Episcopalian Establishment
In late 1895, Lurana White, then a novice in a religious community of women known as The Episcopal Sisters of the Holy Child Jesus, made contact with the Rev. Lewis Wattson, the superior of a small community of Episcopal priests. Both were part of the Anglo-Catholic Movement, also known as the Oxford Movement, which had developed in the Church of England in the early 19th century. Miss White asked Father Wattson's help in finding an Episcopal community of religious which practised corporate poverty in the Catholic Franciscan tradition. Father Wattson was unaware of any such community, but began corresponding with her regarding his desire to see the Anglican and Catholic Churches reunited under the leadership of the Bishop of Rome.
In October 1898, White and Wattson met and made a spiritual covenant to form a new religious community with the aim of re-establishing Franciscan life in the Anglican Communion. The name of the new community was inspired by a passage in the Epistle to the Romans (Romans 5:11), which, in the King James Version of the Bible, speaks of the atonement Christians have received through Jesus. Wattson chose to interpret the word "atonement" in the literal sense of "at-one-ment," out of his vision that his new community should have the aim of leading all Christians to unity (oneness) with one another.
On December 15, 1898, Miss White and two companions took up residence in the area of Garrison, New York, at a farmhouse known as Graymoor, near the abandoned chapel of St. John's-in-the-Wilderness. Father Wattson joined them in the spring of 1899. With the formal establishment of the Society of the Atonement, they embraced religious life in the Episcopal Church. In taking religious vows, Miss White became known as Mother Lurana, while Father Wattson took the name of Father Paul James Francis. Mother Lurana became head of the Franciscan Sisters of the Atonement, the women's branch of the society; Father Paul became superior of the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement. Frederick Joseph Kinsman, third Bishop of Delaware, was chosen as Episcopal Visitor.
The Society preached the primacy of the Roman pontiff, while keeping its Episcopal allegiance, as they worked to realize a corporate reunion between the two bodies. Due to this, the founders and their small number of disciples came to find themselves not only criticised but ostracised by their co-religionists, who saw them as walking an impossible tightrope between the two bodies.
Read more about this topic: Society Of The Atonement