A member diocese of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) will consider a resolution that maintains the diocese’s ties with the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone.

The resolution is being proposed by the Diocese of Fort Worth’s standing committee. The diocese’s convention will meet on Nov. 6 and 7 in Arlington, Texas. The resolution commits the diocese to continued participation in the ACNA, but also “maintains its status as a member diocese in the Province of the Southern Cone while the formal process of recognition of [ACNA] continues in the Anglican Communion.”

“At this point, the Anglican Church in North America is not yet fully recognized as a province of the Anglican Communion,” the standing committee said in an explanation. “We are working towards that goal, but it is a lengthy process involving the primates, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Anglican Consultative Council.”

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Thank God that courts are now beginning to see through the artificial complexity of TEC’s arguments. Comments by the judge in the Ft. Worth litigation stated the obvious, and now that is reinforced by the South Carolina Supreme Court. The finding would seem to say that any Episcopal congregation with clear title to their property in the Diocese of Upper South (USC) or South Carolina could walk away, if they followed some easy to understand guidelines embedded in the decision. In the Diocese of Upper South Carolina, the question for an orthodox Anglican Episcopal Church might well be, why would they stay? Yes, the Second Coming is promised and waited upon with hopeful anticipation among the faithful. Other than that, are they hopeful that they can elect an orthodox bishop for USC? If they did, it seems unlikely that the new bishop would secure confirmation from TEC, unless he/she somehow bound the diocese in perpetuity to TEC, something the bishop alone doesn’t have the authority to do.

Read it all.

We have made our decision. The restraint called for in B033 of the 75th General Convention has been set aside. Bishops may authorize blessings (that’s the clear implication of the “generous pastoral response”), and liturgies are on their way. Our course has been inexorably determined. The conversation about human sexuality is effectively over….

Lord Carey of Clifton, the 103rd Archbishop of Canterbury, asked a difficult question in April at a conference sponsored by the Anglican Communion Institute: “Can conservative believers be assured that they have a future place in TEC without censure or opposition?” This question is both apt and pressing. We need a conscience clause with canonical and constitutional authority, a conscience clause that contains no sunset provision, that cannot be revoked. If the Episcopal Church is to be truly diverse ”” if conservative Christians are to find a place in our life in the next decade or the one following””then the 77th General Convention must turn its attention to the inclusion of theological minorities. Without that assurance, the unraveling of our church, already a tragic reality, will continue apace. The inevitable pattern will re-emerge, as conservatives move from honored minority to tolerated dissidents to canonical outlaws. I (and others like me) will not be among those who leave; but we may well be among the last conservatives left. And so we must, I believe, bend heart, mind, and will to the protection and permanent place of traditional voices in our church.

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An ecclesiastical trial court has refused to dismiss charges against Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania Bishop Charles Bennison or grant him a new trial on those charges.

In a September 24 decision released to the public the next day, the church’s Court for the Trial of a Bishop said that “the newly discovered evidence is not material to the evidence on which the court concluded that [Bennison] failed to respond appropriately once he knew that his brother had sexually abused a minor.”

Pennsylvania’s diocesan standing committee issued a short statement September 25 outlining the decision and saying “we continue to keep in our prayers all who have been affected by this trial.”

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A court of the Episcopal Church USA has rejected a request from deposed Bishop Charles E. Bennison Jr. for a new church trial.

Bennison, head of the five-county Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania since 1998, was suspended from his duties nearly two years ago on charges that he had concealed his brother John Bennison’s sexual abuse of an underage girl about 35 years ago in California. At the time of the abuse, Charles Bennison was pastor of a parish outside Los Angeles, and John Bennison was his youth minister.

Last year, after a four-day trial here, the church court unanimously found the bishop guilty on two counts and ordered him deposed, or removed, from all ministry.

Read it all.

Read it all.

And this is the fatal flaw that lies at the heart of ECUSA’s “winner-take-all” strategy. It tries to argue that a Diocese may never vote to leave, and that the only result of such a vote is that people leave, but the structure remains intact. But the people in question do not conveniently resign their positions, because in their view, they are leaving and taking the entire diocesan legal structure with them. So in their view, they are keeping their positions. Thus ECUSA has to come up with a way of claiming that those positions are in fact vacant. It goes through the charade of “deposing” the Bishop with far less than the required number of votes, but that does not solve the problem. The clergy deputies who voted for the amendment cannot be summarily removed without deposing them as well — a process that takes six months. And there is no mechanism whatsoever for summarily “deposing” or “removing” a lay deputy from office.

