Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee

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Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee
Province	IV (Southeast)
Bishop	John C. Bauerschmidt
Cathedral	Christ Church Cathedral
Subdivisions	—
Congregations	52
Membership	15,000[1]
Website	Diocese of Tennessee

The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee is the diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America that covers roughly Middle Tennessee. A single diocese spanned the entire state until 1982, when the Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee was created; the Diocese of Tennessee was again split in 1985 when the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee was formed.^[1] It is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee.

The diocese includes 52 parishes and mission outposts. Most of its present communicants reside in the metropolitan Nashville area (chiefly Davidson, Rutherford, Sumner, and Williamson counties). St. Paul's Church in Franklin is the diocese's oldest congregation.

Contents 1 Episcopate and offices 2 History and development 3 Recent controversies 4 Gallery of bishops 5 References 6 External links

Episcopate and offices

The Right Reverend John C. Bauerschmidt was consecrated as the eleventh Bishop of Tennessee on January 27, 2007. He is the third bishop to serve since the final territorial separation in 1985; his predecessors were George L. Reynolds (1985-91) and Bertram N. Herlong (1993-2005).

The seat of the bishop is Christ Church Cathedral in Nashville, which was designated the diocesan cathedral in 1997. Weekday diocesan offices are located in the MetroCenter area, north of downtown Nashville. From 1871 until the division of the diocese (1982-1983), the seat of the bishop was St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Memphis; it continues today as the cathedral for the West Tennessee diocese.

History and development

In a history of the diocese published in celebration of its 175th anniversary, Herlong, the 10th bishop of the diocese, writes:

For 175 years, the Diocese of Tennessee has proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus Christ in the Episcopal manner and tradition. On July 1-2, 1829, the fledgling church gathered at the Masonic Hall in Nashville to hold the primary convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of Tennessee. Three clergy and six laymen representing four congregations met with Bishop John Stark Ravenscroft of the Diocese of North Carolina presiding. In that same year, the 16th general Convention meeting in Philadelphia on August 12-20 admitted the church in the state of Tennessee into union with the General Convention.

Since that time, the Episcopal Church in Tennessee has grown and now consists of three dioceses with 137 congregations and 37,518 baptized members.

Someone recently told me that the past is the prologue to the future. I believe that is true. We have a "goodly heritage" as Episcopalian Christians and we can face the future with confidence and hope. In our time and generation may we be faithful and continue the mission and ministry so well begun by those who have gone before.^{[citation needed]}

Much of the early growth of the Diocese of Tennessee occurred in plantation regions, mainly centered in the hilly, fertile region south of Nashville and in the cotton-producing lands of the Mississippi River region in southwestern Tennessee, the church being imported by Anglican loyalists from Virginia and North Carolina. It was not until after the Civil War that the Episcopal church penetrated much of East Tennessee, and well into the 20th century before many other towns elsewhere in the state got their own churches. The University of the South, located on the Cumberland Plateau in Sewanee, Tennessee, however, helped the fledgling diocese in matters of clergy development. As with much of American Protestantism during the period after World War II, the Episcopal Church flourished in newly-developing suburban areas, a large number of the new churches being missions founded by long-established in-town parishes.

By the 1960s and during the episcopate of John Vander Horst, enough growth had taken place that the diocese had established offices in Nashville and Knoxville in addition to the cathedral in Memphis in order to economically provide episcopal care to parishes and missions throughout the state; Vander Horst maintained his office in Nashville while keeping his seat in Memphis. The process for division of the state into three territories began when Vander Horst retired in 1977, under the aegis of his successor, William E. Sanders. Upon approval by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1982, the diocese excised its western counties first, followed by the eastern counties two years later. The remaining territory in Middle Tennessee became the legal successor to the statewide diocese.

Recent controversies

Beginning with the Herlong episcopate in the 1990s, the diocese embarked on an aggressive church extension program, particularly to the fast-growing suburbs of Nashville. Out of keeping with the historic churchmanship positions in most of the diocese, though, many of the clergy recruited to serve those missions were strongly conservative evangelical in orientation, and some of them, along with their laity, began to demonstrate sympathy for the Anglican realignment movement after V. Gene Robinson, a practicing homosexual, was consecrated to the episcopacy of New Hampshire in 2004. Some conservative priests became rectors and vicars in established parishes and missions during this period also. Their activism on behalf of their convictions led to intense polarization within the diocese, as many longtime communicants, especially within the city of Nashville, objected theologically to these newcomers (and to the bishop's apparent support of them), and warned that the Broad Church tradition of the diocese was in grave danger of being replaced by a rigid moralism and biblical literalism, akin to that espoused by fundamentalist groups.

Matters came to a head when the diocese attempted to a elect a successor bishop upon Herlong's retirement in 2006. With delegates to the diocesan convention sharply divided and thus unable to come to a decision from a first slate of nominees, another slate had to be submitted, and even then, the voting required numerous ballots and several adjourned sessions to complete, a situation highly unusual for an American Episcopal diocese. Finally, the diocesan convention settled on Bauerschmidt, a moderate. Dismayed by the loss of their favored candidates and the national church's refusal to reconsider its socially liberal positions on numerous issues including homosexuality, conservatives began defecting, causing schisms at St. Bartholomew's Church in Nashville and All Saints' Church in Smyrna, and nearly depleting the membership of Winchester's Trinity Church. Many of the seceders founded or joined continuing Anglican missions and parishes. Other parishes, though staying in the diocese, protested in other ways: one Anglo-Catholic parish, St. Andrew's Church in Nashville, went so far as to remove the word "Episcopal" from its name and signage on its property, and a small mission near Sewanee, St. Agnes' Church in Cowan, Tennessee, separated itself from a group ministry arrangement in order to have a conservative vicar of its own. Also, several of the conservative missions started during the Herlong episcopate have either had to scale back operations or close entirely, due to communicants deserting what they believed to be irreversible apostasy on the denomination's part. Many of those communicants had no previous connection with the Episcopal Church and therefore not a great deal of loyalty to its larger institutions to begin with.

Gallery of bishops

Rt. Rev. James Hervey Otey, First Bishop of Tennessee	Rt. Rev. Charles Quintard, Second Bishop of Tennessee, First Vice-Chancellor of the University of the South	Rt. Rev. Thomas F. Gailor, Third Bishop of Tennessee, President of the National Council	Rt. Rev. Edmund Dandridge, Fourth Bishop of Tennessee
Rt. Rev. James Maxon, Fifth Bishop of Tennessee	Rt. Rev. Theodore Barth, Sixth Bishop of Tennessee	Rt. Rev. John Vander Horst, Seventh Bishop of Tennessee	Rt. Rev. William Sanders, Eighth Bishop of Tennessee; First Bishop of East Tennessee

References

External links

• The Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee
• The Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee
• The Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee

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