Archives of The Diocese of Georgia

The Diocese elected a liturgist, ecumenist, and the son of a bishop to become the ninth Bishop of Georgia. Henry I. Louttit, Jr. was born in West Palm Beach, Florida in 1938, to the last bishop of the Diocese of South Florida before it was divided into three new dioceses. He was a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of the South who married Jayne Arledge Northway in 1962. Louttit was ordained a deacon in 1963 on graduation from the Virginia Theological Seminary and a priest in 1964. He served first as the Vicar of Trinity Church in Statesboro, then as the rector of Christ Church in Valdosta where he served from 1967 until his election to the episcopacy in 1995. Louttit became the 9th Bishop of Georgia on January 21, 1995.

In his first address as bishop to Diocesan Convention, Bishop Louttit stated he believed the ministry of the bishop to be: an encourager, friend, and prayer supporter; the link between congregations in our diocese, throughout the world, and back through time to the apostles; the chief administrator, planner, and visioner; trouble-shooter, and reconciler; the sharer of family stories, like the grandfather of the family; an icon model of Christian service.

Long involved in liturgical renewal of the Episcopal Church, the bishop also had served a term as President of the Georgia Christian Council. He attended the Lambeth Conferences of 1998 and 2008 in Canterbury, England.

Bishop Louttit’s convention addresses focused on evangelism and church growth, conveying a firm concept of the ministry of “all the baptized.” Bishop Louttit promoted congregational development and fostered church planting. In Evans County, Holy Comforter was established from Saint Paul’s, Augusta; King of Peace was established in Kingsland, and St. Luke’s started in Rincon. A mission congregation, Our Savior, met for a time in the Chapel at Honey Creek. That mission and another, St. Stephen’s in Lee County, eventually closed.

In order that congregations which could not support a full-time priest would have the Eucharist every Sunday, Bishop Louttit initiated the training and formation of persons locally for ordination as bi-vocational priests, without seminary degree. 45 priests since have been raised up for ministry, formed in a variety of ways other than three years of residential seminary. Those priests have served faithfully in parishes and in significant leadership roles in the Diocese. The number of deacons also increased greatly in the diocese during his episcopate.

In 2001 he and the Companion Diocese Committee recommended establishment of a Companion Diocese relationship with the Diocese of the Dominican Republic, the third such relationship for the Diocese of Georgia, Guiana and Belize being the previous two.

A major concern for the diocese, during Bishop Louttit’s episcopacy was the division that occurred in Christ Church in Savannah after the congregation voted in 2007 to separate from the Episcopal Church while continuing to possess the historic building on Johnson Square. Bishop Louttit assisted parishioners in founding a continuing Christ Church congregation to meet on Sunday evenings at the Church of St. Michael and All Angels. The property matter would be decided by the Georgia Supreme Court in favor of the Diocese during Bishop Scott Benhase’s episcopacy (2010-2020). On December 18, 2011, Christ Church Episcopal moved back to the Johnson Square property with a grateful and joyful liturgy during which Bishop Louttit celebrated the Eucharist. Bishop Louttit had kept the diocese largely united during a period of controversy.

Pictured: (top) Bishop Louttit at his consecration in Roman Catholic Cathedral, St. John the Baptist in Savannah, (upper middle) Bishop Henry and Jan Louttit, (lower middle) Julias Ariail’s photo of Bishop Louttit preaching to the 2009 electing convention for his successor, and (bottom) as we close out this series on our history, the 9th, 10th, and 8th Bishops of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia, the Rt. Revs. Henry Louttit, Scott Benhase, and Harry Shipps, sharing a laugh before the convention Eucharist in 2016 in a photo taken by Canon to the Ordinary who would become the 11th Bishop, Frank Logue.

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding, From the Field has shared the story of the Diocese of Georgia in 42 articles. When possible, the articles relied on quotations from contemporary accounts or the person’s own words to assist in sharing history the way those who lived it told their story. Though more than 22-thousand words in length, this series is far from a complete history. Yet we have seen many of the people and events that have shaped our Diocese. Along the way, the abiding characteristics of our Diocese, resilience and adaptability, have been revealed together with the ways we have changed, in seeing the image of God in all people.

Our core beliefs remain the same. As Bishop Logue told the Diocesan Convention in November, “Since the first Anglicans arrived in 1733, so much has changed, yet our core purpose has remained the same: Sharing the Good News of Jesus. This Gospel is worth getting up for in the morning and is worth spending your days and giving your life to accomplish.”

The series ends with next week’s article on the ninth Bishop of Georgia, the Rt. Rev. Henry I. Louttit, Jr. The story of the Diocese from 2010 onward will be written in time. We end there as perspective assists in considering history. One notable example of how this is true is that the book History of the Episcopal Church in Georgia 1733-1957 did not even mention Deaconess Anna E.B. Alexander. Bishop Louttit’s Saints of Georgia booklet later elevated her story. The Episcopal Church has since added her to the calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts. Our history is richer for sharing her holiness of life and steadfast devotion.

Pictured: (top) The First Bishop of Georgia, the Rt. Rev. Stephen Elliott places a Book of Common Prayer in the cornerstone for the University of the South, and (bottom) Jenna Ramer’s painting of Deaconess Anna Alexander that is at Christ the King in Valdosta.

The Diocese of Georgia made national news in 1990 as Christ the King entered the Episcopal Church in a historic liturgy in Valdosta. In the year before, The Rev. Stanley White, a fourth generation ordained minister in the Pentecostal church, approached Bishop Harry Shipps about the process required for him and his congregation to enter the Episcopal Church.

A Christianity Today article described the transition leading to that moment: “In the midst of rethinking evangelical worship, White became seized with what he calls an ‘ecumenical spirit.’ He studied Roman Catholicism as well as Anglicanism, Lutheranism, and other liturgical traditions. A friend gave him a copy of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, which White began using in his private devotions. Most important, he attended a liturgical church and felt a spiritual quickening. ‘I experienced God there,’ White says, his voice still registering astonishment several years after the event. ‘That wasn’t supposed to happen. It shocked me.’”

In the Episcopal Church, White could see the possibility for a church which was founded upon the strength of an ancient tradition and an exquisite liturgy, yet was powerfully enlivened by the Spirit, and reached out into the world with a passionate ecumenism.

White would later write of what animated the church he envisioned, “We have not worried so much about external style or external programs. Instead we have reconstructed our interval values to include things like compassion, inclusion, diversity, social justice, community, spirituality and spiritual practice, honor for science and reason, honor for other religious traditions, honor for doubters and those with questions, care for the environment, modest budgets and facilities, to be non-hierarchical and non-clerical and non-patriarchal thus honoring the dignity and wisdom of all people regardless of age, race, gender, sexual orientation, educational level, financial means, or one’s politics.”

Bishop Shipps encouraged the move and the canonical process was begun. Shipps charged two nearby priests, the Rev. Jacoba Hurst of St. Anne’s in Tifton and the Rev. Henry Louttit of Christ Church in Valdosta, with preparing the pastor for ordination to the diaconate and priesthood, and the congregation for confirmation. Hurst described going before the commission on ministry to a Christianity Today reporter saying that feared he had ushered White into the seat of the scornful. “Some of these guys are rather hostile, dour clerics who don’t suffer fools gladly,” Hurst recalled. “They were reserved and cautious at first,” he said; but then something extraordinary happened: “There was the presence of God in that room.” He continued, “I couldn’t speak. It was like some kind of revival” noting several committee members were weeping.

On Easter Eve 1990, before a congregation of more than 800 persons and a 50 member choir and orchestra in the Church of the King in Valdosta, Bishop Shipps, with four neighboring bishops, confirmed 222 baptized persons from the formerly Pentecostal congregation. Stan was ordained as an Episcopal priest on June 9, 1991, on the birthday of his Grandmother White, who he described as an amazing Pentecostal preacher and pastor ahead of her time. The Very Rev. Stan White continued to lead Christ the King until his death in 2020. The congregation is now in the deliberate process which will lead to calling its second rector.

Pictured: (top) A Christianity Today cover story on Christ the King entering the Episcopal Church, and (bottom) the Rev. Stan White and Bishop Harry Shipps during the liturgy as the Rev. Jim Bullion looks on.

After lengthy spiritual discernment and theological debate, the Episcopal Church approved of women’s ordination to the priesthood in 1976. It would be nine years before the first woman was ordained in the Diocese of Georgia.

Bishop Paul Reeves was clear in his opposition to women’s ordination, “this action needs to be seen as but one manifestation of what appears to be a widespread breakdown of sound doctrine and discipline in the Church.” During this time several clergy of the diocese, troubled by the ordination of women, accepted the Pastoral Provision offered by Pope John Paul II in 1980, which allowed for married Episcopal priests to be re-ordained Roman Catholic priests. Three Georgia diocesan priests accepted the offer. Bishop Reeves was supportive of their decision. 

