Carter Heyward leads the latest issue of Anglican and Episcopal History (AEH) with a wide-ranging 9-part reflection on her 50 years as an ordained priest. As one of the first women ordained in the Episcopal Church–a group known as the Philadelphia Eleven–Heyward’s essay is a fitting opener for the June 2024 issue of AEH commemorating the 50th anniversary of women’s ordinations.

In her essay, Heyward recalls the spirit of God’s holy wisdom in 1974, writing that “Sophia was relentless” before calling for radical mutuality and dismantling oppression in line with Jewish theologian Martin Buber (1878-1965) and renowned poet Audre Lorde (1934-1992). Heyward, a retired professor of theology at Episcopal Divinity School, offers a clarion call for greater visibility of progressive Christianity and is especially critical of what she terms the “7 Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism.”

Turning to the metaphor of the “stained glass ceiling,” Paula D. Nesbitt then evaluates historic challenges for women clergy in her study titled “Feminization of the Priesthood at Fifty–and the Journey Ahead.” 

Nesbitt contends that “the Philadelphia ordinations and feminization processes may have saved the Episcopal Church from more significant membership declines.” Nesbitt is a visiting professor at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif.

Other studies related to the role of ordained women include:

“Graymoor Revisited” by Valerie Bailey in which readers learn about the April 1970 Graymoor Conference as an understudied “anchor event” for women’s ordination in the Episcopal Church. Bailey, a chaplain at Williams College and priest in the diocese of Western Mass., contextualizes Graymoor as an event at the end of two significant 20th century movements: the Liturgical Movement and the Deaconess Movement.

“The Phyllis Edwards Event: A Momentary Event, or an Event of Moment?” draws on archival parish, diocesan, and House of Bishop records to unearth the debate regarding Bishop James Pike’s recognition of deaconess Phyllis Edwards (1917-2009) as an ordained deacon on September 13, 1965. The debate revolved around whether deaconesses were lay or ordained servants of the church. The study’s author, John Rawlinson, is a retired priest in the Diocese of California and volunteer archivist at Church Divinity School of the Pacific.

Tukibako Charles Mwakasege offers an international Anglican Communion perspective from East Africa in “Gender Equality in the Postcolonial Diocese of Central Tanganyika.” Her investigation considers three questions in a diocese that first ordained women in 2001. These are: (1) What is the contribution of the Anglican Church toward gender equality in the Diocese of Central Tanganyika? (2) How does the post-colonial diocese implement gender equality in leadership? & (3) How does gender equality impact people of the diocese? 

Mwakasege is an assistant lecturer of history at the University of Dodoma in Tanzania.

Heather Huyck, a public historian who participated in the 1974 Philadelphia ordinations, then turns attention to “the Washington Four,” a reference to the “irregular” ordination of 4 women that occurred in September 1975 at the Episcopal Church of St. Stephen and the Incarnation in the Diocese of Washington, DC.

Huyck writes that “The ordinations of the Washington Four in 1975 were crucial in the long and complex history of women’s ordination in the Episcopal Church.” She points to ways their ordinations demonstrated that women’s ordination was likely to remain no matter what canonical changes occurred during the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1976. Her study is titled, “‘No Longer Unique’: The Significance of the Washington 1975 Ordinations.”

The remaining articles include a published oral history and reflective historiographic analysis.

AEH editor-in-chief Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook interviews Fran Toy (b. 1934) regarding her experiences and reflections since becoming the first Asian American woman in the Episcopal priesthood in 1985.

Then Carla Roland Guzmán concludes the collection of studies with a historiographic examination of the journal itself. Guzmán’s “Women on the Pages of Anglican and Episcopal History: A Growing Cast” offers a detailed examination of women’s representation in AEH since 1932. 

Guzmán notes strengths of women’s representation and praises the noteworthy contributions of historians such as Fredrica Harris Thompsett, Joan R. Gundersen, Joanna B. Gillespie, Mary Sudman Donovan, Sylvia Sweeney, and current AEH editor Sheryl A. Kujawa-Holbrook. She also illuminates potential areas for further research. Guzmán is assistant professor of church history at The General Theological Seminary in New York City.

This special issue of AEH commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Philadelphia Eleven Ordinations is produced by the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church (HSEC). To learn more, visit the HSEC website [https://hsec.us/]. HSEC will also be represented at the 81st General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Louisville, Ky. this June.

Print or digital copies are available for $10 (which includes shipping) by contacting the Director of Operations at mpayne@hsec.us.

