From The Associated Press via The Washington Post:
After 125 years, tiny St. Paul’s College closes forever on June 30 — a big loss for a little town and a sad setback of the kind that has become all too common across Virginia’s rural Southside region in recent decades.
For a village of about 1,400 people, playing host to a four-year institution of higher learning was rare, and it was a point of pride for the Brunswick County seat of government.
And St. Paul’s history was compelling. It was established by the Episcopal Church in 1888 to educate and train former slaves and their progeny to earn a living as free people in a South where equality under the law was still generations away.
Lawrenceville, though, is accustomed to setbacks.
Matthew Townsend is a Halifax-based freelance journalist and volunteer advocate for survivors of sexual misconduct in Anglican settings. He served as editor of the Anglican Journal from 2019 to 2021 and communications missioner for the Anglican Diocese of Quebec from 2019 to 2022. He and his wife recently entered catechism class in the Orthodox Church in America.
