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The Episcopal Church in Utah: Seven Bishops and One Hundred Years
The Episcopal Church in Utah: Seven Bishops and One Hundred Years
BY JAMES W. BELESS, JR.
The Episcopal Church prides itself on its involvement in the community. The past one hundred-year history of the church in Utah is local proof positive of that community interest and participation. The Episcopal church is, as its name implies, a religious body led and administered by bishops. The church's story in Utah, thus, for convenience, may be considered by examining the events and personalities involved during each of the seven consecutive episcopates with jurisdiction over the state since 1867. Let us now examine that history by looking at the characters both clergy and lay who have played major roles, retelling the salient events in the life of the church, and comparing the part the church has played in the community as it has evolved over the past one hundred years.
BISHOP DANIEL SYLVESTER TUTTLE, 1867-1886
The history of the Episcopal church in Utah began with Daniel Sylvester Tuttle, first Bishop of Montana, with jurisdiction over Idaho and Utah. This strong man's policies and works set the pattern and have been the guiding star for his successors. Those following him probably found themselves in his shadow, and his sagas, both true and apocryphal, made a legendary figure of the bishop.
Bishop Tuttle in his Reminiscences is himself the best chronicler of his nineteen years in Utah. This autobiography has preserved the bishop's letters and sets forth a fresh, on-the-spot impression of the early Utah scene. The Bishop Tuttle story is fairly familiar, but the basic facts of his episcopate in Utah bear retelling to place him and his successors in context.
Bishop Tuttle was thirty years old when he was consecrated in Trinity Church at the head of Wall Street in New York City on May 1, 1867. Four days later the first Episcopal service was held in Independence Hall in Salt Lake City by the Reverend Messrs. George W. Foote and Thomas W. Haskins, the bishop's trail-breaking missionaries. The bishop arrived in Salt Lake City two months later to find the church organized around a heterogeneous congregation with three women the only confirmed Episcopalians; a mission committee which included a Roman Catholic, a Methodist, and an apostate Morman; a thriving Sunday school inherited from the Congregationalist chaplain at Camp Douglas; and a newly opened grammar school. A class of eleven awaited the bishop's confirmation. The bishop met with Brigham Young in the latter's office, and Tuttle reported that he was civilly treated, but not asked to call again. From the very beginning the policy of the Episcopal church in relation to the Mormons was to
Bishop Tuttle left Salt Lake City on July 15, 1867, to spend the next two years in Virginia City, Montana, leaving the work in Utah in charge of Messrs. Foote and Haskins. He returned in November 1869 with his family and remained in charge of the church's work in Utah and Idaho until August of 1886.
Construction of St. Mark's Cathedral began in 1870, and on September 3, 1871, services were held in the completed church. Church of the Good Shepherd at Ogden was completed and consecrated on February 6, 1875. Actually the first non-Mormon church building in Utah was Church of the Good Samaritan at Corinne, an adobe building completed in 1869 at a cost of $2,500 under the direction of the Reverend George Foote. Supplementing the church's religious life and building program, three principal contributions in community action and service marked Bishop Tuttle's episcopate; namely, the inception of a whole system of grammar schools, the beginning of St. Mark's Hospital, and the establishment of two cemeteries.
Immediately upon their arrival in Salt Lake City, Messrs. Foote and Haskins were met with demands by both non-Mormons and Mormons for a grammar school. The two clergymen opened St. Mark's School in a rented adobe building located on the east side of Main Street between Second and Third South streets. The school's curriculum was the basic "three-R's," taught by the clergy and several women volunteers in a free atmosphere that attracted students from the entire community. This early day Episcopal "Operation Headstart" was an immediate success, and it expanded within two years into two rented storerooms, then into Independence Hall, and finally in 1873 into its own frame building at about 141 East First South.
As new clergy arrived in Utah, the first task of each was to start a school. The Reverend J. L. Gillogly opened the School of the Good Shepherd at Ogden in 1870 and St. Paul's School, Plain City, in 1873. The Reverend W. H. Stoy began teaching at St. John's School, Logan, in 1873. Grammar schools were conducted for short periods at Corinne and Layton. A day school for girls began operations in the basement of St. Mark's Cathedral in 1871. This merged into Rowland Hall at the present site ten years later. The first principal of Rowland Hall, Miss Lucia M. Marsh, reported in the catalogue of the school that 84 students were in attendance in 1881. Bishop Tuttle reported in 1886 that 763 students attended Episcopal schools in Utah and that during the prior 19 years 3,186 boys and girls had attended St. Mark's School and Rowland Hall.