The March 2024 issue of Anglican and Episcopal History is now available. In addition to 6 peer-reviewed essays, readers enjoy a variety of church reviews, exhibit reviews, and 24 book reviews.

Church Reviews:

Three church reviews provide a glimpse of Holy Week Triduum customs in the Episcopal Diocese of Chicago. These include Maundy Thursday at the Church of the Ascension in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood, Good Friday at Church of the Atonement in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood, and the Great Vigil of Easter at the diocesan cathedral of St. James.

Engaged History:

Engaged history features collaborative projects undertaken by Anglican and Episcopal institutions that confront buried historical narratives.

This issue features efforts in the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri to address the painful legacy of White supremacy in a state where 60 people were lynched between 1877 and 1950. Readers learn about the horrific Easter 1906 lynching of Fred Coker, Horace Duncan, and Will Allen in the presence of 3,000 people in Springfield, Missouri.

The article is written by John Spicer of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Missouri.

Exhibit Review:

Frances Perkins Center and Homestead in Newcastle, Maine | Reviewed by Brett Donham

Book Reviews:

As always, readers enjoy a treasure trove of book reviews related to church history and Anglican scholarship. The March issue includes 24 book reviews, among them are:

• Christian Homeland: Episcopalians and the Middle East, 1820-1958 by Gardiner H. Shattuck Jr. | Reviewed by Lawrence G. Duggan of the University of Delaware
• When Churches in Communion Disagree edited by Robert Heaney, Christopher Wells, and Pierre Whalon | Reviewed by J. Douglas Ousley
• The Eucharist in Four Dimensions: The Meanings of Communion in Contemporary Culture by Jessica Martin | Reviewed by Christopher L. Webber
• Archbishop William Temple: A Study in Servant Leadership by Stephen Spencer | Reviewed by John D. Alexander
• Borderlands of Theological Education edited by Joshua B. Davis and Deirdre Good | Reviewed by R. William Franklin of the Diocese of Long Island and Union Theological Seminary
• Una Historia de la Iglesia Episcopal (edición en Espanol) by Robert W. Pritchard, translated by Adrián Cárdenas Torres | Reviewed by John L. Kater of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific and Ming Hua Theological College in Hong Kong, China
• Clarendon Reconsidered: Law, Loyalty, Literature, 1640-1674 edited by Philip Major | Victor Starer of Louisiana State University
• The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind by Jason M. Baxter | Reviewed by Jack D. Kilcrease of Christ School of Theology in South Dakota

Anglican and Episcopal History is published quarterly in March, June, September, and December. Full text articles are available through JSTOR.org and for members of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church at https://hsec.us/AEH.

The Historical Society of the Episcopal Church (HSEC) advances scholarship related to the Episcopal Church and Anglican Communion. The latest issues of HSEC’s peer-reviewed journal Anglican and Episcopal History (AEH) is now in print featuring 6 studies and numerous reviews, including 24 book reviews.

The 6 featured studies are:

• “The Episcopal Church’s Freedman’s Commission and the Founding of St. Augustine’s School” in Raleigh, North Carolina, in which diocesan historiographer N. Brooks Graebner, uncovers ways St. Augustine’s School opened in 1867 and became “…a notable exception” for “intersectional cooperation” across geographic regions in the antebellum United States.
• Yvan Francois and Mark Harris break new ground regarding the ministry of Episcopal bishop Charles Alfred Voegeli who was escorted to Port au Prince airport at gunpoint in 1964 on orders from François Duvalier, then-President of Haiti. “The Expulsion of the Last American Bishop of Haiti” illustrates lived experiences of conflicting loyalties between Caesar and God by introducing the Francois Folio – 32 never before published primary sources spanning 1944-1974.
• John C. Hardy, a Church of England priest, then challenges assumptions about ineffective Anglican scholar-pastors in “How ‘Effectual’ was the Anglican Scholar-Parson of the 1920s as a Parson? Alfred Guillaume and G.H. Box; A comparative Assessment.”
• “The Emergence of the Modernist Controversy in the Diocese of New York” evaluates ways various church leaders navigated heresy trials, emerging biblical debates, and diversity of theological belief in 1920s New York. Its author is Warren C. Platt, an Episcopal priest and retired reference librarian in the Research Libraries of the New York Public Library.
• “The Establishment Experience: Church-State Entanglement and the Lessons of the First Anglo-Catholic Movement”by Dn. John F. Wirenius from the Diocese of New York considers challenges the Church of England encounters as an official state church. His draws parallels between secular court interference by the Queen’s Bench and Privy Council in nineteenth-century England to similar secular court intervention as fallout since the election of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.
• The final study is “Waging the Spanish Civil War on British Ecclesiastical Turf: Anglican-dominated Delegations to Republican Spain” by Frederick Halea research fellow at North-West University in South Africa and teacher at Fjellhaug International University College in Norway. Halea’s essay seeks to fill a gap in British scholarship that leaves religion as one of the least studied aspects of the British response to Francisco Franco.

