When a donor withdrew a hefty contribution because he disagreed with diocesan policy, the Rt. Rev. Charles Palmerston Anderson reportedly responded to the disgruntled gentleman with rapier-like brevity. "Dear Sir," he wrote, "Your money be damned."

Bishop Anderson's meteoric rise in the church hierarchy - from missionary in isolated logging camps to Bishop of Chicago and eventually Presiding Bishop - was characterized by a willingness to be an outspoken prophet and determination to move the universal church toward unity.

The son of Methodist farmers in Ontario, Canada, he was elected coadjutor of the Diocese of Chicago in 1900 after serving a 10-year rectorship of Grace Church in Oak Park, Ill. During his 30-year tenure as bishop, he compiled an impressive list of ecclesiastical accomplishments in a boom era when Chicago grew into the "City of the Big Shoulders" made famous by Carl Sandburg. Forty-eight new churches were built, 25 missions organized, and the number of communicants doubled.

It was under Bishop Anderson's leadership that several diocesan institutions sprang up, among them Cathedral Shelter, whose ministry with the homeless continues today, as well as Lawrence Hall and Chase House, both agencies working with children. He was instrumental in organizing Seabury-Western Theological Seminary (in whose chapel he is buried) and in expanding what is now the nationally respected Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center.

"Bishop Anderson strongly believed in bringing the church kicking and screaming into the 20th century," observes Richard Seidel, historiographer for the Diocese of Chicago. "The church at that time attracted several strong leaders who would have been heads of corporations had they not been in the churches."

Indeed, Bishop Anderson himself mused that had he not been a church leader, he would have chosen politics.

An outspoken prelate, he made public statements on prohibition and lawlessness ("The American people are determined to have prohibition and determined not to practice it."); on collective bargaining ("I believe in God, therefore I believe in the right of collective bargaining."); on the church's role in society ("People are not kept out of church so much by its creeds as by its lack of deeds.")

But it was his quest for church unity that carved Bishop Anderson's niche as a spiritual leader of the early 20th century. As chair of the Episcopal Church's Commission on Faith and Order, he led a delegation to the Eastern Orthodox churches and eventually to the patriarch in Constantinople in preparation for an international conference attended by representatives from 90 churches and denominations. Despite a personal plea by Bishop Anderson, Pope Benedict XV refused to participate in the 1927 Lausanne Conference, the forerunner of the World Council of Churches. Bishop Anderson grew increasingly impatient with what he viewed as the parochialism of Western churches. In an impassioned sermon preached in 1907 before the Laymen's Missionary Congress, he pleaded: "We can give up pride ... We can give up congregational jealousies ... And perhaps by the grace of God we can give up some of our ignorance."

His passion for church unity was perhaps matched only by his advocacy for international peace, championing the doomed League of Nations proposed by President Woodrow Wilson. Following World War I, which claimed the life of his only son, Charles Patrick, in an air battle over France, he sounded anew his call for church unity. "The only inspiration that war can give to the churches is a fresh challenge to stand together and to stand solidly for those principles of universal brotherhood and righteousness and justice that make war impossible," he told a Chicago audience after his return from the European battlefields.

He died Jan. 30, 1930, three months after his election as Presiding Bishop, a position he held while remaining bishop of the Chicago diocese. The Living Church at the time published this tribute: "As a preacher, he ranked among the leading men in the pulpits of America."

Marcy Darin edits the Journal of Women's Ministries and is a parishioner of Grace Church, Oak Park, Ill.