In his final sermon as bishop in 1985, Bishop Reeves said he had served in a, “long and frequently upsetting period of Prayer Book revision; and during this same era we saw our small part of the Anglican Communion opt to go its own reckless way, and change the accepted discipline of nearly two millennia, and say that women could be ordained to the priesthood. These three events occurred during a time of social, economic, political and moral upheaval in our own country and in the world generally. I know of no one who is competent – and I know I am not – to make a final judgment on these phenomena, whether in the long run of history they will be seen to have been positive, or negative, or merely incidental and transitory.”

At the time of his election in 1985, Bishop Harry Shipps was opposed to the ordination of women to the priesthood, especially on grounds of impairment of ecumenical relations with the Roman Catholic Church. In the course of his episcopate Bishop Shipps instituted a listening process with clergy conferences to gauge diocesan reaction to possible ordination of women to the priesthood as permitted by 1976 General Convention. Strong division on both sides of the issue existed. In addition to other opportunities for dialogue the bishop brought the Presiding Bishop, The Most Rev. Edmund L. Browning, to meet in St. Michael’s, Savannah, for open discussion on the issue with clergy and laity of the diocese. 

Early dissent to the ordination of women organized into a group called The Traditionalist Clergy of the Diocese of Georgia. Approximately a dozen diocesan priests attended meetings in Dublin, supported by Bishop Paul Reeves, who came from his retirement home in North Carolina. Bishop Shipps attended several gatherings to explain his positions. The ordination issue led to a split in the congregation of St. John’s in Moultrie, resulting in formation of the congregation of St. Margaret of Scotland. 

Marking a change in his previous position, Bishop Shipps initiated the process leading to ordination of women in both orders. Susan Harrison of Savannah was admitted to the process for vocational diaconate and ordained in September 1985. Sonia Sullivan of Valdosta was accepted for priesthood and attended seminary. At the Sullivan ordination in 1993 at Good Shepherd in Swainsboro, a large contingent of women priests from the Diocese of Atlanta were present in support. 

In the 30 years since that ordination, Bishop Henry Louttit and Bishop Scott Benhase ordained 28 women as deacons (vocational) and 42 women to the Sacred Order of Priests. Bishop Frank Logue has ordained one woman to the diaconate and two women to the priesthood. Many more ordained women have faithfully served in the Diocese of Georgia, serving, so far, in every leadership role in the Diocese except bishop.

Pictured: (top) a newspaper article on the Rev. Sonia Sullivan Clifton’s ordination, (middle) Bishop Shipps is pictured above with the clergy of the Diocese at a diocesan convention, and (bottom) Bishop Logue with clergy at the 2022 diocesan convention. Note: This article was edited from Bishop Shipps’ reflections on his episcopacy with an update added to the end of the article above.

A former US Navy and US Maritime officer took the helm of the Diocese of Georgia in 1985. Harry Woolston Shipps, born in 1926 in Bordentown, New Jersey. Married in 1953, he and his wife Louise have four children. He attended Bordentown High School, Bordentown Military Institute, and the New York State Maritime Academy. In 1946, he was commissioned an officer in the US Navy and the US Maritime Service. He sailed on a troop ship, then with Grace Line Steamship Company until called to active duty in the Navy in 1953 during the Korean War. On discharge, he attended the School of Theology at the University of the South as a postulant from the Diocese of Georgia being a parishioner of St. Paul’s Church in Savannah. Ordained a deacon in May 1958 and a priest the following January, he first served as Vicar of St. Mark’s in Albany. From 1963 until 1970 Bishop Shipps served Holy Apostles, Savannah, then St. Alban’s, Augusta until 1983, when elected Bishop Coadjutor. 

He was consecrated bishop at Christ Church in Savannah on the Feast of the Epiphany in 1984. Bishop Shipps served as coadjutor to Bishop Reeves. Early in his episcopate, Bishop Shipps called the Rev. J. Robert Carter, Vicar of Trinity in Statesboro to serve as Canon to the Ordinary.

Bishop Shipps attended the 1988 Lambeth Conference in Canterbury, England, reporting to Diocesan Convention of 1989 that the experience was an exceptional educational experience making him deeply aware of the size and variety of cultures in the worldwide communion of 70 million people.

Bishop Shipps was active in the House of Bishops. He was a founding bishop of The Irenaeus Fellowship of Bishops, representing a moderate-conservative position in the House of Bishops. Meeting regularly, the group consisted of 64 members of the House of Bishops. A strong supporter of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, he was Chair of the House of Bishops Prayer Book and Worship Committee at the 1994 General Convention. He served twelve years on the Episcopal Church Standing Commission on Ecumenical Relations, where he served as Chair of the Theological Committee. 

Bishop Shipps and The Most Rev. Raymond W. Lessard, Roman Catholic Bishop of Savannah, held several joint clergy conferences with noted speakers from both Churches. This led to a Covenant between the two dioceses calling for a number of programs and responsibilities on the part of each. 

In 1994 the diocesan budget was $1,350,211. The Georgia Episcopal Conference Center (Honey Creek) showed an operating surplus of $9,017. The Corporation of the Diocese reported a balance of $5,232,721. In 1994 the diocese reported 17,197 baptized persons. The bishop reported in his Convention Address that the Diocese of Georgia had the second highest average Sunday attendance of all 99 dioceses in the country and that our stewardship average per Sunday was also second highest in the Church.

Noting that the Diocese of Georgia is one of few Episcopal Church dioceses without a cathedral, In 1993 Bishop Shipps designated St Paul’s, Savannah as his personal or Pro Cathedral, signing a document to this effect at a liturgical event in St. Paul’s. Bishop Shipps’ retirement Eucharist was celebrated in St. Paul’s in January 1995, on the eve of Bishop Louttit’s consecration. Bishop Shipps died on November 17, 2016 and is buried at St. Paul’s in Savannah.

Note: This article was edited from one written by Bishop Shipps. The full text is online here: Bishop Shipps’ Episcopacy.

Pictured: (top) Bishop Harry Shipps is pictured during his consecration on January 6, 1984, and (bottom) Bishop Shipps is shown with the Most Rev. Raymond Lessard, the Roman Catholic Bishop of the Diocese of Savannah.

A former United Churches of Christ Navy Chaplain became the Seventh Bishop of Georgia, leading the diocese through a time of great change in the church. G. Paul Reeves was born in Roanoke, Virginia on 14 October 1918. He graduated from Randolph Macon, and in 1943 from Yale Divinity School. On leaving the Navy in 1948, he was ordained an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Florida. He and his wife Adele had two children. 

Canonically resident in the Diocese of South Florida at the time of his election, he was consecrated bishop coadjutor to serve alongside Bishop Albert Rhett Stuart in Christ Church, Savannah, on September 30, 1969. Bishop Reeves became diocesan bishop on Stuart’s retirement in 1972. In his first Convention address he stressed the centrality of Holy Eucharist as the norm for Sunday worship and the obligation of faithful, regular attendance at church. 

Bishop Reeves held regular clergy conferences and retreats at Honey Creek which sometimes included spouses. In 1972, he sent a group of clergy and laity to Dallas, Texas, to participate in Cursillo who subsequently initiated the program in Georgia. Evangelism and renewal were encouraged and supported by regular Cursillo weekends at Honey Creek and similar Happening events for high school youth. He continued the Companion Diocese program formed under Bishop Stuart with Guiana on the Northern Coast of South America. 

In his 1977 Address to Convention, Bishop Reeves said, “I do not apologize for saying that there is a great deal badly wrong in our Church today. I may surprise – even disappoint – some of you by confining my remarks about the ordination of women to one sentence. In my opinion, the provision for ‘ordination’ of women to the priesthood probably was the most serious single mistake the Episcopal Church has made in the nearly 200 years of its history.” 

In his 1983 Address Bishop Reeves stated, “Most emphatically I am not suggesting a return to the 1928 Book, nor a criticism of our present Book. I am suggesting a criticism of the process that produced the Book…. I would like to see us, one and all, cheerfully use it as the quite adequate instrument it is for our corporate worship.”

To name Bishop Reeves solely as a conservative in a theologically-divided church fails to capture the gifts he brought to his call. Bishop Harry Shipps wrote that, “Reeves was a conservative gentleman with a dry sense of humor. He held a high view of the Church and our individual and corporate responsibility to it as stewards.”

 “There’s an art form to a worship service, particularly an Episcopal service,” said his godson Mills Fleming, “I think his strength was in the liturgy. He was a consummate liturgist.”

Bishop Reeves established seven congregations in the diocese during his episcopacy: St. Francis of Islands in Savannah, and St. Mary Magdalene in Louisville, both in 1976; All Saints in Thomasville, Atonement in Hephzibah, and St. Barnabas in Valdosta, in 1980; St. Thomas Aquinas in Baxley, in 1982; and St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Richmond Hill, in 1983. 

