Passion for Service

Local schools were established for both boys and girls during this period and the Episcopal Church Home for orphans and aged women in Allegheny County was launched in 1859. In the 1860s the Pittsburgh Church Guild was launched, offering organized classes in arithmetic, geometry and mechanical drawing, a reading room and later a free dispensary. The architect of a new approach to service was George Hodges of Calvary, who organized a series of musical performances for families living in the tenements of the Point district and helped launch Pittsburgh's first settlement house -- Kingsley House -- in 1893.

A group of energized laymen inspired by the work of Hodges proceeded to put their talents to use in civic life and in 1906, Calvary vestryman George Wilkins Guthrie was elected as mayor of Pittsburgh on a platform of municipal reform and anti-machine politics. The Diocese later formed a social service commission to address women's and children's working conditions, and Trinity Church established a lunch room in 1914 to provide female office workers with an inexpensive but wholesome lunch. In more recent years, parishes have responded to recurrent economic crises in their local communities (the Great Depression, the Second World War and the steel industry recession of the 1980s) by offering pastoral care and unemployment assistance.