William T. Manning


William Thomas Manning was a U.S. Episcopal Church in [the United States of America|Episcopal] bishop of New York City. He led a major $10 million campaign to raise funds for additional construction on the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and directed a program to train and employ men from the neighborhood as skilled artisans during the Great Depression and later.
In 1939-40, Manning took a leadership role in the successful effort to force the City University of New York to rescind their offer of a professorship to the philosopher Bertrand Russell.

Biography

Early life and education

William Thomas Manning was born in Northampton, England in 1866. His family moved to the United States in 1882, when he was 16 years old. He entered the University of the South in 1888, where he studied under William Porcher Du Bose. He obtained a B.D. degree in 1894.

Career

Manning became a deacon on December 12, 1889, and was ordained as a priest on December 12, 1891. He was called to the following:
When the Bishop was asked whether salvation could be found outside the Episcopal Church, he replied, "Perhaps so, but no gentleman would care to avail himself of it."
One year prior to the U.S. entering World War I, Manning said:
During World War I, Rev. Manning served as a volunteer chaplain at Camp Upton.
Bishop Manning supported the Oxford Groups of the 1930s and in 1925 helped Rev. Sam Shoemaker become rector of Calvary Church, where Shoemaker revived the dwindling missionary congregation and later helped found Alcoholics Anonymous.
From 1922 to 1924, Bishop Manning was in the public eye because of controversies with the Rev. Percy Stickney Grant, who expressed a radical point of view. Manning also came into conflict with the Rev. William Norman Guthrie, because of dancing and other innovations at his religious services in St. Mark's in-the-Bouwerie, New York City. In 1925, he prohibited Guthrie from inviting "Bad Bishop" Brown to speak at St. Mark's. When he preached a sermon critical of Judge Ben Lindsey's position on marriage, the judge was ejected from the service and arrested for disorderly conduct. In 1930, his preaching in favor of apostolic succession prompted public debate in the Episcopal press, and in 1934, he was an influential campaigner at the 51st General Convention. He held that the Episcopal Church was "fundamentally and definitely Catholic" in view of its apostolic succession, which should not be compromised for the sake of union with Protestant churches.
In 1933, he attended a rally at Madison Square Garden alongside Reform Jewish Rabbi Stephen Wise, protesting anti-Jewish legislation by the Nazi regime in Germany.
After the war, as Bishop of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Manning led a $10,000,000 capital campaign to revive construction and complete more sections of the church. Under his direction, the cathedral employed and trained neighborhood men as skilled stonemasons and carvers during the decades of the continuing project.
Bishop Manning dedicated The [Church of the Epiphany (Episcopal, Manhattan)|The Church of the Epiphany] on New York City's Upper East Side on October 29, 1939.
In 1939–40, Bishop Manning took a leadership role in the successful effort to force the City University of New York to rescind their offer of a professorship to the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Russell had publicly testified of his atheism in his book What I Believe, and of his support for what was then called "free love" in Marriage and Morals. A Manhattan court granted victory to Manning and his allies in Kay v. Board of Higher Education, better known as The [Bertrand Russell Case].
Manning retired in 1946, and died in 1949. On his retirement, Time magazine noted that "his vigilant guardianship of orthodoxy has often made New York’s Bishop look something of a prim curmudgeon" as well as "his battles with advocates of easy divorce, isolationists, opponents of pan-Christian unity, proponents of a Presbyterian-Episcopalian merger." The New York Times, fifteen years after his death, called him "one of this country's best-known churchmen" and wrote that his forthright and fiery sermons, based on the belief that religion is involved in all of life, raised scores of controversies." He was buried in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

Legacy and honors