Constitutional Changes: Opposing the Centrist Model

[Note: this is the third post in a series on the history of the changes which were made by General Convention to the Constitution of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America beginning in 1889 and finalized in 1901. Part I is here, and Part II is here.]

When the General Convention at Baltimore in 1892 assigned to a Joint Commission the task of proposing complete revisions to the Constitution and Canons of the Church, it also specified that the Commission was to deliver a printed version of its report at least six months before the start of the next Convention, held in Minneapolis in October 1895. The Commission, however, delivered in advance a draft of the full text of its proposals, but gave only the sketchiest of reasons for its changes, and promised a fuller report to the deputies and bishops at the Convention itself.

However, such a report seems never to have been prepared. (See the 1895 Journal at page 187, where the "report" of the Joint Commission delivered to the House of Deputies on its opening day is the same as that sent six months earlier, and reproduced in Appendix XVI of the Journal.) As a consequence, the House of Bishops and the House of Deputies each made their own interpretations of the proposal, and each worked through it at their own pace, agreeing on some things, but disagreeing on much more.

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