Until the opening of mines in the canyons near Salt Lake City, the Mormon bishops' aid sufficed to care for the poor and the sick. The doctors in the valley were associated with Camp Douglas, but there were no facilities for care of the injured and homeless miners and railroad workers. In 1871 the Reverend R. M. Kirby succeeded George Foote as rector of St. Mark's Cathedral. The following year Kirby and two of his vestrymen, Major Edmund Wilkes, a mine superintendent, and Dr. John F. Hamilton, a former post surgeon, met with Bishop Tuttle and prepared to open St. Mark's Hospital, the first institution of its kind between Denver and San Francisco. A small adobe building on the northeast corner of Fifth East and Fourth South streets was first used. The demand for hospital services increased, and mine operators formed an early day "Medicare" program, to which the Emma and Miller Mining companies subscribed, and the individual miners contributed $1.00 each month to entitle them to full hospital care, such as was available. During its first seven years, 2,308 patients received hospital care.
The hospital moved to the northwest corner of Fifth East and Third South. This property was purchased for $4,500, and the institution was incorporated on June 4, 1879. Mr. Kirby was superintendent and treasurer until 1881, when he was succeeded by the Reverend Charles M. Armstrong, who served until 1889. Dr. Hamilton was the medical director and for a while chief of staff of one other doctor. Dr. Hamilton died in 1892, and his funeral was held at the hospital. In 1893 the hospital moved to its present location on Second West and Eighth North streets.
In his Reminiscences Bishop Tuttle sharply criticized Mormon cemeteries, saying that they were forlorn places without trees, grass, or care; and as an answer Mount Olivet Cemetery was established in Salt Lake City through the initiative of the Episcopalians. In 1877 George E. Whitney, attorney and junior warden at St. Mark's Cathedral, induced the Secretary of War to grant by Act of Congress twenty acres of land from the reservation at Camp Douglas for cemetery purposes, together with water rights from Red Butte Canyon. The bishop was responsible for the provisions in the charter of the cemetery for perpetual care and for continued control by the non-Mormon churches of Utah. He commented: "Our example shamed the Mormons into taking better care of their own ground." Burials were made at Mount Olivet even before the government's grant, as Bishop Tuttle reported that Emily Pearsall, an Episcopal missionary who had worked in Utah for two years, was buried there in 1872.
In 1876 the Reverend Mr. Gillogly induced the Ogden City Council to grant two acres east of the Ogden City Cemetery for use by the Episcopalians. Mr. Gillogly reported in his diary that the existing cemetery was without fence or care. The vestry of Church of the Good Shepherd assumed responsibility for the new cemetery by appropriating church funds for fencing, planting trees, and improving the ground. Mr. Gillogly died in 1881 and was buried there.
In 1886 Bishop Tuttle was forty-nine years old. He then accepted a call as Bishop of Missouri, commenting that a missionary bishop in the mountains should be no older than he was then. He left Utah in his official capacity as bishop, but he was responsible for the Utah work until his successor, Abiel Leonard, was elected in January of 1888.
BISHOP ABIEL LEONARD, 1888-1903
The Right Reverend Abiel Leonard was thirty-nine years old when he was consecrated Missionary Bishop of Utah. He was a Missourian, a big man, both physically and spiritually, and he followed well in the footsteps of Bishop Tuttle. His principal accomplishments were in establishing new missions and building churches, particularly in the mining communities, together with the commencement of the church's mission to the Ute Indians in the Uintah Basin.
Bishop Leonard's jurisdiction included Utah and Nevada, and his first annual report reflected 535 communicants in Utah, with 4 clergy besides himself. Five Episcopal day schools were operating in Utah with 783 students studying under 23 teachers. St. Mark's Hospital reported 1,000 patients during the year, and hospital receipts left a $1,041 deficit. The 1889 report included a fervent plea for help for the St. Paul's School at Plain City. The bishop had secured as teacher a deacon who could also act as missionary. Five hundred dollars were needed to help pay for the house at Plain City, which the bishop had purchased, to apply on salary, and "to secure a missionary horse and wagon to enable him to reach some neighboring towns."
