Bishop Ian T. Douglas of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut said Friday that he wants to meet with the parishioners to discuss their options, ranging from rejoining the Episcopal faith to leaving the property.

“It’s a sad circumstance when other Christians are forced to resolve their disputes in court, because that draws significant resources away from our work in the wider world in service of God’s mission,” Douglas said. “It’s been a long and bad process. There are no victors here.”

Parishioners released a statement saying they were going to talk with their lawyers about what to do next. They didn’t say whether they were considering appealing to a federal court.

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This is such a crucial preface to what follows that I shall restate it: only dioceses, in their given territories, are legal members of the association which is the Episcopal Church (USA). As such, they are free, under the First Amendment, to join it or to leave it at their pleasure, through duly enacted amendments to their governing documents — which ECUSA is, again under the Constitution’s First Amendment, powerless to annul or forbid.

Now comes an utterly supercilious pronouncement by an official on behalf of ECUSA’s Executive Council (citing the “decision” of one of its joint standing committees) with regard to the Diocese of South Carolina, and which purports to “declare” certain acts taken by a member diocese to be “null and void”. [A tip o’ the Rumpolean bowler to the Rev. Steve Wood’s blog, which in this instance was authored in his temporary absence by Greg Shore.]

Oh, really? And just who, pray tell, is this supra-diocesan “Executive Council”, or its “Joint Standing Committee on Governance and Administration”?

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From Phil Ashey–

I’d like to share with you a letter from the Bishop and Diocesan Council of The Episcopal Church’s (TEC) Diocese of the Rio Grande. But first, a little background so that you can appreciate the letter in all its fullness.

This time two years ago, approximately 80% of the parishioners of St. Mark’s on-the-Mesa (TEC) left the parish and formed Christ the King Anglican, Albuquerque, NM (Anglican Church in North America). When those parishioners left the parish, the Diocese of the Rio Grande, and the Episcopal Church, they left everything. They left the property, building, endowments, bank accounts – even paperclips and pencils. They did so in good conscience, with generosity, and with love for those who in good conscience could not leave The Episcopal Church. Based on their reading of scripture, these parishioners did not want to fight over buildings and property in civil courts. Instead, they walked away and began a new life together as Anglican followers of Jesus Christ at Christ the King Anglican Church. Not only did the new parish draw former Episcopalians, but also Christians from other denominations who wanted to worship and serve at Christ the King Anglican.

Fast forward two years to August 31, 2011 (about three weeks ago). The congregation’s rector, the Rev. Roger Weber, former priest at St. Mark’s, received this letter from TEC Bishop Michael Vono of the Diocese of the Rio Grande…

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For the “sake of the diocese” the leadership of the Episcopal Diocese of Central Ecuador ”“ including members of the Standing Committee, Bishop Luis Fernando Ruiz, the chancellor, its legal representative and all other diocesan leaders ”“ have agreed to resign by Oct. 1.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori Sept. 20 convened a meeting of the leadership, along with Bishop Victor Scantlebury and Bishop Clay Matthews, the Episcopal Church’s bishop for pastoral development, at the Hilton Colón Hotel in Quito, where the agreement was reached.

By resigning their positions, the leadership yields its authority to the presiding bishop; she appointed Scantlebury, who had served as an assisting bishop in the Diocese of Chicago until he retired July 1 to serve as interim bishop.

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As readers of this blog are aware, your Curmudgeon is no fan of the Dennis Canon, which I like to call the Episcopal Church (USA)’s Trojan Horse. It has spawned a disproportionate amount of Church property litigation, because it operates by stealth, and springs onto the back of a parish just at the time when it is most vulnerable, having decided to take the final step to disaffiliate from ECUSA. All of a sudden, the Bishop of the Diocese swoops down with his attorneys, and orders the congregation to vacate its building, and leave everything behind, from the altar candlesticks to the bank accounts and pew cushions. “Because you no longer are operating within the Episcopal Church,” he says, “Canon I.7.4 [the Dennis Canon] declares that all of your property is now forfeit to the Diocese, since it was always held in trust for this Diocese and the Church.”

