Posted on 05/02/2021 8:07:04 AM PDT by massmike
In a case little heralded outside North Texas and outside Episcopal Church insiders, the United States Supreme Court in February opened the door for more litigation nationwide over disputed church property as churches split over social issues such as women in ministry and LGBTQ inclusion.
The U.S. Supreme Court on Feb. 22 declined to take on any part of the issue — leaving in place a patchwork of state-by-state regulations that likely will continue to produce uneven outcomes. And by refusing the case, the high court left in place a ruling by the Texas Supreme Court that awarded $100 million in property to a breakaway Episcopal group in Fort Worth, Texas.
That meant that the week of April 19, members of five North Texas Episcopal churches had to vacate their buildings and turn over the keys to a group of dissidents that several years earlier had broken with the national denomination over the ordination of women priests and the inclusion of LGBTQ Christians.
Former sanctuary of St. Luke in the Meadows Episcopal Church in Fort Worth.
“Today is our last worship in the building that has housed St. Luke’s in the Meadow for more than 75 years,” wrote Episcopal lay leader Katie Sherrod on Facebook April 18. “For one last time we will celebrate the all-encompassing, unconditional love of God for all humanity. We will walk out of there carrying with us the memories of the hundreds of faithful lay people and clergy who built it up for mission and ministry of the Episcopal Church.”
“We grieve that this building, made holy by the love it housed, will now be in the hands of those who believe women are not proper matter for ordination and that LGBTQ people are somehow disordered."
(Excerpt) Read more at baptistnews.com ...
I won’t comment about women priests but it’s great to hear that there are some Anglicans who understand that God simply does not approve of homosexual acts.
Probably used the place for a brothel.
Here's the whole problem in a nutshell. It's God and only God who can make anything holy. Man isn't capable. That she doesn't know that tells me everything I need to know.
Took about 16 years to right this wrong. ECUSA had diocese take property from conservative congregations that did not want the Gay agenda. The families that had paid for and built those churches for generations had no claim to the property according the ECUSA.
what group’s name is on the deed?
the congregation or the diocese
Hi BD. What’s you’re take on this?
Aren’t the Methodists in the midst of a similar schism? Will this bear on their situation?
Notice how they keep saying that God loves everyone, therefore we should allow degenerates to take over the church.
Pedophiles love children. Will Episcopalians sanctify pedophilia?
It’s the behavior that is condemned! The individual must seek repentance. Why don’t these Episcopalians understand scriptures?
And also, just to show how classy they were, they threw a tantrum on their way out the door: https://virtueonline.org/tec-parish-ft-worth-strips-church-building-they-leave
Anglicanism/Episcopalianism in the USA is a nearly dead religion
Its now merely a holding company for some very valuable properties. That’s why they carry on.
Progressivism kills.
This is what liberalism progressive leftism does - total destruction and secularism to anything it invades. It’s a disease.
Give 'em a couple years to talk themselves into it.
God doesn’t approve of sin, period. Adultery, fornication, etc are all sins as are homosexual sex acts. We love OUR secret s s, God, not so much, repent.
Should say “ we love our secret s s, God not so much.
From my experience in attending an Anglican Church that broke off from the Episcopalians
Liberal states courts will rule for the faction that is “progressive” - want to replace the family with something else.
Conservative state courts will rule for the faction that wants to protect children from indoctrination
Progressives do not want pluralism - meaning toleration of gays to privately live as they choose while respecting the rights of traditional families and children. They want to criminalize churches, nonprofit adoption agencies, teachers or anyone who “discriminates’ against them. They want certain categories of people given superior rights over others. But they do not want it revealed that they want to gain superior legal rights over others by claiming themselves as victims. Portraying ones group as victims is very old tactic used often in Blblical times. There is an entire legal industry involved in this.
The article seems slanted against the conservative victors.
I think it’s the same as an old California case. The denomination was established as a corporation, so the court says. “With corporate law you shall live.”
I suspect they saw the same thing here. You can’t hide behind one paragraph of corporate law and ignore all the rest.
What gets my blood boiling is that the true dissidents were the liberal church members that fundamentally changed doctrine and the way the members worshiped to suit their liberal ideology. They then claimed those that chose to maintain church doctrine as it had been continually up until the true dissidents infiltrated and philosophically took over their churches from within the religion should be the ones forced to leave in order for them to maintain the theological integrity of their church as founded.
The libs then claimed ownership of the church buildings, even though those that built and financed the churches over the years since their inception, were forced to leave when the doctrine of the churches was bastardized by the “new” doctrine of the liberals. Destruction from the inside out, just like what is happening in our Country. We are being eaten alive by a metastasizing malignant tumor of liberalism that will destroy the host. It was the liberals that caused the philosophical mayhem in church congregations and forced the founding church members out of the very churches they built and financed under the true doctrines as had been preached in their churches from when the foundation stones were first laid. Liberals ruin most everything they touch over time.
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