Without such resignations, and without any mechanism for removing lay Convention deputies, the very next “special meeting” of the Diocese which is called is null and void itself. For the duly elected deputies from the last Convention are the ones who should be seated, but they are barred from attending by the unconstitutional device of imposing a “loyalty oath”. And there cannot be a legal (one-third) quorum of loyalist clergy, because nearly nine-tenths of them went with Bishop Iker.

The problem of ECUSA and its remnant “Diocese” is that they just will not follow their own procedures to organize and become legitimate in the eyes of the law. Mr. Nelson, Bishop Gulick’s attorney, even (unwittingly) described his own clients to the court and spelled out what they ought to have done (id. at 57):

MR. NELSON: What I’m saying is that the body gets together, and then it must be approved by the general convention in order to be a valid diocese. It can get together and call itself a diocese, but until it’s approved and until that diocese agrees to accede to the constitution and canons of the Episcopal Church, it is not a diocese and cannot be a diocese.

Read it carefully and read it all.

As we reported last Wednesday, at the conclusion of its hearing the 141st Court granted partial relief in response to our Rule 12 Motion by amending the text of the motion.

In a Motion for Reconsideration (below), filed yesterday, the Diocese is asking the Court to grant full relief by declaring that, as a matter of law, there is only one Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth and one Corporation of the diocese. This would not prevent attorneys Jonathan Nelson and Kathleen Wells from representing the individuals who hired them, but they would not represent them as duly-elected officers of the Diocese or Corporation.

Read it all and carefully follow the links.

The Episcopal Church’s property canons have no legal force in South Carolina that state’s Supreme Court has held.

The Sept 18 decision in the case of In Re: All Saints Parish, Waccamaw ends nine years of litigation over the mother church of the Anglican Mission in the Americas (AMiA), and is the second major legal defeat for the Episcopal Church in a week.

While the ruling only affects the state of South Carolina, the legal analysis the court used in rejecting the ”˜Dennis Canon’ — the 1979 property canon that states that parish property is held in trust by congregations for the diocese and national church — will likely have an unfavourable impact upon the dozens of other pending parish property suits prosecuted by the Episcopal Church across the nation.

It also supports the efforts of the Dioceses of Fort Worth, Quincy, Pittsburgh and San Joaquin to quit the Episcopal Church and backs the statements of a Fort Worth judge who last week said there is nothing in the national constitution and canons that prohibits a diocese from leaving.

Read it all.

Other state courts, including those in New York, California and Colorado, have sided with the Episcopal Church in recent decisions over property rights.

Still, courts seem to be moving away from a deferential approach to church property disputes, meaning they do not always defer to internal church rules, said Robert Tuttle, a church-state expert at the George Washington University Law School.

“At the macro level, that’s the shift,” he said. “Because courts just don’t like the idea of having to ignore the specific claims of the parties, and saying `if you’re part of this church, that’s the story.”‘

Read it all.

A statement issued by the Presiding Bishop’s office said that the opinion was “particularly disappointing in the light of the long struggle in which the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of South Carolina have worked cooperatively to preserve the property of this parish for the mission of the church and the diocese.”

“Time has not permitted a careful analysis of the opinion or of the options that confront the church and the diocese at this point,” the statement said.

South Carolina Bishop Mark Lawrence said that “there’s a long wisdom of tradition in the scriptures, and counsel in the book of Ecclesiastes that there is a time to keep silent and a time to speak, and as picked up in the letter of James, where James says, ‘Know this my beloved brothers and sisters, let everyone be quick to hear and slow to speak.’ I believe this is such a time.”

Read it all.

But you, or at least I imagine most of you have actually stayed in the Episcopal Church. I think that’s brave, and I am glad you have been able to. It doesn’t mean it’s any easier for you. But I do believe from what we have seen together, that staying must mean a call to greater discipleship and uncompromising mission. You have no mandate to remain in the Episcopal Church and simply fade into the background, keeping your head down, avoiding controversy, and preaching a scaled down gospel for our very sick and resistant cultures.

