Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh

The Diocese of Pittsburgh covers the southwestern corner of Pennsylvania and includes the current counties of Allegheny, Armstrong, Beaver, Butler, Cambria, Fayette, Greene, Indiana, Somerset, Washington, and Westmoreland. In the mid-18th century this rich transmontane area drew the first Indian traders, exploring surveyors, military men and later settlers, many of whom were at least nominal Anglicans primarily from Maryland, eastern Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

The earliest penetration of the southwest corner of the state, then sparsely populated with Indians, was made by Episcopalians who set up posts in the 1740s along the Allegheny, Youghiogheny and Ohio Rivers. Maryland surveyor Christopher Gist crossed the mountains to survey large claims of the best farm land. On Christmas Day in 1750, Gist read Prayers and delivered a homily to Indians and traders near what is now the town of Coshocton.[2]

Young George Washington, already a Virginia vestryman, was guided by Gist when he came west to warn the French to withdraw from this region claimed by the British. The French's refusal to leave led to invasion and capture of the tiny stockade built by Virginians at the future site of Pittsburgh in 1754. Washington read the burial office from the 1662 Prayer Book in 1755[2] when British churchman General Edward Braddock, fatally wounded while attempting to drive the French from Fort Duquesne at the Forks of the Ohio, was carried back over Chestnut Ridge and buried in the middle of the wagon tracks of what would become US 40 in Fayette County. The successful 1758 campaign of British churchman General John Forbes marked the end of French control of the region.

When the first new migrating settlers arrived in the 1760s, there were no settled Episcopal clergy. Laity read Morning Prayer, mainly in farm cabins but sometimes at Fort Burd or Fort Pitt, or in public houses as those were established. Before the American Revolution there were no organized Episcopal churches left anywhere in this corner of the state. Some of the more dedicated laity maintained Prayer Book worship in their homes until after the first convention of 1789, but they kept no records, elected no vestries, and built no houses for worship. From then until the 1820s, the leadership of the scattered congregations established was mainly in the hands of the few early ministers who sought ordination as Episcopalians and rode wide itinerant circuits

The first known Episcopal services led by ordained clergy were conducted by Francis Reno. In 1794 he officiated alternately at Pittsburgh and Chartiers.[3]

Other clergy resident in this western third of what was then Diocese of Pennsylvania included Robert Ayres, a Methodist ordained in 1789, residing at Brownsville, Fayette County; and Joseph Doddridge, a Methodist ordained in 1792, residing in Independence, Washington County. John Taylor, raised in Ireland and originally a Presbyterian, was ordained to the Episcopal ministry in 1794. He moved to Washington County in 1797 to teach school, and was soon invited to lead a small congregation in Pittsburgh.[3] During the late eighteenth century, Doddridge was especially active, but unsuccessful, in advocating for a diocese comprising western Pennsylvania, western Virginia, and Ohio in the frontier Upper Ohio Valley.[4]

In 1865, the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania was divided, and the western part became known as the Diocese of Pittsburgh.[5] John Barrett Kerfoot was the first bishop of the diocese, which then included 24 counties and 28 parishes.[2] In 1910 approval was granted for the division of the Diocese of Pittsburgh into two dioceses, and the northern part became the Diocese of Erie (now the Diocese of Northwestern Pennsylvania). The Diocese of Pittsburgh took its current shape, covering the eleven counties of southwestern Pennsylvania.

Calvary Episcopal Church

The Diocese grew under the successive leadership of Bishops John Barrett Kerfoot, Cortland Whitehead, Alexander Mann, Austin Pardue, and Robert Appleyard and developed several notable institutions: St. Margaret's Hospital, the Church Home (later Canterbury Place), St. Barnabas Community, and Sheldon Calvary Camp. The diocese was known for its work among miners and steelworkers, and as the steel industry began its collapse in Pittsburgh offered a variety of programs supporting workers. However, evangelicals targeted the diocese as the location for a new seminary, Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry, and spent much of the 1970s pushing the diocese towards the theological position favored by that group. By the 1990s they had changed the theological mix of the diocese. Under Bishops Alden Hathaway and Robert Duncan, St. Margaret's Hospital and Canterbury Place were turned over to control of UPMC; St. Barnabas was released to an independent non-denominational board; Sheldon Calvary Camp became the last diocesan institution with a board closely tied to the diocese.

