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Court rules on Episcopal property
Yesterday the California Supreme Court ruled against three Southern California parishes, informing them that since they have left the Episcopal Church, they will have to forfeit ownership of their church buildings and property. Earlier today, WORLD’s Lynn Vincent tracked down Anglican Bishop Martyn Minns in Nigeria to get his reaction. Minns told Lynn:
“I think [the California decision] might have a negative impact on some congregations, but most are leaving over principle, not property. Many congregations have chosen not even to contest [ownership of church] property. We’re doing this because we believe in something.”
That “something” is namely the inerrancy of Scripture and its status as the final, objective authority in all matters, including sexual morality.
Lynn writes that Minns said that if standing up for that belief means giving up property, most congregations are prepared to do so.
Read Lynn’ complete report here.
back to top36 Comments to “Court rules on Episcopal property”
What will the Episcopal Church do with all those empty buildngs?
I give those who left on principle a lot of credit, and I have no doubt that in time they will prosper. Maybe some can combine for awhile, or other churches will lend them space.
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I doubt the buildings will be empty. There are a good number of Christians who are willing to continue worshiping with their gay brethren.
And make no mistake – the Episcopal Church is continuing to stand on it’s principles (the full inclusion of all it’s members). Even if the ruling had gone the other way, the EC isn’t going to sacrifice it’s principles. They are to be commended.
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I live near an Episcopol church and decided to visit them for their Sunday service last week. The capacity was probably 300 but there were maybe 60 people there. There was a nice prayer, and some nice songs sung, and they read from scripture, but the church seemed pretty dead spiritually. Not that this status of this church has anything to do with the article herein, but based on my one visit, “empty” is quite accurate.
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The Anglican church is hierarchical and hence property is own by the denomination not the local parish. Raising this issue every time a group leaves the Anglican church is redundant and makes me wonder what people really care about.
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The fundamentalists who are attempting to take over the EC have a goal alright: either take over the EC or destroy it. One of the ways to destroy the EC is by filing multitudes of lawsuits. There are a lot of non-EC folk who are bankrolling this agenda. Let’s keep in mind that the “radicals” are the fundamentalists who are trying to overturn longstanding Anglican doctrine and practice. Lets also remember that they are a tiny faction in the EC. Worldmag likes to portray this as if the EC is in a major crisis. In fact, it’s a tiny fraction of Christians that are raising a ruckus, and a lot of them don’t even belong to the EC. The vast majority of EC churches and their members remain in the denomination and welcoming of all it’s congregants.
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I don’t think any denomination wants to go around parading their failures so it doesn’t take rocket science to point out that most of the dicussion on the division of the EC church would come from outside its ranks.
Very impressive conspiracy theory though Anlir. You must have a lot of time on your hands to come up with such elaborate schemes. You keep up your good job of protecting us from Worldmag.
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I was a member of an Episcopal church for six years, Anlir, and have a different perspective than you do on the subject.
I’ve also visited a well-known and large Episcopal church in which a visiting prelate suggested anyone who believed the Bible was true should leave the Episcopal church because, “you aren’t wanted here.”
It all makes me feel very sad.
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#7 Michelle
I hope you got up and walked out.
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The Church is not meant to be inclusive. That’s not its purpose. In fact it is supposed to be exclusive–it is to include only Christians who are following biblical guidlines. Church discipline, though not practiced in the Bible, is called for in God’s word. No person who is practicing intentional, habitual sin, if he is unwilling to confess it as sin, is to have full fellowship with a Christian congregation.
The Church is meant to follow Christ and His word. It is the so-called fringe that are withdrawing from the heretical mainstream Episcopal Church who are doing so.
I’m sorry that they must give up property that they have occupied for decades and even centuries. I think a truly inclusive body would let them keep the property or sell it at a small cost.
From my experience I disagree with Anlir about filling the buildings. The only Episcopal congregations I know of with growing membership are the theologically orthodox ones. There’s one that my family and I attend occasionally. It’s vibrant and growing in number and in spiritual maturity.
