During the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church, the Rev. Dr. Robyn M. Neville, President, honored the work of Dr. Ed Bond as Editor-in Chief of Anglican and Episcopal History, the journal of the Society. Below is the citation presented.

Citation in honor of the work of Dr. Ed Bond

Dr. Bond came to the editorship of Anglican and Episcopal History as a seasoned scholar.  He received he B.A. in religion from the College of William and Mary; an M.A. from the University of Chicago; and a Ph.D. in history from Louisiana State University.  His scholarly work is significant and wide-ranging.  He has published works on colonial Virginia, including Damned Souls in a Tobacco Colony: Religion in Seventeenth-century Virginia and Spreading the Gospel in Colonial Virginia, comprising two volumes dedicated to preaching and sermons in the Old Dominion. He also lent his expertise to local history publishing a book on the history of St. James Episcopal Church in Baton Rouge Louisiana, as well as co-authoring, with Joan Gunderson, a volume on the history of the Episcopal Church in Virginia, which commemorated the 400^th anniversary of the founding of the Commonwealth.  As a teacher, Dr. Bond served as professor of history at Alabama A&M University and as a Visiting Professor of Church History of the School of Theology at the University of the South. 

In 2006 the Board of the Historical Society approved the appointment of Dr. Bond as the editor of Anglican and Episcopal History.  The Society’s minutes reflect (then) President Fredrica Harris Thompsett noting that “Dr. Bond will in June 2007 succeed the longtime editor, the Rev. Dr. John F. Woolverton upon his retirement.”  Since his first number of the Journal in September 2007, Dr. Bond admirably served as the John F. Woolverton Editor of Anglican and Episcopal History for the next 56 numbers, totaling 14 years of service. Under his capable leadership, the journal maintained excellent scholarship with an international scope including authors hailing from every continent of the globe (except Antarctica).  Dr. Bond also supervised the transition of the journal to the twenty-first century, supporting the changeover to an electronic format for members and various subscription services, which vastly expanded the accessibility and readership of AEH. Dr. Bond, in recent years, also forged a strong working relationship with the Board’s Publications Committee, whose chair remembers gratefully regular dinner meetings and fellowship in Richmond, while Dr. Bond worked with his newest co-author on their latest book project about the Episcopal Church in Virginia.

Such career accomplishments are worthy indeed of praise, but the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church also recognizes that Dr. Bond’s efforts were not for his own sake alone but for the greater service of the Church.  To this end, Dr. Bond’s service furthered the mission of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church by promoting “the preservation of the particular heritage of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America and its antecedents in order that the Church may be served in its mission of proclaiming Christ crucified and risen, and in its servanthood in the world.”  For this, Dr. Bond has the thanks of the Publications Committee, the Board, this president, and the membership of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church.

We have come to understand that Dr. Bond collects vintage cufflinks. We present to Dr. Bond, as a token of our esteem and gratitude, this pair of vintage Soviet-era Amazonite cufflinks.

In my own undergraduate years at the College of William and Mary, I double-majored in both Religious Studies and Geology. It might interest Dr. Bond to know that potassium feldspar, which is what Amazonite is (in the "microcline" family of potassium feldspars), actually has a storied history. It was used by the Egyptians in funerary decorations (on King Tut's funeral mask, for example), and by Amazon peoples in religious rituals (although what those rituals entailed, we simply don't know). The cufflinks as they appear here have a number of Albite inclusions (those are the white, wavy-looking strata that appear in alternating patterns), which would have seeped in during the process of igneous formation. Igneous minerals form in the Earth's crust out of the dual processes of both pressure and time. It seems to me that both historians and editors operate under analogous processes of pressure and time, with demonstrably beautiful results.

We are grateful to Dr. Bond for his dedicated service, witness, and sense of Christian mission. I invite us now to bow our heads for a prayer in thanksgiving of Dr. Bond’s work as editor, a ministry that he has imbued with his own personal style and expertise.

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Let us pray.

We give thanks to you, O Lord our God, for all your servants and witnesses of time past: for Abraham, the father of believers, and Sarah his wife; for Moses, the lawgiver, and Aaron, the priest; for Miriam and Joshua, Deborah and Gideon, and Samuel with Hannah his mother; for Isaiah and all the prophets; for Mary, the mother of our Lord; for Peter and Paul and all the apostles; for Mary and Martha, and Mary Magdalene; for Stephen, the first martyr, and all the martyrs and saints in every age and in every land. In your mercy, O Lord our God, give us, as you gave to them, the hope of salvation and the promise of eternal life; and we ask especially for your continued blessings on our colleague, Ed Bond, in gratitude for his ministry and service; through Jesus Christ our Lord, the first-born of all who serve the Kingdom through the power of the Holy Spirit. Amen.