In 1898 western Colorado was placed under the jurisdiction of the Missionary District of Salt Lake, together with Utah and Nevada, and for the next five years Bishop Leonard visited his isolated Episcopalians in the three-state area by train and stage. In 1902 he reported,
During his episcopate Bishop Leonard opened new churches at Provo, Springville, Layton (then known as Kay's Creek), Eureka, Park City, and Vernal. The work at Corinne was terminated in 1890, after that town went into its decline. Two new churches and a mission were organized in Salt Lake County. St. Peter's was started in 1900 as a chapel for St. Mark's Hospital and to serve the northwest area of the city. St. John's began that year at Ninth East and Sixteenth South, where the bishop purchased a frame building for $100.00 to seat about thirty-five people. He later bought the lot. Grace Mission was established in Mill Creek in 1902. These missions were manned by layreaders for a number of years. Henry Ellis, layreader at St. Jude's, Layton, served during the entire fifteen-year lifespan of that mission. The bishop reported that Sarah Elliott, missionary at Moab, at her own expense "gathered a Sunday school of 80 pupils whom she is instructing. During the year 25 children have been baptised as a result of her prayers and wise teaching."
The bishop was particularly concerned that the church should make its services available in the new mining communities. St. Luke's, Park City, was organized in September 1888, with a ladies' guild and a Brotherhood of St. Andrew Chapter of young laymen doing yeoman spade work. The district newspaper, Church Notes, reported in July of 1889:
St. Paul's, Salt Lake City, began as a Sunday school, meeting in the home of Mrs. W. D. Wilson on Fifth South near Second West, in January of 1879. Services were held there until October 1880, when the church building was completed at Main and Fourth South streets, the present site of the First Security Building. The funds for this chapel were donated as a memorial to Jane Mount of New York. The congregation steadily grew, and St. Paul's achieved parish status in 1890, with the Reverend Ellis Bishop as its first rector. In 1902 the annual report showed communicant strength of the three Utah parishes as follows: St. Mark's, 375; St. Paul's, 275; and the Good Shepherd in Ogden, 137. There were 916 communicants in Utah, 768 Sunday school pupils, 7 clergy, and 14 church buildings.
By 1890, due to change in politics, public schools were operating in Utah free from Mormon control and religious instruction, and the Episcopal schools closed, with the exception of Rowland Hall. The Episcopal school system had proved expensive, but necessary, to fill the vacuum in free education. Thereafter, emphasis was placed on development of Rowland Hall, where 180 girls attended in 1891, 40 of them in the music department, with boarders numbering only 10. Construction of classrooms and dormitories went on, and in 1901 the catalogue reported 55 boarders and a faculty of 11. Bishop Leonard was president of the board, and the Reverend James B. Eddie, the dean of St. Mark's Cathedral, was chaplain for the school.
On June 28, 1898, the Articles of Incorporation of the Corporation of the Episcopal Church in Utah, a non-profit corporation, were filed with the Secretary of State, to create the legal entity necessary for holding title to land in the state. Seven Trustees were provided, and its first officers were Bishop Leonard, president ex-officio, the Reverend W. E. Maison, vice-president; J. H. Knaus, secretary; and John Houghton, treasurer. The corporation had a fifty-year life, which was extended by amendment.
Bishop Leonard reported in his Quarterly Message of September 1893 that no work had been done to that date among the Indians of his district, but that he hoped to visit the Uintah Agency,
The bishop asked, and before long his prayers were answered. He had a chapel and not one, but several dedicated missionaries among the Utes.
The Uncompahgre Utes were removed from western Colorado to the Ouray-Uintah Reservation in 1887, and an Indian school was operated by the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs at Randlett, then known as Leland, about four miles south of Fort Duchesne. The school was later moved north to Whiterocks, as water at Leland was bad and scarce. Early in 1894 Archdeacon Frederick W. Crook, on invitation from the post commandant and acting Indian Agent Colonel J. F. Randlett, an Episcopalian, went by stage to Fort Duchesne and at the post held the first service, which he described as follows:
Colonel Randlett made arrangements for use by the church of a parcel of land at Leland. Bishop Leonard made pleas for funds through church publications and was successful in raising $2,500, which in 1895 built the first church and mission house. The following year Congress allocated the Indian reservations to various churches for religious and educational work. The Utes, influenced no doubt by several of their teachers, selected the Episcopal church. The first missionary to the Utes was Reverend George S. Vest, who remained at Holy Spirit, Leland, until 1898. Two missionaries, Lucy Carter and Sue Garrett, taught at the Ouray Indian School and assisted in the mission, first at Leland and Fort Duchesne, and after 1899 at St. Elizabeth's, Whiterocks, where a three-room infirmary was built next to the mission home. In 1898 Milton J. Hersey, a layreader, took charge of the work at Leland. This dedicated worker and his wife teamed to gain the confidence and friendship of the Utes. Mr. Hersey was indeed the personification of the missionary that Bishop Leonard had prayed for. Mr. Hersey was ordered a deacon in 1901 and ordained a priest in 1909. The bishop complained in his 1902 report that the Board of Missions could give him only $300.00 a year in cash for Mr. Hersey's support.
