Grace Upon Grace
Tammy Galloway, Author
Gary Hauk, Editor Gary S. Hauk retired in 2020 as vice president and senior adviser to the president of Emory University, where he is University Historian Emeritus. He received his PhD from Emory’s Graduate Division of Religion and earned a master of divinity degree from Methodist Theological School in Ohio and BA and MA degrees in English from Lehigh University. He is a member of the Episcopal Church of the Holy Cross in Decatur.
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Grace Upon Grace
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Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church 805 Mount Vernon Highway Sandy Springs, Georgia 30327
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Grace Upon Grace
Tammy Harden Galloway holds degrees in history from Georgia State University and worked as an archivist at the Atlanta History Center and at Emory University. She has authored several historical non-fiction books, numerous magazine articles, and has consulted with organizations to establish their own archival repositories. Galloway enjoys researching and learning about all things Atlanta.
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T
he birth of Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church was, to say the least, difficult. Atlanta was trying to rebuild itself in the wake of the Civil War and the city was in ruins. From this dismal scene emerged Mary Ellen “Nellie” Peters, an Episcopalian seeking to do charity work for orphans and the poor, who were “utterly destitute,” as one document noted. By 1872, she had established a Sunday School mission named Chapel of the Holy Innocents. Grace Upon Grace—Holy Innocents at 150 shows it was not always easy. But the growth of the church continued its march, buying land and erecting new buildings. And as those edifices aged and were outgrown, even more space was sought, which is how Holy Innocents ending up with land in Sandy Springs in 1955. It’s difficult to reconcile the inspiring, soaring home of Holy Innocents today with its early beginnings. But the work of the church is as apparent as ever. Its efforts are alive in fields as diverse as Civil Rights, hospice support, homelessness, the city’s food bank, poverty, missions in other countries, and its well-tended Annual Giving Fund, not to mention the everyday—but impressive—daily ministry and operations. Additionally, the church operates the highly acclaimed Holy Innocents’ Episcopal School, an institution that itself had a difficult birth and now ranks as one of the premier—and largest—Episcopal schools in America. As Rev. Bill Murray observes in his foreword, “To tell the story of Holy Innocents is to tell a tale filled with successes and failures in equal measure. It is not a hagiography of perfect people excelling in everything. It is the wonderful story of faithful lives spilled out together in a jumble of puzzle pieces that is worth repeating because we keep trying. And God tries with us.” It’s clearly evident, however, that the “jumble of puzzle pieces” is coming together quite nicely as the next 150 years roll into view.
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