Within five years of …[Bishop Daneil Tuttle’s] arrival, the Episcopal Church started the first non-Mormon school in Utah, commenced construction of the Cathedral Church of St. Mark and launched St. Mark’s Hospital.
Throughout his years as bishop, The Right Rev. Tuttle was on the road, traveling by horse and buggy to the far reaches of Montana and Idaho to minister to the needs of Episcopalians there, each baptism, wedding and funeral carefully logged in his meticulously neat handwritten journal.
Daniel Sylvester Tuttle was the product of very small congregations in the Diocese of Albany. He was taught Greek, Latin and Scripture by the Rector of Trinity Church Ashland, NY (now, sadly, closed). This is a parish that during its over 200 years of existence never had an ASA of greater than 50 but produced a Bishop (and Presiding Bishop when that office was based on seniority of consecration), a Seminary Dean (Lawrence Rose of General), at least on parish priest, and two Governors of New York State.
Ample example of the essential nature of our small mission congregations in the life of the Church.
Daniel Tuttle is one of my few Episcopal heroes. He was also Bishop of Missouri for a while and eventually became Presiding Bishop.
Utah also produced Paul Jones who was forced to resign his see in 1918 for his outspoken pacifism. Whatever one’s view of the appropriateness of this view (or his Socialist leanings), one can at least acknowledge that Jones took a stand on principle, knowing that it came with a cost.
I remember an Episcopal priest whom I met in Provo almost twenty years ago opining to me that there was a general tendency for Protestants residing in “Zion” eventually to succumb to the “prophet complex.”