A practice of the Utes was to abandon babies after the death of the mother, or to bury the child alive with the mother's body. The Herseys saved a number of these children, and at one time they had three abandoned Indian babies in their home. Bishop Leonard reported that he baptized one such child, Elizabeth Lee Yellow Crow, at Whiterocks at the time of his June visit. This coincided with the Uncompahgres' Sun Dance, which he described in detail in his next report. One loyal churchwoman at Leland was Chipeta, the wife of Uncompahgre Chief Ouray. Chipeta was reputed to have been the only Indian woman allowed to take part in tribal meetings at this time. She and Johnson, one of the participants in the Meeker Massacre at White River, Colorado, in 1879, were friends of the bishop and were supporters of the Episcopal mission. Chipeta was confirmed by the bishop. When she died in 1924, the Reverend Mr. Hersey arranged for her burial with an Episcopal funeral at her home at Montrose, Colorado.
The Quarterly Report, edited by Bishop Leonard, contained reports of successes and failures of the various missions and parishes spread thinly over the district, along with anecdotes and stories of the church family. For example, St. Luke's, Park City, reported:
On December 3, 1903, Bishop Leonard died of typhoid fever. His funeral was held at St. Mark's Cathedral, and he was buried at Mount Olivet Cemetery. Bishop Tuttle traveled from St. Louis to attend. Unfortunately, his train was late and he missed the funeral, but he was rushed through a snowy afternoon by streetcar to the cemetery in time to perform the committal service and closing prayers for his friend, the second Bishop of Utah. Bishop Tuttle again directed the work of the district until a successor was appointed by the House of Bishops.
BISHOP FRANKLIN SPENCER SPALDING, 1904-1914
"I am going to be a western missionary," was the career decision of Frank Spalding, Princeton Senior in 1887. Four years later Franklin Spencer Spalding was ordained a deacon by his father, the Episcopal Bishop of Colorado. As a rector at Erie, Pennsylvania, he gained a reputation as a man of energy, courage, and convictions. He was a rousing preacher, and a dedicated Christian social reformer. He supported Eugene Debs in 1898 and gained renown as a Labor Day speaker. When he was elected Bishop of Utah in October 1904, he met with scattered opposition because of his outspoken disfavor of ritual, vestments, and tradition in the church.
The new bishop wrote to Bishop Tuttle to inquire about problems he would face in Utah and found that as his last official act Bishop Leonard had signed a $30,000 mortgage on St. Mark's Hospital and a large loan on the Episcopal residence. Finances would continue to plague Bishop Spalding during the next ten years. He early determined that whereas his predecessors had stressed self-support for the district and its congregations, as a practical matter the church in Utah had to look to the East for real support. He was troubled as to whether his prime concern should be to travel through his three-state district to visit isolated churchmen or to "beg for funds in the East." During the next year Bishop Spalding traveled to every parish and mission station in the district, covering 14,000 miles by train and 1,160 by stage and wagon. By the time for his first annual report he had arrived at his own definite conclusions regarding the work to be done in Utah. He could see a deterioration in the mining camps, including Eureka and Park City, and he recommended the emphasis for the church's work in more profitable areas. He advocated a separation of the work in Utah from western Colorado and Nevada, and he felt that Utah's problems were indeed unique and required separate treatment. He despaired that at the time when the Episcopal Board of Missions was sending $1,500 annually for work in Utah, the Presbyterians were spending $80,000. In 1908 Utah was set apart as the Missionary District of Utah, and in that year the bishop defined "the Mormon problem" and advocated a very different approach to it from that of Bishops Tuttle and Leonard.
