Forward Movement
Forward Movement HQ
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| Founded | 1937 |
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| Type | Episcopal ministry and publishing house |
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| Website | http://www.forwardmovement.org/ |
Forward Movement is a ministry of the Episcopal Church in the United States, whose mission is to reinvigorate the life of the church. Since 1935, Forward Movement has published the quarterly devotional Forward Day by Day, as well as books and pamphlets that foster spiritual growth and encourage discipleship. As a self-sustaining agency of the church, Forward Movement relies on sales and donations to carry out its work.
Forward Movement was created during a time when the Episcopal Church seemed weary and divided. The 51st General Convention in 1924 charged the newly chartered Forward Movement to “reinvigorate the life of the church and to rehabilitate its general, diocesan and parochial work.” Bishop Henry Hobson of Southern Ohio chaired the Forward Movement Commission, which consisted of five bishops, five priests, and ten laymen. Although the National Council gave a small subsidy during its first three years, Forward Movement soon became a self-supporting ministry, largely through literature sales.
By the 1937 General Convention, Forward Movement had produced twenty-five tracts and booklets in addition to Forward Day by Day. All this was achieved through mostly volunteer labor, with the Diocese of Southern Ohio providing office space and support staff. The 1937 General Convention sought to integrate Forward Movement into the larger church by naming the new presiding bishop, Rt. Rev. Henry St. George Tucker of Virginia, as chair of the Forward Movement Commission, although Bishop Hobson continued to oversee operations in Cincinnati until 1976 (even after his retirement as bishop in 1969).
Gilbert Symons became the Forward Movement's first editor and held the post until 1950. He wrote many of the early issues of Forward Day by Day, in addition to dozens of other titles. The Diocese of Southern Ohio paid Symons’s salary, though he devoted nearly all his time to Forward Movement. The diocese also provided rent-free office space (though expenses were shared) in downtown Cincinnati (although for a time circa 2004 the Forward Movement’s ministries used space outside downtown, it again has offices within diocescan headquarters).
By 1940, Bishops Tucker and Hobson felt the National Council could assume many of Forward Movement’s ministries. At the General Convention of that year, therefore, the Forward Movement Commission was not discharged. But Forward Movement’s success as a publisher led Tucker to ask that the executive committee continue publishing literature for the church. To indicate the ministry's nature more clearly, the name was changed in 1949 to Forward Movement Publications.
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