How have we got to where are? I suppose it wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to call the period from 7 June 2003, the election of Gene Robinson as Bishop of New Hampshire as the beginning of Wilderness years of the Episcopal Church.

But it’s not the only wilderness, and Christian history has seen many such periods. So how does the Scripture address us in such situations?

There are many choices, But what about Hebrews 3:12-14, where the context is exactly that. A desert like experience where God’s word is thwarted and rejected. Listen to this. It’s a call to a greater discipleship.

Read it all

St. George’s rector, the Rev. Donald Armstrong, said Tuesday he’s optimistic that the church will pay off its debts within the next 60 days.

“We are developing a (long-range) plan to once again have the sort of ministry and outreach for which we have long been known,” said Armstrong, whose church lost the bid for the $17 million Tejon Street property and now meets in the Mountain Shadows area.

On the other side, the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado spent $2.9 million to defend against the Anglican parish’s lawsuit to take possession of downtown property, diocese financial records show.

The legal expenses and a decline in the stock market resulted in a colossal loss in the diocese’s investment income, dropping from $4.9 million in January 2006 to $750,000 in August, records show. It will take years to recover the funds, said Chuck Thompson, assistant treasurer for the diocese.

“We had to sell stocks and bonds to pay the fees,” Thompson said.

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The Supreme Court of South Carolina has resolved a long-running dispute between All Saints Church, Pawleys Island, and the Diocese of South Carolina. In a unanimous ruling written by Chief Justice Jean Hoefer Toal, the court said that the Episcopal Church’s Dennis Canon does not apply to the congregation, which was founded before the Episcopal Church.

“It is an axiomatic principle of law that a person or entity must hold title to property in order to declare that it is held in trust for the benefit of another or transfer legal title to one person for the benefit of another,” the court ruled. “The diocese did not, at the time it recorded the 2000 notice, have any interest in the congregation’s property.”

It is not yet clear whether the Episcopal Church will appeal the decision. “My understanding is that the legal team is currently reviewing the ruling,” said Neva Rae Fox, the Episcopal Church’s public affairs officer.

Read it all.

Read the whole order here; and A.S. Haley has comments there.

We are committed to Jesus Christ and also to The Episcopal Church and we rejoice in its rich historic, authentic tradition of worship, outreach, and evangelistic mission while also seeking to be a place where all are welcome to worship the Lord and grow in grace.

However, recent actions in some portions of the church have raised great concerns for us. Specifically the actions of the 76th General Convention in resolutions D025 and C056 which we believe do not serve the Church well, especially in the wider context of our relationship to The Anglican Communion. While we understand that we represent a congregation with varying opinions on issues of sexuality, we also believe these resolutions open the door to innovations, which are not in concert with the majority of the Church and certainly The Communion. We are concerned that the passing of these resolutions will continue to strain our international relationships and we believe that they encourage an ethical stance, which is contrary to scripture. For these reasons we reject them.

We are also concerned with opening remarks made by The Presiding Bishop at the General Convention. We find her statement that the “great western heresy (is that) we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be right with God” extremely troubling. We have read the full text of her speech and while we appreciate her emphasis on exercising our faith in right relationship, we believe her statement about individual salvation to be wrong, and we reject it.

Read it all.

The S.C. Supreme Court ruled that the 50-acre campus of All Saints Church, just off Kings River Road, does not belong to the Episcopal Church.

The judge’s decision is thrilling, but the dispute might not be over, said All Saints church member Sue Campbell.

The congregation remains “cautiously optimistic” about the Supreme Court decision, she said.

“We know that chances are, this may not be the last step, but we continue to be hopeful and prayerful,” Campbell said.

The legal battle began in 2000, when the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina filed a public notice in Georgetown County that the historic land and the pre-revolutionary church belonged to the Episcopal Church.

All Saints sued the diocese, saying that the original deed gave the property to the people of the Waccamaw Neck.

Read it all.

Please note: There is an important error in this article, which is that a statement of A.S. Haley, a lawyer, cited on this blog, is attributed to me–KSH.

A Pawleys Island congregation, embroiled in litigation ever since it left the Episcopal Church in 2004, has won a major court battle over land and assets that could have wide implications for others looking to break away.

The S.C. Supreme Court unanimously ruled Friday that All Saints Church at Pawleys Island belonged to the independent corporation All Saints Parish, Waccamaw Inc. and not to the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina, which had staked a claim to the property.

