Volume 55, September 2023

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death --even death on a cross. Philippians 2. 5-8.

Towards the end of this Newsletter there is a timely meditative essay by Mark Richardson on the book of Job. Timely as we are faced with the reality of the earthquake that has struck Morocco killing some 3,000 followed by the floods in Libya with a death toll of 11,300. Mark writes in his essay:

So, we come back to the big questions of why is there suffering and is God just. Whether it's from natural disasters, physical ills, or from other humans God does not explain why. What God illustrates to Job is that we live in an extremely complex and amazing world. And, at least at this stage, a world that is not designed to prevent suffering.

The question of the suffering we humans inflict on one another appears fresh every year at this time as we commemorate 9/11. 9/11 is followed by September 14th --- Holy Cross Day. On that day we give thanks to God for the triumph of the Cross as we struggle to make some sense of our world. Stephen Cottrell, in his little Lenten book about the passion and crucifixion of Christ, The Things He Carried, reminds us that as the passion narrative begins with Jesus taking up his cross after his trial, there is a sense in which he may appear to us as just another innocent man going to his death:

like so many thousands and millions of other innocent people have died ugly and anonymous deaths through the whole bloody failure of human history – in gas chambers, killing fields, firing squads, trenches, collapsing buildings, atomic explosions, bombed trains, the list goes on and on.

Our minds cannot adequately deal with these lists: two million men, women and children in Hiroshima, six million in Nazi death camps … and how many more by Stalin, or Pol Pot, or in Rwanda, or Kosovo, or Darfur?

Jesus is one of those seemingly anonymous people going to his death. Yet he is remembered. And as we contemplate all the events of his earthly life and his teaching what we remember most about him is his death. Why do we remember it so deeply?

Cottrell concludes:

Is it because this man is not just a man – not less than a man, but God contained within what it is to be man? And is his suffering and his dying not just one more notch carved in the endless torment of human misery, but God sharing it, God involved in the world he made, God stretched out on this fearful piece of wood?

Cottrell tells us that when Jesus took up his cross, he is face to face with our barbarity. And yet, as he carries his cross, he carries something else: he carries within himself:

God’s determination to plumb the depths of that dark river which is the human heart. But the other half is entirely something else: something that also needs to be nailed down and joined up. He is reaching into the bloody mess in order to redeem it. He carries the purposes of God. They will be shaped into a cross.

Wishing you every blessing,

Douglas Dupree  

Holy Cross Day

September 15

O God, who by the passion of thy blessed Son hast made the instrument of shameful death to be unto us the sign of life and peace: Grant us so to glory in the Cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss; for the sake of the same thy Son our Lord. Amen.

Bishop's Institute Interview:

With The Rev. Will Brown

BISHOP’S INSTITUTE INTERVIEW: 

THE REV. WILL BROWN, AUTHOR OF A CATECHISM OF NATURE: MEDITATIONS ON CREATION’S PRIMARY REALITIES

Father Will Brown is the Rector of All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Thomasville, Georgia. He served as a consultant in the areas of marine fisheries policy and management. He is a fisherman and hunter He received his undergraduate degree from Sewanee and the MDiv and STM from Yale Divinity School. He writes for the national magazine ‘The Living Church’ and we are pleased to have him contribute to the Newsletter.

Fr Brown is interviewed by Canon Allison DeFoor, North Florida Land Trust President and CEO.

AD (Allison DeFoor): In reading your wonderful book, as I put it down, the word that I thought of first was “courage”. In this neo-pagan, post-modern world you discuss the literal embracing of God’s Creation in terms of the perspective of the hunter, speaking with reverence of birds shot “their blood and and feathers warm and sticky and beautiful in my hands”. In a culture where most city dwellers seem to think that meat comes “from the supermarket”, I am guessing that you may have experienced some strong reaction from those who have never experienced such wonder. Have PETA come knocking on your door?

