It’s sometimes said that two of the most important cities in the Diocese of New Jersey aren’t in it: New York and Philadelphia. We prefer to turn it round: think how much New Jersey character colors those cities!

It’s probably accurate to say that for the towns and villages north of Trenton, the New York Times is likely the major newspaper of choice. South of Trenton, you’ll find The Philadelphia Inquirer propped on the breakfast table. The latter root for the Eagles and the former root for the Giants, and they simply cannot understand how the other could do that!

Although this north-south division can occasionally be divisive—if we let it!—we prefer to think of it as a strength. This is not a monochromatic diocese, and the variety and mix gives the Diocese of New Jersey an authenticity that makes ministry here real and vital. You can’t hide away from 21st-century life by “playing church”: New Jersey will be right on the doorstep, reminding you that you’ve got to be up to the challenge of ministry in this century, grappling with the problems of this time, not skirmishing about churchy esoterica of little relevance to the world today.

Look at it this way
New Jersey is only 140 miles in length and 65 miles east to west. No parish is more than two hours from the diocesan office in Trenton, and most are within an hour’s drive.

As the most densely populated state in the nation, New Jersey weighs in at 1,134 people per square mile. Three of the 14 counties in the Diocese of New Jersey have populations of more than a half-million. Three others of those 14 counties, the largest in land areas, have populations under 100,000. It’s probably no surprise to you that 90 percent of the state’s population lives in urban or suburban areas.

Although New Jersey is one of the smallest states in the United States, with a land area of 7,836 square miles, it has five distinct climate regions. It’s hard to cite average temperatures! But we can say that the climate is moderate and there are four seasons. The average summer temperature is just below 74 degrees and the average winter temperature is just over 30 degrees. Annual precipitation ranges from 40 inches on the southeastern coast to 50 inches in north-central New Jersey.

We’re called “the Garden State” for good reason: more than 150 types of fruits and vegetables are grown here. In 1997, there were 9,400 farms in New Jersey. We’re second in the United States for production of blueberries and eggplant (we trust you like it); third for cranberries, peaches, spinach, and bell peppers; fourth in asparagus; and fifth in head lettuce. Go veggies!

Make yourself at home
We’ve always been an important center for immigration (we made a strong claim for Ellis Island and got it). In the eighteenth century, the population was primarily English and Welsh, with small communities of Swedes, Dutch, and Finns. The nineteenth century saw an influx of Germans and Irish, and the early twentieth century brought settlers from Eastern Europe and Italy. In the 1930s, great numbers of African-Americans came to New Jersey from the rural south. In the late twentieth century, the state welcomed new Asian and Hispanic immigrants.

In the Diocese of New Jersey, we’ve worked hard to open the doors of the Episcopal Church, which was seen for too long as basically white. We’ve made progress, but there’s a long way to go to ensure that the diocese reflects the reality of the state today and isn’t an off-putting enclave of a long-faded past.

Do good business
You’ll find evidence of every kind that the state is attracting new families, new employees, new businesses, and new life. New Jersey has a growing and vital economy, proving that the state has, in general, made a successful transition from manufacturing to service-related industries. During the 1970s, the state lost roughly 80,000 manufacturing jobs, but in the 1980s, we concentrated not only on reviving our manufacturing base, but on attracting and developing new industries. Research and high-tech industries flourished. Smaller cities began to position themselves as corporate parks, where companies could find good space at reasonable costs.

Tourism is our second-largest industry, and many visitors head to our spectacular coastline. In addition to all the holiday destinations along the shore, you’ll find our commercial fishing industry, which is significant along the Atlantic coast and the Delaware Bay. Fish and shellfish are caught and processed locally.

Data from the 2000 national census and a survey of 700,000 New Jersey households shows that residents are wealthier and better educated than the nation as a whole. The median household income in the state was $54,226 in 2000, highest in the nation. The high incomes in general reflect the sorts of jobs held, since 38 percent were management, business, professional, and related occupations and 29 percent were in sales and office occupations. The data also showed New Jersey women with the highest median earnings in the nation, earning just over $25,000. New Jersey’s poverty rate was 8.2 percent in 2000, the fourth lowest in the nation. The national poverty rate was 12.5 percent.

The state ranked fifth in the United States in percent of residents with bachelor’s degrees or beyond: 31.1 percent of our residents had a four-year college education. Nationally, 25 percent had a bachelor’s degree.

Mix it up
Perhaps more than in any other American diocese, the church and the state are linked here in fascinating ways. If New Jersey is the “cockpit of the American Revolution,” the Diocese of New Jersey can be considered a cradle of the American Episcopal church.

The Church of England arrived in the late seventeenth century to a colony that was already a teeming religious mix of Swedish Lutherans, Quakers, Anabaptists, Presbyterians, and just plain rabble-rousers. Historical records show that there were services in Perth Amboy by 1698, with the coming of an Anglican clergyman.

Old St Mary's Church (1702), Burlington

It was with the arrival of the intrepid priests John Talbot and George Keith—under the aegis of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts—that serious efforts to promote the church began. Keith and Talbot slogged it out in the swamps, pinelands, river villages, and crossroads for years, and established St Mary’s, Burlington, the mother parish of the diocese. Remarkably successful in their evangelism, they made an appeal to Lambeth Palace (the first of many through the decades) for a bishop, to ground the church more firmly in the colonies. That hope dimmed as tensions between England and its colonies grew sharper.

Bishop or no, by the time of the Revolutionary War, the Church of England in America was solidly on the scene in the colony of New Jersey. It took some time to recover from that war, but from the early nineteenth century, the baby Episcopal Church grew steadily, gaining in numbers per capita. The timeline will tell you more of our story. In short: we’ve been here a long time!

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