Christ Church in Savannah has always been locally owned. The church has never received financial support from the national organization. Savannahians paid for the construction of the church and the payment of its clergy.
A vote of the church membership – in the wake of serious doctrinal issues reaching even the unequivocal divinity of Christ – resulted in the separation of the local congregation from the national group.
The Episcopal Church, with the help of Superior Court Judge Michael Karpf, has seized property it neither paid for nor maintained in more than 275 years.
In any other circumstance, such an abrogation of the local congregation’s property rights would not be tolerated. That the seizure was carried out by religious leaders who have strayed from ironclad biblical teaching makes the heavy-handed action by both church and state that much harder to countenance.
When John Wesley (former Christ Church, Savannah rector) was rudely iced out of his dead father’s parish back in England, Wesley vacated that revered, memoried building and went outside, stood on his father’s tombstone and preached to a much larger crowd than ever went into the building. Seems that majority-power erroneous thinking in Anglicanism has gotten things wrong before and paid big time later. Like when the late Bishop Frank Vest addressed the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church about 10 years ago. He looked out over a sea of 3,000 people and about 200 ordinands and said, “We should never have let you go.” Rear view mirror thinking is what those in power in Anglicanism are best at (historically speaking). One would THINK that by now those destroying TEC would take the temperature of the pews a bit more before continuing the march off the cliff; but hey, why change now, right?
So, let the libs have the building and then fill it as a TEC Church building in Savannah…and let the thriving Christ Church preach from atop of their tombstone. If the liberal New Thing success in Savannah is anything like the rump dioceses the people of the area will abominate it to the utter shame and disgrace of those currently train-wrecking TEC. From that there will be no recovery. Just a coffee hours joke in the years to come.
[blockquote] A vote of the church membership – in the wake of serious doctrinal issues reaching even the unequivocal divinity of Christ – resulted in the separation of the local congregation from the national group.
The Episcopal Church, with the help of Superior Court Judge Michael Karpf, has seized property it neither paid for nor maintained in more than 275 years. [/blockquote]
NW Bob has no idea why the Almighty is allowing the faithful to be vexed so. There must be some eternal message here, but I sure can’t see what it is. Although I am also well aware that it in not my call, me thinks that the Diocese involved and, indeed, the national chuch are going to have a lot to answer, for by way of stealing, at the seat of judgement.
Granted, the faithful should at some point walk away. NW Bob is suprisingly happy worshiping in rented Seventh Day Adventist space, unexpectedly so, after leaving with others his beautiful, historic, local Epicopal church.
(This church building, by the way, also predates the Diocese in which it resides. You can bet there would be an awful and expensive row if that congregation decided to bolt. Moreover, the land on which the building sits is in a family owned trust that requires the building on it be used for Christian worship or the land reverts to the family. Sure 815, keep your building, just move it off our land!)
Nonetheless, the prayer book say to strive for the ways of justice and peace on equal footing. Land snatching is certainly not justice. May God bless Christ Church in their resistance to the forces of evil.
YIC,
NW Bob
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I am still trying to understand how a judge, who graduated from law school and who has been on the bench for a number of years, could go along with the notion that a beneficiary could create a trust interest for itself.
If such is Georgia law, then I claim a beneficial ownership interest in all of the property owned by TEC. 815, start paying up!
Time for civil disobedience?