Reformed Episcopal Church guilty of the schism, the party which separates and goes out? or the party that forces the separation, by making binding on the conscience what Christ has not made binding?" Rather than characterize this as schism, Bishop Cummins and his fellow reformers portrayed themselves as providing a Protestant, Anglican identity under which there could be a 'closer union of all Evangelical Christendom.' "The Reformed Episcopal Church would be what the Protestant Episcopal Church might have become had it not been paralyzed by the Tractarian virus." The term "Reformed" was never intended to denote any Calvinistic sense of Reformed theology, but
Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast unique attribute of representing at once the Church and the two states. Since the diocese was formed from two older areas, the new union was symbolized by placing the two crosses of St. Andrew side by side in a single field, the "chief" of the shield. The shield was designed by Professor James Waring McCardy of the University of the South, Sewanee, who is recognized as a top authority on ecclesiastical heraldry in America. Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast The Episcopal Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast is a diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States