The Pittsburgh Paradigm: The Rise of Confessional Anglicanism in Southwestern Pennsylvania, 1950-2000

Pardue challenged members of his diocese to embrace new methods of spiritual regeneration that involved significant departures from the earlier model of the institutional church.4 Prior to the 1950s, outreach to the working classes had been piecemeal and frequently unwelcome to many lay Episcopalians in Pittsburgh.5 Even the most successful experiments in urban parishes like Trinity, Pittsburgh, and Calvary, East Liberty, had relied upon the dynamism of individual rectors (which did not always pass to their successors) and rarely resulted in full participation by their new working class communicants in parish life.6 It was to the working class residents of the Mon Valley, therefore, that Pardue turned for the first innovative ministry of his episcopate.