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The Southern California parishes have no legal standing. The ruling was sound. What churches don’t understand is that incorporating with the state gives the right to sue and be sued and that the state is the final arbiter in such cases.
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As the resident Episcopalian, I can tell you that when a parish decides to leave the American church they care very little about taking the property. Sometimes that property includes special chalices that were donated by members in commemoration of something or in memory of someone. For some it it hard to leave the kneelers that their greatgrandmother helped make.
I am in the process of leaving the Episcopal church I always attended and going to one that joined the Anglican Communion because I feel it is more Biblically based.
Anlir, this whole thing with the Episcopal church …within the church has soooo little to do with homosexuality.
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Anlir I do believe most church welcome all sinners to come to their church. On the other hand, the EC has not had a long history of deciding they no longer believe the Bible is God’s true word. While it may be radical to believe that the Bible is true and that God would die for sinners and want to change them from sinners into holy people, such beliefs are not dangerous for society and certainly not as damaging as the promotion of deviant sexual behaviors. In the history of the world society has been preserved and advanced by the marriage of one man and one woman and the children they raised. This continues to be the best option for the world. These parishes have not left the Church the EC has.
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We went through this is the Lutheran Church as well.It was not a case of fundamentalists coming in atempting to sieze control of the church. The church hierarchy turned it’s back on plain scriptural truth.
Many of these churches were built years ago. The people who built them paid for them in many different ways. In our church, it was the local denomination that sent money to the larger church organization. They never paid for our church in any way. It was very sad to see people whose grandparents started the church, paid for it, built it up etc. to have to be forced out of it, because it no longer accepted God’s Word as the Word of God.
Many of those people left. We left too, but I was aware that I did not have the history or sweat into it that many of them did. For us it was ten years of love and care. For many of them it was their whole lives and the lives of their parents and grandparents. It was also most of their social network.
None of that will compare to the riches we have in Christ or what awaits us. We are warned to be careful what our treasure is. Nevertheless, it is not a casual or easy matter for these congregations.
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I have heard at least one Episcopal priest say that Jesus was a great teacher and was the Messiah figure, but that he was man and not God. THAT is one of the reasons so many people are leaving. The hullaballoo over homosexuality is just a red herring that the media picks up everytime a church leaves. I stopped tithing to the “church” a long time ago and instead marked all my tithe checks for the priests discretionary fund so that what I considered the whack jobs (like the current Presiding Bishop) did not have access to my tithe.
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Kim, it took us two years of talking and battling within the church before we decided it was not going to stop moving in the directin it was going. During that time we were very careful how we used our tithe. We donated a lot of books and gave in areas that we knew the money would not go to support things we were against.
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I have stayed as long as I have because my child was christened in that church, I wanted her to grow up in it and always belong. I also decided to hold on for as long as I could. I have no problem with homosexuals attending my church. As my priest once said, there is not one of us that gets up from the communion rail on Sunday morning and hasn’t sinned in some form by Sunday night. I do, however have a problem with Gene Robinson being a Bishop. The Bible teaches that the leadership of the church should be the husband of one wife. As a divorced man, I don’t think my ex-husband should be allowed to enter the priesthood. Either choose to marry and stay married or choose not to marry if you feel led to become a priest. Gene Robinson divorced his wife and entered into a relationship with another man. While on one level if he felt he was being true to himself, fine, great, be true to yourself. On the other hand don’t enter the priesthood. Larry Thornton was the priest at my church when I first started attending. His wife divorced him after he entered the priesthood. He never re-married and remained celebate. One of the best sermons I ever heard was him preaching about marriage. He cried and said he was a failure. He stood before us as a divorced man. He couldn’t tell us what to do to have a good marriage, but he could tell us what NOT to do.
When people here about Gene Robinson, they see homosexual and miss the big picture because they are so focused on one aspect. Homosexualty is just the hot button to get everyone, including the gay people up in arms.
