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Founded in 1892 as an industrial and teacher training school by Charlotte Thorn, Calhoun School (Lowndes County, Alabama) was patterned after the Hampton Institute, an industrial school for African Americans in Virginia where Thorn had taught for a short time. Thorn served as the school’s first principal until her death in 1932. Support of Calhoun was taken up by the American Church Institute in 1941 after the Institute dropped its support for St. Mark’s School in Birmingham. In 1945 the school’s property was deeded to the State of Alabama and it became a Lowndes County public school.

A fourth-generation minister, Samuel Orr Capers was born August 2, 1899 in Anderson, South Carolina. He attended the University of Texas and then the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, where he was ordained to the diaconate in 1926 and to the priesthood in 1927. He received an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee in 1959.

His first pastoral assignment was Trinity Episcopal Church in Pharr, in the Rio Grande Valley of southern Texas, where he served during 1927 and 1928. After working briefly as rector at Saint Mark’s Church in San Marcos, Texas, Capers transferred to Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in San Antonio, where he served from the end of 1928 until 1930. He then became the rector of Christ Episcopal Church, also in San Antonio, where he remained for the next thirty-seven years. He retired as rector emeritus in 1967. During and after his career he was active in numerous service organizations such as the Salvation Army and the San Antonio Association of the Blind, as well as working on behalf of the San Antonio military community. Capers died on June 17, 1984.

Cathedral Films, Inc. was founded in 1939 by the Reverend James K. Friedrich, an Episcopal priest who believed in using film for Christian education and ministry. The company’s first production, The Great Commandment (1939), was a modest success but not widely distributed. Financial constraints shifted the company's focus to short biblical films for church and Sunday School use, which became its core output.

In 1943 Cathedral Films became a nonprofit corporation, and in 1947 the Articles of Incorporation were amended to stipulate that in the event of the dissolution of the corporation, its assets would go to The Episcopal Church.

For over four decades, Cathedral Films produced and distributed religious films, filmstrips, and recordings across denominations, including the acclaimed Day of Triumph (1954). In the 1960s and 1970s, the company and its subsidiary, Q-Ed Productions, addressed contemporary social issues such as drug abuse and premarital sex from a Christian perspective. Animated filmstrips—featuring characters like Disney’s Jiminy Cricket—were also used to teach children core Christian values. Under the Rev. James L. Friedrich in the 1980s and 1990s, Cathedral expanded into historical documentaries on the Episcopal and Anglican Churches.

In 1968, persistent financial challenges led President Ed Eagle to propose revoking the Trust to return Cathedral Films to for-profit status, which would allow broader funding sources and the production of secular educational content—activities potentially restricted under the nonprofit structure. Efforts to dissolve the Trust or buy back The Episcopal Church’s inheritance rights in the early 1970s were unsuccessful. In response, Cathedral Films created two subsidiaries: Q-Ed Productions in 1973 to produce educational films, and Religious Films Corporation in 1977 to support its religious media work.

By 1980, as Cathedral Films faced mounting insolvency, Eagle offered to sell the company to The Episcopal Church, which declined due to its financial liabilities. A year later, a tentative agreement was reached, but Trustee Elaine Friedrich withheld consent, citing concerns over the Trust’s dissolution. She and her son, the Rev. James L. Friedrich, raised allegations of financial mismanagement—including excessive spending on furnishings, vehicles, and gifts—and called for an audit. They submitted an alternative governance proposal, which the Board approved. Eagle resigned in 1982, and James L. Friedrich became President, continuing production into the mid-1990s.