Because of what he named as an increasingly liberal agenda of the General Convention, Bishop Reeves did not attend General Conventions and House of Bishops meetings during his final years as Diocesan. Bishop Reeves retired in February 1985 upon succession of his coadjutor bishop, Harry W. Shipps. He died April 15, 2010. His Requiem Mass was celebrated in St. John’s in Savannah.

Pictured: (top) Bishop Albert Rhett Stuart at left with Bishop Paul Reeves at right when Stuart was the diocesan and Reeves the Bishop Coadjutor, and (bottom) Bishop Reeves in the cope and mitre the Archbishop of the Anglican Church in Japan gave to Bishop Stuart in the 1950s.

1,700 Episcopalians packed the Aquarama on Jekyll Island in 1965 to take part in the closing Eucharist for a diocesan convention during which the Rt. Rev. Albert Rhett Stuart, commissioned twelve bishops to conduct the Bishops’ Crusade with each bishop in one city or town for five days. Bishop Stuart told the Savannah Evening Press, “The purpose of the Crusade is not to foster our Episcopalianism, but to bring the Gospel to the people of South Georgia.”

To support the evangelistic effort, the diocese used roadside billboards, bumper stickers, posters, stacks of calling cards in motels, signs of every description, radio, TV, and newspaper advertising, and a diocesan-wide telephone campaign.

In the week following the liturgy at the Aquarama, Central and South Georgia echoed with a dozen episcopal voices preaching the Gospel. An article in The Living Church said, “All of the bishops were presenting the facts about God’s love, explaining atonement and redemption, sin and repentance. Old-fashioned and basic. But the packaging of the messages, and the answers to questions, were purely twentieth-century. Humor and slang and good, clear, contemporary language were the media. At night the bishops addressed congregations in churches or auditoriums. By day they spoke to clubs, school and college assemblies, youth groups, ministerial alliances; appeared on radio and TV on panels and ‘meet-the-bishop’-type seminars; addressed workers in factories, knitting mills, and railroad yards.”

In sixty sermons and as many more formal and informal addresses to groups of all sizes, the bishops preached always stressing the Crusade theme, “because He loves us,” each told in his own way of that love and what it means. The Living Church added, “The bishops proved three points: (1) good preaching does happen in the Episcopal Church; (2) evangelism does go on in the Episcopal Church; and (3) the Gospel is still and yet Good News.”

This evangelistic effort was the result of meticulous planning under one General Crusade Committee five subcommittees served, each dealing with a specific area: spiritual preparation, services, finance, promotion and publicity, and follow-up. Each of these had a counterpart in the twelve areas which were designated as preaching stations.

How successful was the crusade? St. Philip’s in Hinesville was founded as a direct result of the effort. Beyond this, the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia grew significantly during Bishop Stuart’s episcopacy. While it is easy to note that he served from 1954-1972, which was a prime time for church growth, the Diocese of Georgia’s rate of growth outpaced the growth of population in the state as well as the percentage growth of other denominations during this time. While this can not be shown as cause and effect from the Bishop’s Crusade. It should not be surprising that such a period of growth for Diocese did correlate with a bishop who put such sustained effort into spreading the love of God as found in Jesus.

Bishop Harry Shipps held another Bishops’ Crusade in 1986. Twelve bishops from across the country were once again commissioned, this time by Presiding Bishop John M. Allin in a service at Christ Church in Savannah. They were sent to twelve parishes around the diocese for a three day preaching mission and interaction with parishioners. In January of 2018, Bishop Scott Benhase hosted a revival at Honey Creek. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry brought evangelical fervor to an immense revival tent on the grounds of the retreat center. 

Pictured: Promotional materials and press coverage of the 1965 Bishops’ Crusade are shown in the photo at top. The chart in the middle shows the percentage growth from 1954 to 1967 with the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia’s percentage growth well beyond that of population growth. The bottom photo shows Presiding Bishop Michael Curry preaching at Honey Creek in 2018 as his Canon for Evangelism, the Rev. Canon Stephanie Spellers, looks on.

 

The search for a new diocesan camp began with the decision to sell Camp Reese, the diocesan camp on St. Simon’s Island. Even in the interim, Summer Camp sessions continued. The Diocese rented Kolomoki Mounds State Park near Blakely each summer for several years. A successful fundraising drive provided funds to build a permanent camp and conference center on land provided by Brunswick Pulp and Paper Company on Dover Bluff Road in Camden County bounded on the East by Honey Creek; hence the common name for our retreat center.

In 1955 a young architect, Blake Ellis an Episcopalian fresh out of Georgia Tech, was approached by Bishop Albert Stuart to layout a master plan and design the buildings for a new camp and conference center in Camden County. Many names of buildings from the former Camp Reese were honored at Honey Creek. Ellis, a long-term communicant at Christ Church in Valdosta, designed the Chapel of Our Savior, three dormitories, a dining hall, and two cottages on the 100-acre maritime forest along the tidal creek. These buildings and a pool were completed in time for springtime retreats for adults and the first summer camp session in 1960. The Department of Christian Education of the Diocese planned programs which were participated in by 622 men, women, boys and girls. It was an invaluable experience in Christian living and Christian education. That the first year of use of the new Center proved to be such a smooth operation with such fine results was due to the careful planning and hard work of the teaching staffs and permanent staff, and above all to the devotion of Mr. and Mrs. Sherman Hammatt, the first resident Custodians. Bishop Stuart also facilitated a widely acclaimed free annual camping program for 400 underprivileged children at Honey Creek. Credit for the success of the program was widely given to the organizer, Commander Robert Clinton of St. John’s in Moultrie.

In the 1970’s, Reese Dining Hall and kitchen were expanded to allow for more indoor gathering space. The 1970’s also brought a new and larger meeting space named Stuart Hall for the Bishop. In the early days of the 1990’s, under the leadership of the Rev. Charles and Dot Hay, a successful environmental education program began, and a new campus office was built, along with twenty additional lodge rooms.

When prior debts threatened the center in 2010, Bishop Scott Benhase worked to bring to fruition the Honey Creek Commission’s plans to restructure the debt into bonds. He also hired Dade Brantley as the Executive Director and oversaw the restructuring of the staffing model to have as needed staff for dining hall, cleaning, and maintenance to bring an end to the center losing money. Before stepping down as diocesan bishop, Benhase got a plan in place to pay off the bond debt through a three-year 2% assessment approved unanimously by the Diocesan Convention. That plan completed at the end of 2022, having successfully cleared the debt. The Honey Creek Retreat Center continues to serve as the parish hall for the Diocese of Georgia.

Pictured: Bishop Stuart laying the cornerstone at the Chapel of Our Savior at Honey Creek on October 31, 1959 (top); and (below) Pam Guice leads singing with assistance from the Revs. Jim Parker, Henry Louttit, and others.

In 1954 at the diocesan electing convention in St. Paul’s Church in Savannah, 17 candidates were on the ballot for Bishop of Georgia. The election was a decisive one as the Diocese elected the Very Rev. Albert Rhett Stuart, Dean of Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans on the second ballot.

Born in 1906 in Washington, DC, Stuart grew up in Eastover, SC., son of a country doctor. He attended Episcopal High School in Alexandria, Virginia and graduated from University of Virginia in 1928, and Virginia Theological Seminary in 1931. Ordained priest at Church of the Resurrection, Greenwood in the Diocese of Upper South Carolina by Bishop K. G. Finlay. He became rector of this parish, leaving in 1936 to become rector of St. Michael’s Church in Charleston. In 1945, Stuart married Isabella C. Alston. They would have two children, Garden and Isabelle. He served as chaplain in the US Navy during World War II from 1942 to 1947 and returned to become the Cathedral Dean in New Orleans.

Bishop Stuart and his family lived in the episcopal residence on Victory Drive and Reynolds Street in Savannah. The diocesan office at that time was in the basement of Christ Church in Savannah; the sole full time employee Olwyn Morgan, a native of Wales. Bishop Stuart moved the offices to 611 East Bay Street, which allowed for additional staff and a chapel. The bishop’s wife, Isabella, died in an automobile accident in South Carolina enroute to their vacation cottage. She was, of course, much mourned by the Diocese, as well as by Bishop Stuart and his family.

In his 1962 convention address, after announcing the largest number of confirmations in the history of the diocese during the prior year, 819 persons, Bishop Stuart noted: “This is a gratifying achievement, but I must point out that it is below the normal growth rate of 10% of our communicants. If your congregation did not present for confirmation 10% of your communicant strength during the year, it is apparent that the members of your congregation are shifting their evangelistic responsibility to the clergy. The instruction for Confirmation in the Diocese should emphasize that each person presenting will himself be expected to present one other person for confirmation within the year.”

