But state property laws vary, so sometimes local churches prevail. A September opinion from the South Carolina Supreme Court overturned a lower-court ruling and declared a breakaway congregation to be the rightful owner of its 60-acre property in a prestigious resort area.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to intercede in a property dispute between the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and St. James Anglican Church in Newport Beach, Calif., a more conservative congregation that parted ways with the diocese. The case has returned to Orange County Superior Court.
The stakes are highest in cases in which entire dioceses split from the Episcopal Church. In the Fort Worth, Texas, area, conservatives, who aligned with the Anglican Church in North America, won the allegiance of about 15,000 of the 19,000 members of the original Episcopal diocese. The conservatives have control of nearly all church buildings and financial accounts. Neither side will estimate the value of the buildings and endowments at stake, beyond saying it is in the “many millions.”
“Female clergy, gay clergy, those things just aren’t issues for us,” says a returnee to the rump congregation at St Luke’s. I wonder what percentage of TEC members are like that? As long as the building and the services are pretty, and the people are friendly, they’re in.
Church as social club never appealed to me. But maybe that’s because social clubs never appealed to me.
Church as social club held great appeal for me and the beauty of the building and the beauty of the services were what brought me into the Episcopal Church. Once there, the Holy Spirit, through inspired preaching, the liturgy, and the Alpha course, brought my Christian faith to life. Had it not been for the beautiful services, building and agreeable social club aspect however, I’d not have been there in the first place and would have remained just another occassional Sunday attendee at the Presbyterian church of my youth.
So many people are living apart from extended family now, and society is so fragmented in general, that a local parish which serves as an extended family is a good thing — but it needs to be a parish which holds the faith, and not “just” a social club.
Katherine,
My old parish definitely held fast to the faith. That’s why 80% of us left our lovely little church home to form an Anglican parish in January 2004. The reconstituted Episcopal parish is fully in bed with the current direction of TEC. They are still a lovely social club with a lovely building and beautiful services, but the faith once for all delivered to the saints is no longer to be found there. No inspired preaching. No Alpha. Tragic.
The TEC portion of my former split parish has wine and cheese after their Eucharist. It is very popular. I hear of little else.
My former TEC parish in El Camino Real has been “wine and cheese” for over forty years!
[blockquote]Neither side will estimate the value of the buildings and endowments at stake, beyond saying it is in the “many millions.”[/blockquote]
Hmm. Many millions. Lawyer bait, for sure. Keeping these in extended litigation will buy many a BMW.
The current parish at St. Lukes in La Crescenta is only holding 8:00 am services. http://www.stlukeslacrescenta.org/ This was a parish with an average of 8 to 12 little kids in the nursery and another 10 to 15 kids in the pre-school/kindergarten Sunday school class room. When we drove by the church on Sunday about 11 am my 10 year old son commented that it look deserted. My 12 year old told him that “This must be what Egypt looked like after the Israelites left.” My husband and I have left for the Roman Catholic church in part because it is holding fast to the faith and we want a church that will still believe something when our kids are adults. I grew up there and still mourn the loss.
Evan Miller wrote in part: “Church as social club held great appeal for me and the beauty of the building and the beauty of the services were what brought me into the Episcopal Church.”
I grew up in the Episcopal Church, and the beauty of the buildings, the beauty of the liturgy, and the general goodness of the people kept bringing me back. But, yes, in many ways, it was a social club with religious overtones. That alone is not enough to hold me there any more. In the old days, when Morning Prayer could be the main Sunday service, we sang the Venite, which included the line “Oh come let us worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness . . .” Too many of us (myself included) got a little confused, and started thinking in terms of the holiness of beauty. But eventually, the point comes when Truth matters. When one discerns that the beauty, and the music, and the sonorous language are not serving Truth then even a choir rat like me starts to wonder. When clerics breach from the pulpit that all religions, whatever their path, can lead to the same end; when a cleric closes a sermon with an invocation of the “womb of God,” when a rector insists that reconciliation is not preceeded by repentance (and I have heard all of these things preached), it gets to be time seriously think about what is going on. Add to that the qualities of too many of those elected to leadership positions in ECUSA, and, well . . . [sigh]
Thank you for your thoughts, Franz.
Pray that, as we embrace Truth, we need not shun Beauty.