Episcopal 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. 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. St. Paul's Church in Franklin is the diocese's oldest congregation.

Episcopate and offices

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 and Bertram Nelson Herlong.
The seat of the bishop is Christ Church Cathedral in Nashville, which was designated the diocesan cathedral in 1997. Weekday diocesan offices are located at the former property of St. Andrew's Church in the Green Hills neighborhood. From 1985 to 2013, the Diocese maintained offices in closer proximity to downtown Nashville but has not, nor at present intends to, occupied any portion of its cathedral, which was a pre-existing parish prior to its designation, with them.
From 1871 until the division of the diocese, the seat of the bishop was St. Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Memphis; it continues today as the cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of West Tennessee.
Bishops of Tennessee
No.NameYears
IJames Hervey Otey1834-1863
IICharles Todd Quintard1865-1898
IIIThomas Frank Gailor1898-1935
IVJames Matthew Maxon1935-1947
VEdmund P. Dandridge1947-1953
VITheodore Nott Barth1953-1961
VIIJohn Vander Horst1961-1977
VIIIWilliam Evan Sanders1977-1985
IXGeorge Lazenby Reynolds1985-1991
XBertram Nelson Herlong1993-2007
XIJohn Crawford Bauerschmidt2007–Present

History and development

In a history of the diocese published in celebration of its 175th anniversary, Herlong, the 10th bishop of the diocese, writes:
Much of the early growth of the Diocese of Tennessee occurred in plantation regions, mainly centered in the hilly, fertile tobacco-growing 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 American 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.

Partition

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.
Each of the three realigned dioceses retained an important legacy of the former statewide body: West Tennessee had St. Mary's Cathedral; the diocese in Middle Tennessee retained the name "Diocese of Tennessee" and the status as the Episcopal Church's sixteenth diocese; and the East Tennessee diocese welcomed Sanders, eighth bishop of Tennessee, as its own first bishop.

Task Force on Anti-Racism

In June 2017, the diocese's Task Force on Anti-Racism and Lipscomb University's Christian Scholars' Conference organized a service held at the Fisk University Memorial Chapel in memory of 1892 lynching victim Ephraim Grizzard.

List of Parishes

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. Many of the clergy recruited to serve those missions were conservative evangelical in orientation, and some of them, along with their laity, expressed sympathy for the Anglican realignment movement after V. Gene Robinson, a non-celibate gay man, was consecrated to the episcopacy of New Hampshire in 2003. Some established parishes and missions were served by conservative priests during this period also.
The diocese became highly polarized as these theologically conservative clergy and some of their laity, supported by the Bishop, objected vocally to increased social and theological liberalism within the Episcopal church. Their positions brought them into conflict with other clergy and laity, mostly in the Nashville and Sewanee areas, who supported a more Broad Church tradition. Prior to that time, the general theological orientation among Tennessee Episcopalians had been toward liberalization and tolerance, especially since the 1960s, despite outspoken opposition by traditionalists.
Matters came to a head when the diocese attempted to 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.
Disappointed in the results of the election, and fueled by the national church's refusal to reconsider its socially liberal positions on numerous issues including homosexuality, some conservatives began to withdraw from the diocese and align with alternate Anglican structures.
Some of the effects from the dismay on the part of conservatives include the following:
Some conservatives have remained loyal to the diocese, but it appears that the balance of power now rests with a coalition of liberals and moderates. It appears that most of the forementioned controversies within the Diocese have been laid to rest, with no expectations of future schismatic activity.

Gallery of bishops