Episcopal fight over use of church property now includes suit against vestries
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, January 31, 2005
On Pawleys Island, south of Myrtle Beach, S.C., they used to hand out bumper stickers to attract summer vacationers. The stickers said, “Pawley’s Island – Shabbily Elegant.”
But there has been nothing elegant about the four-year battle between the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina and the congregation of All Saints Church in Pawleys Island.
The tug-of-war over the use of the church building and land recently took another turn, with the diocese filing suit against the individual members of the congregation’s vestry who rejected their allegiance to the Episcopal Church (USA) because of doctrinal differences.
In response, the current members of the vestry of what’s now called All Saints Parish, Waccamaw, countered with a suit naming the former vestry members as defendants. All Saints Parish is affiliated with the Anglican Mission in America, which is overseen by Anglican leaders in Rwanda and Southeast Asia.
The Pawleys Island property battle is one of several under way in the ECUSA. The exodus has gained momentum since the installation of V. Gene Robinson as an Episcopal bishop. Robinson had left his wife and family to enter a homosexual relationship with another man.
On Jan. 28, the Georgetown Times reported on the latest face-off in the congregation’s ongoing challenge of the ECUSA’s constitutional property trust law. That ECUSA canon law, like the property trust clause of the Presbyterian Church (USA), says a local congregation holds its property in trust for the benefit of the denomination.
The leaders of the dissident Episcopal congregation dispute the diocese’s claim that it is entitled to use the property for Episcopalians who remain loyal to the ECUSA. They said the Pawleys Island community was deeded the property in the mid-1700s, years before the Episcopal Church or diocese were created. Thus, says Henrietta Golding, the attorney for the congregation, the property belongs neither to the congregation nor the diocese, but to the people of the Waccamaw Neck area.
All Saints Parish, Waccamaw, is now identified as a congregation of the Protestant Episcopal Church, the dissident denomination. The ECUSA suit names as defendants the diocesan bishop of the breakaway denomination and members of the current All Saints vestry.
The diocese previously won a partial victory when a South Carolina appellate court upheld the ECUSA’s property trust clause, but the case is currently on appeal to the South Carolina Supreme Court.