Episcopal Diocese of West MissouriHistory of the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri
Origins of the diocese
The history of the Episcopal Church in the state of Missouri begins with a service conducted in 1819 for Episcopalians in the frontier community of St. Louis. Christ Episcopal Church was formed that year as the first Episcopal congregation west of the Mississippi River.
There was not much growth until the arrival of Jackson Kemper. He was ordained by Bishop William White, under whom he had served in Philadelphia, and was the last of 27 men consecrated by White. A missionary bishop, Kemper was charged with expanding the church in Missouri and Indiana. After his arrival in 1836, he founded ten missions and a college before his departure in 1845 to continue the missionary work in Wisconsin. The diocese of West Missouri is one of eleven which were formed from the area over which Bishop Kemper had jurisdiction.
The boundaries of the State and Diocese of Missouri were contiguous
until 1889-90 when, during the episcopate of Bishop Daniel Sylvester
Tuttle, the Diocese of West Missouri was formed along a north-south line
roughly in the middle of the state. Congregations had been
established in nine cities in the new diocese by that time. In the
last few years, several of these congregations have celebrated
sesquicentennial anniversaries.
At the first convention of the diocese in 1890, there was some controversy over how to name it. The Kansas City Star reported, “There is good-natured, open-hearted rivalry between the delegates from Kansas City and those from the other towns of the new diocese…the outside towns are arrayed against the gate city. This distinction was especially apparent yesterday when the diocese was named the Diocese of West Missouri instead of the Diocese of Kansas City as was expected by the Kansas City Episcopalians.” There is to this day some “open-hearted rivalry” between the congregations of Kansas City and those of the rest of the diocese.
Our Bishops
It was at this convention that Edward Robert Atwill was elected the
bishop. The diocese had been formed with pledges and an endowment
to ensure a $3,000 annual salary for him. During his episcopate,
from 1890 to 1911, the number of communicants increased from 3150 to
5000, and many new congregations were started and church buildings
erected. He was kept busy travelling considerable distances for
his visitations. During this time, the current Saint Luke’s Hospital
was begun (in 1902; it has been at its present site since 1923).
Today, the Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of West Missouri serves as
Chair of the Board of Saint Luke’s Hospital.
Bishop Atwill expressed to several conventions his concern that the smaller towns were losing their populations due to migrations. He had confirmed hundreds, but only a fraction remained more than a few years. A century later, this is a concern as the smaller towns “depopulate” and the congregations struggle to find necessary resources.
Sidney Catlin Partridge had been living in China and
Japan for the twenty-seven years preceding his move to Kansas City and
was the Bishop of Kyoto upon his election in West Missouri in 1911.
He was a well-educated well-known scholar. His loving and positive
view of the diocese was set in a world-wide perspective. He
visited each congregation several times per year and constantly and
forcefully advocated for the work of missions within the diocese.
He was also frustrated by a lack of resources for what he saw as a great
opportunity for planting missions in West Missouri.
Robert Nelson Spencer, bishop of West Missouri from 1930 to 1949, has
had a lasting influence on the entire church via his authorship of two
stanzas of the hymn “Almighty Father, strong to save.” In his
address to convention in 1935, he said, “West Missouri is a missionary
field from end to end!” Under his leadership as rector of Trinity
Church in Kansas City, two congregations combined in 1917 to become
Grace and Holy Trinity. In 1922, the first Baby Wellness Clinic in
the world was established by the parish women. The parish became
the diocesan cathedral in 1935 after Spencer had become Bishop.
The post-war period was a time of explosive growth in the Episcopal
Church, and West Missouri was no exception. Bishop Edward Randolph
Welles (1950-1973) was a leader in the House of Bishops and opposed
dropping the word “Protestant” from the name of the denomination, saying
that he often went into the Ozarks and needed “to tell those Protestant
folk who live there that I am a Protestant bishop.” He often
boasted of having never violated a rubric of The Book of Common Prayer
in his entire ministry. He expected his clergy to make ten to
twelve visits per week in homes and believed that clergy should know
every member of the congregation personally. He was described as
“very pastoral with his priests.” Because of his efforts, Saint
Luke’s hospital achieved national publicity. He was in favor of
the civil rights movement and told the convention in 1968, “It is our
church’s mission, as it must be, to do everything in our power to assist
our Negro brother to enjoy the equal rights and opportunities to which
he is entitled by the laws of God and the Constitution of the United
States, to abolish the disgraceful ghettos…and to give our brothers and
sisters the training and education that is so necessary if they are to
become integrated into our society.”
Before he was elected as bishop of West Missouri in 1970, Arthur Anton
Vogel had been a Professor of Systematic Theology at Nashotah House for
nineteen years. He authored 14 books and was, for twenty and
twenty-one years respectively, a member of the National Anglican-Roman
Catholic Commission and the 1st and 2nd International Anglican-Roman
Catholic Commissions. An initiative during Bishop Vogel’s
episcopate led to the coordination of efforts with the Diocese of Kansas
and the formation of Episcopal Social Services, now twenty years old and
known as Episcopal Community Services. ECS is a cooperative
network of hunger-relief ministries offered by many parishes within the
Dioceses of West Missouri and Kansas, and is providing one million meals
this year to hungry and homeless people in the Kansas City area.
The bishop is an ex-officio member of the ECS board of directors.
John Clark Buchanan was ordained in 1989. He stated a goal of
establishing six new parishes, something that had not been done in the
diocese for quite some time. He was one of the first Episcopal
bishops to concelebrate Holy Eucharist with an ELCA bishop. His
tireless work in helping to create
Bishop
Spencer Place, a three-level
retirement community in the heart of Kansas City, is an enduring legacy.
He retired from his position as diocesan bishop in 2000 and continues to
serve the church nationally.
Barry Robert Howe was elected in 1997 and
consecrated in 1998. Bishop Howe has been recognized as a warm and
caring pastor, and he and Mrs. Howe have provided wonderful support for
clergy and their families. There have been several important
developments during his episcopate.
The election of the eighth Bishop of the Diocese of West Missouri will occur at the 121st Convention of the Diocese on November 5th & 6th, 2010.
Sources
Bristol, Lee Hastings Jr., Seeds for a Song (Boston: Little Brown Co., 1968)
Diocese of West Missouri: Profile 1997
Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral
Lusk, William E., ed. & compiler, Visions of Missouri Bishops or Readings in the History of a Diocese
Paxton, Heather N. and Kevin Dunn, Bishop Spencer Place: A Story of Passion and Faith (Kansas City: Bishop Spencer Place, 2009)
Perry, William Stevens, The History of the American Episcopal Church 1587-1883, Volume II (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1885)
Tuttle, Daniel Sylvester, Reminiscences of a Missionary Bishop (New York: Thos. Whittaker, 1906)
