And so the fight over property begins in England as well…

(sigh…)

Considering a good many Anglican churches largely sit nearly empty on Sunday mornings, I wonder if its really worth the fuss and bother.

Umm, wasn’t this Roman property before Henry VIII seized it?

There was a quite independent early English Church before Rome swooped in with Augustine.

But I hope Rome DOES make noise about wanting property. That will wake up Protestant Christian England.

“But I hope Rome DOES make noise about wanting property. That will wake up Protestant Christian England.”

It’s not easy to wake up a corpse.

The CoE has been closing and selling hundreds of churches in recent years (not to mention the excellent rectories and vicarages, replaced with cheap, small alternatives).  Others it would love to get rid of, but is constrained by the fact that they are Listed Buildings and cannot be altered without permission that is unlikely to be forthcoming. 

It would make a good deal of sense for the CoE to hand over buildings to those who wished to leave with them, especially where there is an over-provision of buildings—just about everywhere, as far as I’ve seen.

The Catholic churches in England are generally rather poor, with a few notable exceptions.  They could be sold off or demolished without much loss, and congregations consolidated.  If there were a sudden epidemic of charity, a profit-sharing deal could be worked out between the Catholics and the Church Commissioners.

There is also, in many cases, a great deal of confusion as to who actually owns English church buildings.  The CoE retains a great many medieval peculiarities, not least with regard to property.  Clear titles are not necessarily established.

Interesting how what should be a fight over souls always turns into a squabble over stones, wood, and dirt.

I would think Rome would be very hesitant to get into any legal squabbles over property with the CoE.  I suspect they will advise the partakers of the Pope’s offer to vacate and set up shop elsewhere, preferably to the nearest Catholic church (where there is one to be found).  I also suspect that even if the CoE wanted to let a departing congregation or diocese take their property the legal implications would be fraught.

They need to sue for Glastonbury Abbey, plus restoration expenses.  Then Westminster Abbey.  The Anglican scan have Darwin’s carcass if they want to take it out before the building changes hands.  It’s going to take a while to get all this through the courts.  Lots of lead to put back…..

Fighting over property is, AFAIKS, a complete non starter in England. PCCs, Rectors/Vicars and Dioceses simply don’t have the right to dispose of a non-redundant parish church. (They are all, of course, part of the time consuming process by which churches are declared redundant).

Please do not let the PB see this letter as it might discomfit her, what with her asset-grabbing legal venue so full and all, even when only partially successful and altogether unChristian according to that pestilential fellow Paul.

But if a church was built under tractarian values, and has been paid for and lovingly kept by those espousing tractarian values in its entire history, a people who now feel unwanted within an increasingly liberal church (who keeps shifting the goalposts - note Sweden’s decision to allow gay marriage just today), why would you deprive them of their building should they want to go to the church which offers them what a pastorally insenstive synod refused to?

The hope and strategy of FIF/UK can be stated quite simply.  Over the past few years FIF/UK has maintained its principled opposition to WO, but has not (to the grief of some of its members, including an old “warhorse” like Sir Oswald Clark*) launched a campaign of “stop women bishops” leading up to the selection of members of a new General Synod in 2010.  Their rationale has been that with women priests (if not deacons) in place the ban on woman bishops is theologically senseless, practically untenable and, viewed in secular (or Erastian) terms, unjust.  So for some time they have been “telegraphing” their willingness to offer only a pro forma opposition to women bishops, if, in return, the Church of England/ General Synod will accord them “a third province,” or “a free province,” or, a the very least, parallel dioceses whose bishops can isolate themselves, their parishes and their clergy and people from the sacramental ministrations of femaleclergypersons.  None of these have they got; they were shot down at the July 2009 General Synod meeting—under the derisory plea that to grant them any of these things would “institutionalize schism” (as though that were not already the case!).

So now they—meaning at least 3 of their 4 active “flying bishops” and one of their two retired ones—are prepared to try to lead as much of their constituency as possible into the “new structure” for Anglicans.  It is well-known that the Church of England is not in a financially flourishing shape, and if the exodus of a substantial number of clergy and laity leaves the CofE stuck with the expenses of maintaining largely empty church buildings, many of them “historic,” and so not able to be sold, demolished, or turned into condominia or brothels, the expenses of doing so could rapidly undercut the finances of the Church and become unsupportable.  The hope of FIF/UK is that in such circumstances the Church Commisioners would be willing to make “long leases” of such churches to their clergy and congregations, on condition that the latter be willing to pay all expenses of their upkeep, and perhaps make a token payment to acknowledge that ownership of the premises rests with the Church Commissioners of the Church of England?

Will it succeed?  I have my doubts, and would be hesitant about wagering upon it, but it is a brave and noble aspiration.

