whom it served. In 1960, much of the society's work was assumed by the Department of Christian Social Relations. The Episcopal Service for Youth continued primarily as a scholarship organization until its dissolution in 1976.
Founded in 1980 as an independent national organization of Episcopal women, the Episcopal Women's History Project has played an important role in recovering and documenting the lives of women who have made outstanding contributions to The Episcopal Church. The Project aims to raise awareness about the historic place of women in the Church and their ethnic, racial, regional, and class diversity. Since its formation, the group has produced historical resources, conducted oral history interviews, published a newsletter, distributed grants, and supported and encouraged research and scholarship related to the historical role of women in The Episcopal Church.
The Evangelical Educational Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church was organized in November 1866 as a “general Education society” uniting the diocesan Societies of New York, Massachusetts, Ohio and Virginia [and possibly Maryland] with the Divinity Students’ Aid Society in Philadelphia. Twenty years later, it changed it’s name to the Evangelical Education Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church (EES).
EES occupied an important place in the polity of The Episcopal Church in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It was a strong and representative voice for promoting the thread of “rational religion” that dominated worship and clerical leadership in The Episcopal Church up to the post-Reconstruction period. It did this by supporting the education of men for ministry; sponsoring gatherings, conferences and workshops; publishing books and pamphlets; aiding campus evangelism and theological rigor; and providing biblically-centered Christian education.
EES expanded its membership in the 20th century by merging with the Protestant Episcopal Society for the Promotion of Evangelical Knowledge (PESPEK) in 1949 and the Episcopal Evangelical Fellowship (EEF) in 1961. Although a membership organization for most of its history, it shifted to a grant-making organization in the 1990s with an annual donation drive replacing membership dues. Grants are disbursed through the Evangelism for the 21st Century (E-21) grant program, established in 1977, to support emerging forms of lay and ordained ministries.
In 2014, the EES Board changed the organization’s name to the Episcopal Evangelism Society. It continues to support clerical education, publish books and newsletters, and award grants.
Organized in 1964, the Executive Council is the chief oversight body for implementing the programs and corporate business of The Episcopal Church in matters affecting its domestic and foreign mission, its ecumenical relationships, and its place in civil society. The Executive Council is the direct successor body to the National Council (1919-1963) and inherits the role held by the Board of Missions of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society (1835-1918). The Executive Council marks the consolidation of authority for the implementation of national and international work of the Council under the single executive office of the Presiding Bishop. Membership is composed of individuals elected by General Convention, Provincial Synods, and ex-offico members.
The Executive Office of the General Convention (GCO) is one of the three offices of The Episcopal Church. The others are the Office of the Presiding Bishop and the Office of the President of the House of Deputies.
The GCO administers the governance of the Church in a variety of ways, including organizing and overseeing the triennial General Convention, supporting the activities of the various interim bodies of the General Convention, participating in official meetings of the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies, generating the Church’s annual Parochial Report, and promoting the ministry of the ecumenical, inter-religious, and inter-Anglican bodies of the Church.
In addition, the GCO supports the Executive Officer in their role as corporate Secretary of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society, Secretary of the Executive Council, and Registrar of the General Convention.
Founded in 1895 by white and black community leaders, Fort Valley High and Industrial School was transferred to the control of The Episcopal Church in 1918 and was later renamed Fort Valley Normal and Industrial School (Fort Valley, Georgia), which operated as a two-year junior college. In 1939 Fort Valley Normal and Industrial School and the State Teachers and Agricultural College were combined by the State of Georgia to become part of the state’s university system.
Fort Valley was no longer expressly administered by the American Church Institute (ACI) after 1939 but the vast majority of its institutional appropriations continued to derive from ACI through at least 1959 and perhaps until the dissolution of ACI in 1967. The Dioceses of Atlanta and Georgia also contributed support to the college. In 1949 the school was designated as Georgia’s land-grant institution for African Americans. In 1966 a four-year liberal arts public college continued as Fort Valley State University.
In the midst of the Great Depression, the Joint Commission on the Forward Movement was established in 1934 by General Convention with the charge to point the Church “forward.” The Movement sponsored conferences, meetings, and training programs for leaders along with Bible study and prayer groups under the leadership of the Rt. Rev. Henry Wise Hobson. Forward Movement’s first publications appeared in 1935, including the first issues of Forward Day by Day, a daily devotional guide. In 1940, the General Convention adopted the program elements of Forward Movement as its unifying theme under the slogan of “Forward in Service.” The Joint Commission ceased to exist in 1940, although the publications effort continued in Cincinnati under Bishop Hobson and an Executive Committee.
Although Forward Movement Publications is authorized each triennium by the General Convention with the Presiding Bishop as its chair, the agency is self-funded and does not draw on the budget of The Episcopal Church. Forward Movement specializes in the publication of devotional tracts and spiritual guides, although its range of materials expanded after 1986 with the closing of Seabury Press, which was the national Church’s publishing house. Forward Movement has also published key ecumenical documents affecting The Episcopal Church as well as other works of historical and biographical importance.
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.
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.