Read it all.

Check it out (58 page pdf).

I have now to affirm once again my opposition to schism as a method of affording protection to those whose beliefs and ideals were normal in the recent past. The unwillingness of our church to adopt unusual methods to afford safe haven to a disenfranchised and impotent minority, because TEC is governed by a “winner take all” form of governance is in itself a scandal. A simple expedient of the English “flying bishops” idea, adopted by a church which has a real claim to historic and unique territorial diocesan integrity, a system adopted to preserve unity, in that it was rejected by our “denominational” church, only underlines the stubborn and “conservative” policy of our majoritarian leadership. The simple adoption of protective measures to afford a safe haven for those who cannot in conscience submit to current TEC policies would have trumped schismatic schemes which have led to our present divisions. Our church would be lauded for its tolerance and comprehension while free to pursue the ideals of the majority. What would have emerged would have been “comprehension” tailored to years of conflict.

Instead TEC has asked the secular State by its courts to adjudicate not only property disputes but explicitly in is pleadings the doctrinal and structural ethos of what it means to be an Anglican in America.

Read it all.

This is important, first, because it marks the public rolling out of an agenda by the Communion Partner bishops, hopefully with the Archbishop of Canterbury’s full and forthcoming public support, aimed at preserving some remnant of constituent membership in the Communion for covenanting Episcopalians.

Second, and more profoundly, this step effectively serves as a petition to God for the preservation of Anglicanism, to a larger end of reconciliation and communion. “The divisions before us,” after all, have to do with much more than “differences of opinion on matters of human sexuality,” as the bishops note. They finally touch upon ecclesiology ”” the nature of the Church, as a global communion, committed to “discerning the mind of Christ together.” And this point, like the text of the Anglican covenant itself, drops us into a rich field of ecumenical discernment and decision, since communion in Christ is always larger than the particularities of any one divided church or family of churches….

For this reason especially: that the Catholic Church precedes and follows, comprehends and judges, our feints at autonomy, independence, and party spirit, as well as our flirtations with one or another false unity, we applaud the movement forward to covenant by the Communion Partner bishops, and pledge our support.

Read the whole thing.

The Supreme Court of South Carolina has just delivered a unanimous decision in the oldest still-pending court dispute involving the application of ECUSA’s Dennis Canon to a parish’s property: All Saints Parish Church Waccamaw v. the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of South Carolina (No. 29724, September 18, 2009). (For some background on the origins of the case, see the discussion toward the bottom of this post.) The opinion presents a clear and thoroughly common-sense refutation of ECUSA’s outlandish claims: that as a hierarchical Church, it has the power (1) to decide which congregation/vestry is the “true” congregation/vestry in a given parish; and (2) to override State law by imposing a trust on all parish property everywhere in its Dioceses without its being the owner of any of that property.

The opinion is so clear and well-written, in fact, that there is scarcely any need to translate the greater part of it for a lay person. So I shall present here, for the edification and benefit of those visitors to this blog who have been following with me the vicissitudes of ECUSA’s Dennis Canon in the various State courts, a lightly annotated version.

Please be sure to read it all and do follow the link to his post on the background to the current case.

This parish is NOT going into schism, and we have consistently rejected that course of action, and repeatedly explained why. Further””along with most of the Anglican Communion””this parish has vociferously and publicly rejected the escalating and continuing apostasies of the Episcopal Church. We will not accept them and we will continue to protest them, though it is evident that the leadership of the Episcopal Church is swelled up with monstrous arrogance and determined to keep the pedal to the metal as the institutional juggernaut (not the same thing as the Church) hurtles along the downward slope toward unrecognizablity. A report on the state of the Church prepared for the General Convention provides a number of telling points: 1) The Episcopal Church is rapidly losing members; 2) The Episcopal Church has to cut back its budget severely because of diminished income; 3) the biggest reason for this is conflict in The Episcopal Church over its revisionist policies and practices; 4) full speed ahead!

The writer mentioned “freedom to dissent” and “tolerance of dissent” as a strength of Anglicanism. “Tolerance of dissent” can mean a number of things. When it means living charitably with anomaly as things settle out, it is a vital Christian virtue well described in theory and practice in the New Testament. If it means letting people hold beliefs and maintain practices inconsistent with the faith of the Body, then it is abdication of leadership, which is powerfully condemned in both Old and New Testaments. Genuine leadership must show both clarity and mercy. This is notably different from espousing “inclusivity”.

