The Kenyon Summer Conference is an Episcopal Conference sponsored by the Bishops of both the Diocese of Ohio and the Diocese of Southern Ohio. It takes place on the campus of the beautiful Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.

Kenyon College was founded in 1824 by the First Episcopal Bishop in Ohio, Philander Chase. Bp. Chase (1775-1852) was a pioneering clergyman who ventured into the wilderness of the "West" in 1817 and served as the rector of St. John's Church, Worthington, Ohio.  In 1818 he established the Ohio Diocese of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the first west of the Allegheny Mountains, and was elected the first Episcopal bishop of Ohio. In 1824 he went to England to raise money for  a theological seminary, which he founded and called Kenyon College, The Seminary was established for the training of young men for ministerial work in the West. In 1828, Bp. Chase moved to Gambier and lived there until he resigned his presidency of Kenyon College and the episcopacy of Ohio in 1831.  He then moved to Illinois where he set about building another seminary.  In 1835 he was elected the first bishop of Illinois.  In 1836 he went a second time to England to raise funds for another college and in 1839 he laid the cornerstone for Jubilee Chapel at Jubilee College in Illinois.  He died and was buried at Jubilee college in 1852