These studies along with church reviews, book reviews, reflections on engaged history are available in the March 2024 issue of Anglican and Episcopal History at hsec.us/aeh.

An online series, Archives Basics for Congregations, was offered via Zoom during Epiphany 2024. It focused on establishing and operating a church archive for non-professionals who might, or do already, work in a church archives. It is a resource for reference and continuing education.

The five, one-hour sessions cover purpose, policies and practices, ownership, access and security, practical tips, organizing records, inventorying, processing, digital, personal papers, operations and administration. Also available for download are session outlines, slide decks, and documents referenced.

There is no charge to view and the series is free and available to the public. All five sessions were recorded and are now available for viewing, hsec.us/archivesbasics. Please share it with others.

The Historical Society of the Episcopal Church invites requests for grants to be awarded July 2024. Funding is provided for pursuing the Historical Society’s objectives, especially promotion of the preservation of Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. Requests must be submitted no later than May 1st to be considered for 2024 awards.

Requests may be from individuals, academic entities or ecclesiastical groups. They may seek financial support for research, publication, and conferences relating to Episcopal and Anglican church history. A typical request may include funding for travel (for example, to an archives or other relevant location), research materials, or seed money or support as part of a larger project. Examples of past awards include dissertation research, publication of books and articles, support of documentary films, multi-media and digital historical presentations, and support for a local history conference. Awards generally are $500-$2,500, depending on the number of requests approved and funding available.

For details to make the request, visit hsec.us/grants.

Please note that requests for the triennial Robert W. Prichard Prize will be next received in 2025. The Prichard Prize honors the best dissertation which considers the history of the Episcopal Church or Anglican Communion. Additional details about the prize are also found at hsec.us/grants.

The American Historical Association (AHA) is the oldest professional association of historians in the United States and the largest such organization in the world with over 11,000 members. Its annual meeting draws more than 5,000 historians from around the United States to discuss the latest research and discuss how to be better historians and teachers. Sheryl Kujawa Holbrook, editor-in-chief of HSEC's quarterly, peer-reviewed journal Anglican and Episcopal History, attended the 2024 AHA Meeting in San Francisco in January. AEH is a member of the Conference of Historical Journals which displays samples of its members journals on in the AHA Exhibit Hall. Kujawa Holbrook shared this photo of 2 recent AEH issues displayed, along with a copy of In Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood in the Episcopal Church which is a curated reprint of articles from AEH.

The Historical Society of the Episcopal Church was an exhibitor at the 2023 AHA Annual Meeting and connected with hundreds of attendees with an interest in the history of the Episcopal Church. HSEC has applied to become an AHA Affiliated Society which will allow sponsorship of HSEC sessions and activities at the AHA Annual Meeting.

The winter 2023 issue of Anglican and Episcopal History is now available. In addition to 4 peer-reviewed essays, readers enjoy a variety of reviews.

Church Reviews:

Two church reviews take readers to worship services in the Anglican Communion. The winter issue includes highlights of a Lenten Sunday Eucharist led by the Presiding Bishop at the American Cathedral in Paris while another explores a new Maundy Thursday liturgy service used at St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, part of the Scottish Episcopal Church’s Diocese of Edinburgh.

Engaged History:

A synopsis of a webinar series titled Past Reckoning: Exploring the Racial History of the Moravian and Episcopal Churches by Maria W.E. Tjeltveit of the Moravian-Episcopal Coordinating Committee.

The Engaged History feature explores collaborative projects undertaken by Anglican and Episcopal institutions that confront buried historical narratives. 

