Christ Church Cody Historical Legacy and Identity

In 1902 four friends were playing poker and the pot grew too large for a friendly game. As the story goes, Buffalo Bill Cody suggested that whoever won the hand should commit the winnings to build the church of his choice. George Beck won the hand. His wife Daisy commenced raising a sum of money to match the poker winnings and overseeing the building of an Episcopal Church. The church was built in the center of Cody across the street from the Beck home. It remained there until a larger church was needed. The new church was built in 1965 on land donated by Milward and Lorna Simpson near their home on the west side of town. In order to preserve its past, the leaders of the church moved the historic church to sit on the Simpson property alongside the new church. Like many geographically isolated frontier churches, Christ Church was originally quite independent of Diocesan oversight. Though located in Wyoming, Christ Church was first formally connected with the Diocese of Idaho whose bishop had to travel over one thousand miles to visit. The town of Cody had been founded by William F. Cody, Buffalo Bill. The town’s early leadership was comprised of wealthy men who had come from the East to experience the dream of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and decided to stay. In those early days, leadership of the town and leadership of Christ Church were often one in the same. Parish Registers show that the membership of the church was stable, the lay leadership did not witness much change in its members over the first twenty-five years of the church’s life. Over the same time period, the clergy leadership was short lived; no rector stayed more than three years and many had a considerably shorter tenure. The years of the Great Depression saw a rector stay at Christ Church for seven years, but the three year pattern then returned until the mid-1950s. There was a pattern of alcohol abuse among at least three of the rectors during that time.

Stories told by parishioners indicate two steady legacies in the reputation of Christ Church. First, the leaders of the church were always active in leadership in the public arena, in the community as well as the church. To be a member of Christ Church required living one’s faith commitments in town and community life. Second, the close ties between the composition of the wealthy and influencing leaders in the town of Cody and the leadership of Christ Church led to the church having the reputation of being the church of the high and mighty or the uppity-ups. Living gospel values out in the world beyond the four walls of the church by being active in the community in response to contemporary issues facing the church and the town of Cody had a history of bringing the church into conflict. During World War II, the Rev. John McLaughlin brought a troop of Boy Scouts with whom he was involved to camp out with the Japanese American Boy Scouts who were interred at Heart Mountain and regularly brought his acolytes to the camp to participate in services he offered there; all the while in the town of Cody businesses were hanging out signs protesting the Japanese presence in the county. In the early 1960s, the Rev. Ernest Williams spoke out and wrote publically against the views and the secretive and clandestine ways of the John Birch society in Park County. During the socially tumultuous 1960s, the Rev. Bill Larson brought Encounter Groups to the church and challenged the members to be open and honest with themselves and one another about their inner life. During the tenure of the Rev. Warren Murphy, all the baptized members of Christ Church, not just its traditionally strong leadership, were firmly encouraged to live their faith outside church walls by reaching out in justice to respond to the needs of the world. Locally, the church lived out Murphy’s challenge by committing itself to service on non-profit boards, growing its thrift store ministry into a one hundred thousand dollar outreach business, purchasing real estate for a day use mental health center and donating space and scholarship for an independent preschool.

Interestingly, as the pace of change in the world around seems to

be increasing, Christ Church Cody has broken out of its practice of three year revolving door rectors. The Rev. Bill Larson was rector for eight years (1962-1970), followed by The Rev. Patterson Keller for seventeen years (1971-1988), the Rev. Warren Murphy for fifteen years (1989-2004), and the Rev. Mary Caucutt is in her twelfth year (2006-).