| Jurisdiction: | Diocese |
| Tennessee | |
| Province: | IV (Southeast) |
| Cathedral: | Christ Church Cathedral |
| Established: | July 1, 1829 |
| Congregations: | 45 (2021) |
| Members: | 15,665 (2021) |
| Bishop: | John C. Bauerschmidt |
| Map: | ECUSA Tennessee cropped.png |
| Website: | edtn.org |
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.[1] 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 (chiefly Davidson, Rutherford, Sumner, and Williamson counties). St. Paul's Church in Franklin is the diocese's oldest congregation.
John C. Bauerschmidt 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 (1985–91) and Bertram Nelson Herlong (1993–2005).
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 (see below for background information). From 1985 to 2013, the Diocese maintained offices in closer proximity to downtown Nashville but has not occupied, nor at present intends to, any portion of its cathedral, which was a pre-existing parish prior to its designation, with office space.
From 1871 until the division of the diocese (1982–1983), 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. | Name | Years | |
|---|---|---|---|
| I | 1834-1863 | ||
| II | 1865-1898 | ||
| III | 1898-1935 | ||
| IV | 1935-1947 | ||
| V | 1947-1953 | ||
| VI | 1953-1961 | ||
| VII | 1961-1977 | ||
| VIII | 1977-1985 | ||
| IX | 1985-1991 | ||
| X | 1993-2007 | ||
| XI | 2007–Present | ||
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.
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 the central Diocesan office in Nashville, by the 1970s in a rented shopping center office complex, while keeping his seat (literally cathedra) at St. Mary's Cathedral in Memphis. Vander Horst's bishop coadjutor, William E. Sanders, maintained offices in Knoxville to serve the eastern third of the state, while a suffragan bishop (with no right of succession to the Diocesan position, unlike Sanders), W. Fred Gates, Jr., worked out of Memphis from 1966 to 1982 to tend to churches in the western third of Tennessee; he also served as the Diocese's chief financial officer.[2]
The process for division of the state into three territories began when Vander Horst (who opposed it steadfastly during his episcopate) retired in 1977, under the aegis of his successor, Sanders. Upon approval by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1982, the diocese excised its western counties first in 1983, followed by the eastern counties two years later. The remaining territory in Middle Tennessee became the legal successor to the statewide diocese. Between 1977 and 1985 and during the Sanders episcopate, the formal office of the statewide diocese moved to Knoxville due to his succession to the position as Diocesan, with the Nashville office closing upon Vander Horst's retirement. The Nashville office reopened after the 1985 (East Tennessee) separation in a different location, and has moved twice since then.[3]
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.
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.[4]
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. Most 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:
During the 2013 Diocesan Convention, Bauerschmidt announced that the Diocese would relocate its offices to the property in September 2013.[9] [10] This marked the first time since the 1985 contraction of the Diocese's territory that it had a headquarters in its own name, rather than operating from a rental property.