Bishop Spalding was indeed a fine fund raiser, and by 1908 the appropriation for missionary work in Utah had greatly increased, as special gifts were forthcoming from New York. The bishop reported in his 1908 annual report to the Board of Missions:
The attention which he gave to "the Mormon problem" in his reports was primarily for eastern consumption and may indeed have contributed to his fund raising successes. Concurrently, the bishop's confrontations with Mormon dogma and practice were made locally and appeared to seriously undermine the successful peaceful coexistence policy of Bishops Tuttle and Leonard. The Salt Lake Herald of October 6, 1907, in its lead story on the L.D.S. church conference, carried a red headline, "APOSTLE MAKES ATTACK ON EPISCOPAL BISHOP." The sub-head read, "Orson F. Whitney Denounces Rt. Rev. Franklin S. Spalding's Utterances Questioning the Purity of Mormon Homes." Apostle Whitney referred to a Spalding sermon wherein the bishop had "denounced a number of the churches, among them the Methodist, the Christian Scientists, the Seventh Day Adventists and the Mormons." The Whitney backlash apparently set the theme for the conference on L.D.S. morality and virtue, at the expense of good relations with the Episcopalians for some time.
In 1912 the bishop published a pamphlet entitled Joseph Smith as a Translator. Here he described his research regarding the Mormon Book of Abraham. He wrote that he had furnished facsimiles of the Egyptian hieroglyphics to eight leading Egyptologists, all of whom responded and concurred that the papyri had in fact been a set of burial instructions commonly deposited in Egyptian tombs, rather than Abraham's detailed prime source for much Mormon theology, as translated by the Mormon prophet. The pamphlet apparently had a brisk sale at the Deseret Book Store, and Spalding sent complimentary copies to Mormon church officials, professors in Utah colleges and universities, and teachers in high schools. He felt that it was his business to point out what he believed intellectually and morally untrue.
The bishop formed a local Social Service Commission in 1913, which "made helpful investigations and suggested remedies for social and economic evils both in Salt Lake City and the State of Utah."
The organ of the commission was The Utah Survey, a monthly publication devoted half to discussion of social service problems and half to "thoughtful and courteous discussion of various phases of Mormonism." The editor was James H. Wolfe, later Utah Supreme Court justice, and himself a controversial social champion. The September 1913 issue of The Utah Survey had two articles, a review of the Joseph Smith as a Translator pamphlet, written by another Egyptologist, and a critique of the Hargrove-Husbands police fraud hearings before the Salt Lake City Commission. Three police officers were exonerated at the hearing, improperly according to the Utah Survey writer, of charges of accepting graft from Greek businessmen on West Second South Street.
Frank Spalding was proud of his reputation as the "Socialist Bishop." On his road trips through the mining towns of Nevada and Utah he gave Christian sermons in small frame churches on Sundays and weekday lectures on Socialism in union halls. He tried to equate the two doctrines, retaining the social good of Marx, without resort to strife. He was a social activist, with little regard for theorists. In 1910 he took the church directly to the men at Garfield, where he established All Souls Mission and directed its vicar, the Reverend Maxwell W. Rice, to live in the bunkhouse with the smeltermen. During Lent in 1908 the bishop conducted a series of lectures to a packed house at St. Paul's, Salt Lake City, speaking on "The Church and Socialism." His mission congregations in the mining towns cheered him on, but his parishioners in the city were less than enthusiastic and even hostile.
The Emery Memorial House near the University of Utah campus was opened late in 1913 as a dormitory for male students. The Reverend Mr. Rice was transferred there as chaplain to the twenty-three residents and thirty non-resident members of the house. A Sunday school met in the hall on Sunday afternoons for neighborhood children, and swimming classes were taught in the small pool at the house. St. John's House, Logan, under the direction of the Reverend Paul Jones, had a reading room and pool table to serve the recreational needs of the college students. The Girls' Friendly Lodge, Vernal, was the residence for girls attending Wilcox Academy (Congregationalist) and Uintah Academy (Mormon) in Uintah County. The bishop was proud of these school residences, which he felt provided a Christian homelike atmosphere for the students.
