by the Rev. Scott A. West and Katharine L. Brown
The Church of England and Anglicanism arrived with the first English settlers to Virginia in 1607. As the colony of Virginia grew, so did the Church’s presence, its subsequent establishment, making it the only official recognized religion of the colony. As the colony grew westward, the Church of England, or as it became to be known, the Church in Virginia, expanded with it.
Anglicanism has been present in the area that now comprises the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia since 1738, when the Rev. Anthony Gavin, Rector of Goochland Parish, travelled to new settlers in more than a dozen places in the Blue Ridge foothills and the Shenandoah Valley, offering the services of the established Church.
The Revolutionary War brought consequences to the Church in Virginia, having such strong ties to England and the crown. Some clergy remained loyal to the monarch; others supported independence. The Church in Virginia lost its privileged social position with Thomas Jefferson’s Acts of Disestablishment of 1786, a landmark religious freedom statute. Church property, including the glebes or farms on which the clergy lived, church land, buildings, communion silver, bells, and furnishings were sold in many places. A number of colonial-era churches were abandoned or sold to other religious groups, which were gaining in popularity.
The Episcopal Church was created out of the remnants of the colonial church, adopting a form of governance similar to the newly formed federal system of government for the nation. The Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, created in 1785, encompassed all of the old Commonwealth, from the Atlantic Ocean and Chesapeake Bay to the Ohio River. By the 1820s, zeal for rebuilding the Episcopal Church across Virginia became the work of a handful of evangelical clergy, a faithful remnant of old Virginia families devoted to the liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, and two evangelical bishops, the Right Reverend Richard Channing Moore and his successor, the Rt Rev. William Meade. Bishop Meade, a Shenandoah Valley native, worked tirelessly to establish new congregations in western Virginia.
The Rev. Nicholas Hamner Cobbs of Bedford County, and later the first Bishop of Alabama, was an important figure in church growth in the present Diocese of Southwestern Virginia. He started the congregations of St. Stephen’s Church, Forest; Trinity Church, Lynchburg; St. Thomas Church, Sedalia; and St. John’s Church, Bedford; as well as preaching in Botetourt County, helping to form the congregations that became St. Mark’s Church, Fincastle and St. John’s Church, Roanoke. By the mid-1850s, missionary clergy were sent to southwestern Virginia to expand the Episcopal Church. Among them was the Rev. Frederick Goodwin, who would work to establish congregations in Montgomery, Smythe, Tazewell, and Wythe Counties. Throughout the two decades prior to the Civil War, the Episcopal Church grew throughout southwestern Virginia. Under diocesan sponsorship, the Virginia Female Institute, now Stuart Hall School, was founded at Staunton in 1846, and the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington had strong Episcopal leadership.
Following the Civil Wr, the Episcopal Church entered a period of growth, with many new parishes being formed in newly industrialized villages and towns. Coal, timber, iron ore, and other natural resources tapped by an ever-increasing number of railroads and roads opened the southwestern portion of Virginia to further growth. The founding of colleges in the region resulted in a growing population. Mission efforts within the Blue Ridge mountains brought the Episcopal Church to populations previously unserved, and the influx of deaconesses to these missions provided communities with educational opportunities, health care, social programming, and a steady spiritual presence.
The character of the Episcopal Church throughout Virginia in the nineteenth century was that of the evangelical low church, with the centrality of scripture a major focus. This stance was in accordance with the leadership of Bishops Moore, Meade, Johns, and Whittle, and was the churchmanship taught at the Virginia Theological Seminary, where most clergy in the state had received their education. Virginia bishops were unsympathetic to the high church influence of the Tractarians and the Oxford Movement, which had gained strongholds in some northern and midwestern dioceses and at the General Theological Seminary in New York. It was well into the twentieth century before other styles of worship and churchmanship made inroads into Virginia.
The Diocese of Virginia was first subdivided in 1878 by General Convention, with the counties in West Virginia being formed into the new Diocese of West Virginia. The Diocese of Virginia remained the entire, post-Civil War Commonwealth until 1892, when by an act of General Convention, the Diocese of Southern Virginia was created, further subdividing the Diocese of Virginia. The new Diocese of Southern Virginia contained two-thirds of the Commonwealth, spanning over 400 miles from the Eastern Shore counties and Norfolk to Lee County. The Rt. Rev. Alfred M. Randolph served as the first Bishop of Southern Virginia. The counties presently forming the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia were known as the Southwestern Convocation, with the Rev. John Janney Lloyd serving as the “Evangelist in Southwest Virginia,” preaching and officiating services from Blacksburg and Christiansburg to Abingdon in a nine county, 4,000 square mile area, and founding a string of mission churches, schools, and health centers staffed by lay women or deaconesses. These dedicated people brought the Social Gospel to the mountains and hollows, mining towns, and lumber camps, and through skillful communication of their work and needs, involved the entire Diocese, especially women’s groups, in the support and advocacy of their work. The Diocese also sponsored work among the Monacan Nation, the Native American community in Amherst County, and their parish, St. Paul’s Church, Bear Mountain.
Two additional educational institutions were established before World War I: Boys Home near Covington and the Virginia Episcopal School in Lynchburg. By 1918, the Diocese of Southern Virginia had grown so dramatically that its 265 churches made it the third largest diocese in the nation and the largest in rural work, work among the African-American population, and in missions.
