Former Episcopalian Asks: Out of Division, a Greater Unity?

By David Mills
10/29/2008
Inside Catholic

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Inside Catholic) - Earlier this month, almost four-fifths of the clergy and over three-fifths of the laity representing churches in the Episcopal diocese of Pittsburgh voted to leave the Episcopal Church and join the South American Anglican province called "the Southern Cone." It was the second American diocese (out of 100 or so) to do so, with two more -- the tiny diocese of Quincy, in western Illinois, and Fort Worth -- expected to follow.

In this country, individual Episcopal churches, and now these two dioceses, have simply given up allegiance to their province (world Anglicanism is made up of 39 provinces, mostly in former English colonies, each completely independent) and joined a theologically sympathetic one. Hitherto, being an Anglican has been enough to paper over profound religious differences -- the body having been founded on national identity and strategic generality and vagueness -- but now, pushed mainly by the division over homosexuality, it isn't. the rest