The Episcopal Diocese of Florida is a diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America (ECUSA). It originally comprised the whole state of Florida, but is now bounded on the west by the Apalachicola River, on the north by the Georgia state line, on the east by the Atlantic Ocean and on the south by the northern boundaries of Volusia, Marion, and Citrus counties. Its cathedral church is St. John's Cathedral in Jacksonville.
Major cities in the diocese are Jacksonville, Tallahassee and Gainesville. The diocese includes the eastern half of Franklin County, and all of the following counties: Liberty, Gadsden, Leon, Wakulla, Jefferson, Madison, Taylor, Hamilton, Suwannee, Dixie, Lafayette, Levy, Gilchrist, Columbia, Baker, Union, Bradford, Alachua, Nassau, Duval, St. Johns, Clay, Putnam and Flagler.
The diocese is a part of Province IV of the Episcopal Church. The current Diocesan Bishop of Florida is the Right Reverend Samuel Johnson Howard. The diocese currently comprises 77 churches.
History
On January 17, 1838, the Episcopal Church in Florida was begun in Tallahassee with seven parishes spread throughout the state:
Christ Church, Pensacola, St. Joseph’s Church, St. Joseph, Florida Christ Church (now Trinity), Apalachicola, St. John’s Church, Tallahassee, St. John’s Church (now St. John's Cathedral), Jacksonville, Trinity Parish, St. Augustine St. Paul’s Church, Key West
The group composed a constitution and rules of order which were submitted to the General Convention, and on September 7, 1838, the Diocese of Florida was accepted into the national church body. However, for all practical purposes, the Diocese existed in name only. There was not a Bishop of Florida and only a handful of clergy. Their relative geographical locations posed a huge challenge; the distance between St. Augustine and Pensacola is about . Travel was slow and difficult, as was communication between clergy.
A few new churches were founded, but they had almost no connection to the diocese. As of 1851, there were but 260 communicants in the entire state, and many parishes were struggling to survive. That changed after the Reverend Francis Huger Rutledge was elected in October 1851 as the first Bishop of Florida.
Bishop Rutledge's work transformed the diocese into an effective organization. Funds were raised, clergy was recruited and every parish was visited. Then came the Civil War. In 1861, Florida joined the Confederacy and the war devastated the South. Four Florida churches were burned down with the remainder in desperate need of repair. Some priests had abandoned their parishes and nearly everyone was destitute. Bishop Rutledge died in 1866, and the outlook was grim.
Reverend John Freeman Young (Oct. 30, 1820 – Nov. 15, 1885), translator of the Christmas hymn, "Silent Night" became the second bishop of Florida in 1867. He had earlier served as an ecumenical envoy to the Russian Orthodox Church. The reconstruction was a hardship to the people, as well as the church. Growth was slow but promising. Bishop Young visited parishes throughout the state, but he saw most churches once each year. A trip from Jacksonville to Key West might take a month or more. Bishop Young reported "eleven churches built or in progress in one year" in 1880. He died five years later. During his service as a bishop, he established parishes for Cubans living in Florida and for Blacks, many of whom had come to Florida from Anglican parishes in the Caribbean. At the time of his death, he was working on a Spanish translation of the Book of Common Prayer.