On January 31, 1999, at the last Annual Meeting of St. Mark’s Parish in the 20th Century, Fr. Connely suggested that it would be a good idea to summarize and review the last 100 years of the Parish. And, so the following report was gleaned from various writings of former Rectors, the book by Helen Bradshaw, and remembrances of longtime parishioners.
St Mark’s: The 20th Century and Beyond
By William J. Matsch
Originally printed in the Lion, March 1999
John Franklin Spalding
The first Episcopal Missionary
Bishop of Colorado and founder of
St. Mark’s Parish of Denver
St. Mark’s Parish was born out of a bitter battle between the then Dean Hart of St. John’s Cathedral and the then Bishop Spalding of the Diocese of Colorado. Hart, of the cathedral, wanted the diocese to grow out and from the cathedral, as is the custom in England. Bishop Spalding wanted the growth and development of the diocese to stem from the actions of the Bishop. There was money involved, and the struggle was bitter. At that time, the Bishop could have gone one way, the cathedral another and St. Mark’s still another. Dean Hart wrote, It is a matter of great thankfulness that the God who maketh men to be of one mind in a an house, so granted us His Spirit of forgiveness that we were enabled to continue amicably our Church life for the next decade as if the strife about St. Mark’s had never occurred.
What held it all together was the worship common to all in the Book of Common Prayer. The year was 1875. Bishop Spalding himself was founder and pastor of the new Parish…
Mark is symbolized by a lion since he begins his Gospel with the desert, saying: A voice of one crying in the desert: prepare ye the way of the Lord and because our Saviour now reigns and is invincible.
