The 160-year-old Church of St. John the Evangelist in downtown Stockton is at the center of a lawsuit filed Tuesday in San Joaquin County Superior Court, the latest among several similar legal disputes over parishes that voted in recent years to leave the Episcopal Church USA.

To the Episcopal Diocese of San Joaquin, the lawsuit represents an effort to reclaim assets that were wrongly taken when nearly 50 congregations voted in 2007 to secede, largely in protest over the ordination of women and gays.

But members and leaders of St. John's - which now is aligned with the more conservative Anglican Church in North America - call the lawsuit a malicious attempt to decimate a congregation and to steal what never belonged to the Episcopal Church in the first place.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Episcopal Church (TEC) • TEC Conflicts • TEC Conflicts: San Joaquin

1. A Senior Priest wrote: Why, O why does Mrs Schori allow the formerly good name of The Episcopal Church to be dragged through the exceedingly expensive mud of courtrooms and lawyers? This is madness, or demonic possession. She claims to be standing up to principle, but WHAT principle? Money and power? Those are diminishing, since the first is being spent and the second is being recognized by fewer and fewer people. September 1, 12:49 pm | [comment link]

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