It’s not pretty to see people fight about property.
The three-year-old legal dispute over nine Virginia churches is no exception, with the credentials of Anglican conservative priests being yanked by the Episcopal Church and conservatives threatening Episcopal leaders with trespass if found on the disputed properties. All this happened after the congregations, mostly in Northern Virginia, voted in 2006-2007 to break away from the Episcopal Church, which conservative congregants believe has strayed dangerously from Christianity.
Only 4 of the 11 congregations which originally voted to depart TEC have shadow congregations. The other 7 do not. These shadow congregations are relatively small. In a couple of cases a dozen people and a few dozen in the larger groups. According to their own statements most of those now attending the shadow congregations after 4 years have no history with the property. They are new people. We know there is always a turnover of population in every church each year, especially in places like N Virginia. Naturally there is a core of people in each group who have an identity fixed on the building.
If these shadow groups would be flexible about their requests to share time and space, not making unreasonable demands, and TEC or the DoV promise not to pull any legal tricks then something could probably be worked out.
But how much better to do this in the context of an overall settlement. Any ideas how to do this?
Oh, if only elephants could fly, etc. TEC will never settle for this idea. The TEC strategy has been to financially cripple the ACNA. And now they smell blood in the water! I thought that ACNA had a good chance in VA. But if they lose in VA, I expect that TEC will prevail in CA, TX, and IL. Statmann