Court backs breakaway churches

A Virginia court has ruled in favor of 11 conservative congregations that broke away from the U.S. Episcopal Church and want to keep property worth millions of dollars, parties in the dispute said Friday.

The ruling is the latest development in an upheaval over orthodoxy roiling the global Anglican community. Its U.S. branch, the Episcopal Church, has been beset by disputes, including one involving the installation of an openly gay bishop.

The churches that defected hailed the ruling as a victory, but the decision is an initial one involving only one point of law, and lengthy proceedings are ahead.

“We have maintained all along that the Episcopal Church and Diocese of Virginia had no legal right to our property because [Virginia law] says that the majority of the church is entitled to its property when there is a division within the denomination,” said Jim Oakes, vice chairman of the Anglican District of Virginia, to which the churches now belong.

“Our churches’ own trustees hold title for the benefit of the congregations.”

Among the 11 breakaway congregations are the Falls Church and Truro Church, which have affiliated with the Anglican Church of Nigeria, led by Archbishop Peter Akinola. In the case of those two churches, the property is said to be worth at least $25 million.

The 2.4-million-member Episcopal Church claims that all church property belongs to it and that when a congregation switches allegiance, the property is “abandoned.”

The 77-million-member Anglican Communion, a global federation of national churches, has been in upheaval since 2003, when the Episcopal Church consecrated Gene Robinson of New Hampshire as the first bishop known to be in an openly gay relationship in more than four centuries of church history.

Disputes over scriptural authority, the blessing of gay unions and other matters threaten turmoil this summer, when Anglicans gather for their once-a-decade Lambeth Conference in Britain.

In the Virginia case, Judge Randy Bellows of the Fairfax County Circuit Court ruled that the defecting congregations are covered by a state law. The statute says any “church or religious society” that “divides” remains under the control of the majority, as does property entrusted to it.