On March 26, 2007, the Episcopal congregation that met at 631 N. Tejon St. split when its vestry voted to leave the national body and align with the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, or CANA. The CANA parish continued to worship in Grace Church, while the Episcopal group met at First Christian Church downtown.

A lawsuit was filed to decide ownership of the church property, leading to a 4 1/2 week trial, the longest church trial in Colorado history. Last month, a Fourth District Court judge ruled in favor of the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado and the Episcopal Church, ordering the CANA parish to vacate the Tejon St. church, which it did by April 3.

Over the past several days, Grace and St. Stephen’s Episcopal parish moved back into Grace Church, while St. George’s signed a 6-month lease to worship in a nondescript building in the Mountain Shadows area that formerly housed the Renaissance Academy, a private school.

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I will take comments on this submitted by email only to at KSHarmon[at]mindspring[dot]com.

At least eight conservative congregations in Western Washington ”” including two that left the Episcopal Church ”” are forming a new Anglican diocese in the Northwest.

The Cascadia Diocese, as it’s being called, is the latest local example of the deep divisions splitting the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion over issues such as Scriptural authority and church teachings. The differences erupted in 2003 when the Episcopal Church confirmed the election of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire.

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While the canons are clear that the Episcopal Church keeps the properties (who could imagine canons that would not support the institution that created them?), I think we should listen to the clear message of Scripture and pass over the older brother’s outrage and prepare for the reconciliation that trumps all worldly concern.

Could the Episcopal Church allow a renegade diocese to gather all that it has and travel to a distant country? It would be risky and scary, like the gospel itself. In the parable, the younger son squanders all of the property.

We rightly are concerned about the saints entrusted to our burial grounds and the memorial silver in the safes. We have a responsibility to the legacies entrusted and the promises made.

Still, I remain surprised that the Episcopal Church’s dedication to the reconciliation model so abundant in the Gospel of Luke grows scarce when the fight is over property. In the blink of an eye, brothers and sisters morph into litigants, and the battle lands in the secular courts.

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From its beginnings, the Episcopal Church has relied on its geographic administrative units (dioceses) to preserve those claims. The Convention of the Diocese of Virginia, for example, asserted as early as 1790 that it was the “sole owner” of church property. For two centuries, dioceses have placed restraints on parishes encumbering property and claimed property when parishes closed.

For 29 years, the Dennis Canon has been a part of church discipline. All priests who are younger than 56 have made ordination promises to abide by the “discipline” of the church under church canons including that canon.

If some clergy and laity are uncomfortable with the range of interpretation by Episcopalians of the statements of belief found in our Book of Common Prayer, they are free to find a more compatible home but not to ignore other obligations they undertook as parish leaders. For me, leaving behind the property when one leaves the Episcopal Church is a moral obligation as well as a legal requirement.

Claims that “Christians should not sue Christians” or that the generous course is to negotiate a property settlement require that we ignore previous promises and obligations. This makes a mockery of the trust my grandparents and parents (and others) had that their work building an Episcopal church in a particular location would be honored by those who followed them. Many wrote clauses into their bylaws or articles of incorporation binding the corporation “forever” to the Episcopal Church.

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Quite simply, Christianity is about grace and love. For we who seek to follow Jesus, grace should take precedence over law.

The Episcopal Church operates through democratic processes. When a majority of a parish (or a diocese) votes to leave, those who leave should recognize that the property belongs to the denomination and, if they wish to have the property, offer to purchase it at fair market value. If those who wish to leave insist on keeping the property, however, grace demands that we accept that selfish decision rather than holding to the letter of the law. Although the Episcopal Church likely may prevail in the courts, it will have further alienated the disaffected, turned its focus away from the gospel imperative and wasted precious resources on an issue ultimately of little importance for God’s business.

This choice may seem unfair to the minority who wish to remain Episcopalian, but it is gracious towards the larger number who left as well as to those whom God’s love will touch because the church focuses, and invests its resources, in mission rather than legal actions. The Diocese of Virginia, for example, may well spend several million dollars in lawsuits to retain the property of seven parishes that voted to leave.

Although substantial property is at stake, for the several million dollars and countless hours of time the suits will require from bishops, priests and laity, the Diocese of Virginia could fund several new missions to serve those who remain and others. Successful lawsuits that retain large buildings for small remnants will burden those congregations with excessive overhead and probably instill a maintenance rather than missionary orientation.