Such a claimed operation for the Canon comes as a surprise to many congregations who thought that their years of paying for the acquisition, construction and maintenance of their building, plus a deed in their name, meant that they owned it. Furthermore, every State in the United States has a law which says that trusts in real property can be created only by a writing signed by the owner of the property. The Dennis Canon operates in reverse: it purports to create a trust in church property without the owner’s signature, and just on the authority of ECUSA’s General Convention. As I noted elsewhere, it purports to operate as though, upon you and your spouse’s joining the Democratic Party, your house and all your worldly goods become forfeit to the Party should you ever decide to become a Republican.

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Since it severed ties with the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of South Carolina, St. Andrew’s Church-Mount Pleasant has grown. And now it has secured a central role in a new diocese in formation, part of the Anglican Church in North America.

The Rev. Steve Wood, rector of St. Andrew’s, was appointed vicar general of the not-yet-official Diocese of the Carolinas, which includes eight churches in North and South Carolina and one more that’s still being established.

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To read between the lines here: the Treasurer of the Church, like all of the staff at 815, works for the Presiding Bishop, not for the Executive Council. When she tells him to “find money for litigation”, his job is not to ask “Where?”, but rather: “How much do you need?” And in exchange for such due obedience, she protects him from all incursions into his territory by the likes of the Executive Council — who only imagine that they run the show when General Convention is not in session.

No, this is the Presiding Bishop’s show — lock, stock, and barrel. If the Church needs money to fund her agenda, then it will jolly well have to supply it, without any interference from the Executive Council. The Church is extraordinarily wealthy, with over $140 million in unrestricted securities and investments, the gifts of innumerable donors over the centuries. And in recent years it has not been shy about borrowing against the endowment to provide it with working capital for the Presiding Bishop’s ongoing litigation agenda.

Thus it should now come as no surprise to learn that, in a face-off between the Committee’s alternatives and those explored by the Treasurer and his investment manager, the latter prevailed. The headquarters building did not have to be mortgaged; the Treasurer simply ponied up more of the endowment as collateral for two new lines of credit.

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Litigation over ownership of St. Stephens Church in Heathsville and eight other churches that formerly housed Episcopal congregations entered a new phase when the parties filed their post-trial briefs in August.

The briefs followed a 22-day trial at which 67 witnesses appeared and “thousands of exhibits” were filed, according to the brief for the defendant churches all of which have disassociated themselves from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia and joined the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA). According to the schedule set up by the Circuit Court of Fairfax where the case over ownership of the nine churches is being tried, the parties may respond to each other’s briefs by Sept. 23 and after that the court may hear oral argument and decide the cases.

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Another congregation in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh has decided to abandon its building, saying that it couldn’t meet the financial or ecclesiastical demands that the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh made during negotiations for the property.

On Oct. 2 the 104 members of All Saints Church in Penn Hills will begin holding services in nearby Rosedale United Methodist Church….

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A Episcopal priest defrocked by the local diocese must step down as rector of his Rosemont parish and vacate the premises after 21 years there, a Montgomery County Court judge has ruled.

The Rev. David Moyer, 60, said Wednesday that he was saddened by Judge Stanley Ott’s decision but would abide by his order to leave the Church of the Good Shepherd. He said he hoped to become a Roman Catholic priest.

An outspoken critic of liberal trends in the Episcopal Church, Moyer was defrocked in 2002 by the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania after he agreed to become a bishop in a small, conservative Anglican denomination.

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When members of St. Bartholomew’s Church in the Town of Tonawanda decided in 2008 to leave the Episcopal Church, they didn’t know for sure where they fit in the larger structure of Anglicanism.

Less than three years later, the parish has become a pivotal congregation within the Anglican Church in North America, a rival to the Episcopal Church that grew from a rift between theological conservatives and liberal Episcopalians over Bible interpretation and the ordination of a gay bishop.

This week, the congregation served as host for a conference of the International Diocese, the new diocese to which it belongs as part of the Anglican Church in North America.

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This Sunday, the local Anglican church, Christ Our Savior, will hold services in its first permanent home in Old Torrance. The Rev. Dale Smith, a former Episcopal priest from South Pasadena, has led the church for more than a year.

“It’s been a difficult time for more than 50 years during this gradual split,” Smith said.

After 2003, he said, “We knew there were effectively two churches, one that believed the historic faith and one that didn’t.”

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They sat in plastic chairs amid the sawdust and unfinished floorboards, chipped paint and bare plaster. All were in their Sunday best, about 200 people listening to the first prayer said in the new home of St. George’s Anglican Church.

“Drive from this place those demons that have possessed its inhabitants,” boomed the voice of the Rev. Don Armstrong. “Restore this place to its former sanctity and purpose.”

