As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember the Rev. Bartholomew Zouberbuhler.
Three of the greatest change agents in the history of the Church spent time in the Colony of Georgia. All three belonged to the Anglican Church in the 18th century. John Wesley and George Whitefield both served as rectors of Christ Church in Savannah, while Charles Wesley working as a non-stipendiary priest established worship on St. Simons. Whitfield changed the face of American Christianity in preaching “the great awakening,” John Wesley changed the face of American Christianity and the world with the Evangelical commitment to share the Gospel with people of other classes and colors, and Charles Wesley added greatly to our hymnody. Yet not one of these three was particularly effective in their ministry in Georgia. Bishop Henry Louttit observed, “It was Bartholomew Zouberbuhler, born of German-speaking parents, who was the first great pastor in the Anglican tradition in Georgia.”
Zouberbuhler was appointed on All Saints’ Day, 1745, by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), to be pastor of Christ Church in Savannah. Bartholomew was the son of a native Swiss pastor who had originally served congregations of Swiss Protestants in the colony of South Carolina and then had become pastor of an Anglican parish there. Bartholomew, believing himself called to the ministry, made the long trip across the ocean to be ordained by the Bishop of London.
The trustees of the Colony of Georgia charged Pastor Zouberbuhler with ministering to the French and German inhabitants of Georgia in their own languages, as John Wesley had done, according to the ceremonies of the Book of Common Prayer. In 1748, Savannah boasted 613 inhabitants, of whom 225 were members of Christ Church and 388 were dissenters of all sorts (Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Lutheran, etc.). Under Zouberbuhler’s leadership, Christ Church moved into its first building in 1750. The congregation met in the courthouse before then.
Zouberbuhler served not just in Savannah, but also led worship in outlying villages as well as at Fort Frederica on St. Simons Island. He suffered from bad health and several times during his years of ministry petitioned to be replaced as the pastor for the colony. In the records of the SPG in London are letters from the vestry of Christ Church urging that he continue to serve as the congregation loved him and grew under his leadership. The roots of what would later become Episcopal worship really began to be firmly established during his tenure.
Zouberbuhler’s concern was not only for Christians of other languages and church traditions who had settled in Georgia, but for all the inhabitants, including enslaved persons from Africa. At Christ Church in 1750, he baptized the first enslaved African to be baptized in the colony. When Zouberbuhler died, he left a sizable portion of his estate as a trust to be used to employ qualified teachers “to teach Anglican Christianity to Negroes.” He is buried in Savannah’s Bonaventure Cemetery.
In 1999, Bishop Henry Louttit, Jr. named him a Saint of Georgia with a feast day falling on any liturgy in the week of October 22. This article was adapted from Bishop Henry Louttit’s biography of Zouberbuhler in Saints of Georgia.
Pictured above: The 1734 engraving above shows how Savannah remained a small settlement at the time Zouberbuhler became the ninth Rector of Christ Church, 12 years after the congregation’s founding in 1733; and Zouberbuhler’s grave in Bonaventure Cemetery is the second from the right. There are no pictures of the pastor.
