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Virginia dissenting parishes win first round of legal battle

judgement day Some great news just in from the States. A group of dissenting parishes in the Diocese of Virginia who have named themselves ”Anglican District of Virginia” (ADV) have won the first round of a legal battle with their former Diocese.

The Diocese, at the instigation of the Presiding Bishop of TEC, had sued the parishes for their property. The parishes had responded that they were entitled to split with their property under a law particular to Virginia called “57-9” that allowed such organisations to keep their property where there was a recognisable division in a religious body. The law case, then, hung on whether TEC and the Diocese of Virginia was such a religious body and whether such a division had occurred. TEC and the Diocese argued they weren’t and it hadn’t, ADV suggested that it was common sense that they were and it had.

We’ve got the full text of the judgement up [pdf] at Stand Firm and comments are picking up.

The judgement is excellent in that the judge (the magnificently named Randy I Bellows) is slightly incredulous at the position taken by the Diocese and TEC. Here’s what he says in his conclusion:

...it blinks at reality to characterize the ongoing division within the Diocese, ECUSA, and the Anglican Communion as anything but a division of the first magnitude, especially given the involvement of numerous churches in states across the country, the participation of hundreds of church leaders, both lay and pastoral, who have found themselves “taking sides” against their brethren, the determination by thousands of church members in Virginia and elsewhere to “walk apart” in the language of the Church, the creation of new and substantial religious entities, such as CANA, with their own structures and disciplines, the rapidity with which the ECUSA’s problems became that of the Anglican Communion, and the consequent impact-in some cases the extraordinary impact-on its provinces around the world, and, perhaps most importantly, the creation of a level of distress among many church members so profound and wrenching as to lead them to cast votes in an attempt to disaffiliate from a church which has been their home and heritage throughout their lives, and often back for generations.

In laymans terms, he’s saying that the level of observable disruption and distress in ECUSA/TEC is so great that you’d have to be shutting your eyes not to see it. Which is, of course, what TEC have been doing since day one. Pretending it’s not there.

Now, of course, they’ll appeal and this will drag on but it’s great to have it on the record.

Posted by on 04/04 at 05:16 PM

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