There was a bit of irony to Armstrong’s prayer, a double-meaning to both building and man.

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The murders, beatings and state-sanctioned violence suffered by Anglicans in Harare under the Mugabe regime are akin to the discomforts faced by Episcopalians loyal to the national Church who reside in dioceses that have departed for the Anglican Church in North America.

This summary of the situation in Harare from Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori came in an August 2 report released by the Episcopal News Service (ENS) summarizing her trip to Central Africa. Her remarks are similar to claims made at the Jamaica meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in 2009. However, in Kingston delegates from the Global South rejected the Presiding Bishop’s attempt to cloak the Episcopal Church with the victim’s mantle, arguing in the United States it was the Episcopal Church who was the aggressor in its legal battles….

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Some national church denominations have changed their standards in recent years ”“ stirring debate among congregations about whether to stay or find a new path.

In the central San Joaquin Valley, some congregations have chosen to leave their denominations because, they say, it doesn’t represent their traditional values. The goodbyes have worked out for the churches, but they have been difficult.

The trend has reached three major denominations ”“ the U.S. Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church (USA) and most recently the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

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The segment description is as follows:

George Conger and Kevin Kallsen bring you back to the “new media” of the 1980’s in their “On this day in History” segment. They also discuss the use of analogies and their place in a violent world. Alan Haley discusses some specifics from the court case in the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin; and our guest Bishop this week is Bishop Iker from the Diocese of Fort Worth. Bishop Iker brings news from the Fort Worth law suit and the new heat record for DFW.

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In each of its multiple lawsuits against departed parishes and dioceses, ECUSA usually files a sworn statement (“affidavit” or “declaration”) from Prof. Robert Bruce Mullin, who teaches at its General Theological Seminary in New York. Required discovery disclosures in some of the lawsuits have finally given opponents a handle on the degree of bias which Dr. Mullin brings to his task. Without mincing any words, let me come right to the point:

Over forty months from September 2007 through December 2010, ECUSA has paid Prof. Mullin, over and above his salary at GTS, a total of $672,020.00 in hourly fees. ECUSA has also paid to reimburse him for a further $8,487 in expenses he incurred in his researches, including travel to various locations to have his deposition taken, or to testify at trials.

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For Christ Church in Hudson, the split came from within. Half the congregation left in 2003 after an openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, was ordained in New Hampshire. They set up a new church across town, Holy Trinity Anglican.

At the same time, entire congregations of the Church of the Holy Spirit in Akron and St. Luke’s in Fairlawn left the Diocese of Ohio. The pastor of St. Luke’s, Mike Kraynak says Robinson’s ordination was one of several concerns.

“One thing I believe is really tragic is the gay community gets blamed sometimes because it makes headlines — that this separation is about homosexuality. Our decision to leave the Episcopal Church was really a result of several decades of drifting apart of theological understandings, such as the divinity of Christ, or the nature of salvation”¦”

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The Rev. Mark Lewis is married. He also wants to become a Catholic priest. Lewis is the rector of St. Luke’s in Bladensburg, the first [Episcopal]… parish in the U.S. to seek to become Catholic under Anglicanorum coetibus, a process outlined by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009 that allows groups of Anglicans to join the Roman Catholic Church without discarding their liturgical heritage. Raised Episcopalian, the 52-year-old Lewis entered the ministry 10 years ago and has two grown children. He will become Catholic with his parish in October.

Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?

Obviously, I am of the Catholic faith. Even as Episcopalians, we believed we were Catholic Christians. The Episcopal Church is a very broad church. In it you can have very evangelical people, and in it you can also have very high church Anglo-Catholics, of which I was one.

Why did you and your church convert?

I teach Catholic theology to my people. Once the apostolic constitution was announced, it opened a door that had previously been closed to us. I didn’t really want to sway them with my excitement, so we looked at it together: “Is this something that is really of interest to us?” We looked at the difference between being a Catholic in the Anglican tradition, and being a Catholic in the Roman tradition. And we realized as a church that we needed to be in communion with the Church of Rome.

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The leaders of two congregations that once made up St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Oceanside said this week that their flocks are looking forward after the split, which saw a majority of parishioners leave the national Episcopal Church in 2006.

Deacon Bob Nelson, the clergy member in charge of the smaller congregation that today meets at the original West Street location, said he has seen membership grow from 18 in September to 50 people today.