General Convention split the Diocese of Southern Virginia in 1919, following the lines of division for the former Southwestern Convocation. The Primary Council of the newly formed Diocese of Southwestern Virginia met at St. John’s Church, Roanoke in December 1919 during which the Rev. Robert Carter Jett was elected to serve as the first bishop. Roanoke was named the see city, where St. John’s Church housed the diocesan offices until Evans House was built in 1948. Bishop Jett served as bishop throughout the prosperous 1920s and the years of the Great Depression until May 1938.
At the Diocesan Council of 1920, there were sixty-four organized parishes and missions and thirty-six unorganized parishes and missions, reporting 4,969 communicants among their 7,441 baptized members. There were about thirty-six clergymen in the Diocese in the 1920s and 1930s, most serving more than one mission church or parish in the dispersed, rural areas. Salaries were low, and fifteen clergy had to receive diocesan supplements to meet minimal standards. Most parishes did provide a rectory, however. This was an era of strong church organizations, including the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, the Young People’s Service League, and Women’s Auxiliary. It was also a period in which Episcopal clergy became leaders in community outreach and public service organizations.
Following Bishop Jett’s retirement, the Rev. Henry Disbrow Phillips was elected second bishop, and he would lead the Diocese through the difficult years of World War II. The expansion of the postwar economy, the national growth in church membership, and the growth of suburbia all had an effect on parishes and on the Diocese. Sunday schools, youth programs, and women’s groups all experienced growth in participation. Bishop Phillips served until March 1954, retiring fifteen months before his death in 1955.
The Rev. William Henry Marmion was elected third bishop in 1954. He was consecrated at the time of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision, which cast a long shadow across his early episcopacy. The integration question was most explosive over the then recently acquired diocesan camp and conference center, Hemlock Haven near Marion. Firmly but patiently Bishop Marmion insisted that racial discrimination was wrong and that the center be integrated. Some found that unacceptable, and a long debate ensued before the people of the Diocese would use the center. Bishop Marmion led the way in integrating the parishes of Southwestern Virginia. Yet even after integration and the closing of two of the four traditionally black parishes, there were fewer black Episcopalians in this diocese than previously. Bishop Marmion’s episcopacy was marked also by expanded college campus ministries, civil unrest over the Vietnam War, the debates and support of women’s ordination, and the debates and trial uses of Prayer Book revision. Bishop Marmion retired in 1979 and died in 2002.
In 1978, the Rev. Arthur Heath Light, rector of Christ & St. Luke’s Church, Norfolk, was elected as the diocesan bishop following the retirement of Bishop Marmion and consecrated at the Salem Civic Center in 1979. During Bishop Light’s tenure, the Venture in Mission capital campaign placed the diocese in a good financial posture. Significant changes within the Episcopal Church began in the mid-1970; the ordination of women, Prayer Book revision and adoption of the present Book of Common Prayer in 1976 set the stage for much of Bishop Light’s work. He noted in an interview that compared to the challenges of integration, women’s ordination and prayer book revision were manageable challenges. The Diocese took an active role in the Appalachian Peoples’ Service Organization (APSO), a thirteen-diocese consortium to address widespread social needs in Appalachia. Headquarters for APSO were in Blacksburg for more than a decade, and the Rev. R. Baldwin “B” Lloyd led the organization. During Bishop Light’s episcopacy, The Hymnal 1982 was published and ratified for use. Bishop Light retired in 1996.
The Revered Frank Neff Powell was elected to serve as the Diocese’s fifth bishop, being consecrated at Burris Hall on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg on October 26, 1996. Among the challenges during Bishop Powell’s episcopacy were the Church’s debates regarding sexuality and the place of LGBTQ+ individuals within the life of the church and especially as clergy. The watershed General Convention of 2003 which ratified the elected of the Rev. Canon V. Gene Robinson as the Bishop-elect for the Diocese of New Hampshire elicited responses across the Episcopal Church from excitement to fury. Subsequently, several parishes across the nation sought legal means to separate from the Episcopal Church and take with them church property and funds. The Diocese of Southwestern Virginia weathered that storm with faithfulness and advocated inclusivity. Mission and ministry also marked Bishop Powell’s episcopacy, with an emphasis on ministry with and among the Episcopal Church of Sudan, the Mark Nikkel School in Sudan, and Sudanese immigrants within the Diocese. (Nikkel was ordained in 1985 in this Diocese by Bishop Light.) Bishop Powell retired in 2013.
The Very Rev. Mark A. Bourlakas, dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Louisville, Ky., was elected as the Diocese’s sixth bishop on March 9, 2013 and consecrated at the Roanoke Civic Center. Among the highlights of Bishop Bourlakas’ episcopacy has been the development and implementation of a Mission Action Plan for the Diocese with an emphasis on new Evangelism efforts and Missional Church strategies during a time of institutional decline. Parish responses to this challenge included projects, experiments, and new ministries to reach out to people beyond the parish walls. Churches were also challenged to address racism both within the Diocese and across the culture. New initiatives were engaged to raise up ministry collaboratives among diocesan parishes and schools and congregations in the Diocese of Haiti. The Covid-19 Pandemic presented enormous challenges, the likes of which have not been seen for over a hundred years. Creativity in ministry and worship characterized the months of lock-down and isolation, all the while parishes and Episcopalians across the diocese remained faithful and continued in their ministries to the best of their abilities. The cultural shifts of American society following the pandemic, especially around church attendance and involvement, have presented another set of challenges.
Perhaps one word can summarize the history of the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia: “Change.” Change has been ever-present in the territory we know as the Episcopal Diocese of Southwestern Virginia, but with God’s leading, the preaching of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments, continue, faithfully, fervently, and for the future.