WB (Will Brown): Perhaps strangely, no. I have only had positive engagements from people about the book. And I have talked to quite a few non-hunters who have read it, and a handful of conscientious vegans and people who are passionate about animal welfare, PETA types and so forth. A few have even gone out of their way to write to me to express appreciation for the book. I suspect the the positive response is born of a deep skepticism, even an antipathy, we share about a food economy that brutalizes its human participants (both laborers and consumers), animals, and the land and sea. I admire people whose participation in the food economy is informed by such concerns, and for better or worse, there are probably more such people who are vegetarians or vegans than who are hunters or fishermen. Also, I try to consume only meat that I have hunted (or fished for) myself; and this, combined with my (imperfect!) effort to keep the Church's rule with respect to fasting and abstinence means in practice that I spend a good portion of the year as a de facto vegetarian myself. For the Christian there is also the realization that the eating of animals is something God cedes to mankind within a broken world—in Scripture, God’s permission to eat meat comes only after the flood, in the opening verses of Genesis 9. So, there is a latent intuition that human carnivory is actually not the ideal, but a postlapsarian, post-diluvial divine concession. I think that grief-tinged Christian intuition has something in common with what motivates many of the animal rights people in the secular arena.

AD: Some older hunters that I have known, who would all recognize and affirm the intimacy of the “hunter’s dilemma” with the prey, turn aside from any killing as they age, in favor of photography. The Brahmin culture also embraces vegetarianism fully. Do you ever see yourself taking a similar path as you age?

WB: I have definitely noticed that phenomenon among seasoned hunters. I have a friend and mentor who is also one of the most accomplished (if that’s the right word) hunters alive today. He has probably killed more Cape buffalo, for example, than I have had hot breakfasts. A while ago I asked him what he would do if God were to permit him to do just one thing outdoors for the rest of his life: what would he choose? I was surprised when he said he would choose fly fishing. I could certainly see myself mellowing in this way as I age. I’m much less concerned now, at 44, with filling bag limits than I was in my 20s; and the process, the “dance,” of hunting and fishing is more precious to me as the years go by than is the actual taking of game. I mean all the subsidiary activities that constitute hunting and fishing as unitary experiences: just seeing beautiful country, intact habitat, and rich profusions of wildlife; learning to shoot, or cast, more accurately; studying maps, planning trips; and the thing I cherish most of all, just spending time with people I love against the backdrop of, and enmeshed within, the sublimity of God’s creative work. Being united in a common purpose, the pursuit of game, somehow enhances that experience, but the things are distinct.

AD: Do you see any parallels in terms of respect for life even in death in the Kosher Laws which govern Jewish killing of animals for human consumption?

WB: This is not something I have thought much about, but it would not surprise me to learn that respect for life somehow underwrote Jewish cultic and food laws. God says in Leviticus that “the life of the flesh is in the blood,” on account of which bloodletting became an integral part of making atonement. And the whole arc of Scripture witnesses to our God being preeminently concerned with life as such, culminating in the “abundant life” or “eternal life” that God offers in Jesus. So, I would not be surprised if this were at the bottom of the punctiliousness of our elder siblings in the faith of Abraham about food.

AD:  You note, interestingly and aptly that Christians should be particularly able to grasp the idea of “you are what you eat”. Might Jung’s concept of “spiritus contra spiritus”, when a spiritual encounter serves to counter the bad things that we take into ourselves, in one manner or another, relate to your obvious reverence for the land and waters and the creatures in them?

WB: Peter warns that there is an adversarial spirit at work in the world that prowls around, seeking to devour the unwary (1 Peter 5:8). Peter’s solution is to exhort his readers to resolute fidelity in the God of grace. When we consider that God made the world, and all that therein is, and made it by his grace; and when we consider that his creative work is not arbitrary or capricious, but is rather accomplished by perfect wisdom, then we can see how marinading in God’s works can expose us to a force that countervails the spirit that would corrode or deprecate those works, and us with them. I think Jung was playing with the idea of “spirit” in the sense of alcohol, and the degrading power alcohol can have over people, but obviously alcohol is not the only dehumanizing “spirit” at work in the world.

We need to be in the channel of God’s grace in order to prevail against the forces set against us, which seem to multiply by the hour. I believe the Japanese have a concept of “nature bathing”—just experiencing nature in an unadulterated way. Or in current pop culture one encounters the injunction to “touch grass” as a remedy to getting bound up with ideological abstractions or online contagions. I think this can be helpful, whether it's hunting or fishing or nature photography or birding or whatever. But it’s even more important for faithful people to spend time marinading in Scripture, having frequent recourse to the Church’s sacraments, and seeking the face of Jesus in private prayer. Jung also talked about the importance of human community, alongside spiritual experience, in resisting the pernicious spirits of the world. The Church needs to get serious about all of this. We need to be marshaling all of the resources God has given us for the sake of our people. I really believe this task is urgent as the days grow ever more spiritually dark.

