As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember Selina Hastings Countess of Huntingdon who funded the Bethesda Orphanage in Savannah as she guided an Evangelical movement. The philanthropy of Countess Selina Hastings (1707–1791) made it possible for the Rev. George Whitefield (1714–1770) to found the Bethesda Orphan House in Savannah even as she was shaping the Methodist movement. Hastings was one of three daughters born to an English noble family. At 21, she married to Theophilus Hastings, the ninth earl of Huntingdon. In the next ten years, she would give birth to seven children, four of whom died quite young, which had an impact on her religious thought. After her husband died in 1746, Hastings increasingly connected with Methodism through the Rev. John Wesley, who she met after his return from Georgia. In published letters, Wesley credited the Countess with convincing him to preach to miners in the open air, telling him “They have churches, but they never go to them! And ministers, but they seldom or never hear them! Perhaps they might hear you.” He tried her plan and found his preaching transformed. […]

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember the beginning of Saint Paul’s in Augusta. James Edward Oglethorpe sent a party up the Savannah River in 1735 to build a fort as a refuge for settlers living near the first set of rapids. Oglethorpe named Fort Augusta for the princess who would become the mother of George III. In time, the trading post prospered. In April of 1750, the people who lived and traded in this area erected a church. Noting that their friendship with the indigenous population was “sometimes precarious,” they built the church under the shelter of the Fort. The Trustees of the Colony of Georgia meeting in London shortly thereafter sent to Augusta the Rev. Jonathan Copp, a Connecticut native and clergyman of the Church of England. He left London in 1751 with window glass, church furniture, and a deed to 300 acres of land to cultivate for his support. We are told that he arrived full of enthusiasm, “with much the same temperament as St. Mark.” There is a letter from Lambeth Palace in Saint Paul’s founding documents as the […]

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember the Rev. Bartholomew Zouberbuhler. Three of the greatest change agents in the history of the Church spent time in the Colony of Georgia. All three belonged to the Anglican Church in the 18th century. John Wesley and George Whitefield both served as rectors of Christ Church in Savannah, while Charles Wesley working as a non-stipendiary priest established worship on St. Simons. Whitfield changed the face of American Christianity in preaching “the great awakening,” John Wesley changed the face of American Christianity and the world with the Evangelical commitment to share the Gospel with people of other classes and colors, and Charles Wesley added greatly to our hymnody. Yet not one of these three was particularly effective in their ministry in Georgia. Bishop Henry Louttit observed, “It was Bartholomew Zouberbuhler, born of German-speaking parents, who was the first great pastor in the Anglican tradition in Georgia.” Zouberbuhler was appointed on All Saints’ Day, 1745, by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG), to be pastor of Christ Church in Savannah. Bartholomew was the son of […]

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember John Wesley and his exit from Georgia. Though his legacy as the founder of the Methodist movement has born so much good fruit for almost three centuries, John Wesley’s ministry in Georgia went catastrophically wrong. Wesley arrived to a Savannah that was still a village of just two hundred houses. In less than two years, a 44-person grand jury, making up a significant percentage of the population, would approve a 10-count indictment against their idealistic minister. John had been felled by a rigid faith and a broken heart. One colonist described John’s spiritual leadership as “religious Tyranny.” To make matters worse, John had fallen for Sophia Hopkey who he tutored in French on the ship from England and continued to see regularly. She even nursed the pastor through a fever. But John became convinced that marriage would get in the way of his ministry and he told the apparently equally infatuated 18-year old that he could not marry until he accomplished his mission to the Indians. Wesley’s words did not strike the young woman as the […]

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember Coosaponakessa of the Wind Clan. Coosaponakeesa of the Wind Clan was essential to the success of the Colony of Georgia. Born in 1700 in the Lower Creek Nation’s Capitol of Coweta, she was the daughter of Edward Griffin, an English trader, and a Creek woman usually referred to as Brim, which was also the name of her relative who ruled the Creek Nation. By the time of her death in 1765, she was the largest landowner and the wealthiest person in the colony. At the age of 10, she was sent to Charles Town, South Carolina. She would spend five years living with an English family and attending school where she learned English language and customs. There she was baptized in the Church of England, taking the name Mary Griffin. The English Colonel John Musgrove brought his son, John, with him when he traveled to Coweta to negotiate a treaty establishing a border between the Carolinas and the Creeks. The young John fell in love with Coosaponakeesa. The two married and would have four sons in […]

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. This week we remember James Oglethorpe. Growing up in the house next door to King George’s Whitehall Palace, James Edward Oglethorpe was the youngest of ten children born to a prominent English family. Inheriting a family estate at 26, the up-and-coming Oglethorpe ran for the House of Commons. Reports say soon after the election, Oglethorpe was already drunk when he wandered into a tavern at six o’clock in the morning. He got into a heated exchange over politics with a lamplighter and killed the man in the fight that followed. A powerful friend intervened to get Oglethorpe freed from jail. The pugilistic politician emerged as a powerful reformer after landing a seat on the committee working with problems in debtor prisons. There he met the charismatic Sir Thomas Bray, a priest of the Church of England with a heart for the underprivileged. In five years, Oglethorpe would serve on numerous committees working to relieve problems that plagued England’s poor. He managed to secure the release of 10,000 imprisoned for their debts. Concerned that the debtors were free, but without work, […]

As we approach the bicentennial of our founding in 2023, we will share the story of the Diocese of Georgia. Looking back on our Centennial Celebration on April 22, 1923, the tone was laudatory. The fourth Bishop of Georgia, the Rt. Rev. Frederick Focke Reese (pictured here in the bishop’s chair that was in the sanctuary at Christ Church, Savannah) preached a sermon that praised his predecessors with words that made them seem so heroic as to not be real: Speaking of Bishop Stephen Elliott, Jr. he said, “Of distinguished lineage, with a handsome and impressive appearance, with a mind richly endowed and stored with large learning, a disposition benign and gracious, a temper patient and well poised, he was naturally a leader among his fellows, and he gave himself and all that he had without stint to the Church.” He described Bishop John W. Beckwith saying, “He was a fatherly Bishop and meekly ruled as remembering mercy. Endowed by nature with a marvelous voice that ranged throughout the whole realm of human emotions, Bishop Beckwith’s reading was so impressive that, as I have heard people say, they crowded to hear him read the service which was to them as […]

On February 24-28 in 1823, Saint Paul’s in Augusta hosted the First Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the State of Georgia. Clergy and lay persons from Christ Church in Savannah and Christ Church Frederica on St. Simons Island joined the delegates from Augusta in forming this Diocese. We would not be able to call our first bishop until we had the six congregations required by the Canons of the Episcopal Church. That election happened in 1841, with the Bishop of South Carolina making visitations in the intervening years. “Our history contains remarkable stories of the resilience and ingenuity of the people and congregations of this Diocese. The gift of hindsight also reveals when we missed the ways the Holy Spirit was leading us to bring the Gospel to bear against injustice as well as when we got it right,” Bishop Logue said. “The 200th anniversary of our founding offers the opportunity to look back and discover both how we have transformed over time and what remains the same for Episcopalians in Georgia,” he added. In preparation for a Bicentennial celebration in February 2023, From the Field will have articles sharing our history appearing each week starting after Easter. Pictured: The Rt. […]