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Back in 2003, the Episcopal Diocese of Central New York consecrated a gay bishop and allowed others to perform same-sex blessings.

The Church of the Good Shepherd in Binghamton, an Episcopal parish at the time, disagreed with this move and severed ties. Last year, the Diocese sued for Good Shepherd to leave the church building on Conklin Avenue, and in December, a state Supreme Court judge ruled in their favor.

On Friday, both sides were back in court.

“We’ve kind of moved on as a congregation and this is almost looking backwards now. So we were dreading it but here it is,” said Father Matthew Kennedy, Good Shepherd’s head pastor.

This time, the feud centers around a will by former Good Shepherd member Robert Brannan. He died in 1986 and left behind money in a trust fund for his parish.

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As I watch the sad saga of our bishops’ legalistic and punitive response to “traditionalist” bishops, dioceses, and parishes who are attempting to leave the Episcopal Church in order to form a new North American Anglican province, I am reminded of the defensive and dismissive response of the Church of England bishops to the Methodist Movement in the eighteenth century. The result of course was the founding and development of a separate Methodist Church, which is now much larger than the “Anglican” Church (at least as we are now constituted) on this continent. Imagine the strength and witness of Anglicanism today if the Methodists were welcomed as a preaching order within the Church of England. Surely, they would be more “orthodox” and we would be more “vibrant,” and together we would be much larger and much more effective for the Gospel in the world than we are divided. This, by the way, is exactly what Innocent III achieved when he embraced St. Francis and welcomed his friars into the ministry of the Catholic Church at the beginning of the thirteenth century, despite the fact that they were preaching such a dangerous “new” doctrine.

Now what I wonder is this: what would happen if the Presiding Bishop with the support of the House of Bishops were to welcome the formation of a new province for “traditionalists” within the Episcopal Church, allowing every diocese, parish, and church institution to join this province with a two-thirds vote by the appropriate parish meeting, convention, or governing body? She could even stipulate an acceptable window of a year during which this vote would be required to happen.

In this way, both “sides” of our church could continue in dialogue from protected positions of mutual respect without the present feelings of distrust and fear. Both would also be encouraged to grow by teaching the doctrines and practicing the liturgies they believe in, which they could proceed to do with conviction and enthusiasm. We could, for instance, continue to share the Church Pension Fund and Episcopal Relief and Development, and our primates and bishops could continue to meet on an annual basis to look for areas of agreement, common witness, shared costs and joint projects, but in a way which is more representative, more conducive to collegiality, and more focused on results than our present General Convention. I also wonder if it would not be appropriate for the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Anglican Consultative Consul to ask us to do this in one final attempt at unity and civility before they are forced by our actions to actively establish or passively recognize a permanent state of schism between us.

I would hope that the traditionalists would find such an arrangement better than what is now proposed as it would allow clergy, parishes and dioceses to reorganize without the loss of their properties and the cost of legal action. The risk for the Presiding Bishop, of course, is that too many will want to leave, but at least they will not be completely leaving and no one will remain because they have been bullied and threatened into submission. There is also the obvious advantage pointed out by others who have written to this magazine before me that such an action on her part and on the part of the rest of the House of Bishops would show true Christian humility and a more genuine openness to the power of the Holy Spirit to build the Church and thus to lead the Church in His, if not necessarily our own, direction.

–The Revd. Dr. D. Stuart Dunnan is Headmaster of Saint James School in Maryland; this article appears as a Guest Column in the February 8, 2009 Living Church on page 10 and is used with the author’s kind permission

Members of All Souls Anglican Church had to walk away from their home in 2007, after the Episcopal Diocese said they could no longer worship there.

Now the diocese is walking away from the empty 5.3-acre All Souls campus in Mandarin, putting it up for sale for $2.8 million. But the former occupants say “no thanks” to coming back as they hone in on a new, permanent home nearby.

Meeting every Sunday since mid-July 2007 in the Mandarin Middle School auditorium, the congregation uses a storefront at 3750 San Jose Place for office space and a local Baptist church for youth programs. That could change in the next year as the church looks into the purchase of a 5-acre site on Hood Road, said the Rev. Gene Strickland.

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One friend told her, “Run away and run quickly.”

But the Rev. Sarah E. Gordy decided not to retreat from the intriguing task of establishing a new Episcopal congregation in the church building of her youth ”” a sanctuary that a thriving congregation packed up and left slightly more than a month ago.

