Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee

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Diocese of West Tennessee
St. Mary's Cathedral
Current leadership
BishopPhoebe Alison Roaf
Map
Location of the Diocese of West Tennessee
Location of the Diocese of West Tennessee
Website
edwtn.org

The Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee is the

St. Mary's Cathedral
.

History and development

Despite being located in the extreme southwestern corner of Tennessee, Memphis served as the

plantations, both owners and slaves. After the American Civil War, missionary emphasis in West Tennessee shifted to the city of Memphis, although the church gradually began appearing in larger towns outside the Mississippi River
region as well.

Displayed in the west transept of St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Memphis, Tennessee, this stone is part of one of the columns of the balustrade that surrounded the ancient Pool of Bethesda. Brought from Jerusalem by Thomas F. Gailor, June 1, 1928.

After World War II, three large parishes, Calvary Church,

bishop coadjutor, William E. Sanders, had his office in Knoxville. A suffragan bishop
, W. Fred Gates, Jr., worked out of Memphis from 1966 to 1982; he was elected and consecrated partly for that purpose.

It was not until Vander Horst retired in 1977 that talks began to separate the statewide diocese into three territories. Upon the

General Convention giving consent to plans at its 1982 meeting, the statewide diocese excised its westernmost counties first, with the new West Tennessee diocese beginning operations on January 1, 1983. Two years later, the easternmost counties of the remaining Tennessee diocesan territory became the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee
.

Alex Dickson, the first bishop of the diocese, was closely aligned with "orthodox" forces within Anglicanism opposed to the trends away from teaching "Jesus Christ as the one source of salvation and the normative authority of scripture." (In 2000, then-retired Bishop Dickson, still living as of 2020, was involved in the consecration of the first two bishop of the Anglican Mission in the Americas.)[1] During the controversies that racked the denomination nationally in the early 2000s (after Dickson's retirement) over the consecration of a non-celibate gay man,

continuing Anglican groups. Not a large number did so, however, and the diocese has not been as involved as some other conservative Southern dioceses have in the Anglican realignment
movement; an example was the continuing Diocese of Tennessee in the middle part of the state.

The diocesan motto, Ubique Inter Flumina, means "everywhere between the rivers", referring to the Tennessee and Mississippi rivers, which bracket West Tennessee on two sides. This echoes the original motto of the old state-wide Diocese, which was Usque ad Flumen, meaning "even unto the river," referring to the Mississippi River.

Most communicants of this diocese reside in either the city of Memphis or its surrounding suburbs in Shelby County. Elsewhere, only about half or so of the region's counties have congregations, most of which were founded before 1945.

Bishops

  1. Alex D. Dickson 1983–1994
  2. James Malone Coleman 1994–2001
  3. Don Edward Johnson 2001–2019
  4. Phoebe Alison Roaf 2019–present [2]

Bishops of Tennessee before the creation of the Diocese of West Tennessee

  • James Hervey Otey, first Bishop of Tennessee
    James Hervey Otey, first Bishop of Tennessee
  • Charles Quintard, second Bishop of Tennessee
    Charles Quintard
    , second Bishop of Tennessee
  • Thomas F. Gailor, third Bishop of Tennessee, President of the National Council
    Thomas F. Gailor
    , third Bishop of Tennessee, President of the National Council
  • Edmund Dandridge, fourth Bishop of Tennessee
    Edmund Dandridge, fourth Bishop of Tennessee
  • James Maxon, fifth Bishop of Tennessee
    James Maxon, fifth Bishop of Tennessee
  • Theodore Barth, sixth Bishop of Tennessee
    Theodore Barth, sixth Bishop of Tennessee
  • John Vander Horst, seventh Bishop of Tennessee
    John Vander Horst, seventh Bishop of Tennessee
  • William Sanders, Dean of St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, eighth Bishop of Tennessee, first Bishop of East Tennessee
    William Sanders, Dean of St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral, eighth Bishop of Tennessee, first Bishop of East Tennessee

See also

References

  1. ^ article on the consecrations
  2. ^ "Bishop-Elect page". The Search for the Fourth Bishop of West Tennessee. Episcopal Diocese of West TN. Retrieved 26 March 2019.

External links

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