Bishop Stuart always dressed in black vest and white shirt with French cuffs. Bishop Harry Shipps wrote of Stuart that he was, “The epitome of a Southern gentleman, he had impeccable credentials, strong leadership skills, and innate wisdom, all of which served him well as the storm clouds of racial unrest appeared over the South.”

Henry Louttit, recalls in his booklet, Saints of the Diocese of Georgia how Bishop Stuart was often the only white voice for integration in Savannah willing to speak on TV. He remembers him speaking up for welcoming groups seeking to integrate churches, “This is a free country. You can belong to any kind of church you wish, but the Episcopal Church has never asked anyone why they were coming to the church. We are not starting asking people now. This church is open to anyone who wishes to worship.”

When Bishop Stuart was consecrated in 1954, there were 8,904 communicants in the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia. He served as diocesan bishop through 1971, by which time the diocese had grown to 12,180 communicants.

Pictured: Bishop Stuart’s official portrait (top) and (below) Bishop Stuart is pictured with his secretary Olwyn Morgan in his office at 611 East Bay Street in Savannah.

From the Diocese’ founding until 1906, a single convention met each year, conducting business for all the clergy and congregations of the Diocese. In that year, just before the Diocese divided into two dioceses in one state, the convention approved a separate “Council for Colored Churchmen.” It was at the second such meeting in 1907 at Good Shepherd in Thomasville, that Bishop C.K. Nelson set aside Anna E.B. Alexander as a Deaconess. The separate church meetings continued all through the Episcopacy of Bishop Frederick F. Reese who was the first Bishop of Georgia after the creation of the Diocese of Atlanta.

In 1911, Bishop Reese reported to the all white convention of the Council for black Episcopalians, “every possible opportunity should be given this Council and responsibility laid upon it for the direction of the work among their own people.”

In his first Bishop’s Address in 1936, the Rt. Rev. Middleton Stuart Barnwell said, “I am particularly concerned about the relationship existing between the Convention of the Diocese and the colored churches.” Naming “manifest inconsistencies in our canon laws which deal with this relationship,” he called for a committee “to consider this matter seriously.”

He went on to add, “I have no desire to suggest at this time any change in the relationship existing between the Council of Colored Churchmen and the Diocesan Convention. I wish, however, to make myself perfectly clear in one respect. This committee may go as far as it pleases in the matter of granting recognition to the colored parishes on the floor of this Convention, without meeting with any opposition on the part of the ecclesiastical authority.”

The Diocese of Virginia had enfranchised black churchmen to vote in its diocesan convention in 1931. Bishop Barnwell wanted to gently lead the Diocese through this same change, so he made it clear that he would fully support meeting in a single convention. Yet, he added, “This is a matter which I intend, however, to leave entirely in your hands, as I realize full well that it is a matter upon which a comparative new-comer in your midst should walk warily.”

Diocesan conventions continued to be segregated as black Episcopalians met in a separate Council presided over by the Bishop of Georgia. In 1946, the Federal Council of Churches condemned discrimination as Mainline Protestant churches began to move towards the goal of a “desegregated church in a desegregated society.” The Federal Council of Churches named discrimination as a “violation of the gospel of love and human brotherhood.”

In 1947 the Diocese of Georgia took steps to end racial distinctions between clergy and lay leaders in the constitution, canons, and in other official references. This action followed trends among other southern dioceses as the Diocese of Southern Virginia had acted in 1946 and South Carolina and Arkansas would do so in 1947. The constitution and canons amended in 1947 provided that “future representatives of both races would attend the same assembly and have the same voting privileges.”

Pictured: Photos taken at two Councils for Colored Churchmen in the Diocese of Georgia with the top undated photo taken in front of St. Athanasius’ Church in Brunswick and the bottom one from 1942 in Augusta.

In 1934, Bishop Frederick F. Reese was in his 26th year as Bishop of Georgia when he called for the election of a successor. At a special convention later that year, the delegates established the Bishop Coadjutor’s salary at $5,000 (which is $111,200 in 2022 dollars) and provided that Bishop Reese should have the use of “the Episcopal Residence” in Savannah “for the remaining years of his life free of expense and without any embarrassment.”

Three rectors and three bishops of missionary dioceses made the slate. Twelve ballots were taken without any one nominee receiving the required thirteen clerical and nine lay votes for a majority. Dr. Henry Phillips, Rector of Trinity in Columbus, South Carolina, led in the clergy balloting, while Dr. C.C.J. Carpenter of St. John’s in Savannah led in the lay order. Dr. Jimmy Lawrence of Calvary in Americus and the three bishops lagged in the voting. The Special Convention adjourned.

The special convention met again in January 1935 at St. Paul’s in Augusta with Phillips, Carpenter, and Lawrence nominated as a slate of three. In four ballots Dr. Phillips continued to lead with clergy and Dr. Carpenter favored by the laity. The convention dropped the bottom vote getter after the next ballot, which removed Dr. Lawrence from the slate. The sixth ballot revealed the same deadlock. The convention voted to remove Philips and Carpenter from further consideration.

The convention approved a new slate with Dr. Lawrence back on the ballot with the bishops considered in the first special convention brought back for consideration: Missionary Bishop William P. Remington of Oregon, Missionary Bishop Elmer N. Schmuck of Wyoming, and Missionary Bishop Middleton Stuart Barnwell of Idaho. Bishop Barnwell’s name led the votes in each order without getting a majority. On the ninth ballot, the convention elected Bishop Barnwell as Bishop Coadjutor.

A relation of Georgia’s first bishop, Middleton Stuart Barnwell was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1882. He earned his Bachelors in Divinity from Virginia Theological Seminary. Barnwell served as an assistant rector in Baltimore before becoming the rector of St. Andrew’s Church in New Bedford, Massachusetts. While there, he married Margaret Thorne Lighthall (1889-1960).

Barnwell worked at the Church of the Advent in Birmingham, Alabama, from 1913-1923. He then became field secretary to the Protestant Episcopal Church before being consecrated Bishop of Idaho in 1925. During the late 1920s and early 30s, Barnwell ran St. Margaret’s School, a secondary girls academy in Boise, Idaho. He advocated that the academy become a junior college so that local high school graduates could begin their college education without out-of-state costs and he secured funding from The Episcopal Church. Bishop Barnwell served as the college president for Boise Junior College from 1932 until 1934. The college grew to become Boise State University.

Barnwell had served as Missionary Bishop of Idaho for nearly a decade when the call for a bishop coadjutor went out from the Diocese of Georgia. At the time of his 1935 election as Bishop of Georgia, there were 16 parishes, 21 organized missions, 13 unorganized missions, five mission stations and one parochial mission. The segregated church records noted 5,391 white and 1,029 black communicants.

Pictured: Bishop Middleton Stuart Barnwell. Photo courtesy Boise State University Library.

When recounting the history of the Diocese of Georgia, one can miss the impact that extends well beyond the bounds of the Diocese. Two women–Sarah Elliott and Nellie Bright–raised in the Diocese are examples of people influenced here who went on to make a difference well beyond Georgia.

Sarah “Sada” Barnwell Elliott (1848-1928) was born at the Montpelier Institute, which her father, Bishop Stephen Elliott founded near Forsyth, Georgia. Elliott was a strong proponent of education for women. Bishop Elliott died in 1866, when Sada was 18. She moved to Sewanee with her mother in 1871 and other than attending classes at Johns Hopkins University in 1886 and living in New York City from 1895 to 1904, she was on the Mountain the remainder of her life.

Sada published her first novel, The Felmeres (1879), at the age of 31. The novel of a woman whose unbending devotion to duty and honor led to tragic consequences interested reviewers who did not anticipate serious themes from a woman. She traveled to Texas to visit her brother, Robert, who was the Missionary Bishop of Western Texas, which led to her second novel, A Simple Heart (1887). As with all of her writings, the Episcopal Church featured prominently in the story. Her most successful novel was Jerry (1891) and her strongest female lead came with The Making of Jane (1901). She set aside her career as an author to raise two orphaned nephews. Yet, she remained a noted resident of Sewanee with her “Mondays” when she held an open house for residents and students during which she gained a reputation for her sharp wit.

Elliott became active in the women’s suffrage movement and served as president of the Tennessee Equal Suffrage Association from 1912-1914. Her invitation to the National American Woman Suffrage Association led to that group meeting in Nashville in 1914 in a convention that increased support for suffrage in Tennessee. Her writing was part of a movement of local color books, with characters speaking in dialect, that fell out of fashion by the time she died. Her work on the right to vote had an enduring legacy as Tennessee became the last state needed to pass women’s suffrage nationwide.

