By Julia Duin
November 12, 2007
The largest property dispute in the history of the Episcopal Church, brought on by divisions over a homosexual bishop, is likely to turn on a Civil War-era Virginia law passed to govern churches splitting during disputes over slavery and secession.
Circuit Judge Randy Bellows will preside starting tomorrow at the Fairfax County Courthouse over a case brought by the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia and the national Episcopal Church against 11 churches seeking to leave the denomination along with millions of dollars of property.
The 11 churches voted in December and January to leave the denomination and join the Convocation of Anglicans in North America (CANA) under the Anglican Church of Nigeria, citing disputes over biblical authority and the 2003 election of the openly homosexual New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson.
The case is informally referred to as "57-9" in many documents because the coming hearing is based on Virginia Code Section 57-9. This says when a diocese or a denomination experiences a "division," members of a congregation may determine by majority vote which side of the division to join, along with their property.
"This case is literally historic, because it's based on a statute enacted by the Virginia legislature during the Civil War," said Mary McReynolds, one of 24 lawyers involved on CANA's side of the dispute. "The Virginia division statute is unusual, and my understanding is there are not many situations in the country that allow this."
Thus, many of the documents filed by the breakaway churches talk of 1860s splits among Baptists and Presbyterians over slavery and secession, including an 1867 article in the New York Times.
The "Multi-Circuit Episcopal Church Litigation," as the case is formally called, is a consolidation of 22 separate court cases. The trial is scheduled to last six days, and has amassed 15 feet of filings, stored in kelly-green cases in the records room two floors below the fifth floor of the courthouse, and is expected to feature a number of star witnesses.
The Virginia Diocese and the denomination, which have at least nine lawyers working on the case, have filed 67 documents undergirding their case and are calling in 19 witnesses. They include Virginia Bishop Peter J. Lee; Canon Samuel Van Culin, former secretary-general to the Anglican Consultative Council in London for 11 years, now working at the Washington Cathedral; church historian Robert Bruce Mullin; seminary professors Ian Douglas and the Rev. Katherine Grieb; and David Beers, chancellor to the Episcopal Church.
The breakaway churches have filed 174 documents and the names of 17 witnesses. They include Penn State professor Philip Jenkins, a scholar of Pentecostal Christianity and other emerging religious movements in what's known as the "Global South," a term he coined.
The Virginia Diocese released a short statement on its Web site, www.thediocese.net, stating that although the CANA congregations have left the Episcopal Church, they continue to occupy the property.
"Four continuing Episcopal congregations have been denied use of their property, locked out of their buildings, deprived of their rights to that property and forced into exile," it said.
Several of the parishes involved have slated prayer vigils throughout the weekend. Members of the legal team were invited to be prayed over last Friday night at a meeting at Church of the Apostles in Fairfax.
The Falls Church, the largest of the congregations being sued, had a service Saturday afternoon for the trial and has distributed leaflets urging prayer from Oct. 17 to Nov. 27 in "a vigil surrounding our litigation."
Truro Church, which sits directly on the other side of Main Street from the courthouse complex, will be open for prayer during the trial, which ends Nov. 21. There will be no hearings on Friday.
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