On Sunday, Gordy, an Episcopal priest, will celebrate her first liturgy as vicar of Holy Apostle Episcopal Church in the Town of Tonawanda.

The mission parish was created by the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York following last month’s departure of most members of the former St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church, a large, conservative congregation that had been at odds for years with the direction of the national church.

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Recent opinion pieces published in the Gazette about divisions in the Episcopal Church reveal more than intended.

One writes that only “four bishops” have left the church and that “the vast majority of Episcopal churches” don’t want to leave. This is the Episcopal Church’s oft repeated mantra — division in the church is numerically minor, therefore wildly overblown. This rhetoric fuels the crisis it seeks to deny. It isn’t helpful to claim that there is some smoke but no fire when there are flames everywhere.

It’s not simply four bishops but four dioceses that have left following arduous discernment processes that spanned two annual conventions. While only a small percentage of individual parishes have left, it’s a “figure’s lie and liar’s figure” argument.

The denomination’s membership has dropped by double digits annually in the last decade. By 2007, the average Sunday attendance had fallen to 103, the median attendance to only 69 people.

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Virginia Episcopal Bishop Peter J. Lee said Friday that he will retire three months early, on Oct. 1, in a bid to save money for his financially-strapped diocese.

“My resignation will occur several months earlier that I had originally anticipated,” he said to 700 Episcopalians gathered at the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia’s annual council at the Reston Hyatt, “but I believe it is an appropriate and necessary response to the realities we face.”

His early resignation will save the diocese $63,000, one-quarter of his salary package that includes housing, travel and other benefits, according to diocesan treasurer Mike Kerr.

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Update: A chart of some of the diocese of Virginia Statistics is here.

New beginnings had a major role in the Rev. Rob Hartley’s sermon Sunday morning at The Church of the Holy Trinity, in a setting that combined tradition with a fresh start.

Hartley, who resigned last week as vicar of nearby St. John’s Episcopal Church, led a service that drew dozens of worshipers who had transferred their membership from St. John’s, in what some have described as a move in support of Christian orthodoxy in the Anglican tradition.

He estimated Sunday’s crowd at 120 people. “We were really blessed with the turnout, and the service was just a real blessing to me and apparently to everyone else, so that was … great,” he said, during an outdoor reception after the service.

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The Episcopal Church isn’t the only denomination facing a split between liberal and conservative interpretations of Scripture. The Presbyterian Church USA also has seen individual churches leave the national church.

First Presbyterian Church in Fresno and Trinity Presbyterian Church in Clovis are two. The congregational votes in November were overwhelming: 543-10 at First Presbyterian; 264-7 at Trinity.

There are similarities between the denominations: Both have had more than 100 churches leave the national churches, mainly over differences about the authority of Scripture and the ordination of gay clergy. Both national churches claim more than 2 million members.

But there are differences: The Fresno and Clovis churches have asked to be reassigned to the more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church, based in Livonia, Mich. The Episcopal Church, so far, is the only approved Anglican body with oversight in the United States.

And many of the Presbyterian churches have been allowed to leave “with grace” and their property, as opposed to the…[Episcopal] parishes and dioceses that have been sued across the country.

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A few minutes ago, I received a letter from Saddleback’s Rick Warren, who many conservative Anglicans realize has been extremely supportive of their cause.

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Leaders in the Los Angeles diocese quickly suggested that Monday’s ruling might have a “chilling” effect on other congregations considering leaving the national church. But [Martyn] Minns disagrees.

Minns is missionary bishop of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA), a group of more than 70 congregations and 150 clergy in 21 states. Founded in 2005, CANA was established as a diocese-like home for breakaway U.S. Anglican churches. The group includes 11 Virginia churches that last month prevailed in the largest U.S. property dispute in Episcopal Church history.

“I think [the California decision] might have a negative impact on some congregations, but most are leaving over principle, not property,” said Minns, speaking by phone from Nigeria. “Many congregations have chosen not even to contest [ownership of church] property. We’re doing this because we believe in something,” namely the inerrancy of Scripture and its status as the final, objective authority in all matters, including sexual morality.

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A Newport Beach parish’s fight to keep church property it claims belongs to the congregation may go as high as the U.S. Supreme Court after the state Supreme Court rejected its argument, an attorney for parishioners of St. James Anglican Church said Monday.

“I do know that the people of St. James have continued to reflect upon their decision in 2004 to change religious affiliation and still have a very strong view,” said Eric Sohlgren, representing the parish. “We’ll just have to see how it unfolds in the courts and where we go from here.”

