The Archives of the Episcopal Church has unveiled a newly-designed and content-rich website here featuring historical items and the rich, important stories of the church.

“The Archives website has been completely reorganized to enable users to locate information more quickly and intuitively,” noted Mark Duffy, Canonical Archivist and Director. “The upgrade enables the Archives to reach inquirers with timely news of its holdings and to publish new educational content from the Church’s historic collections.”

The Archives of the Episcopal Church, located in Austin, TX, is dedicated to observing and honoring the history of The Episcopal Church.  “In addition, our mission is to support the faithful in fulfilling the Baptismal Covenant,” Duffy added.

New Exhibit

Highlighting the new look of the website is fresh content, with the principal feature as the opening of a major exhibit on the life and work of the 23^rd Presiding Bishop, John Maury Allin, available here 

Titled Venture in Ministry, the exhibit weaves historical text and rich media into an exploration of Bishop Allin’s ministry as he navigated the Church through arguably its greatest period of institutional change in the 1970s and 1980s. 

The exhibit follows a narrative marked by the turbulent shoals of a remarkable series of historical changes.  It encompasses a biography of experience lived within the Church as it struggled to meet the calls for civil rights, liturgical revision, and women’s ordination. 

The Allin episcopate brought into stark reality the Church’s cultural dilemma of having to rediscover its unifying ethos in the midst of greater diversity and the dynamics of ecclesial authority in a democratic polity.

“John Allin’s ministry was rooted in a generous understanding of mission in service to others as the central organizing force in the Church’s life, and that theme is worth revisiting as we embark on a new examination of our capacity for reconciliation” observed Duffy. “The simple explanations for how we arrived at today’s Church are too easy when one ponders the remarkable compression of time, geography, and opposing ideas in the recent decades.  We can still draw insights from those who passed though the fire of transformational change.” 

The exhibit development was made possible by the donation of a large and relatively complete archive of Bishop Allin’s personal papers to the Episcopal Church and a generous financial gift to the Archives from the Allin family foundation.  

Updating

Duffy recommended that visitors to the Archives’ website should update their bookmarks and explore the new site. Access to frequently used pages will automatically be redirected to new locations and include such highly used resources such as the Digital Archives. 

He added, “Visitors to the Allin microsite may share the site through social media and email options and we encourage you to fully explore the site and provide your reflections with the staff through an online comment form.”