Free Republic

A Statement from the Virginia Annual Council of the United Methodist Church July 11, 2008 On June 27, 2008, the Circuit Court of Fairfax County declared constitutional—as applied to the case before it—a Virginia statute which gives ownership of church property to breakaway congregations of a church denomination, which for years had held the property in trust for the purpose of worship within the denomination, according to denominational doctrine. The statute, known as the “Division Statute,” was enacted by the Virginia legislature only a few years after the end of the Civil War, and was used then as a vehicle...