Nellie Rathbone Bright (1898-1977) was born in Savannah to the Rev. Richard and Nellie Bright. Her father was the Rector of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Savannah. Her mother, Nellie, was educated in Europe as a teacher. The Bright’s valued education and established the first private kindergarten and primary school for blacks in Georgia. When their daughter, also named Nellie, was 12, the family moved to Philadelphia as part of the Great Migration. After graduation from the University of Pennsylvania in 1923 with a Bachelors in English, Bright taught in Philadelphia public schools. She served as a principal from 1935 until her 1952 retirement. During the 1920s she was part of a literary group known as the Black Opals. In 1927–1928, She co-edited Black Opals, together with Arthur Fauset. The literary magazine, published in Philadelphia, was part of the larger influence of the Harlem Renaissance.

Allen Ballard was a student of hers who became an author and history professor. He said that she was a strict principal who instilled a love for and pride of African American history and culture in her students. He added, “We were all Nellie Bright’s children and she expected great things from us and so she created a wonderful school.”

Pictured: Sarah Barnwell Elliott (top) The Felmeres is linked above and her short-story collection As Others See Us is also in print; Nellie Rathbone Bright (bottom).

No one in Sumter County had encountered a minister like the Rev. Dr. James Bolan Lawrence (1878-1947)—“He smoked, he drank, he liked good stories.” He attended country club dances and made headlines for preaching a sermon in favor of golf on Sunday.

Gertrude Davenport, who knew him well, wrote that Lawrence, who was known in the area as “Brother Jimmy” was handsome, well-bred and scholarly. Lawrence, who grew up in the family of a patriarch of St. James Episcopal Church in Marietta, Georgia, was known for his love of “good food, good drink, good tobacco, good music, good clothes.” He read Homer and Virgil in their original Greek and Latin and to study laboriously to craft sermons “expressed in such beautiful language” that his friend noted were nonetheless “rarely were stimulating.”

Davenport recalls how though he was often ignored, laughed at and publicly made fun of, Dr. Lawrence persevered. He tirelessly worked to live out the Gospel. He carried the sick to hospitals, helped rehabilitate alcoholics, assisted boys and girls to get an education while teaching others himself. Little by little, she wrote, this county seat town observed the odd man with his collar on backwards helping people “high and low, rich and poor, young and old, good and bad.” He was versed in Greek, Latin and French, but he was never heard talking down to anyone. Too old to fight in World War I, he went into the YMCA and served near the front just the same. He returned from the war to take back up his steadfast example of trying to follow Christ.

Besides seeing significant growth in the membership at Calvary in Americus, he founded churches in Pennington (the log chapel is now in Andersonville), in Vienna, in Cordele, Blakely, Cuthbert, Dawson, and Benevolence. He would get on the train, and go to the next stop, get off and gather people to hear the Gospel.

In 1947 when Mr. Lawrence retired from active service, Bishop Barnwell commented on the Archdeacon’s forty-three years of faithful duty: “So far as my knowledge of the record goes, this is the longest period of service rendered by any man in the history of the Diocese.” He added, “Dr. Lawrence is still a missionary.”

When he died, he was laid to rest beside the log church of St. James. The mile-long funeral procession followed his casket, many on foot the 13 miles from church to church. Davenport shared that he had not gained hard-earned respect with noble church building efforts any more than through eloquent preaching. The people in Americus and the towns all around it loved Brother Jimmy Lawrence for his example of “kindness, selflessness, and utter goodness.” Bishop Henry I. Louttit, Jr. named him a Saint of Georgia in 1999 and established a local feast of September 3.

For 30 years, the Diocese of Georgia enjoyed summer camp sessions on St. Simons Island. These began as a modest offering when the Rev. W.A. Jonnard, an associate at St. John’s in Savannah, took 14 young people for a two-week stay on the island in 1924. That summer and in the years until the Diocese built a camp, the group lived in rooms at a beach motel.

In 1932, the Diocese purchased ten lots of land a few hundred yards from the Atlantic Ocean using a gift of $7,500 from Mr. and Mrs. Charles Chapin of Thomasville and $2,300 in diocesan funds (a total of $218,000 in 2020 dollars). The Diocese built Chapin Hall at the Camp Reese named for Bishop Frederick F. Reese, who was the Bishop of Georgia at the time of the purchase.

Eleven additional lots were added and buildings given in subsequent years. St. John’s Church in Savannah built Jonnard Cottage in 1933. The next year, Christ Church in Savannah built Wright Cottage in honor of their Rector, the Rev. David Cady Wright. St. Paul’s and Good Shepherd in Augusta added the Augusta Cottage in 1936. Funded from various gifts in 1938, Aiken Cottage was named in honor of Frank Aiken of Brunswick. Also in 1938, the Young People’s Service Group built Alexander Cottage in honor of Deaconess Anna Alexander who worked at the camp in the summer to raise money to support the school in Pennick. Alexander Cottage was described as a servants’ house for the camp.

In a Living Church article in 1945, the Rev. James Lawrence reported, “From the scant beginning when Mr. Jonnard and his handful of campers rented a beach hotel the camp has grown and so contributed to Church life that it has been described as ‘the powerhouse of the diocese.’” That same year, the Diocese reported a camp enrollment of “457 persons comprising different youths and adults who attended that summer.”

Rita Griffeth, a Glynn County native who lived in Savannah, served as the diocesan secretary of religious education at this time. Each year from 1925 to 1950, she drove the backroads of central and south Georgia to personally find counselors and campers and then tirelessly run the program.

During the post World War II years, the Diocese added two new buildings, a chapel and a recreational hall, the latter a memorial to Lt. Carl Schuessler, a U. S. Marine who lost his life in the Pacific after serving seven years on the staff of the camp. A tabby outdoor altar under the branches of a majestic live oak served as a beloved outdoor chapel, named Barnwell Chapel, for Bishop Reese’s successor, the Rt. Rev. Middleton Stuart Barnwell.

The Diocese added an annual Layman’s Conference in 1949 as noted in a report to convention that “Much of this lay interest in the Church had been engendered over the years at special conferences and retreats at the Diocesan assembly, Camp Reese.”

By 1954, the buildings were becoming out-moded and the original privacy of the Camp was being lost as a result of continued residential construction adjoining the Camp. The Convention voted to sell the property. In the years between Camp Reese and Honey Creek, the diocese held youth conferences at Kolomoki State Park in Blakely and at Abraham Baldwin College in Tifton.

Pictured: The beach near Camp Reese (top); the outdoor altar at Camp Reese, painted by Tisha Chambers (bottom).

Though the practice has been done away with a century ago, pew rents were once the primary source of funds for Episcopal Churches. Prominent families rented prominent pew, so that the closer a family sat to the altar or pulpit, it signaled their higher socio-economic position. Some churches would rent all the pews. Others would have some pews “set aside for strangers” as Christ Church in Macon put it in a vestry vote in 1833.

This system assisted in building churches. For example, an auction for pews in Columbus raised a revenue of $3,369 a year in 1835, making the construction possible (this is $105,855 in 2022 dollars). Yet the system was not never perfect. The Panic of 1837 was devastating to the economy. By October, 1839, creditors filed suit against the church for failing to make its payments as pew rents fell to less than $1,000 a year in 1839-1840.

While pew rentals funded the ministry, they were also a deterrent to any visitors and especially the poor. In the 1850s, St. Paul the Apostle in Savannah and the Church of the Atonement in Augusta were the first churches in the Diocese to offer free pews.

St. Paul’s in Savannah would be the first. The legacy of Mrs. Dorothy Abrahams of Savannah, and the generosity of the parishioners of Christ Church and St. John’s Church assisted in paying for a chapel to be built with an accumulated sum of $15,000. This built St. Paul’s Free Chapel, a congregation inspired by the Oxford Movement vision that all sorts and conditions of men, women and children are part of the Body of Christ and the church was not a place where the world’s measures applied. For the first time in Savannah, an Episcopal church was to be supported by the contributions rather than from the rental of pews.

A further step toward democratization of the Episcopal Church in Georgia occurred shortly after in Augusta when the Church of the Atonement was founded. A fund established by Mr. and Mrs. Hallowell Gardiner and Miss Mary G. Jones made possible a church to serve the families in a new manufacturing area.

Bishop Stephen Elliott had mentioned the obstacle pew rents presented in some of his Bishop Addresses. For example, in 1854 he said, “To be pointed at as the church of the rich and the refined and the fashionable, when Christ had given it as one of the marks of his mission, that the gospel was preached unto the poor, was a condition under which she was not satisfied to rest.”

Yet pew rents remained the norm. This changed slowly with the practice finally ending on December 31, 1919 when Christ Church in Savannah, the final congregation with pew rent, removed its rental system. Through its history, the principal source of income for the parish had been the rental of pews, which in 1910 brought in $8,144, ($250,588 today). Annual pledges became the new normal for churches that had been unsure how to budget as they dropped the requirement to rent their pew.

