THE GREAT UNRAVELING OF THE ECUSA

“A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

— Richard Niebuhr, 1937

The great unraveling of the Episcopal Church has begun in earnest.

On Sunday, March 14, 2004, five retired Episcopal bishops—C. FitzSimons Allison (South Carolina), Maurice Benitez (Texas), William Cox (Oklahoma), Alex Dickson (West Tennessee), and William Wantland (Eau Claire)—joined by Robinson Cavalcanti, Bishop of Recife (Brazil), crossed canonical boundaries to conduct a Confirmation and Holy Eucharist service in Akron, Ohio, under the ecclesiastical authority of the Diocese of Ohio’s revisionist bishop, J. Clark Grew II.

Held at the Orthodox Church of the Presentation of Our Lord, the service confirmed 110 individuals from six congregations—five Episcopal parishes and one Anglican church plant—whose members had refused confirmation by Bishop Grew due to his support for ECUSA’s 2003 General Convention actions, including the consecration of Gene Robinson.

Approximately 800 people attended. None of the officiating priests were from the participating parishes; all acted under the bishops’ authority. Bishop Allison preached on the defense of the faith, selecting Christ’s warning against the “leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” as the Gospel lesson, and invoked Charles P. McIlvaine, the 19th-century Bishop of Ohio who opposed theological rationalism and ecclesiastical idolatry.

Cynthia Brust of the American Anglican Council, which helped organize the event, acknowledged possible repercussions. Yet the act signaled a new phase in the struggle for the soul of ECUSA—a deliberate, public defiance of diocesan authority and revisionist leadership.

Bishop Grew called the event a “disturbance” created by a “minority position” seeking fading attention. Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold and spokesperson Daniel England condemned the action as unconstitutional. Yet critics noted the irony: the 1974 Philadelphia ordinations—also canonically irregular—were later vindicated by many as prophetic.

Griswold insists all actions must conform to ECUSA’s canons and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s call for constitutional fidelity. Yet both orthodox and revisionist camps now claim Rowan Williams’ tacit support. According to ACNS editor James Rosenthal, the Archbishop has not publicly clarified his position—a silence the Anglican Communion Office fears may accelerate fragmentation.

The House of Bishops’ historic reluctance to pursue presentments—even against figures like John Spong or Charles Bennison—suggests little appetite for disciplining the retired bishops. Their lack of current diocesan authority makes any censure largely symbolic, and risks triggering more severe schisms.

Meanwhile, statistical decline underscores the crisis: ECUSA lost 36% of its membership between 1966 and 2001, while clergy numbers rose 63%. Average congregants per priest fell from 343 to 133. Over 500 parishes closed or departed between 1985 and 2001.

Further symbolic collapse came with the resignation of revisionist Bishop Richard Shimpfley (El Camino Real), whose diocese shrank from 30,000 to 12,000 under his leadership.