The California State Supreme Court ruled Monday that St. James worshipers do not own the church property they’ve worshiped on for more than 50 years because when they decided to split from the general Episcopal Church almost five years ago, it violated an agreement with the larger church and forfeited the rights to the property.

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In a brief interview with a reporter for The Living Church shortly after the decision was announced on Jan. 5, Bishop Bruno said he was “overjoyed” at the verdict and considered all issues at dispute to be decided in their favor. Bishop Bruno said his next step will be to initiate dialogue individually with the clergy and lay leadership of the three churches in the hope that it will lead to reconciliation and perhaps the eventual voluntary return of those congregations to The Episcopal Church.

“I want to see if they are willing to talk; to see if they want to return to The Episcopal Church,” Bishop Bruno said. He added that the offer of dialogue carried no preconditions.

“Attorneys handle legal issues,” he said. “This is now a pastoral issue.”

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When the Rev. Jose Poch learned a high court ruling Monday could spell eviction of his 78-year-old parish from St. David’s Church, he was prepared to pack his bags and Bibles.

The California Supreme Court unanimously decided that a breakaway parish like his could not hang onto church property.

“We have to find a place,” said Poch, rector of the North Hollywood church. “We must worship the Lord in any way we can.”

The court ruled that St. David’s and two other Southern California parishes that split from the U.S. Episcopal Church over its ordination of [noncelibate] gay ministers cannot retain ownership of church buildings and property.

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NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. ”“ January 5, 2009 ”“ The California Supreme Court today ruled in Episcopal Church Cases that church property disputes must be resolved by “neutral principles of law,” not by civil courts merely deferring to the decrees of church “hierarchies.” This ruling has wide and favorable impact for churches throughout California that seek to change their denominational affiliation.

While adopting this “non-religious” method of resolving property disputes between churches, the Court seemed to defer to the Episcopal Church’s alleged “trust canon,” which purports to create a trust interest in church property owned by local congregations. The Court made its ruling despite the fact that St. James Anglican Church, Newport Beach, purchased and maintained its property with its own funds and has held clear record title to its property for over fifty years.

In recent years, religious denominations as diverse as the Eastern Orthodox, Baptist and Pentecostal “Assemblies of God” have attempted to confiscate the property of congregations that wish to change their spiritual affiliation. Today’s ruling falls far short of the endorsement of such tactics that the Episcopal Church ”“ and other denominational hierarchies that submitted briefs in support of it ”“ had sought. Many local churches in California will be able to exercise their religious freedom to change their affiliation without having to forfeit their property as a result.

Nor is the saga over for St. James Anglican Church. “While we are surprised that the Court seemed to give some credence to the Episcopal Church’s purported rule confiscating local church property, the battle is far from over,” lead attorney Eric C. Sohlgren said. “The matter will now return to the Orange County Superior Court for further proceedings, and we look forward to presenting evidence and additional legal arguments that St. James Church should prevail under neutral principles of law.”

The leadership of the Newport Beach congregation is also evaluating a possible appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court and is meeting to discuss other possible steps. Today’s ruling also affects All Saints Church in Long Beach and St. David’s Church in North Hollywood, whose cases were put on hold pending the outcome of the St. James case. Together with St. James Church, these congregations never agreed to relinquish their property to the Episcopal Church upon changing their affiliation, and have consistently maintained that they have the right to use and possess the property which they have owned and maintained for decades.

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The California Supreme Court ruled that the 2.4-million-member national church, and not a local parish in that state, owns a church building and the land on which it sits, property which members of the congregation said belonged to them when they left the church.

St. James parish in Newport Beach split from the church in 2004, a year after the national church consecrated Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first bishop known to be in an openly gay relationship in more than four centuries of Anglican church history.

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From here:

I have just been informed that the Vicar of St. John’s Mission Church in Clearwater has announced that he and most of the communicants of St. John’s have left The Episcopal Church. This comes as a complete surprise to me. Although Fr. Hartley has shared his frustrations with me, he never indicated to me that he was on the verge of taking such a step, and I am extraordinarily disappointed not only in their decision, but that he went public with this announcement without informing me first. It is also a shock to me that he would lead this congregation away from the Church without providing me with the time and opportunity to be in conversation with them as part of their decision-making process–after all, as Bishop I am–or was–their chief priest and pastor. I not only ordained Fr. Hartley to the priesthood, but I am the one who appointed him Vicar of St. John’s, providing him with an Altar and a pulpit.