AD: I was surprised to see your reference that it was not until the 1990’s that more people in the South lived in cities than in the countryside. Do you think that this makes the pain of humankind’s alienation from the Creation, and thus the Creator, fresher and more acute for those of us who are sons and daughters of the South?

WB: I think so. Of course, there are many local and regional cultures throughout our country that have a strong tradition of connectedness to the land in one way or another. I got to fish in Alaska last year, and it’s alive and well there, for example. But the South’s agrarian tradition, which is not too far away generationally, and even still alive in pockets, albeit now critically endangered, marks the South and Southerners as special in this respect. Whether it’s the memory of your grandmother’s cornbread, or stories of older relatives growing up on family farms that are now strip malls, or quail hunting in the piedmont where there are now no longer any wild quail… I think these kinds of things mark out a peculiarly Southern “eco-consciousness,” the embers of which should be fanned.

I went to elementary school in Atlanta, and we used to pass an old grist mill on the way, with a waterwheel and everything. My dad stopped there on the way home one afternoon when he saw the door open and two pickup trucks parked outside. We went in and there were two old farmers in there grinding corn. That was in the early 80s. I still remember the dust from the cornmeal covering my school uniform when we left. I drove by it a few years ago and not only was the mill gone, but the creek that ran along next to it was gone too! The whole thing had been swallowed up by Atlanta. There was a prison or a school (it’s hard to tell the difference) sitting on top of the site. One word for this is “progress,” but there are other words for it, less fit for print.

AD: As we rush heedlessly towards urbanization worldwide, do you see any places that have struck a balance that gives you Hope for our future, or are we really in deep trouble?

WB: That’s a tricky question. There are certainly bright spots out there. My own hometown is a great example of successful habitat conservation. The model is based on conservation easements on large, privately held tracts of land; and quail hunting is what motivates it. It’s certainly not a perfect model, but we have a relatively prosperous little town, surrounded by hundreds of thousands of acres of relatively intact wildlife habitat. That’s not nothing. And there are plenty of other success stories. There are large (and growing!) populations of elephants and rhinoceros in Namibia, Zimbabwe, and other places. I read recently that there are more whitetail deer in North America now than there have ever been. Other wildlife populations are doing well or recovering from past declines. The same can be said of some fisheries. To a great extent we have wise legislation and regulation to thank for these things: just at the federal level, the Pittman Robertson Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the Magnusson-Stevens Act, etc. etc. But there is, and there will continue to be, pressure on fish and wildlife and their habitat, and I do worry that over time that pressure will be overwhelming.

The fundamental problem, as I see it, is avarice. We live under a cultural / political regime, broadly called “liberalism,” that seeks to leverage avarice (and increasingly cupidity) to make good things happen, and this has worked to a remarkable degree! But I am afraid the piper will sooner or later demand payment. Our system is premised on growth—economic growth, population growth—and we simply cannot have infinite growth in a finite world. I suspect this is why I read about smart people in Silicon Valley and such places dreaming of colonizing other planets, digitizing consciousness, etc. But the real solution, the non-fantastical solution, as posited by Scripture, is repentance and conversion of heart. We have to recognize avarice as a sin and root it out. Each of us needs to ask the question: What do I and my family really need? And to answer that we need to be firmly acquainted with what is most important, what is the highest good; that is, so that we can order other goods in relation to the highest good. And that, in turn, is the work of Bible reading, participation in the Church’s sacramental life, and prayer.

Click here to continue reading.

Book Review

Excerpt from "A Catechism of Nature: Meditations on Creation’s Primary Realities" by George Willcox Brown III. This excerpt is part of a meditation in chapter 12 titled ‘Trinity River’ and based on one of the author’s quiet visits to the banks of the Trinity River located four miles outside Dallas, Texas.

I once sat by the muddy flume of the Trinity, ate my lunch, and thought about God’s invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity. At its best, theology, unlike the other sciences, has no technical vocabulary. It uses ordinary words like “father,” “bread,” “wine,” or “water “to translate God and the things of God to us. “God” itself is a word we borrowed from the pagans (their word for members of their pantheon). Now it denotes whatever we think most highly of or, in the lexicon of our day’s atheistic scientism, whatever we find most incomprehensible and are angriest at. Wittgenstein compared the discipline of philosophy to a sickness of the soul, and to be sure, God is sometimes lost in translation, as though he gets tangled up in our words. Surely our social estrangement from the Spouse of our souls began with, or at least is exacerbated by, our penchant for abstraction, our addiction to it, and the failure of our imagination that has led us to build an artificial universe on the binary foundation of overly simple affirmations and denials, ones and zeros.