Book Reviews:

As always, readers enjoy a treasure trove of book reviews related to church history and Anglican scholarship, including:

• In Search of Julian of Norwich by Sheila Upjohn and Julian of Norwich’s Literary Legacy by Luke Penkett | Reviewed by Molly Field James of the Episcopal Church Center
• The Censored Pulpit: Julian of Norwich as Preacher by Donyelle C. McCray and God’s Kinde Love: Julian of Norwich’s Vernacular Theology of Grace by Julia A. Lamm | Reviewed by Molly Field James of the Episcopal Church Center
• How the English Reformation was Named: The Politics of History, c. 1400-1700 by Benjamin M. Guyer | Reviewed by Hilary Bogert-Winker of the School of Theology, University of the South
• England’s Second Reformation: The Battle for the Church of England 1625-1662 by Anthony Milton | Reviewed by David M. Goldbert of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Houston, Texas
• Hamilton: An American Biography by Tony Williams | Reviewed by Suzanne Geissler of William Paterson University
• Rowan LeCompte; Master of Stained Glass by Peter Swanson et al. | Reviewed by Brett Donham
• “This Grand Errand”: A Bicentennial History of Yale Divinity School by Ray Waddle | Reviewed by Justus D. Doenecke of New College of Florida
• American Slavers: Merchants, mariners, and the Transatlantic Commerce in Captives, 1644-1865 by Sean M. Kelley | Reviewed by Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr.
• The Tudors: Art and Majesty in Renaissance England by Elizabeth Cleland et al. | Reviewed by Matthew F. Reese of the Peabody Institute at The Johns Hopkins University
• The Holy Bible 2023 Coronation Edition | Reviewed by Suzanne Geissler of William Paterson University

Anglican and Episcopal History is published quarterly in March, June, September, and December. Full text articles are available through JSTOR.org and for members of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church at https://hsec.us/AEH.

In the winter issue of Anglican and Episcopal History (AEH), four scholars investigate ways historians churchmanship influenced—and in some cases still influences—various dioceses of the Anglican Communion, especially the Episcopal Church.

Two studies examine historic evangelical influences in the Episcopal Church’s dioceses of Rhode Island and Virginia while the remaining two consider Anglo-Catholic influences in Australia’s nineteenth-century Diocese of Adelaide and the writings of “saint” Woodbine Willie in the Church of England during World War I.

The Virginia article by Jacob M. Blosser considers the influence of New Light Anglicans, particularly the preaching ministry of the Rev. Charles Clay (1745-1820). Blosser, a professor of history at Texas Woman’s University, draws on the largest manuscript collection of preserved Virginia Anglican sermons in order to rediscover ways parishioners in rural Albemarle County responded to calls that they be “born again,” “renewed”, and “quickened.”

Blosser questions traditional historiography that depicts colonial Virginia’s Anglicans as Latitudinarians while describing evangelical voices as outside of Virginia Anglicanism. He considers Clay to be “a bridge between the latitudinarianism of the colonial establishment and the evangelicalism of [Bishop William] Meade’s nineteenth-century Protestant Episcopal Church.”

John Sailant, a professor of English and History at Western Michigan University, then explores the 1812 baptism of Prudence Gabriel (c. 1780s-c. 1813) in Providence, Rhode Island. Gabriel, a free Black woman, made the unusual choice to be baptized in the Episcopal Church, a denomination with noticeably fewer Black members than other Christian denominations in Providence at the time.

Sailant connects Gabriel’s choice to the ministries of the Rev. Nathan Bourne Crocker (1780-1865) and other paternalistic, evangelicals in the diocese, especially Bishop Alexander Viets Griswold who he describes as “the little-remembered leader of evangelical Episcopalians in Rhode Island.”

The remaining studies look beyond the United States and focus on Anglo-Catholic influences in the wider Anglican Communion.

“The Myth of Woodbine Willie” by Timothy Larsen, professor of history and Christian Thought at Wheaton College, reexamines the ministry and theology of G.A. Studdert Kennedy (1883-1929), who rose to popularity within the Church of England during World War I as a supporter of the war effort. Kennedy became an Army Chaplain and was well-known for his writings found in The Church in the Furnace (1917) and Lies! (1919).

Through a detailed examination of Kennedy’s writings, Larsen challenges traditional descriptions of Kennedy as an Anglo-Catholic. He writes that “most jarring of all he [Kennedy] insisted that catholics had made the Eucharist into a false god.” Instead, Larsen contends “Woodbine Willie” is best described as a Christian apologist whose churchmanship was “liberal Anglo-Catholic” or “high church modernist.”

A final study examines the churchmanship and eucharistic theology of Australian colonial bishop Augustus Short (1802-1883) who led the Diocese of Adelaide from 1847 to 1882.

