The Rev’d Phillip Channing Ellsworth Jr

Rector

Phillip came to faith in Christ at a Baptist church as a sophomore in high school. At the invitation of his sister Vicki he went to a service thinking that would be the end of it. He caught the “good infection,” as CS Lewis calls it, and he’s been sick with it ever since. His collegiate studies of English literature, especially of the Anglican divines John Donne and George Herbert, and of WH Auden, put his feet on the Canterbury trail. His sponsoring parish was St Stephen’s (’Smoky Steve’s), East Providence, RI. On sabbatical the first half of 2016, he was a member of the clergy staff at the Church of the Advent, Boston, and was a Resident Scholar (Pusey House) at Oxford University all of Trinity Term. A graduate of Wheaton College and Yale Divinity School, Fr Ellsworth was awarded the Wolcott Calkins Prize for excellence in preaching by the President and Fellows of Yale University.

Phillip is the second of four children of Akiko and Phillip Ellsworth, he was born in Ft Bliss, Texas and raised in Okinawa, Colorado, New Mexico, and Michigan. He married Victoria in 1980. She was born to Muriel and Robert White in Brussels, Belgium, and grew up in the Congo and Michigan. Father and Mrs Ellsworth have four children: Evan (Los Angeles, married to Kristin), Gabriel (Boston), Gillian (Paoli, PA, married to Matthew), and Aaron (Conshohocken, PA, married to Genevieve). The Ellsworths have five grandchildren, John, James, Samuel, Benjamin, and Gemma.