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Extentuating circumstances kept me in my seat, but I sure did argue with myself about getting up with a flourish and walking out. In the end, the church organist had the last word: “The Church’s One Foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord,” poured out of that massive organ like nothing I’ve ever heard before. The congregation stood and sang with enormous gusto and that prelate didn’t get many people to shake his hand after the service.
My family also tithed to the rector’s fund to avoid funding the absurdities of the local diocese–and that was 20 years ago. That church faithfully prayed and fasted for the unity of the greater church and watched in dismay as the Episcopal hierarchy walked further away from Scriptural principles.
An interesting story about that particular Episcopal Church, one of the Connecticut Six being sued by the local Bishop because of their adherence to Scripture. When the original land grant was given in the 18th century, the grantor made it out to Bishop Seabury Episcopal Church. The grantor then went back and crossed out Episcopal and initialed it to make it clear the land only went to the local congregation. Every deed since them has omitted Episcopal. That church hopes to retain the building it, too, built with blood, sweat and tears. (Along with some help from a winning tithe of the Connecticut lottery, but that’s another story.)
We want to worship Jesus. We love the majesty and beauty of The Book of Common Prayer. We want sinners to be free to confess their sins and rejoice in a relationship with the God of the Universe who set down His guidelines in the Bible. That can’t happen when people blindly deny the truth in the Bible.
On the other hand Jesus said, “In the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
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The conservative Christian dream that the EC is gonna declare their gay congregants as “persona non grata” is pure fantasy (rubbish, actually). Not gonna happen. If you don’t want to go to church with gays or blacks or poor people or whatever, the EC isn’t gonna be very comfortable for you. There are plenty of conservative Christian churches that will welcome you with open arms.
As Kim and others have noted, this isn’t just about gay people. It’s about the Anglican tradition and whether the EC will continue to follow it. The Anglican tradition allows great freedom on theological and social issues. It involves discussion that can take place over long periods of time – decades even. It also says that the Anglican tradition is to walk together in disagreement.
The fundamentalists are attempting to completely overturn Anglican tradition and impose their extremist religious and social agenda on the EC. Realizing they aren’t going to impose their agenda, they’ve now set out to destroy the EC. The lawsuits they’re filing are a part of that.
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Anlir,
The church is as inclusive as “whosoever…” and as exclusive as “…believeth in Me.”
I’ve served on a church staff with a friend who came out of the gay lifestyle, married and had two kids. He still struggled with his sinful desires, as do we all with our own sinful proclivities, but managed to walk in holliness.
I attend a church that is about fifty per cent black. I am working poor myself. I would expect that Episcopal churches probably have far fewer poor people and people of color than your garden variety evangelical church.
The Anglican tradition is about more than collegiality and the supine lack of conviction commonly mistaken for “tolerance.” It was born of the Reformation and it draws its tradition from Scriptural foundations. The largely affluent, and mostly white, American Anglican church’s bishops try to drive it off the rails chasing after trendy political ideaologies while the majority of Episcopalians world wide, and many of its adherents in America are still concerrned with eternal truths.
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Anlir,
Church discipline is not about declaring someone “persona non grata.” It’s about someone living in unrepentant sin. Whether that sin is sexual (living with a boyfriend, adultery, homosexuality), financial (embezzelment), wife or child abuse, or something else, the body of Christ is supposed to deal with sin in its midst.
We don’t really expect you to understand (or to admit that you understand, if you really do), but we do expect you to stop pretending like this is some objectionable bias against a group of perfectly innocent people who haven’t done anything wrong except be different from other people. That’s nonsense, and you know it. This is a theological and moral issue on which the church has a right to speak and quite frankly you, as an outsider, have nothing whatever to say. God made the rules; take it up with Him if you don’t like them.
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You know Cheryl, one day you write something that I don’t like and I think “that Cheryl….” then the next day you write what you wrote about and I think “that Cheryl, I am kinda fond of her.”
Thanks.
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I meant above not about.
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I concur with CherylD’s comments re persona non grata, which explains the problem in terms of faith and add the following “legal” comment:
For someone who is always touting the Constitution, I was surprised by Anlir’s statement: “The fundamentalists who are attempting to take over the EC have a goal alright: either take over the EC or destroy it.”
