GALION, OH: Last Episcopal church in city closing
By Terricha Bradley
Telegraph-Forum
http://www.bucyrustelegraphforum.com/article/20091120/NEWS01/911200307
November 20, 2009
The only Episcopal church in Galion closed last month, after being a place of worship for more than 130 years.
During the past decade, the congregation at 130 W. Walnut St., stayed at less than 10, mostly seniors citizens. The handful of members asked the Episcopal Diocese of Ohio to allow the parish to close.
The Rev. Brad Purdom said an Episcopal church is created or closed by a vote at the annual convention. At this year's convention in Cleveland, the Diocese voted Saturday to allow Grace Episcopal to close.
"It's a parish that for many years now had a small amount of people worshipping," Purdom said. "There's a lot of work involved (in operating a church), so it was time for them to move on."
He said Grace Episcopal had visiting priests, because there hasn't been a Rector for 20 years.
There are about 100 Episcopalian congregations in northern Ohio. Purdom said churches in cities similar to Galion are going through a similar scenario.
Trinity Episcopal Church in Bryan, also with a small membership, closed last weekend and is up for sale.
At the last worship service, the church went through a deconsecration. It's a brief service in which witnesses and church members sign a document officially secularizing the building, officiated by the Right Rev. Bishop David Bowman, Assistant Bishop of Ohio for the Episcopal Church.
Galion Historical Society wants to preserve the building's place in city history. According to society President Craig Clinger, the society bought the church in April 2008 in an agreement with the Diocese of Ohio.
The contents -- pews, windows, woodwork and even most of the liturgical items important to local history -- have been retained. The society installed a new roof and two high efficiency furnaces and repaired some bricks.
Since it's no longer an Episcopal church, the society's board voted to officially name the building "Historic Grace Church," Clinger said.
The Parish Hall is a regular meeting place for the historical society, and the sanctuary is available for public use. Last year, the society offered a Christmas program in the sanctuary.
END
| Poster | Thread |
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| railbirdbc | Posted: 2009/11/25 11:02 Updated: 2009/11/25 11:02 |
Home away from home   Joined: 2007/6/6 From: Posts: 767 |
 Re: GALION, OH: Last Episcopal church in city closingMaybe they could do with Grace Church what the Diocese of British Columbia did with All Saints Parish, Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada? They turned it into a funeral parlor. Funeral parlors seem a very appropriate use for old Anglican Churches, as they're already dead from the posterior up anyway. You know what Jesus once told a would-be ditherer? -- "Let the dead bury their dead!" That should be the new motto of modern Anglicanism.
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| DPJ071 | Posted: 2009/11/25 12:36 Updated: 2009/11/25 12:36 |
Just can't stay away  Joined: 2009/7/21 From: Posts: 105 |
Re: GALION, OH: Last Episcopal church in city closing And yet TEC and the Diocese will never admit to the reason this historic church has to close. Oh, they'll blame it on the economy or something. There are hundreds of TEC churches where the membership numbers are below 100 (http://www.theredbook.org/redbook/default.asp). You will notice too that the vast majority of these near empty churches are on in the north/northeast. Pretty soon 815 will be the largest holder of church real estate in the U.S. in which the majority of is empty.
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| alsdally | Posted: 2009/11/25 12:58 Updated: 2009/11/25 12:58 |
Just popping in  Joined: 2008/5/15 From: Diocese of Fredericton, Canada Posts: 11 |
Re: GALION, OH: Last Episcopal church in city closing I found an interesting bit of history about Galion on Wikipedia. It appears that the basis for this decline has been going on for some time. It states that "Galion was also home to William Montgomery Brown, a Bishop of the Episcopal Church who was tried by the church and convicted of heresy. The first northerner elected as a Bishop in a former Confederate State after the Civil war, Brown was, according to his obituary, "the first Bishop of his communion to be tried for heresy since the Reformation, and the first of any creed in America to be disposed for heretical teachings." His house, Brownella Cottage, is owned and operated by the Galion Historical Society, and the Galion History Museum is located in the carriage house on the Brownella grounds."
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| polyphemos | Posted: 2009/11/25 14:37 Updated: 2009/11/25 14:37 |
Home away from home  Joined: 2005/6/29 From: και Θηος δη μεχανη Posts: 630 |
Last Episcopal church in city closing At some point the rapers in TEC are going to have to realize that the sheep they are leading are wandering away. This has already happened to the Democrat party.
If only our immortal souls had a worldly market value which visibly depreciated at the rate of its spiritual feeding. Oh well.. Daisy, the Wonderdog |
| OnTheRight | Posted: 2009/11/25 14:50 Updated: 2009/11/25 14:51 |
Quite a regular   Joined: 2008/4/9 From: Tampa, Florida Posts: 64 |
Re: Last Episcopal church in city closing the sheep they are leading are wandering away.
.................... Or simply dying off. You really do wonder: How many churches must close? How many congregations must vote to abandon TEC? How many parishioners must vote with their feet? How far must ASA fall? How deep must the rot sink in before the idea occurs to TEC's powers-that-be that maybe -- just possibly -- they are on the wrong path? |
| efenton | Posted: 2009/11/25 16:56 Updated: 2009/11/25 16:56 |
Just popping in Joined: 2004/4/16 From: San Antonio TX Posts: 12 |
Re: GALION, OH: Last Episcopal church in city closing It appears that Bp Brown was just a little ahead of his time. You can read it all here;
http://www.anglocatholicsocialism.org/episcopus.html In 1920 William Montgomery Brown, retired Bishop of Arkansas, scared the gaiters off his fellow members of the House of Bishops by publishing a little book called Communism and Christianism. The cover was adorned with a hammer and sickle and bore the motto, "Banish Gods from Skies and Capitalists from Earth!" In it he announced his conversion to "Darwinism and Marxism", launched into a militant (and somewhat simplistic) exposition of Revolutionary Communism, attacked what he thought was orthodox Christianity, and set forth his new "symbolic" interpretations. |
| Cyrus | Posted: 2009/11/26 0:51 Updated: 2009/11/26 0:51 |
Not too shy to talk  Joined: 2008/12/4 From: Ballarat, Australia Posts: 25 |
Re: GALION, OH: Last Episcopal church in city closing Oh Efenton, why oh why did you have to tell us that. Now that its out there Pope Schori will no doubt canonise him!!!
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| ThomasP | Posted: 2009/12/4 10:44 Updated: 2009/12/4 10:44 |
Just popping in Joined: 2009/11/25 From: Posts: 1 |
Re: GALION, OH: Last Episcopal church in city closing As the last Senior Warden of Grace Church, I would ask that you please not use the closing of Grace Church as a sign of, or support for, any particular agenda.
The closing of Grace can be attributed primarily to the incredible economic decline of the north central Ohio area from an economic point of view; all of Galion’s mainline Protestant denominational congregations are in some state of decline, and Grace was not the first to close. The Diocese of Ohio exercised great care and concern in the closing of our parish. Their sales agreement with the local Historical Society was the first of its kind in Ohio, where our parish was initially able to continue in operation with a permanent, rent-free lease. Even though we were the smallest parish in the Diocese for a decade, we had parishoners on both sides of major issues, both politically and socially, including those associated with human sexuality. At the same time, however, there was never — not once — a single moment when our parishoners engaged in acrimonious behavior. We were, as the Episcopal Church can be, a place where we worshiped together despite our differences. |