Pictured: Trinity Church in Columbus and Christ Church in Savannah.

Bishop F.F. Reese’s greatest area of expansion in the early part of the 20th century was in creating new African American congregations. He told the diocesan convention in 1910, “My brief experience as a Bishop, ministering to the negroes, has excited in me a much greater degree of sympathy and interest in the Church’s work among them than I felt before.”

He said, “Just in so far as we believe ourselves to be a superior race are we responsible under God to be calm and patient and just and kind,” and then later in the address added, “We cannot, dare not, look God in the face and say we will have nothing to do with it or them.”

He spoke to the faithful work underway by African American clergy, “Our colored clergy are, I believe, faithful, earnest men. Some of them are exceptional men among their people, men of character and devotion. They are laboring under great difficulties and with poor and inadequate support. They are making bricks with but little straw.”

When the diocese elected Bishop Reese in 1908, the congregations noted as “colored” in the convention journal comprised one parish and seven missions. The sole African American church among the 14 parishes was St. Stephen’s in Savannah. Among the missions of the Diocese were the African American missions of St. Mary’s in Augusta, St. Athanasius’ in Brunswick, St. Bartholomew’s in Burroughs just south of Savannah, St. Cyprian’s in Darien, Good Shepherd in Pennick, Our Savior in St. Marys, and St. Augustine’s in Savannah.

By 1910, six more missions were started for black Episcopalians: St. John’s in Albany, St. John in the Woods in Inwood near Darien, the two congregations of St. Ignatius’ and St. Perpetua’s on St. Simons Island, St. James in Tarboro, and Good Shepherd in Thomasville. By the end of his episcopacy, he would also start the African American missions of St. Ambrose in Waycross and St. Philip’s in Hawkinsville.

Throughout this time, the congregations met for a separate council for the Colored Churchmen of the Diocese of Georgia. The conventions remained segregated though Bishop Reese’s tenure with separate councils held from 1907 to 1947. In 1911, Bishop Reese told the all white convention of the meeting for black Episcopalians, “every possible opportunity should be given this Council and responsibility laid upon it for the direction of the work among their own people.”

At this same time debate at the church-wide level focused on two competing plans for expanding work among African Americans. One plan would elect from black clergy some suffragan bishops who served under the bishop diocesan. The second plan would create missionary districts served by blacks bishops who did not report to a diocesan. The Diocese of Georgia preferred raising up a Bishop Suffragans as a report read, “We believe that there is a real necessity and a justifiable demand on the part of the negro Churchmen for authorized leaders of their own race if our Church is to command the allegiance of that Race.” Suffragans would not be given a vote in the House of Bishops or the right to become a diocesan bishop. The same report noted that this was the “only plan by which complete control on the part of the white Bishop of the Diocese can still be maintained.”

In 1918, the dioceses of Arkansas and North Carolina did elect the first black Episcopal priests to serve as bishops. Many black Episcopalians delighted in seeing African American bishops while many others saw the move as a hollow gesture.

Pictured: St. Athanasius in Brunswick (top); Good Shepherd in Thomasville (bottom).

When the state of Georgia split into two Episcopal dioceses, Bishop C.K. Nelson became the first bishop of the Diocese of Atlanta. Within the new bounds of the Diocese of Georgia, transportation to churches and income for ministry both presented significant issues for whoever would become the bishop of the southern 2/3s of the state. As to transportation, only local trains on two secondary branches of the Coast Line and Seaboard served south Georgia. They arrived at all of the western points in the diocese at two o’clock in the morning and returned to Savannah at about the same hour. This made for a difficult travel schedule for a bishop. With regard to money for mission, the Diocese of Atlanta retained the endowments which had been left in the wills of faithful churchmen and women even of the Coastal area. The sole endowment remaining was the Dodge Fund that could only be used for the education of poor boys.

Despite the challenges, there were seven nominees for bishop–two were clergy from within the diocese while five were serving elsewhere in the southeast. Frederick Focke Reese was among the three leading candidates on the first ballot and was elected by majority vote of both lay and clergy orders on the fourth ballot. Born in Baltimore, Maryland on October 23, 1854, Reese graduated from the University of Maryland and Berkeley Theological Seminary (at Yale University) before his ordination to the priesthood in 1877. He served as an Episcopal priest in Baltimore, then in Virginia. He was well known in the Diocese as he had served as the Rector of Christ Church in Macon, during which time he was the Secretary of the Convention of the Diocese of Georgia. At the time of his election, Reese was the Rector of Christ Church, Nashville. He was consecrated in Christ Church, Savannah on May 20, 1908. Almost immediately, poor health caused the newly elected bishop to take an extended leave of absence. He resumed ecclesiastical duties April 1, 1909.

In his first address to convention in 1909, Bishop Reese spoke of the difficulty in finding priests for the mission stations of the Diocese. He said, “It is cold comfort to ask our mission stations to be patient; they have been patient; but we must ask them, in considering the matter, to bear in mind the great difficulty which confronts us.”

His successor, Bishop Middleton Barnwell, said of Reese’s tenure, “Again and again he plead, and for a long time in vain, for enough money to raise the salaries of married missionaries to $1,200 a year. $800 seems to have been almost the maximum. He had no travel allowance to speak of, he rented his own house, he had nothing to build with in the mission field and his own salary was often far in arrears. We owed him something like $2,500 in back salary when I came to Georgia in 1935.”

Through the years, Bishop Reese would address conventions about how our churches were seen as strange and different as our manner of worship is different from our neighbors. But he remained steadfast in the conviction that we must share our faith. He told the diocesan convention in 1929, “​​Christianity is either a missionary religion or it is nothing, and every Christian is a missionary or he denies the faith in his life, if not in his words.”

The late 19th and early 20th centuries brought growth to the Episcopal Church in Georgia. From 1893–1906, the diocese went from 88 missions to 108 and from 6,292 communicants to 9,229. During that same time period, congregations built sixty-two church buildings. In many ways, this was all according to plan. The idea at the time of Bishop C.K. Nelson’s election as the third Bishop of Georgia, the scope of the call was seen as two big for one person, but not yet enough work for two. The hope was that growing the number of congregations and parishioners could lead to two dioceses in the state, each better served by having two bishops in the state. Similar church growth was leading to states splitting into more than one dioceses elsewhere in the Episcopal Church.

Bishop Nelson would tell the convention that the need for two diocesan bishops was largely one of authority, “Observation and experience have convinced me that no arrangement of agent, Archdeacon or Coadjutor will ever satisfy the demands among these people who are most amenable when brought into direct touch with the authoritative head of affairs, but do not heed an intermediary.”

It took 15 years of sustained work by Bishop Nelson to get the Episcopal Church in Georgia to that point. In his annual address to the Convention of 1906, he referred again to the proposed separation as he had for a number of years. Following a brief summary of the amount of time devoted to his work in the preceding year, he remarked: “I am more than ever impressed with the economy to the Church which would result from a division of labor that would give me a part, at least, of the 65 days (of twenty-four hours each) spent on the cars and at railroad stations …. It is my solemn belief that no man reading these details [of my duties] would hesitate a moment in forming a conviction as to the necessity of erecting two Dioceses out of Georgia.”

In further justification of the separation, the Bishop offered some statistics comparing Georgia with other Dioceses. He pointed out that nine other Dioceses had half as many clergy as Georgia, that twenty-nine had half as many parishes and missions, and that eighteen had half as many communicants. When the plan for division came forward in 1907, there would be 28 parishes and missions in the Diocese to the north and 24 parishes and missions in the southern division. The amount of income from each part of the division was nearly identical, yet all knew that the northwest portion of the state was set to grow at a faster rate than more rural central and south Georgia.

The Diocese of Atlanta was set apart from the Diocese of Georgia in 1907 with Nelson serving as its first Bishop. Nelson would die on February 12, 1917 at the age of 65. He had served as a bishop for 25 years. The Diocese of Georgia’s first item of business would be to elect a successor to Bishop Nelson.

Pictured: Bishop C.K. Nelson.

Anna Ellison Butler Alexander (1865-1947) was born on Georgia’s Saint Simons Island, the youngest of eleven children. Her parents, James and Daphne Alexander, were enslaved on the plantations of Pierce Butler (1810 – 1867). She grew up in the Pennick Community west of Brunswick. Anna, a cradle Episcopalian, was dissatisfied with public education. “I pitied the poor little ones,” she recalled, “but cannot teach the church in school.” She joined two of her sisters, Mary and Dora, in the school founded by Mary at St. Cyprian’s Church in Darien.

One Sunday, she attended a service at St. Athanasius Church in Brunswick and fell into conversation with a lay reader, Charles A. Shaw. That discussion sparked her dream of establishing a mission in Pennick. St. Athanasius’ priest, the Rev. J. J. Perry, agreed to baptize “any that I can present for baptism.” Within two weeks, Perry found himself making the trek to Pennick to baptize the first six children of the new congregation.

