Last week Episcopalians were slightly torn by unity. Before the Episcopal Church's 54th Triennial General Convention, meeting in Cleveland's Euclid Avenue Baptist Church (no Episcopal church was large enough to hold the 750 Bishops, priests and laymen), were two reports from the Joint Commission on Approaches to Unity. For six years this Commission has pondered with unflagging leisureliness the question of uniting Episcopalians with the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. The majority report (twelve signers) favored unity; the minority report (three signers) opposed it.
Most people expected 77-year-old Bishop William Thomas Manning to...