A retired city manager, Nelson was appointed by the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego as a temporary administrator and spiritual leader until the church can hire its own priest —- something Nelson said he expects to happen late next year.

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The Episcopal Diocese of the Rio Grande has agreed to settle a 2008 lawsuit that challenged the ownership of St. Francis on the Hill Church.

The settlement means the conservative breakaway Anglican group now occupying the church has to be out by the end of July.

It also means a smaller group of Episcopalians who felt forced out of the church a few years ago will take control of the property, but not its financial assets.

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Members of an Anglican parish in Penn Hills have quietly handed over their building to the rival Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, saying they couldn’t accept the ground rules for property negotiation and believed it was better to rent space in a different church nearby.

It’s the latest development in a split and legal dispute between the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh and the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh. The Episcopal diocese said it didn’t ask the congregation to vacate St. James Church on Frankstown Road but will start its own services there. The Anglican pastor said he hoped to maintain good relationships with Episcopal colleagues.

“We’ll have a positive attitude about this move,” said the Rev. Doug Sherman, rector of St. James Anglican Church, which will now worship in Faith Community Church. “We made the right decision, and we’re excited. It’s hard leaving a building that you’ve been in for 50 years and that people have paid for. But we look forward to continuing our ministry in Penn Hills.”

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Beginning this first weekend of July 2011, the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh plans to re-establish congregations in at least three locations that have been without an Episcopal Church presence for several years.

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For over 50 years, the congregation at St. James Episcopal Church has ministered to the Penn Hills community at their Frankstown Road location. The congregation is now moving, after accepting the kind offer of Faith Community Church to share their building and facilities at 501 Jefferson Road, Penn Hills. Concurrent with the move, the congregation is pleased to announce the formation of a new congregation in the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh: St. James Anglican Church.

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Jim Cowan, liaison to Council from the Anglican Church in Canada, reflected that he found the conversations concerning the Dioceses of Quincy and San Joaquin intriguing. He asked, “How do the dioceses that have suffered as a result of schism compare with those dioceses that are marginal? There are real concerns about viability, but where do these concerns mesh with plans for the extended mission of the Church?

He also observed, “We have talked about ‘pruning for growth.’ What does this mean to us? Pruning, whether for maintenance or for growth, hurts.”

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In the Anglican tradition, the Holy Bible is revered as central to God’s self-revelation to the world. It is the divinely inspired, revealed Word of God, unchanged from the time of the first Apostles. It expresses the unchanging Gospel of the Lord Jesus for ever-changing times ”“ for, though times may change, the Truth does not. The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever. Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings.” (Hebrews 13:8) Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God, tells us, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.”(John 14:6) When certain bishops deny these words, they are no longer true guardians and defenders of the faith, unity and discipline of the Church, as held by Anglicans around the world. Those who abandon the teachings of the Bible also abandon the Anglican way. Such innovators are free to start a new church, but do not call it Anglican if it does not abide by the clear standards and teachings revealed in Holy Writ.

While being clear that the Bible is basic and fundamental to all that Forward in Faith stands for, that it is the foundation upon which everything stands, we must hasten to add that our faith is not in the Bible, but in Jesus Christ. We believe the Bible, because it is the Written Word that bears witness to the Incarnate Word. We are saved by our faith in Jesus, not the Scriptures. So while we affirm that Anglicanism rests on a firm Biblical foundation, we confess that Jesus Christ Himself is that one foundation upon which the Church of God is built. As St. Paul reminded the Church in Corinth, “No other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” (I Cor. 3:11) Historic, orthodox Anglicanism is built upon nothing less than the sure foundation of Jesus Christ, and everything else rests upon Him. In his Epistle to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul states it in a slightly different way: “You are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord.” (Ephesians 2:20)

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St. Luke’s Church will make a pilgrimage from Anglicanism to Roman Catholicism without leaving its historic location at 53rd Street and Annapolis Road in Bladensburg, Md.

The Rev. Mark Lewis, rector of St. Luke’s since 2006, praises the Rt. Rev. John B. Chane, Bishop of Washington, for the arrangement, in which St. Luke’s will lease the facilities from the Diocese of Washington and has an option to buy the property.

“We have a relationship that is mutually respectful,” Lewis said in an interview with The Living Church. He appreciates where I am theologically, and I know he appreciates the parish.”

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