The 213th Annual Council - Diocese of Virginia

Proceedings
on their recommendations and going one step further, I am charging that commission
and renaming it the Windsor Dialogue Commission, to continue the conversation with
our gay and lesbian members, to help us maintain our already expressed desire to
remain in relationship with the worldwide Anglican Communion, and to follow the
recommendations of the Windsor Report. I believe the Diocese of Virginia can make
a contribution to that global discussion especially, when we send our bishops to the
Lambeth Conference this coming summer.
As a continuation of our Triangle of Hope, linking Virginia with the Diocese of Liverpool
in the Church of England and the Church in West Africa, all three of our bishops have
accepted an invitation from the Bishop of Liverpool to spend the weekend in his diocese
before Lambeth begins.
The empowerment of the Church at a local and international level continues to engage the
energy of our staff and bishops. At confirmations, we give vouchers for short-term mission
trips to every young person under the age of 18, hoping that they will take a diocesanapproved
mission trip before they turn 19 years old. The reports we receive from young
people who have taken such trips confirm that they are often life-changing events.
Most of the early bishops of Virginia included in their annual address a diary of what they
had done since the preceding Council. At the 1908 Council, Bishop Gibson reported on
the 300 th anniversary of the Church in Virginia at Jamestown in the Spring of 1907. It was
also interesting to read that he spent most of July and August in Orkney Springs, Virginia.
Although that summer was 18 years before the founding of Shrine Mont, it was an early
indication of the origin of Shrine Mont, which became a reality when the Rev. Dr. Edmund
Woodward, who had married Bishop Gibson’s daughter, founded Shrine Mont in 1925,
beginning with Bishop Gibson’s summer house which Dr. Woodward had acquired. Bishop
Gibson also reported that he was present when the cornerstone was laid at the Washington
National Cathedral on September 29, 1907. The major event of that year was the General
Convention of the Episcopal Church which met in Richmond from October 2 until October
19, 1907. The Bishop of London was a special guest at the General Convention.
In one of the only signs of personal irritation that I have ever read in the reports of my
predecessors, Bishop Gibson’s notes for Monday, October 14, 1907, read as follows: “At a very
late hour at night by a call of five most inconsiderate trustees, the Board of Trustees of the
Virginia Seminary was convened. It was the most unpleasant incident of the convention.”
While Bishop Gibson makes no further reference to the matter, the minutes of the
Seminary board are preserved in the Seminary library and reveal that a quorum of
the Seminary board consisting of five bishops, three priests and two lay members
assembled at 10 o’clock at night on October 14 at the State Capitol in Richmond and
dealt with the removal and demotion of the professor of Greek at the Seminary and the
changes in salary such a demotion might require. Several resolutions were considered,
but agreement was reached only on the demotion of a professor. Bishop Gibson and the
Bishop of West Virginia were constituted as a committee of two to notify the professor.
No wonder the bishop thought the event was unpleasant! The event ends with grace,
however. John Booty’s history of the Seminary reports that the professor took gracefully
his removal from teaching Greek and remained on the faculty in other capacities another
13 years.
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The Diocese of Virginia t Journal of the the 213 th Annual Council