By 1990, the Diocese of Pittsburgh was a theologically conservative diocese within the Episcopal Church. Robert Duncan (elected in 1995) in particular had a prominent role in the conservative position within the national church. In 2003, he and a group of other conservative bishops walked out of General Convention after the House of Bishops approved Gene Robinson's election as Bishop of New Hampshire. In January 2004, Duncan was elected the first moderator of the Anglican Communion Network.

In 2003, Calvary Episcopal Church in East Liberty sued the diocese and its bishops, Duncan and Scriven, specifically over actions taken by a special convention the diocese held after the Episcopal Church's 2003 General Convention.[6] At the special convention, the diocese had passed a resolution that asserted that all property of individual parishes belonged to the parishes themselves, rather than to the diocese. In the suit, Calvary claimed that the diocese could not take such an action, as it violated the Dennis Canon which states that parish property is held in trust for the diocese and the national church. The parties signed a court-approved settlement in October 2005. The settlement confirmed that all diocesan property would remain the property of "The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Episcopal Church U.S.A."[7] even if a majority of parishes left the Episcopal Church. It also created a process by which the diocese agreed to make decisions about property and assets should a congregation wish to leave the diocese.

On November 2, 2007, the Diocese of Pittsburgh annual convention voted to change its constitution to remove accession to the constitution and canons of the Episcopal Church. The vote was 118 to 58 in the lay order and 109 to 24 in the clergy order.[8] Shortly after, a group of Episcopalians filed a formal complaint with the Episcopal Church and the Presiding Bishop also submitted a complaint charging that Bishop Duncan had abandoned the Episcopal Church and violated other canons. The committee designated by the Episcopal Church voted that the charges were substantive and the matter was put before the House of Bishops on September 18, 2008.[9] The bishops deposed Duncan from ordained ministry on charges of abandoning the communion of the church.[10]

Despite Duncan's removal, diocesan leadership went ahead on October 4, 2008 with the necessary second vote required to amend the diocesan constitution and canons. At that convention, 119 of 191 lay deputies and 121 of 160 clergy deputies voted on the second reading of constitutional changes intended to facilitate withdrawal from the Episcopal Church.[11] In additional votes, canonical changes were approved that were intended to move the diocese into the Province of the Southern Cone.[8] This is similar to what happened in the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin in 2007.

1. John Barrett Kerfoot (1866-1881)
2. Cortlandt Whitehead (1882-1922)
3. Alexander Mann (1923–1943)
4. Austin Pardue (1944–1968)
   * William S. Thomas (1953–1970), bishop suffragan
5. Robert B. Appleyard (1968–1983)
6. Alden Hathaway (1983–1997)
   * Robert Duncan (1995-1997), bishop coadjutor
7. Robert Duncan (1997-2008)
   * Henry Scriven, assistant bishop (2002–2008)
   * Robert Hodges Johnson, assisting bishop (2009)
   * Kenneth L. Price Jr., bishop provisional (2009–2012)
8. Dorsey W. M. McConnell (2012–2021)[24]
9. Ketlen A. Solak (2021–present)[25]

• Badger, R.G. Calvary Church: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (1908).
• Bonner, Jeremy. Called Out of Darkness Into Marvelous Light: A History of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, 1750-2006 (Wipf and Stock, 2009).
• Brittain, Christopher C. A Plague on Both Their Houses: Liberal vs. Conservative Christians and the Divorce of the Episcopal Church USA (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015).
• Caldwell, Ronald J. A History of the Episcopal Schism in South Carolina (Wipf and Stock, 2017), 196–202.
• Harriss, Helen L. Trinity & Pittsburgh: The History of Trinity Cathedral. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: Trinity Cathedral (Trinity Cathedral, 1999).
• Lewis, Harold T. The Recent Unpleasantness: Calvary Church's Role in the Preservation of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Pittsburgh (Wipf and Stock, 2015).
• Richards, Samuel J. The Middle Holds: A History of St. Thomas' Episcopal Church, Canonsburg, and the Community it Serves (Closson Press, 2016).

• Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh website

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