Coventry parish quits Episcopal diocese
By: Tracy Scudder, Daily Times
05/23/2006

The Rev. Mark Galloway was called to be the rector of St. Andrew and St. Philip in the fall of 2003. He became the rector in January 2004. He said discussions began almost immediately about what was going on in the church and what was the church's future. Galloway described the U.S. Episcopal Church as having two types of religion that exist within a single institution.

"They have two views of reality and they aren't compatible anymore. While they are within a single institution, there's not enough common ground left about what the essentials of faith are anymore to keep those two sides within the same house," he said.

The Church of St. Andrew and St. Philip sponsored two different statewide conferences and monthly meetings. The monthly meetings were Anglican studies that would be informational meetings about what's going on in the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican world, according to Galloway.

"More and more people started to come to the parish. What is amazing is, in two years as rector, the demographics of the parish have changed drastically," he said.The idea to leave the Episcopal Church started at the vestry level, the governing body of the church, according to Galloway. The vote initially was to join the Anglican Communion Network. The vestry did that in September 2004 and then monitored what was going to go on in the life of the church, according to Galloway. the rest