Furman Charles "Bill" Stough (July 11, 1928 – February 2, 2004) was an American prelate who served as the eighth Episcopal Church Bishop of Alabama from 1971 till 1988.
[3] On December 15, 1970, during a special convention held at the Church of the Advent, Stough was elected Bishop of Alabama.
During his time in Alabama, he guided the Diocese in adapting to the ordination of women (in 1976, something implemented cautiously in Alabama) and accepting the revised prayer book in 1979, despite considerable resistance from tradition-minded parishioners, something that led to the formation in some places, mostly in metropolitan areas, of Continuing Anglican congregations as conservative alternatives to ECUSA.
[4] During his tenure, in the 1970s, Alabama became the first diocese in the entire Episcopal Church to mandate that congregations be self-supporting, electing their own clergy (i.e., no more "missions" with appointed "vicars"), and foregoing diocesan financial subsidies, with only newly formed churches receiving them for a limited period of time.
During Stough's years, the Episcopal Church nationally began a period of numerical decline in communicants and Sunday attendance that has continued to the present.
This did not happen in Alabama, with, in fact, the Diocese growing in existing parishes and church planting throughout the 1970s and 1980s, something that persists to this day.