The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin has filed its ninth and final lawsuit against self-incorporated parishes that turned their backs on the national church in 2007.

This one, filed Monday, is against St. John the Evangelist church in Stockton, which is insured for $7.5 million.

St. John was one of about 40 parishes in the San Joaquin Diocese that left the Episcopal Church over issues of scriptural interpretation, such as whether Jesus is the only way to God, and whether gays should be ordained as priests and bishops.

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The 160-year-old Church of St. John the Evangelist in downtown Stockton is at the center of a lawsuit filed Tuesday in San Joaquin County Superior Court, the latest among several similar legal disputes over parishes that voted in recent years to leave the Episcopal Church USA.

To the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, the lawsuit represents an effort to reclaim assets that were wrongly taken when nearly 50 congregations voted in 2007 to secede, largely in protest over the ordination of women and gays.

But members and leaders of St. John’s – which now is aligned with the more conservative Anglican Church in North America – call the lawsuit a malicious attempt to decimate a congregation and to steal what never belonged to the Episcopal Church in the first place.

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The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin has filed a lawsuit against the former members of St. John the Evangelist, Stockton. It’s the ninth such lawsuit the diocese has filed against its former congregations that split from the national church to align with a more conservative Anglican order.

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The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin is suing the members of St. Paul’s, Bakersfield. The lawsuit is the latest in a series of suits stemming from the original diocese splitting from the national Episcopal Church and aligning itself with a more conservative Anglican order.

The congregations being sued occupy what the Episcopal Diocese contends is church property that it owns. The Anglicans dispute that argument. There was no immediate comment from the Bakersfield church about the lawsuit.

Similar cases are pending against the former members of St. Francis, Turlock; St. Michael’s, Ridgecrest; St. John’s, Porterville; St. James, Sonora; Redeemer & Hope, Delano; St. Columba, Fresno and St. Paul’s, Visalia.

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We see in this set of facts, as early as 2004, a recurring pattern. While professing to honor diversity — and indeed, to seek “unity in diversity” — the groups allied with Via Media have always taken root only in those dioceses led by orthodox clergy who stoutly resisted the ordination to the episcopacy of individuals in a noncelibate relationship outside of Holy Matrimony as defined (and still defined) by the Book of Common Prayer. For thus upholding the rubrics of the BCP, they have been accused of fomenting schism within ECUSA, sued, deposed and hounded from the Church.

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The summer months have seen no break in the Episcopal Church’s legal wars, with new lawsuits, appeals and victories for both sides in the litigation over parish and diocesan property.

On July 6, the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin filed suit against the rector, vestry and parish of St Paul’s Anglican Church in Visalia, California. A congregation of the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin, St. Paul’s along with a majority of the diocese withdrew from the Episcopal Church in 2007 and affiliated with the Province of the Southern Cone.

The St Paul’s litigation joins a growing list of parish lawsuits funded by the national Episcopal Church and initiated by loyalist faction in San Joaquin. Suits against lay leaders and parish corporations are pending against St Francis Anglican Church in Turlock; St Michael’s Anglican Church in Ridgecrest; St John’s Anglican Church in Porterville, James Anglican Church in Sonora; Holy Redeemer Anglican Church in Delano; and St Columba’s Anglican Church in Fresno.

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It’s been a year since more than 90 percent of St. Paul’s congregation walked away from its $2.3 million property in northeast Modesto to begin Wellspring Anglican Church downtown. The move forestalled a lawsuit by Episcopal Bishop Jerry Lamb to claim the property in the ongoing national dispute between the theologically liberal Episcopal Church and the conservative Anglicans.

Members and leaders of each congregation said they are happy — Wellspring with its stable congregation and ministries, despite not owning a physical structure, and the small but slowly growing congregation at St. Paul’s.

Recent visits to both churches found the congregations using the identical liturgy, from prayers to reponses, and even the same order of worship.

The differences are in the numbers — about 30 adults attended the main service at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, while nearly five times that number gathered at Wellsping — and in the Scriptural passages and sermons.

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Bonnie Anderson, president of the House of Deputies and council vice president, yielded the majority of her time for opening remarks to Diocese of San Joaquin Provisional Bishop Jerry Lamb who updated the council on the work to rebuild the central California diocese since the group met there in January 2009.

“I want to tell you clearly and loudly that the clergy and laity of the Diocese of San Joaquin are committed to the Episcopal Church and to the Episcopal sense of what it is to be God’s people,” he said.

He said that the Episcopalians who remained after the former leadership and a majority of its members joined in December 2007 the Argentina-based Anglican Province of the Southern Cone have tried to reconcile, revive, renew and rebuild. Lamb said that efforts to reconcile with those who left “bore very, very little fruit” but that 21 worshipping communities have reformed and 18 of them have shown “significant but slow growth.”