With the guns opening fire in Europe in August of 1914, Bishop Spalding changed the themes of his sermons from social reform to peace. On September 24, as he crossed South Temple at E Street to mail a letter to his mother, he was struck by a speeding automobile to become one of the city's first traffic victims. On the following November 1, a memorial service for the third Bishop of Utah packed the Salt Lake Theatre. Speakers at the service were his friends the Reverend Elmer I. Goshen, Congregationalist minister in Salt Lake City, and Brigham H. Roberts, L.D.S. church historian.
BISHOP PAUL JONES, 1914-1918
The fourth Bishop of Utah was consecrated at St. Mark's Cathedral on December 16, 1914. He was the Right Reverend Paul Jones, former vicar at St. John's, Logan, and archdeacon of the district after 1913. Highly regarded and praised by Bishop Spalding for his work among the collegians, the new bishop lacked the social zeal and secular interest of his predecessor. His achievement was the expansion of the church's mission stations and improvement of the Episcopal institutions. In his first report to the district convocation he reviewed the state of the church, noting that the $40,000 debt on the hospital was retired, there were then 12 clergymen and 7 women workers in the field, and 1,426 communicants.
He noted that the proportion of L.D.S. to Episcopalians in Utah, outside of Salt Lake City and Ogden, was 1,800 to 1, adding, "It is useless to rely simply upon preaching and teaching which falls upon deaf ears — We must try in a sympathetic and loving way to break down the barriers which prevent an understanding of our message." He felt that the Christian service through the church institutions was the best way to open hearts.
Bishop Jones's episcopal reports over the four years showed his prime interest was in placing the services of the church where the need was current and most pressing. St. John's House, the student center at Logan, was located downtown, and its small but adequate collection of books served students and townsmen alike, as there was then no city library. The Emery House was filled to capacity with college men. Of thirty-two, only two were Episcopalians, eleven were Mormons, and two were Roman Catholics. The Girls' Friendly House at Vernal was serving a need, but lacking local support, it was struggling to survive. The Sunday school at Garfield was the largest in the district, and American Smelting and Refining Company built a $15,000 stone church for the Episcopalians there. In 1917 work was started and lasted for one year among the Japanese, led by the Reverend Peter C. Aoki, who organized a Sunday school and taught English.
The Women's Auxiliary was organized on a district level in 1915, and women were first elected as delegates to the annual convocation that year. Mr. Hersey investigated the use of peyote among the Utes at Whiterocks and Randlett. In February 1917 through the sponsorship of the church, the legislature amended the state narcotics law to include and control peyote. Mr. Hersey was rewarded — the bishop gave him an automobile, and he retired his mule team.
St. Paul's, Salt Lake City, sold its property on Main Street and moved to Ninth East and Third South in 1917. Bishop Tuttle preached at the Cathedral in June of that year to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the church in Utah. On paper the church's progress looked good, but Bishop Jones and the militarism of the world conflict met head on. Does the Christian religion insist on nonresistance or hold for aggressive warfare for God and the right? The bishop was an avowed pacifist, and he saw no other right. The district churchmen dissented.
Bishop Jones was a member of the Christian Pacifists, a group which actively opposed the draft and called for immediate peace in Europe. His sermons during 1917 so incensed his parishioners that his Council of Advice called for his resignation. When it was not forthcoming, a demand was made on the House of Bishops for an investigation of Jones's activities, which were termed embarrassing and seditious. In December he tendered his resignation which was accepted the following April. Bishop Tuttle was Episcopal Presiding Bishop, and he again assumed control as acting Bishop of Utah for the fifth time. The Right Reverend Frank H. Touret, Bishop of Western Colorado, was given charge of the work until a successor was named. Bishop Touret was able to make only occasional contacts with Utah. He addressed the 1919 convocation in Utah, saying that because of the disturbing controversy regarding Paul Jones, financial help from the East was not forthcoming, adding, "It will, perhaps, be some time before it is possible to restore confidence in our missionary enterprise in Utah." The accompanying annual report showed a slight overall, four-year gain in communicants, but a significant drop in the three parishes. "Peace at any price" had been costly to the district.
BISHOP ARTHUR W. MOULTON, 1920-1946
"Bishop Moulton is a man who never asks what another's creed is when help is asked," so spoke the mayor of Lawrence, Massachusetts, at a farewell reception attended by a thousand townspeople, friends, and parishioners as the newly elected fifth Bishop of Utah prepared to leave after twenty years as rector at Lawrence. The Right Reverend Arthur W. Moulton had a knack for making friends, and his record in Utah would show excellent rapport with the L.D.S. church and other denominations, good community relations, and loyalty from his own churchmen. However, the new bishop was not a good businessman, nor a fund raiser, and the district's financial problems of the next twenty years generally fulfilled Bishop Touret's prophecy.