* whom I admire, btw.  Were I an Anglican and an Englishman I would be for pulling out all stops to defeat the women bishops legislation, even if that meant, e.g., that it fell short by only one vote of the two-thirds majority required in each one of the three houses of the General Synod.  It would stop further progress in that direction for at least five years, and be a great “gobsmack” to the proponents of what I regard as a detestable cause.

There was a quite independent early English Church before Rome swooped in with Augustine.

No.  There was an early British Church before the Augustinian mission entered the kingdom of Kent (Cantware), but there was no English Church prior to the missionary efforts of St Augustine of Canterbury - save for those Christians who came in as part of the court of the Frankish Christian queen Bertha, wife of the same king Æthelbert who was baptized by St Augustine.

And the British Church prior to “the Roman swoop” was not independent.  Read about St Germanus of Auxerre and his battle against the Pelagians in the early 5th century British Church.

Our knowledge of exactly what happened to the native (mostly) Christian Romano-British population during the Anglo-Saxon invasions is sketchy (did they all flee to Cornwall, Wales and Cumbria?), but it appears that the Britons did not make any sort of organized effort to evangelize the invaders.  (Cymric legend holds that the northern British prince, Rhun, son of the great Urien, king of Rheged, baptized the Northumbrian prince Edwin in 612, making Rhun a notable and quite late exception.) 

Thanks be to God that Pope Gregory the Great had the foresight to send the Augustinian mission to those shores.

I wasn’t aware that the Church of England had made any recent statements regarding homosexual activity.  Perhaps Professor Mclean - who should know - would care to enlighten us as to what is next on the agenda?

The Church of England has taken, by its proper procedures, some decisions about gays and women in its ministry that a minority do not like.

Isn’t it amazing how many intelligent people think God’s will is determined by a vote in their own little church council!

the courts were dragged into a similar dispute. When they awarded the assets of the Free Church of Scotland to a minority faction, the result was so absurd that it had to be reversed by legislation. I doubt whether the courts would make the same mistake again in either England or Scotland.

The court case here is commonly known as General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland v Lord Overtoun. What seems to be a reasonable summary of it can be found on wikipedia here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bannatyne_v_Overtoun

Far from being a situation that the courts would not repeat, this case has become the cornerstone of handling disputes when institutions (not just churches) split, not just in Scotland or even Great Britain but wherever English case law is used (so NZ, Australia, and other commonwealth countries). A recent case where a denomination lost church property for falling foul of it was in 2001 in the Bahamas. The case notes can be found here:
http://www.icnl.org/KNOWLEDGE/IJNL/vol4iss1/cn_3.htm

These case notes state (with the key bits bolded by me):

having regard to Craigdallie v. Aikman (1813) 1 Dow. 1 and General Assembly of Free Church in Scotland v. Overtoun [1904] AC 515, it is settled law that in the absence of a provision in the governing instrument for a division of property on a schism the law of England will not enforce a trust for a religious society at the expense of a forfeiture of property held for the beneficiaries for adhering to the opinions and principles in which the congregation had originally united, provided that the court will not enforce the letter of the governing instrument if, in changed circumstances, to do so would defeat the underlying charitable purpose for which the trust was established ;

In less legal terms what it is saying is that this particular case with one earlier one established the principle that had been enforced ever since that property cannot be taken from people who continue to hold the original core beliefs of the organisation. If members of the organisation changes its core beliefs then they forfeit the property—and it does not matter how many people are on either side of the dispute. I have come to characterise this as “if the property is accumulated because the organisation is a duck, then it has to stay a duck. If it becomes a goose it loses the property.” Note it does not matter how exciting or wonderful or big the goose is, the fact it is not a duck is all it takes.

It is worth noting that the legislation he refers to did not overturn the decision, it just set up a process for dealing with it that led to over 100 congregations being evicted from their churches and many hundreds of others having to buy it for a second time from the Free church.

So if the Professor above is putting his faith in the idea that the Courts will rescue the situation, and if not Parliament will, then he is likely to be sorely disappointed.

#14 - “I wasn’t aware that the Church of England had made any recent statements regarding homosexual activity.  Perhaps Professor Mclean - who should know - would care to enlighten us as to what is next on the agenda?”

I didn’t recognize Iain McLean’s name so had to look him up. He is a political theorist, rather than a theologian, so perhaps that is relevant insofar as it demonstrates where his protestations might originate from. On the other hand, he has advised the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit on potential policy shifts in the past, and it’s not outside the realms of possibility that, as someone who lists ‘church and state’ as one of his specialisms, he might be called upon to offer advice to Parliament/some government-related body in the future regarding this issue.

I have to say, though, as one in the pews of an historically anglo-catholic (English) parish that is increasingly swinging towards HTB evangelicalism, I cannot predict how the Pope’s recent overtures are going to be received on the ground. For some, it’s clear - parts of FiF made up their minds years ago that if such an offer came, they would take it. But for many others this development from Rome is extremely confusing and, because of this confusion, the raising of the question of who ought to keep the property seems a lot like running before we’ve learnt to walk.