Sitting by the Trinity that midwinter day, I finished my lunch and tossed an apple core into the river as an alligator gar stirred the silt—the fish and the silt both relics of the early Cretaceous, the time when the earth brought forth flowering plants and God saw that it was good. I thought of Ezekiel 47:12: “And on the banks, on both sides of the river, there will grow all kinds of trees for food.”

A pileated woodpecker, arrogant and reclusive, flashed through the branches and began a mad search for bugs in the bark of a hackberry tree. The tree attracts the bugs, but the bugs can kill the tree, so the bird eats the bugs. “God appointed a plant,” and “God appointed a worm,” (Jonah 4) and God appointed a pileated woodpecker. And the prophet “wrapped his face in his mantle and . . . behold, there came a voice to him, and said, ‘What are you doing here?’” (1 Kings 19).

Years ago there was an absurd attempt to make Dallas an inland port. Once a steamship even made it from the Gulf all the way up the Trinity to town. It took about a year of dredging and clearing log jams, and it was never attempted again. But the point had been made: Man can run against creation’s current, though the effort exhausts him. But with enough congressional funding, it can be made to work and done regularly. Several years ago I read that the British House of Commons approved the making of laboratory babies from the genes of three parents. I used to be interested in the maddening discourse of theodicy, but I have departed in peace. It is simply a mysterious facet of God’s humility that man can thwart his will. They are now building a golf course on several hundred acres in a corner of my forest.

A cold breeze hovered over the Trinity as I sat next to it that day. Deep called to deep in the murmuring of its eddies. The only signs of civilization were a morass of plastic grocery bags caught in the branches overhanging the river. But for the moment the woods around me were clean and bright. And the Trinity was slowly and inexorably sweeping everything given to it, and the land itself, toward the limitless expanse of the Gulf.

September Quiz: Part 1

This month Jonathan Rich, author of the soon-to-be-published Spires in the Sun: The Carpenter Gothic Episcopal Churches of Florida has set the quiz questions. Here are the first two questions.

1. Name the highly regarded British-born, New York-based Gothic Revival architect that the young missionary priest (and future second Bishop of Florida) John Freeman Young commissioned to design small, rural Gothic churches in Mississippi and Louisiana in 1851 and 1853, respectively?

Frank Wills. Young’s engagement of the co-founder and official architect of the New York Ecclesiological Society to design the Chapel of the Cross in Madison, Mississippi, and Christ Church, in Napoleonville, Louisiana gives us some of the earliest tangible evidence of Young’s fealty to the Oxford Movement, the Gothic Revival and ecclesiology. Wills, who designed Christ Church Cathedral (1845-53) in Fredericton, New Brunswick, has been called a “pioneering transmitter” of ecclesiastical Gothic Revival architecture in the U.S. and Canada. Wills was no less respected and accredited than another British-born, New York-based pillar of the American Gothic Revival, Richard Upjohn, at that time. But Wills’ star has faded, compared to Upjohn’s, in the years since. Today, Wills is not as well-known as Upjohn because (i) Wills’ career was cut short by his death at age 34, whereas Upjohn had a long career, (ii) Wills specialized in Anglican architecture, whereas Upjohn produced both ecclesiastical and secular work, diversifying his legacy, (iii) the institution co-founded by Wills, the New York Ecclesiological Society, did not survive, whereas an institution co-founded by Upjohn, the American Institute of Architects, has flourished to this day, (iv) Upjohn, unlike Wills, had the advantage of designing a masterstroke church (Trinity on Broadway in Manhattan) for a historic parish in a major American city, (v) Upjohn, again unlike Wills, left a substantial body of archival material, which was preserved by his firm and family, and (vi) Upjohn’s son, Richard Michell Upjohn, succeeded him as a prominent architect, and Upjohn’s grandson, Everard M. Upjohn, penned a laudatory biography of Upjohn, whereas Wills had no comparable train of architect-author-descendants to keep his shield burnished.

