The Episcopal Diocese of Mississippi, created in 1826, is the diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America with jurisdiction over the entire state of Mississippi. It is in Province 4 and its cathedral, St. Andrew's Cathedral, is in Jackson, as are the diocesan offices. The first two Bishops of Mississippi were members of what is called the Southern High Church school, but this type of churchmanship should not be confused with Anglo-Catholicism. Bishop Green was very close to Bishops Otey and Quintard of Tennessee, both of whom were High Church and neither Low Church nor Evangelical. The Southern High Church group were in definite ways descended from the example of Bishop John Henry Hobart of New York, whose watchwords were "Evangelical Truth and Apostolic Order." Though Bishop Hobart was one of the greatest preachers of antebellum America, the "Evangelical" connoted not the New Means of the camp meetings but, simply, the assumption that the Gospel rightly and forthrightly proclaimed has the power to convert the world to Jesus Christ. Like the Bishop of New York, the Hobartian High Churchmen in the Southern phase were dedicated to the doctrine that Grace really is given in the sacraments, and they taught the doctrine of baptismal regeneration. This alone distinguished them from the Low Church party stemming from the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria. Hugh Miller Thompson, the Second Bishop of Mississippi, was a graduate of Nashotah House in Wisconsin, which is a seminary usually identified with Anglo-Catholicism. Thompson was a most progressive Christian and one of the most prolific writers of the nineteenth century. He was an essayist and the editor of two leading Episcopal journals. That the Diocese of Mississippi has been at least mildly High Church since its founding is illustrated in the fact that John Maury Allin, one of its most celebrated leaders in the twentieth century, was basically a High Churchman who was right at home in New York when he served as the Presiding Bishop. What has obtained since Allin's tenure as Bishop of Mississippi is more Broad Church than Evangelical or Low Church. Episcopalians in Mississippi have been by and large progressive in their views about race, economics, and other big issues in America. This is even more true of the Dioceses of Arkansas and Alabama. The Episcopal Church in Mississippi has usually tolerated freedom of belief and differing types of ritual practice. As such, the fallout from the ideological and theological conflicts that beset the Episcopal Church between the 1970s and 2000s has not been large in comparison to other Southern dioceses. As of 2013 the Diocese of Mississippi had 18,741 members, down from 20,925 in 2003.
Current bishop
was elected on May 3, 2014, at St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Jackson, and received the required consents from a majority of bishops and standing committees of the Episcopal Church. He succeeded Duncan M. Gray, III, as the tenth bishop of Mississippi when Gray retired in February 2015.