Any division in the Church weakens the Church’s mission. And when people leave they not only deprive those with different views of their voice, but they also deprive themselves of prayerful viewpoints which they need to consider. The Episcopal Church–indeed, traditional Anglicanism–respects highly the individual intellect and conscience, and I respect the decisions of Fr. Hartley and others at St. John’s as a decision of conscience. Nevertheless, it breaks my heart.

Rob has struggled with his ministry within The Episcopal Church for some years now. From my own perspective, in observing his struggle and the instigating factors of that struggle, the decisions — and not merely the most obvious one — of the General Conventions of 2003 and 2006 indicated a departure from the Christian view of the primacy of Holy Scripture and the person of Christ for the majority of the leadership at the highest national levels of The Episcopal Church. This was deeply troubling to Rob.

Beyond his struggle with his ministry in The Episcopal Church, there was his belief that the diocese of Upper South Carolina had not stood sufficiently or publicly against the new direction of the national leadership of The Episcopal Church. The lack of a diocese with a clear and strong identity to counter the stances of The Episcopal Church at the national level was also deeply troubling to Rob.

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But Father Rob Hartley who resigned Sunday as vicar of the church says the issue of homosexuality was not his main concern.

“I found it an error because it was contrary to scripture and I don’t think it was any deeper than that,” Hartley said.

He says his issues with the Episcopal Church started long before 2003.

“Early 80’s probably,” Hartley said.

That is when he said he started to see a shift in the theologies and teachings of the church.

“The Episcopal church really wants to make Christianity relevant they really want to make the truth of the gospel easier to ingest for the modern mind. I think the truth is the truth and changing it to make it digestible isn’t exactly what the apostles learned from Jesus,” Hartley said.

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Update: The parish website is here.

An Elm Grove congregation is the first in Wisconsin to announce it will split from the Episcopal Church in the United States to align with a more conservative, rival province being formed in North America.

Wednesday’s announcement by St. Edmund’s Episcopal Church comes less than a month after a group of breakaway dioceses and parishes announced that they were forming a new, more theologically conservative North American province. Those churches have been angered by the liberal views of the U.S. Episcopalian and Canadian Anglican churches.

“We are not leaving the Episcopal Church; they have left us,” said Marsha Ohlgart, a board member and spokeswoman for the 125-member parish at 14625 Watertown Plank Road.

“This is a lateral move. We’re just joining with the traditional, conservative Anglican Church in the world,” she said.

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An Elm Grove church says it will leave the U.S. Episcopal Church to join a rival, more conservative province.

Wednesday’s announcement makes St. Edmund’s Episcopal Church the first Wisconsin congregation to break with the Episcopal Church since the new Anglican Church in North America formed earlier this month.

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Update: The parish mission statement may be found here.

The selection of Robinson in 2003 set off a wide-ranging debate within the church, with conservative congregations saying that the Episcopal Church had abandoned historic doctrines and traditional teachings in a number of key theological issues ”“ including sexuality.

“While on paper this has been a battle about property, the division within our church has been caused by TEC’s decision to walk away from the teaching of the Bible and the unique role of Jesus Christ.,” Minns said.

“They are forging a prodigal path ”“ reinventing Christianity as they go ”“ which takes them away from the values and beliefs of the historical church here in the United States and the worldwide Anglican Communion as a whole.

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The conservatives tried unsuccessfully to work the system by proposing resolutions at diocesan conventions to distance the diocese from the national church. Then Lebhar and other priests began to take their congregations out of the denomination.

Other Anglican bishops, mostly from Africa and South America, extended oversight to those congregations and clergy who had departed.

Lawsuits over property ensued.

“It was a painful and disillusioning time,” Lebhar said.

The diocese successfully sued Lebhar’s parish to establish the precedent that departing congregations cannot remain on church property.

Bruce Dougherty, senior warden at All Souls Anglican, said many in the congregation were devastated to leave behind the facilities they’d held dear for nearly 30 years. Many continue to grieve.

At Grace Episcopal, member Richard Cobb, 66, was one of 35 who remained behind on the 7-acre, 21-building campus in 2006. He said it caused him “great sadness” to see hundreds of friends abandon the parish and denomination.

In April, Howard rescinded the holy orders of Lebhar and 21 other priests and deacons, many of whom already had led their congregations out of the diocese months or years before.

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Take a look.

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