The Rev. Jon Shuler, who was the driving force behind the Shaping Our Future Symposium, formed the North American Mission Society to change the way the Episcopal Church does its business.
In a letter to all bishops of the Episcopal Church, Presiding Bishop Edmond L. Browning, announced on 18 August 1995, that Clarence Pope, the former bishop of Fort Worth, "has made the decision to return to the Episcopal Church". Bishop Pope and his wife joined the Roman Catholic Church last February.
The Episcopal Church House of Bishops voted in September 1995 "that equal access to ordination for men and women is `mandatory' throughout the church." "While the 1976 General Convention voted that canons on ordination should apply equally to men and women, the bishops of four out of 118 dioceses and jurisdictions currently do not ordain women".
The parish of Trinity-St. Michael's in Fairfield Conn. had returned to its building after a seven year absence. In 1986 a portion of the parish broke away from the Episcopal Church, chiefly over the 1979 prayer book and the ordination of women, to join the traditionalist Diocese of Christ the King. Following a series of lawsuits the parish building was returned to the diocese of Connecticut and original parish members.
The US Episcopal House of Bishops voted by a narrow margin to "dissociate" themselves from the actions of Bishop John Spong who ordained an admitted homosexual man to the priesthood last year. "Bishop Spong ... responded to the decision with a stinging half-hour rebuke in which he contrasted his treatment with that received by traditionalist bishops opposed to the ordination of women".
Both the Very Rev. Richard Hatfield and his associate, the Rev. Canon Joseph Kimmett, resigned from the Episcopal Church and joined the Antiochian Orthodox Church.