The Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday handed the state’s Episcopal Church a major victory in its protracted land dispute with a group of breakaway conservative congregations, sending the battle for millions of dollars of property back down to a lower court.
Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Randy Bellows erred in allowing the breakaway groups to occupy disputed property, including Falls Church and Truro Church, after disbanding from the Virginia diocese and forming their own church, the state’s highest court ruled.
A series of rulings in recent years in favor of the congregations left the Episcopalians with fewer and fewer options. In October 2009, though, the state Supreme Court agreed to hear the church’s appeal.
“This decision brings us one important step closer to returning loyal Episcopalians … to their church homes,” said the Rt. Rev. Shannon S. Johnston, bishop of Virginia. “We are extremely grateful for this opportunity to correct a grievous harm.”
But the battle is not over; the land and ownership of the property remains unresolved, the court said.
“The court’s ruling simply involved one of our statutory defenses, and these properties are titled in the name of the congregations’ trustees, not in the name of the Diocese or the Episcopal Church,” said Jim Oakes, chairman of the Anglican District of Virginia, the umbrella organization for the nine Anglican congregations. “We continue to be confident in our legal position as we move forward.”
In late 2006, about a dozen Northern Virginia congregations left the diocese and joined the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a mission of the Church of Nigeria. The congregations claimed that the national church had drifted from its doctrine, notably by ordaining a gay bishop in New Hampshire in 2004.
At the center of the legal dispute is a Civil War-era Virginia law known as the “Division Statute” that governs the ownership of property during religious splits. It says that when a division happens, a congregation can vote on which branch it wants to join.
But the court said the Convocation of Anglicans in North America was not a “branch” of the Episcopal Church.
The statute “requires that each branch proceed from the same polity, and not merely a shared tradition of faith,” Justice Lawrence L. Koontz Jr. wrote.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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