 The Rt Rev Jack L Iker, SSC, Bishop The Rev Mark A Stockstill, SSC, Vicar Office 325.356.2997 Vicarage 325.356.2198 Cell 325.330.2411 mstockstill@fwepiscopal.org |
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William
A. Muhlenberg was born in Philadelphia on 16 September 1796, to a
distinguished German Lutheran family. Attracted to the Episcopal Church by
its use of English, he was ordained in 1817. He was active in promoting the
Sunday School movement, and concerned that the Church should minister to all
social groups. He wrote hymns and compiled hymnals, greatly expanding the
range of music in Episcopal churches. In 1828 he founded, and for twenty
years headed, Flushing Institute (later St Paul's College), a boys' school
in Flushing, New York. There he made extensive use of music, flowers,
vestments, and an emphasis on the Church year and on sacramental worship,
with the weekly reception of the sacrament of Holy Communion, while at the
same time preaching with great force and conviction the Reformation
doctrines of grace and of justification by faith. Out of his ministry came
inspiration for the establishment of Church schools and hospitals, and an
outreach to the poor. In 1846 he founded the Church of the Holy Communion in
New York City, with a parish school, a parish unemployment fund, and trips
to the country for poor city children. He called himself an "Evangelical
Catholic," and by his firm stand for Evangelical Faith, Apostolic Order, and
Corporal Works of Mercy, he spoke to all parties in the Church while
belonging to none. As one writer has said, "There was not a significant area
of the Church's life, during his ministry, that he did not elevate and
strengthen by the pureness of his life and the vigor of his consecrated
imagination."