Bishop Louttit Dead at Age 81
Episcopal News Service. August 9, 1984 [84165]
ORLANDO, Fla. (DPS, Aug. 9) -- The Rt. Rev. Henry I. Louttit, retired Bishop of the former Diocese of South Florida from 1951 to 1969 and of the Diocese of Central Florida from 1969 to 1970, died July 24. Louttit, 81, had been in failing health for the past several months.
A Requiem Eucharist was celebrated in the Cathedral Church of St. Luke here July 30 by Bishop William H. Folwell of Central Florida.
Through Louttit's episcopate from 1945 to 1970, he led the church through years of growth and rapid change. Exercising his ministry with enthusiasm and conscientious labor, he saw opportunities in every challenge and persistently called his people to pioneer for the future. With his people, he built a church which today in three dioceses serves a Florida only faintly envisioned in 1945.
Louttit was born Jan. 1, 1903 in Buffalo, N.Y. He attended Hobart College and went into business in Miami before attending seminary.
He graduated from Virginia Theological Seminary in 1929 and served briefly at All Saints' Church in Tarpon Springs and at Trinity Church in Miami.
Louttit served in the National Guard and in 1934 was commissioned in the Chaplains Corps. In 1941 when World War II broke out, he was called to active duty, eventually serving as a major in the South Pacific. While hospitalized in an army hospital in the U.S. in 1944, he was elected suffragan bishop of South Florida.
Louttit became bishop coadjutor of South Florida in 1948, and in 1951 he succeeded as diocesan bishop. In 1946 he had been elected bishop of Western New York, but he declined the election.
In 1945 when he entered the episcopate, the Diocese of South Florida stretched from Ocala to Key West and claimed 21,000 communicants, 56 priests, and 92 congregations. When he retired from the active ministry in 1970, there were in the same area 80,769 communicants, 259 clergy, and 204 congregations. Louttit's leadership was an important factor in his church's growth.
In the 1950's, Louttit spoke out forcefully against racial discrimination and segregation. "As Christians," he said, "ours is a ministry of reconcilation, to make men (ourselves included) to be at one with God, that we may be at one, each with the other." Segregation, he said, was contrary to the Christian faith.
On the national church level, Louttit served as chairman of the Armed Forces Division, as chairman of the General Commission on Chaplains and Armed Forces Personnel, as chairman of the Department of Christian Education of the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church, and as a trustee of the Episcopal School of the Caribbean. He was president of the Florida Council of Churches from 1947-48.
He was author of two books, Fear Not and Commanded to Preach.
In June 1969, Louttit announced his retirement to be effective the end of 1969 or as soon as the division of the Diocese of South Florida into three dioceses was consumated. Following the division of the diocese in early 1970, his two suffragans, James. L. Duncan and William L. Hargrave, were instituted as bishop of Southeast Florida and bishop of Southwest Florida respectively. Louttit served very briefly as bishop of the new Diocese of Central Florida. On Feb. 9, 1970, he consecrated Folwell as his successor. Louttit also had ordained Folwell as deacon and then as priest.
Louttit is survived by two sons, The Rev. Henry I. Louttit, Jr., rector of Christ Church in Valdosta, Ga., and James W. Louttit, M.D., of Maitland, Fla., and by five grandchildren.