It’s called free exercise.
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Anlir #5 writes:
“The fundamentalists who are attempting to take over the EC have a goal alright…”
It should be noted that “homosexuality is sin” is the historical position of the Anglican church. Any return that position is not so much a “takeover” as it is a reversal of a previous “takeover”.
Nor are these folks trying to destroy the Anglican church in America. They want to continue to be Anglican, but not under the authority of a structure that endorses believes fundamentally contrary to their own. That’s why many of these groups are putting themselves under the governance of non-American diocese, either in Africa or South America.
“Let’s keep in mind that the “radicals” are the fundamentalists who are trying to overturn longstanding Anglican doctrine and practice.”
From what I can tell, the Episcopal church in America didn’t really start to become gay-friendly until the mid 1970s. So if by “longstanding” you mean “30 years”, then I guess you’re right. Otherwise, no.
“Lets also remember that they are a tiny faction in the EC.”
From what I can tell, the percentage that have already broken away or voted to break away is about 0.5%. What remains to be seen is how prevalent the movement’s sympathizers are within dioceses where they’re the minority, i.e. not enough clout to actually break away. Should the new denomination get official recognition from the Archbishop of Canterbury, I expect many of these sympathizers would jump ship.
Statistically, think of it like the 1984 presidential election, with states representing dioceses. Mondale only won a single state out of fifty, but got 40% of the popular vote. The fact that only a few dioceses have broken away doesn’t necessarily mean the number of supporters is similarly small.
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Gah. Typos. Should be “any return TO that position”, then “a structure that endorses BELIEFS fundamentally”.
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Cheryl D.,
Why don’t churches exercise “discipline” on their members who over-eat? Why don’t churches exercise “discipline” on their member who gossip or lose their temper or lie? Why don’t churches exercise “discipline” on their members who get divorced and/or re-married? Because the pews would be empty! Only when it comes to gay people do we see the cries of “church discipline”. Only when it comes to gay people do we see this huge uproar from conservative Christians.
I understand that conservative Christians are fighting like crazy keep gays as social (including churches) and legal outcasts. Anything that treats gays with decency and respect is going to be appalling to them. Thankfully the majority of Americans and Christians have decided differently.
If you want to go to churches where gays are banned – have at it. It’s a free country. But don’t try to force other churches to buckle under to your anti-gay agenda.
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Anlir, you are swallowing a camel and choking on a gnat. The Episcopal church really doesn’t care if we have gay members. We just want to go back to Biblically sound theology. A divorced man has no business being a bishop whether or not he is gay or straight. You want what you want right now and you are not going to wait no siree. Quite frankly, it says in the Bible that a Bishop must be the husband of one wife…I even interpret that to be that a woman shouldn’t be a Bishop. I have been around female priests and if they feel led to that I feel they should be the priest associate or have a small church, but I don’t feel like they should have one of the largest churches in the diocese and I don’t think they should move up the church hierarchy. I have a real problem with the whack job that is currently the Presiding Bishop.
Churches are allowed to be exclusive and set their own rules. Outside of the church you are welcome to every right I have. You are even welcome to sit in the pew next to me, but your rights end where mine begin. And even though I heartily disagree with you; you are still my favorite gay man on WorlMag…right now a former boyfriend is my current favorite gay man.
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Anlir, overeaters, gossipers and such, know and admit that they are sinners and that these are sins. They are not trying to force the church to tell them they are not.
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Anlir,
There’s a practical difference between overeating and sexual sin. The distinction may elude you, but it is there. But yes, I have seen adultery met with church discipline–and it should be. (You asked about divorce, and adultery is the relevant issue there. A person shouldn’t be excommunicated for divorce, but for being the guilty party in a divorce. And yes, I’d include divorcing a spouse without biblical cause as being the “guilty party” in a divorce.)