“They are becoming much, much stronger,” Lamb said.

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The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin filed a lawsuit last week against St. James Anglican ”” the historic Red Church ”” in Sonora. It was news to St. James’ priest, the Rev. Wolfgang Krismanits, on Monday afternoon.

“We’ve had no word whatsoever,” he said. “I’ve seen nothing yet. I didn’t get an e-mail. I didn’t get a phone call.”

When told that a news release dated Friday said a lawsuit had been filed against his congregation, Krismanits replied with frustration: “This is what (the Episcopal[ians]s) are doing. They’re telling everyone else, but they’re not contacting the congregation until after it’s done.”

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St. Paul’s Church of Visalia has chosen to fight attempts by the Episcopal Church to seize its property including the stately 60-year-old brick church complex at Hall and Main Streets.

The Rev. Richard James, pastor of St. Paul’s Anglican Church, said the Fresno law firm of Penner, Bradley and Simonian has been hired to represent the St. Paul’s congregation in court.

“This move was necessitated by legal action taken against St. Paul’s by the Episcopal Church and the Rev. Jerry Lamb Bishop of the newly formed Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin. .Lamb is seeking claim to St. Paul’s property for a small group which broke away from the congregation after it voted by a large majority to remain a part of the original Diocese of the San Joaquin, said James.

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Members and clergy of various local Episcopal and Anglican congregations say they are doing just fine, some of them boasting church growth in numbers of congregants, quality of fellowship and worship, or both, despite ongoing litigation over church property to which both the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin lay claim.

The rector of All Saints Anglican Church, the Rev. John Riebe, said pending litigation does not worry him or his flock of 140 who attend two Sunday services. “The church is the people. It’s not the building,” he said. “We honestly believe that this is the Lord’s property and we are stewards of the Lord’s property. If we’re asked to give it up to find other property to work with, then that’s what we’ll do.”

He said only about five people left All Saints when “the separation” took place in December of 2008. “We have continued to see slow but steady growth. We have not had any decline as a result” of the split, he said.

“It’s a very thriving, energetic, Episcopal parish,” Grace Congregation member Mary Webb said about her church during the social hour following a recent Lenten service attended by about 65 worshippers. “We are very much alive and well. There are legal battles over property, but we move on.”

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The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin today filed a lawsuit against St. Columba’s, a Fresno parish that in 2007 joined Bishop John-David Schofield and 39 other churches in seceding from the national Episcopal Church.

Already, the Episcopal diocese has filed similar lawsuits against St. Francis Anglican Church in Turlock and St. Michael’s Anglican Church in Ridgecrest, a high-desert community in far eastern Kern County. Those parishes also were part of the secession.

The lawsuits against the individual parishes are part of a larger legal battle pitting the Episcopal Church against the breakaway Diocese of San Joaquin, which joined the Anglican Church of the Southern Cone of South America, and now also the newly formed Anglican Church in North America.

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However, unlike the case in San Joaquin, there is now a date that has been set for oral argument in the Court of Appeal — and it will occur in the same week that oral arguments have been set in the Supreme Court of Virginia on the litigation between ECUSA, the Diocese of Virginia, and the Anglican District of Virginia. (The latter Court has not yet published a specific date and time for argument, but has announced only that arguments will occur sometime during its session meeting from April 12 to 16.)

The Court of Appeals for the Second District of Texas, which hears appeals from Fort Worth, has announced that it will hear oral argument on the writ sought by the Episcopal Diocese and Bishop Jack Iker on Wednesday, April 14, beginning at 1:30 p.m.

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This new program of legal mayhem began with the filing of this suit against the parish of St. Francis Anglican Church in Turlock. St. Francis is a duly constituted member of the only true Diocese of San Joaquin, and wants nothing to do with the non-Diocese. But the non-Diocese wants to claim its property and assets — its bank accounts, its prayer books and altar furnishings, and the building which it owns, and in which it worships.

How can this be? Well might you ask. For in the make-believe world of Bishop Lamb, the Presiding Bishop and President Anderson, St. Francis still “belongs” in some fashion to ECUSA — in their eyes, it never left. And so they want to “embrace” it in their loving grasp, and to take all of its property and assets. Never mind that although there are some Episcopalian parishioners in Turlock, who are worshipping for the time being in other premises, they by themselves would not be enough to maintain and insure the property, and pay for a full-time rector. If the Anglican parishioners choose not to return to the fold and support their church, well, the Episcopal remnant will just run through the parish bank accounts until the property can be sold to someone else (but certainly not to the Anglicans, because they are in “competition”, and the Presiding Bishop is dead-set against helping “competitors”), and then that money can be used to prop up the non-Diocese. What a wonderful and Christian-like plan!

