Bishop Philander Chase and I share an interest in bringing the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the wilderness of Ohio. I can’t put a date or time on the beginning of my awareness of our response to God’s call to bring Good News of God’s love to the cities and villages of this state. When I was a seminarian at Bexley Hall, the divinity school of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, there was not much said about “The first of Kenyon’s Goodly Race”— Philander Chase, who had been elected Bishop of Ohio in 1818, only 15 years after Ohio became a state. I did not really know the significance of the names of the institutions on Gambier Hill and of Chase’s zeal for making the ministry of the Episcopal Church a means for sharing God’s love in “the West.”
I later learned that when the leaders of the Episcopal Church on the eastern seaboard had little interest, and less enthusiasm, for supporting a college and seminary in the wilds of Ohio, Chase went to England and found interest and enthusiasm there. Lord Kenyon, Lord Gambier, Lord Bexley, Lady Rosse and many others all contributed generously to support his vision, and their names are still recognized in the little Knox County village where Bishop Chase “climbed a hill and said a prayer, and founded Kenyon college there.”
As all four of our children attended Kenyon College, my wife Jean and I became more aware of the excellence of this institution and more appreciative of Bishop Chase’s zeal and wisdom. The coming of Kenyon graduate, Richard Flinn, to St. Mary’s Episcopal Church in Hillsboro, where I was rector, led to our increased interest. Dick Flinn was an avid genealogist whose interest was piqued when he discovered that he and the first wife of Philander shared a common ancestor. He began to research the family, found nearly 1,000 descendants of Bishop Chase, and published a book about the Chase genealogy.
On a trip to New England, Jean and I visited Bishop Chase’s birthplace in the town of Cornish, NH, and saw the graves of his parents, both of whom were descendants of families who had already been in New England for several generations. We also saw the small Episcopal Church built by the family, who were long-time Congregationalists, after Philander came home from Dartmouth College with a Book of Common Prayer and persuaded all of them to become Episcopalians.
A later trip took us to Jubilee College State Park near Peoria, Ill., where we saw the graves of Philander and his wife, Sophia. We also saw the reconstructed building of the college Chase founded after he became Bishop of Illinois after his resignation as bishop of Ohio and president of Kenyon College and before he became presiding bishop. Unfortunately, Jubilee did not survive as Kenyon has.
My use of the Calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts in my daily devotions led me to realize that Bishop Chase was truly a hero of the westward expansion of the Church in the United States. Dick Flinn and I led the vestry of St. Mary’s, Hillsboro, to pass a resolution asking the East Region Council of the Diocese of Southern Ohio to request that Diocesan Convention pass its own resolution urging General Convention to include Philander Chase in the Calendar of Lesser Feasts and Fasts. With the support of many others, including some from the nine states where Bishop Chase had ministered and had founded congregations, the question was placed before General Convention in 2003 in Minneapolis, and Chase was included in the calendar for a trial period of three years.
It is my hope that the 2006 Convention will vote for permanent inclusion.
Our experience representing Bishop and Mrs. Chase began with the Kenyon Summer Conference in 1990. One of the conference planning committee members, the Rev. Brian Wilbert of Oberlin, Ohio, a longtime friend and a graduate of both Kenyon College and Bexley Hall, knew of our interest. He suggested that since the conference is a family event, we should have “the Chase family” come to Kenyon. And so it was that I first appeared in costume as Bishop Chase, along with my wife Jean as Sophia Chase, and Brian Wilbert as the Rev. Philander Chase Jr.
Since then “Sophia” and I have been “the Chases” occasionally at Kenyon Conferences and at events such as the 175th anniversary of Harcourt Parish in Gambier, one of the many congregations founded by Chase, and at the anniversary of Trinity Church, Columbus, also founded by Chase. Coincidentally Trinity is the site of the presiding bishop election on June 18. Bishop Philander Chase and his wife Sophia have been invited to appear at the General Convention of 2006, so don’t be surprised to see them there.
