In the previous seven editions of From the Field, we shared brief histories of some of the Bishops of Georgia. The series continues with the Fifth Bishop of Georgia.
 

Before serving as our bishop, Bishop Middleton Stuart Barnwell was for 10 years (1925-1935) the Missionary Bishop of Idaho. During this time in the late 1920s and early 30s, as Bishop of that Diocese, Barnwell ran St. Margaret's School, a secondary girls academy in Boise, Idaho. With the Depression, more girls began to attend public school. Bishop Barnwell advocated that the academy become a junior college so that local high school graduates could begin their college education without out-of-state costs. 

In February, 1932, he began working to form a junior college out of St. Margaret's. While he found no local support, Barnwell did secure funding from The Episcopal Church. September 6, 1932, Boise Junior College opened its doors to about 75 students and fourteen faculty members (eight of whom were full-time). Bishop Barnwell served as the college's president from 1932 until 1934. At that time he recommended that Boise Junior College become a public institution. That junior college grew to become Boise State University.

The election of a successor to Bishop F.F. Reese (who was then 80 years old) was a difficult one, taking two conventions to be decided. On August 30, 1934, a special convention was held at Grace Church, Waycross and failed in twelve ballots to elect a new bishop. A second session met January 15, 1935 at St. Paul's, Augusta and took nine more ballots to elect the Bishop Barnwell, great nephew of Bishop Stephen Elliott, our diocese's first bishop.

At the time of his 1935 election as Bishop of Georgia, there were 16 parishes, 21 organized missions, 13 unorganized missions, five mission stations and one parochial mission. The still segregated church records noted 6,420 communicants. During his tenure as bishop, which lasted until 1954 the Diocese grew 27% to 8,156 total communicants with two more churches becoming parishes and four additional missions created.  

Bishop Stuart on a Sermon of Bishop Barnwell

Bishop Albert Rhett Stuart said in his 1957 Address to Convention, "On October 14, 1928 in Washington, D.C., as a Junior Seminarian, I heard one of the great sermons of my life. It was preached by the then Missionary Bishop of Idaho to a great assembly of the General Convention of the Church. The preacher declared-'There is no such thing as a foreign mission. A mission is foreign only as our love doesn't reach to it. The neighbor across the street may be foreign to us if our heart doesn't reach to him. Jesus Christ came into flesh not for Nordics or Anglo-Saxons but for all the world.' Bishop Barnwell brought this sermon in his life, not just in words, to Georgia where it characterized his leadership for 19 years."

 Bishop Barnwell on the Life of a Bishop

Bishop Barnwell told the 1953 convention his own assessment of serving as bishop as they prepared to elect his successor, "And furthermore, do not think that you are giving a man a nice easy and exalted job when you make him a bishop. I think that a bishop should be either a celibate, or a man who is very unhappily married, for if he does his job in a diocese such as this, he is going to live on the highway. He goes to his office when he can. He fills the relentless week-ends with five hundred mile trips to Thomasville, Albany, Blakely, Bainbridge, Americus, Moultrie, Quitman, Valdosta and a score of other places, and in between he tries to make friends with his wife and others who live in his own home town."

He died in Savannah on May 6, 1957. Bishop Barnwell and his wife Maggie had no children. He died in Savannah on May 6, 1957.  She died in 1960. The couple is buried at Savannah's Bonaventure cemetery. Bishop Stuart said of his predecessor, that he was "A humble and patient man of God."

All 19 of Bishop Barnwell's Addresses to Convention are found in the  Diocese of Georgia's Online Archives.