And now, as I have reported, the non-Diocese has embarked on a program to sue all of the individually incorporated parishes in the Anglican Diocese, using the St. Francis complaint as a template. A second such lawsuit has now been filed against St. Michael’s in Ridgecrest, and still others are in the works. Each of the lawsuits seeks a “declaration” from the court where it has been filed that the parish corporation’s assets are held in trust for ECUSA and Bishop Lamb’s group, and so cannot be controlled or used by the people who are the current vestry members and clergy. (The latter have been “deposed”, don’t you remember? So they cannot function in an Episcopal church, and must be made to hand their churches over to those who will “loyally guard and preserve the Parish Premises and Parish Assets for the mission of the Church, . . . adhere to the Church and Diocesan Canons and . . . protect and serve loyal Episcopalians in the Parish”, to quote from paragraph 80 of the complaint.)

Other lawsuits against the remaining incorporated parishes in the Diocese of San Joaquin are surely coming….

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“Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of creation! O my soul, praise him, for he is thy health and salvation! All ye who hear, now to his temple draw near; praise him in glad adoration.”

If the 67 parishioners at St. Francis Anglican Church here were troubled over last week’s lawsuit seeking their property, they didn’t show it as they fervently sang the traditional hymn Sunday.

The song has been around since the 1600s, nearly four centuries before a split hit the U.S. Episcopal Church over the interpretation of Scripture. Anglicans say they haven’t abandoned their faith but have moved to the oversight of the biblically conservative Anglican church worldwide.

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The Episcopal-Anglican battle in Stanislaus County got very personal on Monday, as the Episcopal faction filed a lawsuit against St. Francis Anglican Church in Turlock.

The suit, filed by the Rev. Jerry Lamb, bishop of the Modesto-based Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, names the Rev. Gerald Grossman and nine members of the church’s vestry, or ruling body, as well as the St. Francis parish as defendants.

No monetary damages are mentioned. Instead, the lawsuit seeks “to return control of the parish premises and other parish assets to the plaintiffs in the matter.”

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The Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin has started a new round of lawsuits to get dissidents to return numerous Central Valley churches.

The dissidents split from the national Episcopal church to affiliate with a more conservative unit of the Anglican Church.

The lawsuits have been filed because invitations of the Diocesan Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Jerry Lamb, to discuss the orderly return of the churches have been largely ignored, the diocese says.

“It is particularly disappointing given the recent and unequivocal decisions of the California Supreme Court and Court of Appeals’ rulings that the properties and assets are held for the Episcopal Church and its Dioceses,” says Diocesan Chancellor Michael Glass, the lawyer for the diocese.

The litigation is focused on returning the properties and assets to the mission and ministry of the Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, he says.

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Two years ago this week, the Diocese of San Joaquin seceded from the U.S. Episcopal Church, launching a legal battle over church property that is now headed toward a decisive showdown.

The rebel diocese changed its name and became a founding member of a new church, the Anglican Church in North America. But religious and legal experts say holding on to its property — including real estate and cash — will prove to be far more challenging.

Already, a Fresno County Superior Court judge has handed a critical victory to the national Episcopal church, which sued not long after the San Joaquin diocese voted to break away. The diocese is appealing that July ruling.

Several legal issues in the case remain to be decided. But even the breakaway diocese acknowledges it will likely lose if it cannot persuade the 5th District Court of Appeal to overturn Judge Adolfo Corona’s ruling.

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Hundreds of worshippers packed into Sacramento’s Trinity Cathedral on Sunday morning to hear the nation’s leader of the Episcopal Church talk about the need to embrace change.

“Changing isn’t the problem,” said Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori in her message. “Our fear and anxiety about it is.”

Jefferts Schori spoke to a supportive and welcoming crowd. After all, she interned at the midtown cathedral 16 years ago. Sunday she returned to deliver a message of hope and change for the Episcopal Church that has been marked by controversy in recent years.

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As two former Episcopal dioceses hold conventions this weekend, they are beginning to incorporate congregations from across the nation.

The Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh will vote on welcoming Harvest Anglican Church, Homer City, Pa.; Church of the Transfiguration, Cleveland, Ohio; HolyTrinityChurch, Raleigh, N.C.; and St. James Church, San Jose, Calif.

The Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth (Southern Cone) plans to receive St. Gabriel’s Anglican Church, Springdale, Ark., as a new mission station. It also will welcome two existing parishes: St. Matthias’ Anglican Church, Dallas; and Church of the Holy Spirit, Tulsa, Okla.