In “Augustus Short’s Apologia for Newman’s Tract 90,” Brian Douglass examines ways Bishop Short’s Oxford Movement-influenced eucharistic theology faced opposition from evangelical clergy and laity when he arrived in Adelaide. However, Short’s episcopal ministry in Adelaide slowly shifted the diocese from an evangelical churchmanship to an Anglo-Catholic one.

Douglass, an Anglican priest, research professor at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, and editor of the Journal for Anglican Studies, concludes that, “Short’s contribution of catholic eucharistic theology remains firmly established in the present-day Anglican Diocese of Adelaide, Australia and represents part of his continuing legacy.”

These studies along with church reviews, book reviews, reflections on engaged history, and minutes for the annual meeting of the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church are available in the winter 2023 issue of Anglican and Episcopal History.

A Conference to Mark the 60th Anniversary of the 1963 Toronto Anglican Congress is planned for the 12th and 13th of April 2024. Initiated by the Canadian Church Historical Society and co-sponsored by the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church, the conference will be held in Toronto with in-person and online participation. Additional details will be available soon. Other organizations interested in sponsoring the Conference should write to Laurel Parson lparson@national.anglican.ca.

The 1963 Toronto Anglican Congress was attended by about 1,000 archbishops, bishops, priests, deacons, and laity from virtually all the dioceses of the Anglican Communion. It approved a Manifesto, “Mutual Responsibility and Interdependence [MRI] in the Body of Christ,” which proposed a radical examination of inequalities across the Communion. The purpose of the 2024 conference is to examine the legacy of the 1963 Toronto Congress. 

The keynote speaker will be Canon Professor Mark D. Chapman, Professor of the History of Modern Theology, University of Oxford. This conference, with its emphasis on mutual responsibility and interdependence, could make an important contribution to planning a the next Anglican Congress. A Thanksgiving Service will take place on Sunday 14  April.

Call for Papers: Papers of twenty minutes (approx. 2,500 words) are invited on any theme related to the 1963 Congress (historical, missiological, theological, international, and local significance) with abstracts due by December 15, 2023.

Read more here

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The ordination of eleven Episcopal women to the priesthood on July 29, 1974, at Church of the Advocate in Philadelphia, has transformed the face of Episcopal clergy. We are reminded that all of God’s children are called and empowered by the Holy Spirit to serve in every capacity. To honor the celebration of the 50th Anniversary, the Historical Society of the Episcopal Church (HSEC) and the Episcopal Women’s History Project (EWHP) have collaborated on the publication: “In Honor of the 50th Anniversary of the Ordination of Women to the Priesthood in the Episcopal Church.” Articles were originally published in the Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church and its successor, Anglican and Episcopal History (AEH).

The ordination of The Philadelphia Eleven was followed by the ordination of the Washington Four which is also addressed in this collection. Other articles address women inclined to holiness, the religious role of women in the 18th century, Anglican clergy wives, the Woman’s Auxiliary, 19th century Episcopal Sunday School, and education of Black women plus more.  These articles give the background and context for why the logical next step was the ordination of women beyond the diaconate.  These articles preserve the story that reminds us that the proper place of women is in all orders and roles of the Church.

Time passes and memories fade, but this anniversary calls us to acknowledge the courage of women called and ordained to holy orders of the priesthood.  They paved the way for the church’s many women priests and bishops, something that is not unusual today.

These fifteen articles found in this 178-page volume help us keep this history alive and reflect on the actions of the past. Article authors, listed in order, include Sheryl-Kujawa-Holbrook, Barbara C. Harris, John F. Woolverton, Fredrica Harris Thompsett, Joan R. Gundersen, Anne Llewellyn Barstow, Joanna B. Gillespie, Mary Sudman Donovan, Arthur Ben Chitty, by Heather Huyck, Qiana Johnson, Susan D. Buell, and Catherine M. Prelinger. The volume was curated by Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook, Editor-in-Chief of AEH, the cover was designed by Robin Sumners of EWHP, and the production was managed by Matthew Payne of HSEC.

Copies of this soft cover volume may be ordered online at hsec.us/honor50 for $10.00 plus shipping. Bulk orders and discount inquiries may be made to the Historical Society Director of Operation, Matthew P. Payne at administration@hsec.us.

The hope of the authors and publisher is this collection will inspire and educate the people of Church — women and girls, men and boys — about the work of the Holy Spirit through her people.