Anna continued to teach in Darien. Each Sunday she made a round trip of forty miles by boat and foot. In 1897, however, Anna was accepted at St. Paul’s School [now College] in Virginia. She returned three years later to establish a school and revive the church. For the first year, Anna taught at home and supported herself by taking in sewing. Anna raised funds to buy the land and purchase lumber for the school.

During his last year as Bishop of Georgia, Bishop C.K. Nelson visited the mission and was deeply impressed by Anna’s achievements. In 1907 at a service at Good Shepherd in Thomasville as a part of the Convention for Colored Episcopalians, Bishop C.K. Nelson set Anna aside as a deaconess. The term “set aside” noted that a deaconess was not considered ordained, but living a life of consecrated service to God. She would be the only African American to serve as a deaconess, before women could be ordained as a deacon starting in 1974.

In a 1910 report on a United Thank Offering grant that supported her work, Deaconess Alexander wrote, “My life in the mission is a busy one. There are times for weeks when I have not an hour to call mine. Some days, leaving home in the morning, I go to the school-house, and, after finishing the teaching for the day, I take one of the children with me for company, guide, or protection, and walk nine or ten miles, visiting the people, before reaching home in the evening.” At that time in her eighth year of the school, she had 100 students and five of her graduates were studying at her alma mater, St. Paul’s School in Virginia.

She would continue in ministry until 1945, finding support largely from philanthropists in the north as she received no assistance from her Diocese. She served her entire ministry as a deaconess in a segregated church as a separate meeting for black Episcopalians met apart from diocesan conventions from 1907-1947.

Deaconess Alexander’s feast day of September 25 is in the Episcopal Church’s Lesser Feasts and Fasts. Those recognized as saints will typically exhibit the following traits: heroic faith, love, goodness of life, joyousness, service to others for Christ’s sake, and devotion. Through her holiness of life, constant example and teaching, many children received a quality education and went on to technical school and college. She transformed her community for the better in showing Christ-like love.

Finding a successor for the Second Bishop of Georgia, the Rt. Rev. Bishop John Beckwith proved difficult. In May 1891, the convention of the Diocese of Georgia elected the Rev. Thomas F. Gailor, the Vice-Chancellor of the University of the South at Sewanee over two other candidates for bishop–the Rector of St. Paul’s, Augusta and the missionary bishop of North Texas. Gailor declined the election saying that he felt called to his work at the university.

That July, the convention met again with two bishops on the slate–the missionary bishop of Northern California and the missionary bishop of Wyoming and Idaho. Bishop Ethelbert Talbot was elected and a two-person delegation was sent to Laramie, Wyoming, to meet with him. For three days the Rev. F.F. Reese and Mr. W.K. Miller talked repeatedly with Talbot, who would neither accept nor reject the offer. Finally the delegation headed back to Georgia offering him an additional thirty days to make up his mind. In September, Bishop Talbot declined the call, writing to the Diocese of Georgia that he felt “deeply committed to the missionary operations of the Church in this new and growing West.”

The convention reconvened on November 11 with four priests of the Diocese of Georgia on the slate along with the rector of Christ Church in Detroit, Michigan, and the Rev. Cleland Kinloch Nelson, rector of the Church of the Nativity in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Nelson received majorities in both houses, with scattered votes for Johnson and the four Georgia clergy.

Nelson was consecrated as Bishop on February 24, 1892, in St. Lukes’ Church, Atlanta. That May he addressed the annual convention saying, “The proper attitude of the Church in Georgia is best described by the word aggressive…we, the Bishop and missionary clergy, are charged with the responsibility of awaking to life dormant stations and entering immediately upon a lively campaign in quarters where the Church has as yet no foothold.”

He named areas which needed “to be attacked (to use the warlike phrase proper to a militant church), and to be strongly manned.” These were Cordele, Abbeville, Tifton, Montezuma, Butler, Guyton, Tennile, Sandersville, Rockmart, and Jesup and he added beyond these were “a hundred other towns of 600 to 2,500 population” as a mission field.

With a practical view to the financial responsibilities which such an expansion would bring, in 1892 Bishop Nelson asked for, over and above regular annual missionary funds, $2,500 from each convocation, for a total of $10,000 (which is $317,700 in 2022 dollars). The missions themselves did contribute a total of almost $21,000 to the budget for their maintenance and improvement that same year. Georgia was at that time a largely missionary diocese, with just twenty-six parishes that were fully self-supporting out of a total number of 138 congregations.

Bishop Nelson chose Atlanta for his cathedral city, saying that the capital of the church should be in the capital of the state. St. Luke’s became the Diocese of Georgia’s first cathedral. Two years later the cathedral site was changed to St. Philip’s.

Missionary work resulted in sustained growth of the Episcopal Church in Georgia in the decades following the American Civil War. During Bishop John Beckwith’s 23 years as Bishop of Georgia, he averaged a little more than one new congregation every year as he added 22 congregations and five missions. Realizing that the state of Georgia was too big for one person to handle alone, Beckwith made administrative changes to enable the expansion. At the Diocesan Convention of 1870, a new canon was adopted which established four missionary districts. This relieved the Bishop of the sole responsibility for stimulating, establishing, and maintaining new missions.
One typical example was in Hawkinsville. Dr. and Mrs. Golding were Episcopalians who moved to town in 1862. They spoke with some other families and together asked the Convocation Dean, the Rev. H.K. Rees of St. Paul’s, Macon, if he could assist. They first gathered at Wimberly’s Hall on Commerce Street. Ministers from Macon came at intervals to hold these services and a Sunday school was organized. Bishop John Beckwith was one of the first to give to your building fund. They built a 24 by 50 foot plain frame building. The chancel and vestry rooms would come later. The Rev. H.K. Rees built the altar by hand.

In January of 1872, Bishop Beckwith wrote in his journal that he gave his canonical consent to organizing the Parish of St. Luke’s, Hawkinsville adding that, “A little band of faithful churchmen…have here labored against great difficulties with unflagging zeal to form a congregation and build a church. God has blessed their efforts, and I had the privilege of ministering to them in their own neat building…. Their zeal and devotion are worthy of imitation.”

This pattern of Episcopalians moving to town, beginning to meet on their own, and then asking for some diocesan assistance was common. Financing the missionary efforts became an ongoing problem. It was readily apparent that the parish clergy were too busy with parochial duties to give effective missionary service on a regular basis. The Diocese assigned and paid the compensation for a mission minister-in-charge for these stations. By 1880 the Diocese had established a Board of Missions with responsibility for the ambitious missionary operations. This group consisted of the Bishop, the four Deans, and four laymen who apportioned monies to “the feeble Parishes and Mission Stations.”

By 1890, the Diocese supported eleven missionaries in addition to the Diocesan Missionary to further the work of church planting across the state. That November, Bishop Beckwith fell ill and was sick enough that he authorized the Standing Committee to act on his behalf. He died two weeks later, on November 23, at the age of 59. At that time, there were 50% more baptized members of the Episcopal Church than when he was consecrated as the second Bishop of Georgia. He and his wife, Ella, are buried in Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery.

The young son of a wealthy New York City family, Anson Green Phelps Dodge, Jr. (1860-1898) was sent south after the American Civil War to tour the family’s timber property on St. Simons Island. He rode out on horseback to the north end of the island and found the ruined Christ Church. Built in 1820, near the site of the oak tree under which the Wesley brothers preached, the church was virtually destroyed by Federal soldiers during the in 1862. He was so horrified by the treatment of the building and sought Holy Orders to address the problem personally. Dodge entered the General Theological Seminary to prepare to spend his life pastoring and rebuilding Christ Church as a religious community, in addition to rebuilding its building.

The young Dodge fell in love with his younger first cousin, Ellen Ada Phelps. Their marriage in 1880 created a scandal. Eventually, the family agreed to the match. The couple planned an ambitious 3-year trip around the world as their honeymoon journey. In India, Ellen contracted cholera and died. Devastated by her death, Anson had his wife embalmed and placed in a metal coffin inside an ebony casket. He had promised her on her death bed that he would not leave her side. True to his word, he remained by her casket in the hold of the ship for a long return journey. He buried her under the altar at Frederica on his return to the Georgia coast. In time, he remarried. His second wife, Anna Gould Dodge, gave birth to a son. Their son also died tragically when he fell from a carriage at the age of three.

While much of his story is told in Eugenia Price’s historical novel, The Beloved Invader, what is not so clear from the novel is his energy in riding out from St. Simons preaching to all he could gather along the coast, regardless of race, and forming them into congregations. His foundations clearly stand out in the old list of the Diocese of Georgia, because he was deeply affected by the Latin and Greek fathers of the first four centuries of the Church.

