Up for auction "Episcopal
Bishop" William T Manning Hand Signed TLS . This item is
authenticated By Todd Mueller Autographs and comes with their certificate of
authenticity.
William Thomas Manning (May 12, 1866 – November 18, 1949) was a U.S. Episcopal bishop of New York City (1921–1946). He led a major $10 million campaign to raise funds for additional construction on the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and directed a program to train and employ men from the neighborhood as skilled artisans during the Great Depression and later. In 1939-40, Manning took a leadership role in the successful effort to force the City University of New York to rescind their offer of a professorship to the philosopher Bertrand Russell. William Thomas Manning was born in Northampton, England in 1866. His family moved to the United States in 1882, when he was 16 years old. He entered the University of the South (Sewanee, Tennessee) in 1888, where he studied under William Porcher Du Bose. He obtained a B.D. degree in 1894. During World War I, Rev. Manning served as a volunteer chaplain at Camp Upton. Bishop Manning supported the Oxford Groups of the 1930s (not to be confused with the Oxford Movement of the 1830s, of which he was also a supporter) and in 1925 helped Rev. Sam Shoemaker become rector of Calvary Church, where Shoemaker revived the dwindling missionary congregation and later helped found Alcoholics Anonymous. From 1922 to 1924, Bishop Manning was in the public eye because of controversies with the Rev. Percy Stickney Grant, who expressed a radical point of view. Manning also came into conflict with the Rev. William Norman Guthrie, because of dancing and other innovations at his religious services in St. Mark's in-the-Bouwerie, New York City. After the war, as Bishop of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, Manning led a $10,000,000 capital campaign to revive construction and complete more sections of the church. Under his direction, the cathedral employed and trained neighborhood men as skilled stonemasons and carvers during the decades of the continuing project. Bishop Manning dedicated The Church of the Epiphany on New York City's Upper East Side on October 29, 1939. In 1939–40, Bishop Manning took a leadership role in the successful effort to force the City University of New York to rescind their offer of a professorship to the philosopher Bertrand Russell. Russell had publicly testified of his atheism in his book What I Believe, and of his support for what was then called "free love" in Marriage and Morals. A Manhattan court granted victory to Manning and his allies in Kay v. Board of Higher Education, better known as The Bertrand Russell Case. Manning retired in 1946, and died in 1949. He was buried in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. For his service during World War I, he was awarded the chevalier of the Légion d'honneur of France and an officer of the Order of the Crown of Belgium.