The Historical Society of the Episcopal Church announced the awarding of $16,060 in grants to 12 recipients during the Annual Meeting July 27, 2022. The funds are provided to support significant research, publication and projects related to the history of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion. Over the past decade, the Historical Society has provided over $100,000 in grants to nearly 100 recipients.

Applications are considered by the Grants and Research Committee and determined by the Historical Society’s Board of Directors. Recipients are encouraged to share their research and projects, especially in Anglican and Episcopal History, the peer-reviewed, quarterly journal of the Historical Society. Detail about the granting program may be found at hsec.us/grants.

Grant recipients and their areas of research are:

• Christy Baty – MA candidate at University of Nebraska at Kearney, to research the role of embroidered book bindings in women’s religious lives in early modern England.
• Devin Burns – PhD candidate at Florida State University, to study the Confederate Episcopal Church and its relationship to the making of Lost Cause historiography.
• Mongezi Guma – Canon, Anglican Church in South Africa, to research Sister Alberta Ngudle, a Religious Sister from Tsolo, who founded in 1919 an African female Religious Community of St. John the Baptist (CSJB).
• Laura Hernandez-Ehrisman – Faculty member, Department of History, Austin Community College, to research the place of slavery and race relations in the history of St. David’s Episcopal Church, Austin.
• Stephen Kapinde – Lecturer, Religion and Public Life, Pwani University, to investigate the long standing and ambiguous history of the Anglican Church and ex-slave’s descendants at Frere Town in Kenya.
• Simon Lewis – independent scholar, to study doctrinal debate in the early-eighteenth century Church of Ireland, focusing on the contributions made by the clergyman Edward Nicholson.
• Donn Mitchell – independent scholar, for research on Frances Perkins and the religious dimension of the New Deal by placing it within the context of the Episcopal Church’s role in social mission.
• Daphne Noyes – independent scholar, to continue her research on the life of Adeline Blanchard Tyler (1805-1875), the first deaconess in the Episcopal Church.
• Donna Ray – Senior Lecturer in History and Religious Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, to research the voices of laywomen, especially their “soft power,” in shaping the Episcopal Church in the American Deep South.
• Bart Segu – PhD candidate in systematic theology, St. Paul’s University, Kenya, to study the influence of liberation theology upon John Henry Okullu and his pursuit for social justice in Kenya.
• Diocese of Mississippi –  to digitize five audio cassettes and thirty-three VHS tapes, 1975-2003, which will include sharing the stories online through the diocesan website.
• Diocese of Milwaukee –for the collection and dissemination of oral histories of the Milwaukee Diocese of the Episcopal Church.