Bishop Moulton enjoyed his trips to the missions in eastern Utah, including the Ute stations. He referred often to "my Basin," and the work there seemed to have his preference. Churches were built at Roosevelt, Duchesne, and Vernal, and missionary work was done at Myton and Fort Duchesne. The coal camps of Carbon County were booming, and a mission was started at Kenilworth. The YMCA at Helper was taken over by the Episcopalians; the building provided a chapel, reading room, and dormitory for railroaders. During the 1920's good progress was shown throughout the district. In Salt Lake City, St. Paul's new church was completed, and the bishop's 1928 annual report showed that plans were being made to move St. Mark's Hospital from its trackside location to a quieter neighborhood. Rowland Hall had achieved a fine reputation as a girls' preparatory school, but also had a growing indebtedness. The bishop was a welcome reconteur at dinner meetings, and he had loyal friends in L.D.S. churchmen George Albert Smith and Levi Edgar Young. The 1929 annual report showed 12 clergymen, including the bishop, active in the district, with 1,843 communicants. The district overpaid its quota to the Episcopal National Council, and the bishop was pleased with the service that the church's institutions were rendering to the community. Then came the Great Depression.
The years of economic depression proved how closely the Episcopal church in Utah was tied to the vitality and growth of the areas of which it was a part. When the mines and smelters closed, railroads reduced service, farm products went begging, and finally the banks closed, the church's work seemed to almost anticipate declines and troubles in these various areas. In 1929 the girls lodge at Vernal was leased as a hospital. By 1932 Rowland Hall and the Emery House were having financial troubles. Students did not have the money for tuition, and both institutions were again heavily indebted. The hospital gave up its plans to move and improve, and it entrenched in its industrial location. In 1933 the Episcopal National Council recommended closing Rowland Hall for lack of support and finances, and the school was kept open only through the heroic efforts of local patrons and alumni. The ingenious argument made to the National Council was that if the school did close it would lose its tax exempt status, and the resulting taxes would compound the deficit.
Lack of finances and churchmen moving away caused the missions in the Uintah Basin and the mining towns to close, and clergymen doubled up on missions served. The Reverend Hoyt Henriques, vicar at St. John's, Salt Lake City, served at Park City and Logan on alternate Sundays. In 1933 he went to Idaho to be chaplain to the CCC camps. Archdeacon William F. Bulkley was on constant travel status, covering distant missions and visiting isolated Episcopalians. The Emery House finally succumbed from lack of support and was leased to Salt Lake City as a boys' club. The property was finally sold under pressure. Bishop Moulton's task in the 1930's was to spread himself and his clergy thin over the district and to hold the financial line with the institutions. In slow step with the rest of the state's sagging economy, the church came through the Great Depression lean and scarred. It received its next stimulus only as the result of the inflow of Episcopalians attached to the Armed Forces or working in the war-related industries during World War II.
In 1942 the Reverend H. Baxter Liebler, former rector of a parish in Greenwich, Connecticut, traveled by pony and pack burro through the Navajo Reservation in southeast Utah. Like the man who came to dinner, he stopped at Bluff, learned the language and Indian customs, and with the aid of volunteer labor and funds from the East built St. Christopher's Mission to the Navajos, naming it after the guardian saint of travelers and dedicating its work to carrying on Indian customs and culture in a Christian environment. The first sermon in the Navajo language was preached at Bluff on Christmas 1943, and work was then commenced by Father Liebler to translate the Book of Common Prayer into Navajo. St. Christopher's provided the first school for the Indians in the area, as the public schools at Bluff were for whites only. Some medical facilities were provided, and x-ray and dental clinics were set up at the mission.
Bishop Moulton was seventy-two years old, the mandatory retirement age, in 1945, and his resignation became effective in September of 1946. The second World War was over, the chapter of the lean years for the district was closing, and the church prepared to adapt itself to the changing postwar times, responsibilities, and opportunities.