Built under the leadership of John Freeman Young as a frontier missionary in his early thirties, both the Chapel of the Cross, Madison, and Christ Church, Napoleonville, remain in use for services to this day. The latter is one of the oldest Episcopal churches west of the Mississippi River.

2. Name the young missionary priest (and future bishop) who helped the warden and building committee of St. Mark’s, Palatka procure the services of the famous American Gothic Revival architect, Richard Upjohn, to design their 1855 Carpenter Gothic church?

The Reverend Henry Benjamin Whipple. As the young founding rector of Zion Church in Rome, New York, Whipple had worked with Upjohn about five years earlier to design a (still existing) Gothic Revival bluestone church for his parish. Whipple left Rome, New York to spend the winter of 1853-1854 in St. Augustine, Florida, so that his wife, Cornelia (Wright), might recuperate from typhoid fever in a warm climate. While in St. Augustine, Whipple took temporary charge of Trinity Church, the rector of which, the Reverend Benjamin Wright (Whipple’s wife’s brother), had recently passed away. As part of his responsibilities to Trinity, the 31-year-old Whipple served as a missionary in East Florida, traveling by steamboat on the St. Johns River to settlements and towns, including Palatka. On December 12, 1853, he presided over a meeting of Palatka’s civic leaders, including Judge Isaac H. Bronson and James Burt, to constitute St. Mark’s as an Episcopal mission. Five months later, Judge Bronson, as the warden of St. Mark’s, wrote to Whipple: “We… send this memorandum [requesting drawings for a “neat village church… entirely of wood” costing about $2,000] to you and request you to give it to Mr. Upjohn, who I believe you know very well.” This request led to Upjohn’s furnishing the designs for St. Mark’s.



Six years after he organized St. Mark’s, Whipple was consecrated as the first Bishop of Minnesota, a role in which he would gain worldwide fame for his activism on behalf of the American Indians. As an older man, he returned to Florida for the winters, and in Maitland in the early 1880s he built a winter home and a (still existing) Carpenter Gothic church, the Church of the Good Shepherd.

Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop, and Scholar

September 25 is the commemoration of Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), one of the architects of the Via Media we call Anglicanism. He is one of the greatest names in the history of English-speaking preachers. He wrote beautiful prose and especially prayers. He had a clear and authoritative understanding of the church’s teaching as based upon the Scriptures interpreted by the ecumenical creeds of the first five centuries of the church:

One canon reduced to writing by God himself, two testaments, three creeds, four general councils, five centuries, and the series of Fathers in that period – the centuries, that is, before Constantine, and two after, determine the boundary of our faith.

A prayer of Bishop Lancelot Andrewes:

Thou, O Lord, art the Helper of the helpless,

the Hope of the Hopeless,

the Saviour of them who are tossed with the tempests,

the Haven of them who sail; be thou all to all.

The glorious majesty of the Lord our God be upon us,

prosper thou the work of our hands upon us,

Oh! prosper thou our handiwork

Lord, be thou within us, to strengthen us;

without us to keep us; above us to protect us;

beneath us to uphold us; before us to direct us;

behind us to keep us from straying;

round about us to defend us.

Blessed be Thou, O Lord our Father, forever and ever.

September Quiz: Part 2

Bishop John Freeman Young (1820-1885)

3. Name a verifiable instance in which the second Bishop of Florida John Freeman Young and architect Richard Upjohn collaborated on a church design.

4. Which two Carpenter Gothic Episcopal churches in Florida are structural “sisters” in the sense that each was designed by the same architect, and each was constructed by the same builder?

Click here for the answers.

Archdeacon's Corner

The Book of Job

The Book of Job is very unique to the Bible. It’s a story about suffering. The main character Job is not an Israelite, Job lives in the land of Uz (southeast of Israel). The author is anonymous, and the story is very ancient (6th. Century BC). All this seems intentional, to ensure we focus on the questions raised about suffering.

The book of Job has a clear literary design. It opens with a short prologue and ends with an epilogue. The central body of the book are several conversations between Job and his four friends. These conversations are concluded by a series of speeches given by God to Job.

The Prologue

The prologue introduces us to Job. We are told that he “is a blameless and upright man” who honors God. Then suddenly, we are transported into the heavenly court of God (a common Old Testament image of how God runs the world). Amongst the heavenly beings is one called Satan (in Hebrew ‘the accuser’). God asks Satan if he has seen Job, a truly righteous man. Subsequently Satan questions God, as to whether Job’s righteousness is true. He declares that the only reason Job obeys God, is because God blesses him with prosperity. Satan says, “But now stretch out your hand and strike everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face.” God agrees to lift His blessing on Job and allows Satan to inflict suffering.

