Visiting Clergy
June 22, 2014
Rev. H. Alexander Viola serves as part – time priest associate at St. John in the Wilderness in Flat Rock, NC. His pre-theological studies began and finished with a BA from Lenoir Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina. After a short teaching career in the Catawba County School system, he entered three-year postgraduate studies at the General Theological Seminary in New York City, where he graduated with a Master of Divinity in 1965. He was ordained into the Sacred Order of Deacons that summer and was assigned to St. Gabriel’s Church, Rutherfordton, NC, where he was ordained a priest in 1966 and remained there until 1968. He became the First Associate Rector of All Soul’s, Biltmore, in Asheville until 1974, when he became rector of St. James, Hendersonville. He earned an Honorary Doctorate from Lenoir Rhyne University with recognition for church growth and ecumenism in the Diocese of Western North Carolina.
