Great Living Cincinnatians: Honorees

Bishop Hobson was a national leader in the Protestant Episcopal Church for nearly half a century. A hero in World War I during battle near San Mihiel, the Reverend Hobson served congregations in Connecticut and Massachusetts before becoming Bishop of the Diocese of Southern Ohio in 1931, a position he held actively until his retirement in 1959.

Bishop Hobson was a founder and chairman of the church’s Forward Movement program, which began as a means of bringing the church to the people through conferences across the nation, and eventually took the form of producing devotional and evangelical publications. Millions of copies of Forward Movement booklets have been distributed nationwide from its headquarters in Cincinnati.

He originated the Wayside Cathedral program, devising a church on wheels that travelled from 1937 to 1947 throughout southern Ohio, bringing baptisms, confirmations and religious services to remote locations where no one had represented the church for years.

Bishop Hobson was also largely responsible for the creation of a unique religious congregation. Working with his own Episcopal church and a Presbyterian congregation, he brought the two denominations together as the united congregations of Indian Hill Church and West Cincinnati St. Barnabus Church.

He was also closely involved with the growth and development of the Children’s Hospital Medical Center, founded by his church, as chairman of the hospital board during his tenure as bishop, and has been an outstanding example of a religious and community leader in numerous civic organizations and projects.

Bishop Hobson died on September 18, 1997 at 75.