Not since 1977, when the House of Bishops meeting in Port St. Lucie failed to censure New York Bishop Paul Moore for ordaining the first woman priest with the full knowledge that she was a lesbian, has the Episcopal Church been so divided. Some might say it is irretrievably shattered with four dioceses in full flight from a once proud denomination that has played host to eleven presidents and many of America's intellectual elite.

Dr. Nancy Carol James, assisting priest at Grace Episcopal Church in Georgetown, Washington, DC, and the holder of a Ph. D. from the University of Virginia, has performed an excellent service to the church by documenting the developing schism over the past 50 years. She has written with a scholarly objectivity that eschews polemic. She sought the views of many of the major figures of the church ranging from Gene Robinson, Louie Crew and Washington Bishop John Chane on the one side and Uganda Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi, CANA Bishop Martyn Minns and ACNA Archbishop Robert Duncan on the other. It has been no small task. She writes with clarity and winsomeness.

While she presses no conclusions on the reader, her own theological bias comes from her long scholarly association with the late Dr. Charles Price, former preacher to Harvard and chair in Systematic Theology at Virginia Theological Seminary whose long shadow over the church is apparent in this volume. She acknowledges his liberal proclivities. Price's accomplishments brought the Episcopal Church into modern life with expansive social changes that included writing the new Prayer Book, advocating for the ordination of women and later coming out in favor of the ordination of homosexuals. Price's primary authority was God's redemptive love. He called on Anglicans to destroy any part of their tradition that impedes the actions of this love. He believed, however, that homosexuality itself was not part of God's plan for humanity. He said that homosexuality was part of the fallen creation and should be placed in the category of unfortunate human realities such as poverty. His position on the ordination of homosexuals did not allow him to be classified as either liberal or conservative. He did not believe that the Bible was the church's ultimate authority only "redeeming love," concluded James.

Dr. James noted that many crucial actions in this schism have their beginning at Virginia Theological Seminary. The first two Episcopal priests consecrated in the Global South, John Rodgers, and Chuck Murphy. Murphy graduated from Sewanee and Rodgers from from VTS. Other notable graduates include Martyn Minns, Bishop John Guernsey and the highly influential African Anglican leader of the Nigerian Anglican Church, Peter Akinola.

While the book does not tell the whole story of the schism and emphasizes the Virginia roots of the schism, James is keenly aware that there are many narratives in play. She is mindful that some 60 lawsuits along with increasing inhibitions of priests and bishops reveal that the schism has percolated throughout the Episcopal Church. The schism should be discussed wherever these issues happen.

This volume is a history of timelines beginning in August 20, 1965, when seminarian Jonathan Myrick Daniels was shot and killed by a special deputy in Haynesville, Alabama. It quickly moves to a few months later when Presiding Bishop John Hines appointed a committee to study the proper place of women in the ministry, then to 1966 when Bishop Pike was censured, and onto 1967 the General Convention which allowed lay people to assist with the chalice in the communion service.

Dr. James hits all the high points in TEC's slow decline and downfall into schism. The founding of the Episcopal Charismatic Fellowship by Dennis Bennett in 1973, the revisions of the Book of Common Prayer in 1973, the "Philadelphia Eleven" illegally ordained in 1973, the founding of "Integrity" by Louis Crew in 1974, the approval of the ordination of women in 1976 culminating with the installation of Katharine Jefferts Schori in 2006 as TEC's first woman Presiding Bishop.

The Global South's intervention in North American Anglican affairs is documented with dispassion along with the Anglican Archbishop of Southern Africa pleading for "grace, tolerance and living with difference."

James records the marriage of Bishop Otis Charles to his same-sex partner and the events leading to four bishops leaving TEC for the Roman Catholic Church with cool detachment, but notes that such actions do have consequences. She notes the various Primates' meetings and the constant wrangling over sexuality but makes no attempt to applaud or condemn either side.

Other highlights include the formation and accreditation of TESM in Ambridge, PA, along with the 1988 Lambeth Conference when the Global South bishops took a strong public role. She noted the rise of Jack Spong, his organization of the group, "Christianity for the Third Millennium", and later his writing of a Koinonia Statement. She notes the beginning of the American Anglican Council, "Ekklesia", the Righter "trial", the beginning of the "Emerging Church Network" dedicated to evangelism in the postmodern era and much more.

Her book concludes in July of 2010 with the General Synod of the Church of England reaffirming its intention to consecrate female bishops. This decision alienated traditionalists, she observed. "Some fear a schism within the Church of England."

I found only one glaring timeline omission. When Chuck Murphy and John Rodgers were heading to Singapore to be consecrated as bishops for the new Anglican Mission in the Americas, US Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold raced across the Atlantic to plead with then Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey to disavow the consecrations and recognize TEC as the only legitimate representative of Anglicanism in North America. This Carey did. Had he not done so, events might have turned out quite differently. James writes wistfully, "That history will judge these movements but until then human beings from all cultures, faiths and races may witness this group of believers who struggle to express their faith, however inadequately, while standing upon the mysterious presence of God."

If there is a weakness in her book, from this writer's perspective, it is her failure to understand the real source of schism and TEC's decline which is that TEC has abandoned the authority of Holy Scripture as normative in all matters of faith and practice for the life of the church and its people. TEC's open and public disobedience to Holy Writ and to the Holy Spirit and to the belief that "God is doing a new thing" has wrenched the very fabric of the Anglican Communion apart.

James concludes her book with these words, "Yes, the cracked monolith of the House of Bishops appears to be crumbling, yet the sight of all these leaders standing upon their spiritual principles might be just what our era needs as we too engage with the weighty issues of our times. This might be the perfect antidote, or balance, to the zeitgeist of the now ended tempestuous and violent twentieth century."

With the advent of GAFCON and the Jerusalem Declaration, the waning influence of the Covenant and the coalescence of the Global South into a cohesive theological and ecclesiastical force, it is hard to imagine how "balance" can ever again be reached in a communion so deeply divided.

END