of American Protestantism during the period after World War II, the Episcopal Church flourished in newly-developing suburban areas, a large number of the new churches being missions founded by long-established in-town parishes. Partition By the 1960s and during the episcopate of John Vander Horst, enough growth had taken place that the diocese had established offices in Nashville and Knoxville in addition to the cathedral in Memphis in order to economically provide episcopal care to parishes and missions throughout the state; Vander Horst maintained the central Diocesan office in Nashville, by the 1970s in a rented shopping center office complex, while keeping his seat (literally cathedra) at St. Mary's Cathedral in Memphis. Vander Horst's bishop coadjutor, William E. Sanders, maintained offices in Knoxville to serve the eastern third of the state, while a suffragan bishop (with no right of succession to the Diocesan position, unlike Sanders), W. Fred Gates, Jr., worked out of Memphis from 1966 to 1982 to tend to churches in the western third of Tennessee; he also served as the Diocese's chief financial officer. The process for division of the state into three territories began when Vander Horst (who opposed it steadfastly during his episcopate) retired in 1977, under the aegis of his successor, Sanders. Upon approval by the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1982, the diocese excised its western counties first in 1983, followed by the eastern counties two years later. The remaining territory in Middle Tennessee became the legal successor to the statewide diocese. Between 1977 and 1985 and during the Sanders episcopate, the formal office of the statewide diocese moved to Knoxville due to his succession to the position as Diocesan, with the Nashville office closing upon Vander Horst's retirement. The Nashville office reopened after the 1985 (East Tennessee) separation in a different location, and has moved twice since then.<ref>Episcopal Church Annuals, 1966-82.</ref> Each of the three realigned dioceses retained an important legacy of the former statewide body: West Tennessee had St. Mary's Cathedral; the diocese in Middle Tennessee retained the name "Diocese of Tennessee" and the status as the Episcopal Church's sixteenth diocese; and the East Tennessee diocese welcomed Sanders, eighth bishop of Tennessee, as its own first bishop. Task Force on Anti-Racism In June 2017, the diocese's Task Force on Anti-Racism and Lipscomb University's Christian Scholars' Conference organized a service held at the Fisk University Memorial Chapel in memory of 1892