Former Alabama Bishop Stough dies at 75

The Right Reverend Furman C. "Bill" Stough, bishop of the Diocese of Alabama from 1971 to 1988 when he became senior executive for mission planning and deputy for the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief under former Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning, died in Birmingham, Alabama, on February 2, 2004. He was 75.

His friends said he will be remembered for his commitment to mission work both at home and abroad. He was "great and gifted," said Bishop Henry N. Parsley, Alabama's current bishop. "His vision of Christian stewardship, church growth and world mission strengthened this diocese and extended widely into the larger Episcopal Church."

In 1985, Stough was nominated for presiding bishop, but bishops and deputies chose his lifelong friend, Edmond Browning. Three years later, Stough joined Browning at the Episcopal Church Center in New York where he worked in mission planning and world relief until 1993.

In this position he flew around the world working for the church. "He had a heart for mission," the Rev. William Yon of Chelsea, Alabama, told the Associated Press. "That was just his understanding of the gospel -- that it's for all people everywhere, not to be bounded by race or class or nationality or anything else."

Born in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1928, Bishop Stough studied political science at University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee, followed by service in the U.S. Army in Japan at the end of World War II. He returned to Japan in the 1960s as a missionary priest.

As bishop of Alabama for 17 years, he guided Episcopalians through the end of the Vietnam War, domestic racial tensions and the revision of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer. He also introduced the Cursillo movement to his diocese.

Throughout his ministry he worked for desegregation, supported the ordination of women and was active in prison ministry and urban renewal.

He kept actively involved in the church when he returned to Alabama in 1993 and at his death he was bishop-in-residence at St. Luke's in Mountain Brook.

http://www.episcopalchurch.org/library/article/former-alabama-bishop-stough-dies-75