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POTTER, HENRY CODMAN 277POTTER, HENRY CODMAN (25 May 1835, Schenectady, N.Y.–21 July 1908,Cooperstown, N.Y.). Education: Graduated from the Virginia Theological Seminary,1857. Career: Minister-in-charge, Christ Church, Greensburg, Pa., 1857–59; rector, St. John’s Church, Troy, N.Y., 1859–66; assistant minister, TrinityChurch, Boston, 1866–68; rector, Grace Church, New York, 1868–83; assistantbishop, diocese of New York, 1883–87; bishop, diocese of New York, 1887–1908.Henry Codman Potter, a bishop and social gospel advocate, was born in Schenectady,New York, in May 1835. His father, Alonzo Potter, was then a professorat Union College and later became the third bishop of Pennsylvania. Henry studiedat Virginia Theological Seminary, and he was ordained a deacon in 1857 anda priest in 1858. After serving briefly in three different parishes, he became therector of Grace Church, New York, in 1868. In that position he helped transformhis parish into an early example of an “institutional church.” He erected GraceChapel in 1876 as a free church (i.e., a church that was not supported by pewrents), and the following year he built Grace House as a headquarters for missionarywork among Germans living in the neighborhood. Grace House includeda reading room for working men and women as well as a day nursery for theirchildren. It was widely recognized as a center of service to the people of the city,and its active social programs were further developed under the rectorship ofPotter’s successor, William Reed Huntington.*Potter was consecrated as the assistant bishop of New York in 1883 and as thediocesan bishop four year later. As bishop, he became a leader of the ChurchAssociation for the Advancement of the Interests of Labor, which was foundedin New York City in 1887. In a pastoral letter he argued against treating labor asa mere market commodity, and he supported arbitration in labor disputes whileopposing sweatshops. A promoter of social reform, he sought better living andworking conditions for laborers and fought against police corruption. In additionto these activities, Potter was a broad church Episcopalian who sought to overcomepetty divisions over party issues in his denomination. He dealt skillfullywith three particularly troublesome conflicts during his episcopate: the ordinationof the outspoken biblical critic Charles A. Briggs,* the controversial lectures onbiblical criticism given by R. Heber Newton,* and the extreme ritualist practicesadopted by Arthur Ritchie, the Anglo-Catholic rector of the Church of St. Ignatius.Employing a mixture of tact, humility, and good sense, Potter adroitly handledproblems with an eye to the long-term good of the Episcopal Church as a whole.Energetic on behalf of the spiritual welfare of New York Episcopalians, Potterinstituted the Advent Mission, an Episcopal form of revival, in 1885, and he beganspiritual retreats for clergy and ordinands. A champion of cathedrals as spiritualcenters for dioceses, he presided at the laying of the cornerstone of the Cathedralof St. John the Divine in New York City in 1892. A supporter of religious ordersfor men and women, he was among the first Episcopalians to proclaim the valueof sisterhoods and deaconesses in his denomination, and he heard the professionof James O.S. Huntington* as a monk in the Order of the Holy Cross.