Read it all.

Where does all this leave us as Anglicans? Our problem, as has been made painfully clear in the current crisis, is that we do not really know who we are. It will not do to defer to scripture as if scripture stands outside the catholic and ecumenical tradition, for this attitude easily suggests, however unintentionally, that we read the scriptures alone, and that we alone mediate their interpretation.

Instead, let us follow the vision of Lambeth 1920, at which the bishops urged “every branch of the Anglican Communion” to “prepare its members for taking their part in the universal fellowship of the reunited Church, by setting before them the loyalty which they owe to the universal Church, and the charity and understanding which are required of the members of so inclusive a society” (Resolution 15).

Read it all.

The entire ruling is here.

Please read it in its entirety carefully before commenting.

There is nothing in the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church that prevents a diocese from seceding from the national church, a Texas judge declared on Sept 16.

On Wednesday Judge John Chupp of Texas’ 141st District Court handed the Episcopal Church a major setback in its campaign to seize the assets of breakaway dioceses, stating that of the two entities holding themselves out as the “Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth”—Bishop Jack Iker and his diocese affiliated with the Province of the Southern Cone and Bishop Edwin Gulick and his Episcopal Church-affiliated diocese—Bishop Iker’s diocese was the lawful holder of that name, corporate seal and property.

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This paper examines whether the Presiding Bishop is authorized to initiate and conduct recent property litigation and finds no source for such authority in the Constitution and Canons of the Episcopal Church. Arguments based on a presumed equivalence of the roles of the Presiding Bishop and Executive Council to those of a corporate CEO and board of directors are found not to be valid. The paper also examines claims that pursuit of litigation is necessitated by fiduciary duty. It concludes that no convincing case has been made that this is so. First, no person is under a fiduciary duty to undertake something that has not been authorized. Putting aside the issue of authorization, several factors relevant to a proper fiduciary duty analysis suggest refraining from litigation such as has been commenced against disaffiliating dioceses. In this connection, relevant fiduciary duties are not limited to those that may be owed to TEC as an organization, but also include duties owed to its member dioceses. Claims that a member diocese cannot disaffiliate and retain ownership of its property implicate the latter set of duties. The paper presents a case that the duties to dioceses include duties to those that have withdrawn because the claims against them are based on alleged consequences of their having been dioceses of TEC rather than the actions of an unaffiliated third party.

Read it all.

Gear up–it is 83 pages.

Read it all.

Resolution #1

Subject: First Guiding Principle for Engagement

“The Lordship of Christ and the Sufficiency of Scripture”

Offered by: The Standing Committee and Deans

Whereas, The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, otherwise known as The Episcopal Church, is a constituent member of The Anglican Communion, upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order as set forth in the Book of Common Prayer, and

Whereas, recent pronouncements by the Presiding Bishop and resolutions of the General Convention have raised questions about the content and nature of the doctrine, discipline and worship of The Episcopal Church, and

Whereas, it has never been the intent of The Episcopal Church to depart from the doctrine, discipline and worship of The Church of England as we have received them, now, therefore, be it

Resolved that the Diocese of South Carolina reaffirms its commitment to live its corporate life under the authority of Holy Scripture (Articles of Religion, Art. VI and XX) and the unique Lordship of Jesus Christ (Art. XVIII) and commits to exercising all such actions as the Bishop and Standing Committee may believe edifying to the Body of Christ in bearing that witness and bringing to light such actions as contravene those essentials to “upholding and propagating the historic Faith and Order” (Constitution and Canons of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States: Preamble) as we have received them: and be it

Further Resolved, that the following statement shall constitute our understanding of the
doctrine, discipline and worship of The Episcopal Church and shall be read at all ordinations in The Diocese of South Carolina, and a copy of which shall be attached to the Oath of Conformity signed by the ordinand at such service of ordination:

“In the Diocese of South Carolina, we understand the substance of the ”ždoctrine, discipline and worship”Ÿ of The Episcopal Church to mean that which is expressed in the Thirty-Nine Articles, the Creeds, the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral and the theology of the historic prayer books.”

Read them carefully and read them all.