theophiles.org - Va. judge sides with breakaway Episcopal parishes

Va. judge sides with breakaway Episcopal parishes

Written by holmegm

Monday, 07 April 2008 04:23

From the Washington Times:

A Fairfax circuit judge has awarded a favorable judgment to a group of 11 Anglican churches that were taken to court last fall after breaking away from the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia in late 2006.
In an 83-page opinion released late last night, Judge Randy Bellows ruled that Virginia's Civil War-era “division statute” granting property to departing congregations applies to the Northern Virginia congregations, which are now part of the Nigerian-administered Convocation of Anglicans in North America.

Comments

laika - Distant Bishops

|2008-04-07 09:20:18

i'm sure that won't be the end of if, but that's certainly an interesting development in the story. i wonder if we'll be seeing more ECUSA congregations moving to CANA after this?

missionary bishops in the USA - who'd a thunk it?

wezlo - I doubt it...

|2008-04-07 09:31:15

I doubt you'll see a flood to CANA - the ACC has a parallel structure already in place that gives dissenting congregations Episcopal oversight and they get to keep their buildings.

It's not a "perfect parallel," which is why you still see congregations jumping, but most that jumped jumped before the ACC was given permission to work on their oversight.

Sigh, if the Anglicans could get their act together, I might even consider jumping ship.

Calvin

|2008-04-07 10:10:20

Sigh, if the Anglicans could get their act together, I might even consider jumping ship.

Yeah, I've considered the Anglicans. I like a lot of what I see. For a denomination characterized by worship and not doctrine, there are a lot of disputes happening just now.

SteveGus - That's an interesting statute

|2008-04-07 10:49:50

FWIW, the text of the statute itself is available here:

http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe ?000+cod+57-9

I don't know how many states have similar laws on the books; Indiana does not.

The typical judicial response is to analyze the civil polity of a church and give effect to it, whether it is hierarchical or congregational or some hybrid of the two. In hierarchical polities, the national body almost always gets the assets.

My outsider's impression would have been that the Episcopal Church was strongly hierarchical in its tendencies, then again, I do not know much about its formal policies. Religious "freedom" of a sort is in fact potentially implicated by this statute, which might just be unconstitutional, however reasonable it sounds.

You can imagine a local Roman Catholic church voting itself into a separate denomination; the hierarchy would definitely try to keep the buildings and properties. But the Roman church has organized itself in such a way that the hierarchy gets its way in such matters. The statute may infringe on a religious body's ability to organize itself in such a manner.

It's not what I'd call "freedom", but then again this is one reason why I couldn't join a church that's organized that way.

emperorbma

|2008-04-07 11:06:47

There's two issues, as far as I am concerned, which are bundled here:
The first is that the government should not be meddling in Church affairs.
The second is that the congregation should have the freedom to determine its denominational association.

Now, I am sympathetic to the cause of the breakaways because I think the Anglican clergy has gone too far astray in many of its doctrinal dealings and rejects any attempts to maintain doctrinal integrity. Even so, it does not reflect well upon the Christian Church to employ the government to settle an ecclesiastical matter as 1 Corinthians 6 declares that we should not involve the civil authorities in the disputes of the Church, but rather settle matters fairly amongst brethren. Concurrently, I am of the opinion that a congregation can and should be permitted to determine a new denominational affiliation if it feels that the higher authority has betrayed the doctrinal principles of the faith. The issue of property is basically "who is maintaining it?" If the archdiocese is maintaining it, then the archdiocese can claim an empty church. If the church is maintained, however, by its members, then it should belong to the members who keep it.

In my opinion, this argues in favor of the congregational system of governance because the denominational integrity is built on Concord (i.e. agreement), not on forced obedience and the "higher ups" controlling the property.

wezlo

|2008-04-07 11:21:36

Problem is, in the ECUSA constitution it's explicit that buildings are the property of the denomination. So a law like the one in Virginia is problematic for that.

Free association is a great thing in some ways, and I have seen our local bishop act rather punitively towards churches he didn't like (shutting down congregations who challenged him) - but their rules for being together are quite clear on who owns the property.

emperorbma

|2008-04-07 11:32:01

Yup, I agree with that. That's why I made clear "who is maintaining it." If it is the diocese, then by all rights they own the building. The congregation should either fork over for the building or build their own. It's all a part of the difficulty of the system of governance that they were founded under.

WebbedFeetOfClay - who's maintaining

|2008-04-07 13:00:00

At this point, i've tried to mostly wash my hands of this stuff, for personal health and other reasons, but i've got to say, I really can't buy the "who's maintaining it" reasoning. If I rent an apartment, and have a falling out with my landlord after a few years, I have no right to stop paying rent, and keep the apartment as my own property.

emperorbma

|2008-04-07 13:10:54

I should have been clear, when I say "who's maintaining it," I meant who is maintaining the legal contract. Someone clearly isn't "maintaining" their rented apartment by any real stretch of the imagination even if they "fix it up."

At any rate, I agreed that it is a difficulty of the episcopal system that the contract belongs to the diocese and not the congregation. It should belong to the congregation, but it does not. (is/ought distinction)

wezlo - Yah...

|2008-04-07 15:59:54

...anyone coming from a congregational autonomy polity is going to see the very idea of denominational ownership as being screwy. Then again, they aren't part of that type of polity.

In my context, if the denomination came in and told me to do something or they'd close the church I pastor, I'd tell them to jump off a cliff. In an Episcopal polity, you just can't do that and not have something happen in response.

And that's OK, it's what the polity is, after all.

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Our valuable member holmegm has been with us since Thursday, 03 April 2008.

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