On Oct. 30, the Episcopal Diocese of Tennessee went to court against St. Andrew’s Church, Nashville, which left the Episcopal Church in 2006 and has since announced its affiliation with the Diocese of Quincy (Ill.).

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Those divisive issues caused the San Joaquin Diocese to become the first diocese in the nation to leave the Episcopal Church in December 2007. The theologically conservative Fresno-based Anglican San Joaquin Diocese represents about 40 parishes from Lodi to Bakersfield, including St. Francis in Turlock, St. Matthias in Oakdale, the historic “Red Church” (St. James) in Sonora and St. Luke’s in Merced.

The theologically liberal Episcopal San Joaquin Diocese, with its headquarters in Modesto, has added about 10 new churches to the original seven that chose to remain Episcopal in 2007. Those original parishes include Christ the King Community Episcopal Church in Riverbank and St. Anne in Stockton.

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

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.

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The Episcopal Church (USA) currently is a party to some sixty lawsuits across the United States. Its litigation budget from 2006-2012 could approach $7 million, or more than $1 million per year — and that is just the official, published figures. There is another considerable amount going out to prop up its Potemkin dioceses in San Joaquin, Fort Worth, Pittsburgh and Quincy.

Those are the four dioceses which have thus far voted to leave the Church, and each departure has spawned a lawsuit. ECUSA from the beginning has adopted a high-stakes, winner-take-all strategy which depends for its success on its ability to prove in court the proposition that a diocese is not free to withdraw from the voluntary unincorporated association which ECUSA has been since its formation at common law in 1789….

The inverted logic of this argument should be apparent to any mind that loves reason. The Presiding Bishop and Chancellor first contend that ECUSA’s Constitution and Canons prohibit any Diocese from amending its Constitution so as to withdraw from the Church. They can point to no language in the national Constitution and Canons which says as much; they argue that the prohibition against leaving is implicit. Then they contend that because it is forbidden implicitly to withdraw, a vote to do so pursuant to the express power to amend spelled out in the diocesan Constitution (which, in the form approved by General Convention when the diocese in question was admitted, was an unlimited power to amend the document in any manner whatsoever) violates that implicit prohibition. So an implicit and unwritten understanding overrides the express language of amendment: the latter does not mean what it says, because despite its unrestricted language, it is to be understood that certain amendments are out of bounds. And it is further understood (although nowhere expressly written) that you are out of office the moment you choose to follow the express language in a manner that is implicitly prohibited.

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No, as you can see plainly from this chart.

I post this today because earlier I read the following:

St. Francis is one of 28 parishes of the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh of the Episcopal Church in the United States.

According to the Episcopal Church Annual of 2007 (which reflects parochial reports from 2005) there were 67 parishes in the diocese of Pittsburgh that year. So the quite significant drop in active baptized membership in the domestic dioceses of TEC from 1997-2007 of -9.7% does not yet reflect the realignments in Pittsburgh, Quincy, Fort Worth and San Joaquin.

The Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin will appeal a California Superior Court ruling that The Episcopal Church is hierarchical and that the Rt. Rev. John-David Schofield had no standing to break the diocese’s ties with the larger church.

Judge Adolfo M. Corona of the Superior Court of California, County of Fresno, issued an order for summary adjudication on July 21. The lawsuit was filed by the Rt. Rev. Jerry A. Lamb, acting bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, and The Episcopal Church against Bishop Schofield, several bodies formed by the departing diocese, and the investment firm of Merrill Lynch.

“Defendants’ right to amend their constitution and canons is not unrestricted and unlimited,” Judge Corona wrote. “The constitution of the diocese has always permitted amendments. ”¦ However, from the inception of the diocese as a missionary district, it acceded to the constitution of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America and recognized the authority of the General Convention of the same.”

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Officials with the breakaway Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin say they will appeal a Fresno County Superior Court ruling that affirmed the U.S. Episcopal Church’s authority and its choice for a bishop — a man the decision said controls the local church’s affairs and properties.

The ruling did not directly address ownership of disputed properties claimed by the Episcopal Church but occupied by breakaway congregations. But the ruling likely will make it hard for the rebel diocese to hold on to the properties as the legal battle between the two sides continues.

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The California courts have handed the Episcopal Church and the ACNA a mixed bag of legal decisions this month in the battles over parish property. While both sides have trumpeted the importance of their legal victories, neither ruling is likely to settle the property litigation.

On July 21 the Fresno County Superior Court affirmed its May 5 ruling granting summary judgment in favor of the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin in its suit against the Anglican Diocese of San Joaquin, while an Orange County Court on July 13 dismissed two motions filed by the Diocese of Los Angeles against St James Church in Newport Beach, that challenged the legal sufficiency of the parish’s cause of action in light of the California Supreme Court decision in favor of the Diocese.

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