Episcopal Property War

This is surprising to me.

April 7, 2008

The Episcopal Property War

by David Van Biema
Time

In the slow-motion civil war of the Episcopal Church in the U.S., one very worldly question has arisen: who owns the real estate? If a congregation chooses to leave the U.S. Episcopal organization, do they have to vacate the property and the physical church building they have been occupying?

That high-stakes question will surely take many more legal battles to resolve, but the first round has been won by the secessionists, in a high-profile fight involving a famous old church.

A Virginia County Circuit Court Judge has ruled that at least according to a state statute, The Falls Church, where George Washington was once a vestryman - and which gave its name to the surrounding community - is covered under a state definition that would allow its conservative congregation to take the property into a non-Episcopal group supervised by the conservative Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria. The same goes for ten other churches in Virginia. Their monetary value has been estimated at over $20 million, but their symbolic value is considerably greater.

The most immediate part of the ruling by Judge Randy Bellows late Thursday night states that the evidence is "overwhelming" that the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia is currenly in a state of "divison" and that, therefore, under a Civil War era state law, control of its property sits with their congregations, not their previous mother church.