wfn.org | First Promise founding parish challenges diocese for property

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2000-168

First Promise founding parish challenges diocese for property
http://www.ecusa.anglican.org/ens

by Jan Nunley

      (ENS) All Saints Church in Waccamaw--home base of one of the Anglican 
Mission in America's (AMiA) bishops, Charles H. Murphy III--is challenging the 
Diocese of South Carolina in court in a bid to gain control of its property.

      The parish's legal adviser, attorney Ross M. Lindsay III of Pawleys Island, 
says the action doesn't mean All Saints will follow its rector into the dissident 
AMiA. "The vestry hasn't even discussed it," Lindsay told the Charleston 
Post and Courier. "This is a property dispute. It has nothing whatsoever to 
do with leaving the Episcopal Church."

     The question of who controls the parish's property came to light after the 
church was denied a loan for an expansion project. The lender found that the 
diocese had filed a public notice declaring that All Saints and Prince George's Paris
h of Georgetown--another colonial-era congregation--hold their titles "in trust" 
of the diocese and the denomination, giving the diocese and the denomination 
ultimate control and "clouding" the title.

     On October 6, the parish filed suit in the Court of Common Pleas for 
Georgetown County, asking that the title be cleared.

      "I received information that All Saints' Church, Pawleys Island, had hired
 a large law firm with state-wide offices to do an extensive title search on its 
property," Bishop Edward L. Salmon Jr. said in an October 11 letter to the 
diocese. "There is not now nor has there ever been any dispute that under the 
canons and policy of this diocese each parish and mission holds title to its 
property. Under the circumstances, it was a reasonable assumption that All Saints 
Parish, Waccamaw, was preparing to challenge the validity" of church property laws,
 Salmon added.

     In the complaint, the parish claims to hold a deed dating from 1745, before 
either the diocese or the denomination were formed, that puts its almost 59 acres 
and improvements in trust of "the inhabitants of the Waccamaw Neck."

     Lindsay said some parishioners had canceled their pledges when they found
 out about the diocese's action, but he doesn't blame them. "Would you give any 
money to a church that you found out doesn't own this property?" he said.

Rector emeritus

     Currently, All Saints' is served by an interim rector, the Rev. Thaddeus 
Barnum. Murphy had wanted to continue as rector of All Saints' when he returned 
as a newly consecrated bishop from Singapore in January, 1999, but Salmon 
would not allow it. In an address to the diocesan convention earlier this year,
 Salmon explained that, in his view, "one cannot at the same time canon
ically be a bishop in one diocese and a priest in another…That's just the way it is. 
Without being canonically resident you cannot hold a canonical cure, so my
 next conclusion was that he was not the rector of All Saints', Pawleys Island." 
Murphy was given the non-canonical title of "rector emeritus" by the parish, and 
is still listed as the rector on its Web site, <www.allsaintspawleys.org>.

      The parish was also the site of a meeting in September, 1997 at which the 
organization First Promise was founded by 26 conservative rectors. At that time,
 Murphy was quoted as saying that  "we're staying exactly where we've always been…
We're saying if we pull apart, it's because you (progressives) moved, not us." 
The First Promise document pledges the signers not to be bound "by the legal or
geographical boundaries of any parish or diocese, if those boundaries are being
 invoked to prevent the preaching and teaching of 'the doctrine, discipline, and 
worship of Christ as this Church has received them'." First Promise has been 
absorbed into the Anglican Mission in America's structure, accountable to 
Murphy and the Province of Rwanda.

--The Rev. Jan Nunley is deputy director of the Episcopal Church's Office of News 
and Information.