At this point in the story most of us ask why God has allowed Job’s suffering as he is a good man. We then assume that the story will answer, why bad things happen to good people. Though, as we read, the book does not really answer that question (or maybe it does). However, the prologue sets up a different question. One about God's justice and whether God operates the universe according to the strict principle of justice. The response to those questions comes as we read through to the end of the book.

Testing and questioning

In this first test of suffering, Job remains faithful. But Satan does not give up. Satan now accuses Job of serving God only because he still has his health. So, God allows Satan to afflict Job with every matter of loathsome sores. The prologue concludes with a suffering and bewildered Job who is rebuked by his wife. But Job still defends God by saying “Shall we receive the good from the hand of God and not receive the bad?” Job’s initial response is the one we all have in bad times. Job can only ask “why”.

In his misery Job is first met by three friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar who after seven days of silence are going to try and provide wisdom and counsel. They are all non-Israelites like Job and they represent the best of ancient near eastern thinking about God and suffering. 

This moves us into the main part of the book where Job speaks and then a response will follow from a friend. Then Job will respond to that friend, and then another friend will respond to Job's response, and so on back and forth for three cycles. This whole debate is focused on three questions: is God truly just? does God run the universe on the strict principle of justice? and, if so, then how is Job suffering to be explained?

Job and his friends are working from a human belief of what God's justice should look like. Namely that things should operate according to our perception of Godly justice. So, if you are a good person and you honor God, good things will happen. But if you are bad, then bad things will happen to you. We know from the prologue Job is innocent as God himself said Job is righteous and blameless, and Job will defend himself as innocent and God as just. However, as the discourse continues, Job’s friends insist that God is punishing him for his wrong doings, because justice dictates that the evil is punished. 

The conversations go back and forth and ultimately Job concludes his argument that either God does not run the world according to justice or, even worse, God himself is simply unjust. The friends on the other hand continue to differ, as they continue that God can only be just, and the world operates according to His justice. So, the three friends conclude by accusing not God, but Job, of have done something really bad for God to punish him so severely.

Job gets so fed up with the friends that he eventually gives up on them and he takes up his case directly with God. Keep in mind that Job is racked with grief. He used to think that God is just, but now he cannot reconcile his suffering and so in some outbursts Job will accuse God of being a bully. Once he even declares that God has orchestrated all the injustice in the world. But the moment he utters that thought, he is terrified of it, because he wants to hope and believe that God is truly just. Job makes one last statement of his innocence and then he demands that God show up personally to explain Himself.

At this point a fourth friend Elihu shows up. Elihu is also not an Israelite (he does have a Hebrew name). Like the other friends, Elihu argues that God is just, and that God always operates the universe according to justice. But he draws a more sophisticated conclusion about why good people suffer. It may not be punishment for sin, but as a warning to help people avoid sin in the future. Elihu offers that God might use pain and suffering to build character or to teach people a valuable lesson. Job doesn't respond to Elihu, and there all the dialogues end. The wisdom of the ancients has been spent and the mystery remains: is God just? and why do bad things happen to good people?

To continue reading, please click here.

Spires in the Sun Book Launch

and Upcoming Diocesan Event

Spires in the Sun: The Carpenter Gothic Episcopal Churches of Florida, written by Jonathan Rich and photographed by Phil Eschbach, will be published by Frederic C. Beil, Savannah, GA on October 24, 2023.

The book is available at the St. John's Cathedral Bookstore for pre-order. Order before Oct. 24 and you'll receive 10% off your order!

About the book

A work of nonfiction, Spires in the Sun celebrates the Upjohn-style rural wooden churches raised by the Episcopal Church in Florida in the 1800s. Given the era involved, the book is also a history of the germinal years of the Diocese of Florida.

Upcoming Event

There will be a joint book talk and signing Diocesan event with the St. John's Cathedral Bookstore and the Jacksonville Historical Society on Thursday, Nov. 9 from 5:30 - 7:30 p.m.! The event will take place in Taliaferro Hall at 256 E Church St, Jacksonville FL, 32202.

Episcopal churches in the Jacksonville area and others from the diocese are warmly invited to attend.