Honoring forbears' trust

Those departing are obligated to keep their promises

By Joan R. Gundersen for Episcopal Life, January 14, 2009 [Episcopal Life] My grandfather built in his basement the altar of the Episcopal parish church where I was baptized as an infant. He also represented the congregation at the auction where it bought the one-room school that became the church building. My grandmother made the cloths that covered the altar. A decade later, my parents helped found a parish in a neighboring suburb and served on the committees that planned and built the church building where I was married in 1969.

The parishes my family helped build are now in the hands of other Chicago-area Episcopalians. While pursuing my academic career, I have been a communicant in eight additional parishes, each in a different diocese. I thus benefited from the building efforts of other Episcopalians. Some of my church homes were built within living memory and others generations before, including one church erected more than 250 years ago.

As a vestry member in three of these parishes, I strove to honor the trust bequeathed to us by the past, respect the needs of the present and take seriously my obligation to pass on the gifts received to future generations. To me, a parish is not an island, but part of a larger corporate whole -- the Episcopal Church. We all are beneficiaries of this larger community of believers, extending across time and space. It gives each of us a stake in every parish and its property.

This experience shapes my understanding of the issues surrounding property ownership. The general church has a longstanding claim on all property given for the use of Episcopalians.

From its beginnings, the Episcopal Church has relied on its geographic administrative units (dioceses) to preserve those claims. The Convention of the Diocese of Virginia, for example, asserted as early as 1790 that it was the "sole owner" of church property. For two centuries, dioceses have placed restraints on parishes encumbering property and claimed property when parishes closed.

For 29 years, the Dennis Canon has been a part of church discipline. All priests who are younger than 56 have made ordination promises to abide by the "discipline" of the church under church canons including that canon.

If some clergy and laity are uncomfortable with the range of interpretation by Episcopalians of the statements of belief found in our Book of Common Prayer, they are free to find a more compatible home but not to ignore other obligations they undertook as parish leaders. For me, leaving behind the property when one leaves the Episcopal Church is a moral obligation as well as a legal requirement.

Claims that "Christians should not sue Christians" or that the generous course is to negotiate a property settlement require that we ignore previous promises and obligations. This makes a mockery of the trust my grandparents and parents (and others) had that their work building an Episcopal church in a particular location would be honored by those who followed them. Many wrote clauses into their bylaws or articles of incorporation binding the corporation "forever" to the Episcopal Church.

Occupancy of an Episcopal parish building by former Episcopalians, even as renters, is a barrier to any continuing congregation of Episcopalians. Dioceses only should consider sale of a building to its former members if there is no continuing congregation or the building is useless to those continuing.

Sales should be at full market price to preserve needed resources for those continuing or for creation of a new community of the church. The group that wishes to separate needs to raise its own purchase funds. Any parish endowment also is a trust for future Episcopalians.

Am I in love with the courts and lawsuits? No. But I believe the church must uphold its responsibility to those who came before us and will come after.

Our society created the courts to settle disputes between its members. There need be no lawsuits if those who are leaving simply honor (as some have done) the understanding that the property is not theirs to take. Those who are leaving have it in their power not to waste their own resources and efforts on a long legal battle that they are unlikely to win. All of us then could go about our common desire to serve Christ as best we can.

-- Historian Joan R. Gundersen, Ph.D., is immediate past president of the Episcopal Women's History Project, president of Progressive Episcopalians of Pittsburgh and a founding member of Via Media USA. She has published extensively on the history of the church in Virginia and is collaborating with Edward Bond on a new history of the Diocese of Virginia.

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