BISHOP STEPHEN CUTTER CLARK, 1946-1950 When the Right Reverend Stephen Cutter Clark surveyed his district in January of 1947, it was really a renewal of old acquaintance — finding familiar landmarks and assessing the changes of thirty years. The newly consecrated bishop had begun his ministry in July 1917 as a deacon at St. Luke's, Park City. In his report that year, Bishop Jones had praised the enthusiasm and aggressive work of the Reverend Mr. Clark, then age twenty-five. Stephen Clark stayed in Utah just over a year, then accepted a call to Los Angeles, where he remained until his election as the sixth Bishop of Utah.
Bishop Clark found the Episcopal church in Utah very changed in its component congregations and their locations from the time of his Park City ministry. In 1947 the church had followed the population and economic trends and had given up many of the unprofitable mission stations, including Park City, Eureka, and the Uintah Basin missions, with the exception of Vernal. A new breed of churchmen was appearing. These laymen were the returning servicemen, their young families, and the postwar migrants from the East and South, who sought new homes in the West and lent vigor, new ideas, and renewed missionary zeal to the church. As in other times, new congregations began in growing communities around a Sunday school. In 1947 a group of mothers from the Sugarhouse area called on the bishop and requested his help in organizing a Sunday school and mission in southeast Salt Lake City. St. John's at Ninth East near Sixteenth South streets had closed during the depression. The bishop gave his support to this new mission, All Saints, which began life with its church school in a garage and eventually moved to its present building in 1955.
Another mission built around the Sunday school began in 1949 at Dragerton, a new coal mining town. The Indian work at Whiterocks was reopened under the guidance of the Reverend Joseph Hogben. Bishop Clark's 1950 report showed 3,017 communicants and 4,358 baptized persons in the district. The Archbishop of York visited the bishopdn 1949 and spoke in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. Community relations were good. Bishop Clark foresaw real and immediate progress for the church, but illness intervened, and he died on November 30, 1950.
BISHOP RICHARD SIMPSON WATSON, 1951—
The Right Reverend Richard Simpson Watson was consecrated seventh Bishop of Utah in St. Mark's Cathedral on May 1, 1951. The colorful procession of participating bishops, clergy, and choirs and the service of consecration were televised, one of the first local events of this nature to receive such full coverage. The new bishop, a native of Colorado, practiced law in Denver before entering the ministry and had been rector of parishes in Houston and Seattle.
Bishop Watson's record of progress over the past sixteen years speaks for itself. During his episcopacy new work was begun in nine growing communities supported by postwar industry, the space program, or the military. These missions in the order of their respective establishment are at Price, Moab, Brigham City, Clearfield, Holladay, Bountiful, Granger, Tooele, and Roosevelt. Of these missions seven have new church buildings, and four have new rectories. Two missions became self-supporting parishes. All Saints, Salt Lake City, in 1959 was the fourth parish in the district and the first in Utah in sixty-eight years. St. Mary's, Provo, became the fifth parish in 1960. Two of the new missions, St. James, Holladay, and Resurrection, Bountiful, are parochial missions, having been sired and supported by All Saints and St. Mark's Cathedral respectively. St. Luke's, Park City, was reactivated.
The Conference Center at the former location of the Girls' Friendly Camp at Brighton was completed by Bishop Watson and is the district camp and site for the church family's retreats and conferences. Two new wings have been completed at St. Mark's Hospital, and new property was purchased in Salt Lake County in anticipation of a future move of the entire facility. St. Mark's Boys School was established and combined into one administration and faculty, now Rowland Hall-St. Mark's School. Land, formerly a part of Fort Douglas, was acquired for an ultimate move and expansion of that institution.
Of the new breed of laymen, Bishop Watson has ordained 16 men to the ministry. The district budget in 1966, money raised within the district, was almost six times greater than in 1950. Communicants in 1966 were 4,617, 1,600 more than in 1950. Baptized persons in 1966 were 8,201, an increase in 16 years of 3,843. Twenty clergy were resident in the district, with 22 organized congregations.
The Episcopal church, both nationally and in Utah, has been a leader during the past decade in many ecumenical approaches, discussions, and experiments. The Utah clergy have been and are, without exception, deeply involved in practical community life and current social problems. The Episcopal church in Utah, as it enters its second century, is clearly committed to the stated policy of Bishop Daniel Tuttle; namely, that the church should stress the merits of its own cause, should seek the areas of greatest need for its ministry, and should freely offer its good services for the better life of the whole community.
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