As to church discipline practiced on someone who gossips or loses his temper or lies, under certain circumstances these might indeed be appropriate matters of church discipline–if, for example, a malicious gossip destroys a reputation and thereby a family or a career. More commonly they’d be seen as sins from which to repent, recognizing that all of us are sinners. But the first step in church discipline should always be a call to repentance, not excommunication. The call for excommunication comes when the sin is embraced rather than repented. So an adulterer, embezzeler, wife abuser, or homosexual who chose to continue in his sin would likely end up being excommunicated. And that is no more “concern” of yours (because you aren’t a part of the church) than it is a concern of mine how the Lion’s Club treats its members who stray outside proper behavior and Lion’s Club rules. (No, I’m not an Episcopalian, but I am a member of the body of Christ, and this necessarily concerns me.)
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Anlir #26 and Kbells #28:
Anlir correctly notes that if churches were to excommunicate all sinners they would be devoid of members. He also correctly points out the hypocrisy of most churches in this country, who narrowly focus on the particular sin of homosexuality.
Fortunately, simply “being a sinner” is not the criteria we’re given in scripture for excommunication. The relevant passage is 1 Cor. 5:
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you.
For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present, I have already pronounced judgment on the one who did such a thing. When you are assembled in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging outsiders? Is it not those inside the church whom you are to judge? God judges those outside. “Purge the evil person from among you.”
A couple points:
1. The ultimate goal of excommunication is the redemption of the expelled party. We see the result of this particular instance of excommunication in 2 Cor. 2.
2. What requires the severance of fellowship is not merely the individual’s sin, but that sin combined with his calling himself a brother. Nowhere does Paul suggest that believers should mistreat those outside the church on the basis of their sin, including their sexual sin.
3. Paul doesn’t enumerate all possible sins when describing who should be excluded from community, but he does give a fairly comprehensive list. Sexual immorality, greed, idolatry, slander, drunkenness and swindling, which by extension could be thought to include theft. If anything, this suggests the church should be disciplining more people not less.
4. “Arrogant” in the first paragraph is usually translated “proud”. Not only was there sin in the Corinthian church, they were proud of it. Not only was the sinner himself unrepentant, there was not even the expectation in the church that he should be. Most evangelical churches I know would not sever fellowship with an individual who was recovering from {insert addictive sin} and who happened to fall off the wagon.
5. Paul seems to make a distinction here (and elsewhere) between a person who has committed a particular sin and a person who is defined by that sin. Does getting drunk once make one a drunkard? Does speaking ill of someone once make one a reviler? I’d have to say no.
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See Anlir, Cheryl got a dig in at me and called me a sinner but for the most part I still agree with her. My sin was that I got so angry with my ex-husband that there was no reasoning with me and I got a divorce. He and I have talked since and I admitted my contribution to the problem and told him I was sorry. He admitted to his contribution and told me he was sorry and that he forgave me for divorcing him and apologized for driving me to it. Therefore we have repented to each other and to God. Neither of us is dating anyone else and neither has re-married. So right this minute neither of us are sinning but that can always change and then I will have to take it up with God again.
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It is pretty funny to me that the Anglican Church had its beginning with Henry VIII, an adulterer and a murderer. Victors write the history books.
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32. Which reminds me of a funny poster I saw once by an Episcopal church. It had a picture of Henry the VIII with the caption “the Episcopal church welcomes divorced people.”
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In my church, discipline is practiced for a whole range of things besides homosexuality. In fact, I don’t think that we have ever had a member who was practicing homosexuality unrepentently. I can’t imagine that such a person would want to attend our church, much less become a member of it.
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Is Anlir actually admitting that homosexuality is a sin? And does he think a homosexual who did not engage in homosexual activity would actually be asked to leave the church or would be excommunicated? Because they wouldn’t be. People are leaving the Episcopalian church because sin is being embraced by the church. Anyone who stays in a church like that should reflect on why they agree to that.
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Anlir is as certain that homosexuality is NOT a sin, as surely as dead people bleed and Galatians 5:22-23 means, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, polyamorousness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
Just as beauty is, meaning is in the heart of the beholder.
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