I have an very big interest in the Church Property litigation that is happening all around the USA. Much of this litigation involves the Episcopal Church. I take an interest in this for many reasons one of which is because I am history nut. I have studied a great deal Episcopal Church history from the colonial days to the American civil war to the present day. In my view that plays a critical part in the litigation that we are seeing.
The current leadership of the TEC as a part of legal arguments seem to have been rewriting history a tad. Nothing though compares to these whoppers though. Anglican Curmudgeon has The Episcopal Church as Rebellious Teenager.
I wonder who was consulted on this "Church History". Maybe it was a law firm.
What a whopper when it comes to history! The reason the Episcopal church thumbed its nose to England was because we could not get a bishop here.
ReplyDelete"...The Church was organized shortly after the American Revolution when it was forced to separate from the Church of England, as Church of England clergy were required to swear allegiance to the British monarch...."
"...In 1789, representative clergy from nine dioceses met in Philadelphia to ratify the Church's initial constitution. The Episcopal Church was formally separated from the Church of England in 1789 so that clergy would not be required to accept the supremacy of the British monarch. A revised version of the Book of Common Prayer was written for the new church that same year. The fourth bishop of the Episcopal Church was James Madison, the first bishop of Virginia. Madison was consecrated in 1790 by the Archbishop of Canterbury and two other Church of England bishops. This third American bishop consecrated within the English line of succession occurred because of continuing unease within the Church of England over Seabury's nonjuring Scottish orders...."
I have a tendency to look at the break-away Anglicans like I do libertarians. The insult in intended. The problem is the fact that church property does not belong to an individual church, but legally to the diocese, not the parish. It does not belong to the ECUSA as a whole, but a diocese.
There's quite a bit I could tell you, but it needs to be in confidence. Let's just say they are so disparate they are taking priests who have been literally defrocked by the ECUSA, and allowing them to take over "Anglican" churches here.
This who thing is so insane. If Rowan Williams were not the Anglican version of Barack Obama, utterly incompetent, cooler heads might have prevailed. As it is, he's allowing some extremely hard-line African bishops to make fools out of him.
The people who promoted the Anglican schism here are the same guys who don't protest the burning and execution of witches, the execution of homosexuals, and the rape if infants to cure aids. Some of the schism was done out of rank ambition.
Sorry, I have a very hard time with this.
SJR
The Pink Flamingo
I guess my point to where I think this history seems to go off the rails is the
ReplyDeleteThe History of the presidng Bishop
and on top of that
the power of the National Church.
I do agree with you that on the whole the DIOCESE itself has the stronger claim in many cases to the property with some exceptions I suppose as local property law. I just don;t see the National Church that much of a historical claim or legal calim versu the Diocese