Dear Neville,
I’m working on you post. Please be patient I may be way off.
I define schism as an intentional separation across an entire community from a different community.
Conservative is a schism because they are not willing to take a stand for halachah. The halachah itself is not the problem. There some very modern communities that use a lot of technology on Shabbos that is almost universally understood to be prohibited. Even though this causes a lot of us to keep our distance, this is not a schism because we agree on keeping halachah in general. Whereas a Conservative Congregation that even today most of it’s members do not drive on Shabbos, is still out of bounds because we can’t trust them to take a stand.
It is interesting to note, that there is no schism between the Barely Orthodox and The Conservative. That is because the Barely Orthodox don’t know enough Torah to separate from anything. But if you educate them a drop, they usually listen. Whereas, Conservative ‘know’ that if their rabbi didn’t stop them the first time, that means it’s really allowed unless you choose to be a fanatic.
Once the Misnagdim accepted that the Chassidim were not intending to break any halachah, the whole prospect of schism evaporated. There is a whole bunch of halachic disagreements between the two which basically come down to “We don’t care so much about that”. But it’s not a schism because we both realize that we are both not willing to comprise on any bit of the Torah. Much like Sephardim and Ashkenazim.