Thus, he dedicated his new congregations to St. Ignatius, St. Cyprian, St. Ambrose, St. Perpetua, St. Athanasius, as well as to the Messiah, Transfiguration, and St. Andrew. He founded six chapels along the Satilla River. He worked as far inland as Waycross, founding the Church of St. Ambrose there.
His family fortune allowed him to financially underwrite a priest to serve some of these congregations and assist him in his work. He also restored life at what is now Christ Church in St. Marys, St. Andrew’s in Darien, (which had been burnt to the ground), and St. Mark’s in Brunswick.

Lovely Lane Chapel, now at Epworth, the Methodist Conference Center, is the church he built for the mill workers in St. Simon’s Village. His concern for the church led him to build a dorm still in use at General Theological Seminary in New York City, and a cathedral in India, which was destroyed in the India-Pakistan war. His last work was to found an orphanage in his home for boys. That work goes on as a significant endowment providing for the education of poor boys. He died at the age of 38. In keeping with his will, Ellen’s casket was removed from the vault under the altar to be buried by his side in the church yard.

Better known in his later years as a politician, journalist, and physician, Dr. Joseph Robert Love was the first black clergy person to serve in the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia. Born in the Bahamas on October 2, 1839, Love was educated at St. Agnes Parish School and Christ Church Grammar School in Nassau. He worked as a teacher before moving to Florida in 1866. In 1871, Bishop John F. Young of the Diocese of Florida ordained him a deacon. Later that year, he moved to Savannah, becoming the Deacon in Charge of St. Stephen’s Church. In 1872, citing discrimination in St. Stephen’s against those with darker skin color, he founded St. Augustine’s Church. Love moved to Buffalo, New York in 1876 to accept a call as Rector of St. Philip’s Church. While there, he was ordained a priest and then studied in the medical school at the University of Buffalo. In 1880, he was awarded his Doctor of Medicine degree, becoming the first black graduate of the school.

The Rev. Richard Bright was the first black Episcopal priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia. He was born in 1866 in St. Thomas, then part of the Dutch West Indies. Bright was educated at St. Augustine Collegiate Institute in Raleigh, North Carolina, and the General Theological Seminary in New York, where he graduated in 1891. Bishop Henry C. Potter ordained Bright a deacon the same year and he passed examinations for the priesthood and could have been ordained later the same year, but he had not yet attained the minimum age for a priest of 25.

He was ordained a priest in St. Stephen’s in Savannah on June 10, 1892, by Bishop C.K. Nelson of Georgia who noted he ordained him on behalf of the Bishop of New York where Bright was still canonically resident.

His wife, Nellie, was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and educated in Europe as a teacher after she was denied entrance to schools in the United States. Together, Richard and Nellie established the first private kindergarten and primary school for blacks in Georgia in 1892. In 1909, he accepted appointment by Bishop F. F. Reese as “Archdeacon for the colored Work of the Diocese.”

The Bright family’s friendship with Caroline Rathbone, a white woman who later became his daughter’s godmother, appears in an article detailing Rathbone’s funeral, held in Evansville, Indiana. A black man’s officiating at a white woman’s funeral raised eyebrows. “Colored Man to Take Part in Funeral at St. Paul’s Church” announced in The Evansville Courier, December 23, 1901. The article mentions Bright was once Rathbone’s Sunday School student in New York.

Bright was a respected writer of religious pamphlets, and he wrote for the Episcopal newspaper, Church Advocate. The Library of Congress has an entry dated March 2, 1900, registering “St. Stephen’s Catechism” prepared by Rev. Richard Bright in 1892. After serving the Diocese of Georgia for almost twenty years, Bright moved his family from Savannah to accept an appointment in Philadelphia.

Other deacons and priests of the Diocese of Georgia came from the Caribbean, including The Revs. Samuel Minns and Joseph S. Atwell, who arrived here in the late 1800s already ordained.

Pictured: Dr. J. Robert Love (top); Excerpt of the St. Stephen’s Catechism written by the Rev. Richard Bright (bottom).

On September 18, 1868, the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee held its first convocation with nine students and four faculty members present. The dream of the University had been shared by Bishop Stephen Elliott, the first Bishop of Georgia, who joined Bishop Leonidas Polk of Louisiana and Bishop Otey of Tennessee as the founding Bishops of Sewanee in the late 1850s. Though the cornerstone for the University was laid October 10, 1860, construction of the University was halted by the Civil War. Bishop Elliott, who died in 1866, did not live to see their vision realized.

The story of The University mirrors that of this country, the South, and the church in Georgia. Very much a vision of those privileged, educated bishops and wealthy Southerners to provide an excellent higher education for Southern young gentlemen along the lines of Oxford and Cambridge, Harvard and Yale so that the sons of the South would not have to travel North or abroad. As our society has struggled with the issue of slavery and discrimination so has Sewanee. For many years, it was a bastion of higher education but not for people of color or women. The early years of the University were of that era. That era is over.

Beginning in the 1950s the University began reckoning with its legacy which, on the one hand being an Episcopal university held the faith high, but on the other hand, was fraught with the flaws of our American government, slavery, injustices seemingly inbred. Certainly this was contradictory to the Episcopal nature of the University. Students of color and women were finally admitted in the 1960s.

This reckoning came to an ultimate resolution unanimously passed by the Board of Trustees in 2020 as a result of the 6-year Roberson project: “The University categorically rejects its past veneration of the Confederacy and the “Lost Cause”. The Trustees have pledged that “Sewanee will be a model for diversity, for inclusion, for intellectual rigor and loving spirit in an American that rejects prejudice and embraces possibility.”

Sewanee is now the University of the New South as one of the top small liberal arts colleges in the country. Georgia continues to be one of the owning Dioceses along with 27 other Southern Dioceses. The School of Theology is highly respected as is the School of Letters. Sewanee has 18,000 alumni for all 50 states and 40 countries and has produced 27 Rhodes Scholars and dozens of Fulbright Scholars. The Board of Trustees, the Faculty and Staff and the student body currently reflect the diversity and display the strength of that diversity. Sewanee is becoming the place where its motto can ring true: Ecce Quam Bonum “Behold how good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity.”

Pictured: Bishop Elliot placing items in Sewanee’s Cornerstone (top); Sewanee seen from above (bottom).

The second bishop of Georgia, John Watrous Beckwith, said of the Episcopal Church, “She is simply a true Branch of the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church—the Church of the Living GOD—the Pillar and Ground of the Truth! She dare not be less; she cannot be more.”

Born 1831 in Raleigh, North Carolina, Beckwith graduated from Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut in 1852. He served in North Carolina and Maryland before joining the staff of Confederate General William J. Hardee at the start of the Civil War.

Beckwith wrote from Atlanta of being a chaplain in a letter to his wife dated June 26, 1864, “I have asked Hardee for a candid opinion as to the ability of a Missionary to do work in the Army while this Campaign is going on, and he tells me it is simply impossible …. He says that if the men were brought together for service it would at once attract the attention of the enemy who would open fire upon us … and cause a useless sacrifice of life. He therefore advises me to confine my operations to the Hospitals, for nothing can be done here outside of his Staff.”

He was serving as the Dean of the cathedral in New Orleans at the time of his election. Bishop Beckwith was consecrated as Bishop of Georgia on April 2, 1868 in St. John’s Church, Savannah. On May 16, 1889, he gave what was by far the longest Bishop’s Address in the history of our Diocese. The 22-pages of text was long even by the standards of the day. He read into the minutes, as was required by canon, his daily calendar of activity since the last convention. This takes up the first six pages. The bishop then launched into a defense against the introduction of “Romish” doctrines through practices such as having lit candles on the altar for communion, wearing a chasuble, reserving the Blessed Sacrament, and other practices now considered traditional in the Diocese he led from 1868-1890.

The lengthy address might have been easier on the ears than we first imagined. The Rev. Dr. Jimmy Lawrence in writing a history of the Diocese of Georgia in the early 1900s put it, “His wonderful voice, bringing out the full meaning of the services, at once arrested the attention of his hearers. When Bishop Beckwith read, people listened. His oratory in the pulpit attracted large congregations wherever he went, and the course of his episcopal visitations was like a royal progress.”

Beckwith served as Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia for 23 years during the difficult period of reconstruction. He led expansive growth across the state in starting new congregations. In his final annual report in Milledgeville in May 1890, he told the convention delegates, “I have not for years looked forward to the future with as much hope as now….All over the Diocese, among clergy and laity, there seems to be an increase in aggressive work on churchly lines.”

One strange, but true story is the 300-page book Beckwith published that was briefly a bestseller in Atlanta. The book was the evidence in the trial to depose the Dean of the Cathedral who had earlier been dogged by rumors that he was John Wilkes Booth. An article is online here: Unremembered Atlanta – An assassin’s grave in Atlanta?