There’s some news in the ongoing infighting among American Anglicans.
Next week will mark a turning point in a three-year-old court battle over church property in Virginia when the state Supreme Court weighs in. The case is being watched by Anglicans around the country – and other faith groups facing bitter, potentially litigious divisions.
Tens of millions of dollars have been spent and friends and families divided over the question of who owns a dozen churches – including some large, prestigious properties in Northern Virginia that belonged for centuries to the Episcopal Church. But at the end of 2006 majorities of members of the churches, including Truro Church and The Falls Church, voted to leave the Episcopal Church and join other, more conservative overseas branches of the larger Anglican Communion. Disagreements range from the ordination of women to the status of gay men and women to what the Bible says about salvation.
The breakaway conservatives have won almost all the court rulings so far, but the case is complex and involves both state and federal constitutional issues.
I don’t care who gets the properties, so long as TEC doesn’t. But then, if they did I doubt they could generate the funds to keep them, so maybe it’s a win-win either way. It has always seemed to me that Peter Lee wasn’t thinking right to break his publicly pledged word at the behest of Mrs Schori, spend millions of dollars, and then actually desire to take (under color of law, of course) property that he will then have to operate and maintain without enough people to keep the charade going that TEC actually counts for anything any more. Oh. I forgot. He’s retiring so it doesn’t matter. But think of how big his memorial chapel at the Roslyn Conference Center could have been if the diocese hadn’t wasted the money and good will on lawsuits?
It is an important case in Virginia, but it is unlikely to have much impact elsewhere, given the peculiarities of Virginia state law on the subject.
“belonged for centuries to the Episcopal Church”? That begs the point, rather. The Episcopal Church did not exist for centuries after these started. The Episcopal Church is the result of these prior entities.
Nothing like factual inaccuracies first thing in the morning to get the historical neurons lit up!
Factual inaccuracies or bias? This is the Washington Compost, after all, engaged in a race for the drain with the New York Times.
True that Dio Virginia will not be able to afford any of these buildings without parishioners. However, never fear!. We have the wonderful example from the Diocese of Central New York.
The Falls Church would make a lovely mosque, don’t you think?
Won’t TEC have a problem with Falls Church if it gets it? The original sanctuary building is on the register of national historical places and I assume it cannot be altered or modified in any significant or structural way without a lot of red tape. Of course, in our headlong rush to political correctness I can see the civic authorities allowing it to be turned into a mosque to show just how inclusive and “with it” they all are.
A Senior Priest . . . I think that the Diocese of VA folks have always thought that the dearly departed would return if they lost their property. TEC revisionists have consistently underestimated the extent of the chasm that exists between their gospel and that of the departed.
So I think in the coming decade after all the lawsuits have been resolved there will be some mighty shocked revisionists, since my prediction has always been that the Leavers recognized and acted on how utterly antithetical the two gospels are. The revisionists just don’t get that, and how repulsed the Leavers are by the revisionist gospel.
So I don’t think the revisionists have really considered that far down the road about “what happens if we win the property but the people don’t return.”
The Washington “Compost” (#4)? Yeah, I like that. Dead and decaying.
Actually, I hope the writer is wrong, and that the VA Supreme Court decision turns out to be the final act after all in this already-too-long legal drama. That is, I’m assuming that the conservative churches are going to win, as they ought. The ruling by Judge Bellows at the Circuit Court level was impeccably crafted (or so it seems to this non-lawyer anyway).
But I suspect #2, NoVA Scout, is right. The ruling (whichever way it goes) most likely will have little impact outside VA, since the state’s Civil War era Division Statue is so unique. But it could give a big morale boost to orthodox Anglicans everywhere.
David Handy+
There are diocesan shadow congregations alongside the Falls Church, St. Stephen’s Heathsville and Church of the Epiphany Herndon — they’d assume occupancy of the buildings. The assumption is that many of the leavers are “tied to the buildings” and will rejoin the diocesan congregations if TEC controls the properties. The latter two have tiny TEC congregations, but TFCE is relatively healthy at well over 100 attending.
I suspect the diocese would sell non-consecrated properties, such as the Southgate building across from TFC and the Truro ministries building. Smaller properties without shadow congregations, such as Church of the Word in Gainesville, would probably also go on the market. As for Truro itself, the diocese might put up a Potemkin church for a year or so — but the record of those “astroturf” congregations becoming viable is a poor one, usually they are just a photo-op for the local paper.
Sarah, I believe is correct. The Diocese of Los Angeles also seemed to believe that if they got control of our buildings they would get the congregation, or enough of it to continue on, and were quite surprised to open their doors and find they had no one. There is a delusional quality to their agenda.