National Church

Rebellious congregations that part ways with their denominations may lose their church buildings and property as a result, the California Supreme Court said Monday in a unanimous ruling. The state high court decision came in a case involving the Episcopal Church, but lawyers said it would apply to other denominations as well. Several Protestant denominations, including United Methodists and Presbyterians, have faced upheaval over gay rights issues.

An Anglican congregation evicted from its La Crescenta church in October after it lost a legal battle with the Episcopal Church asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to hear its case. Congregants at St. Luke's of the Mountains Anglican Church voted in 2006 to leave the Episcopal denomination over theological differences, including the consecration of a gay bishop in New Hampshire. The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and the national church sued to retain the church's property.

The people of St. Luke's Anglican Church have called their La Crescenta parish home for 85 years. Generations of families have grown up within its historic stone walls. On Sunday, Father Rob Holman will deliver his final sermon there, an epitaph to a bruising legal fight the congregation waged and lost to practice its conservative brand of Christian theology and hold on to the church. On Monday, St. Luke's leaders will hand over its keys to the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

In the space of a week, Mary Glasspool has gone from being an obscure priest in Baltimore to the emblem of a growing international tempest over gay bishops in the Episcopal Church. The lesbian priest with salt-and-pepper hair -- one of two newly elected suffragan, or assistant, bishops in Los Angeles -- has become a potent symbol of hope for gays in the national church but a portent of doom for traditionalists worried about their denomination unraveling. Ask Glasspool, 55, about her central role in the turbulence that has drawn the disapproving eye of the archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion, and she offers a lament: The struggle for gay rights in the church has never been her primary mission, she says, even as she speaks proudly of her 22-year relationship with her partner, social worker Becki Sander.

The marquee outside St. Luke's Anglican Church in La Crescenta was a bit sardonic in its scripture from the Book of Hebrews: "You joyfully accepted confiscation of your property." That was the message delivered Sunday by the Rev. Rob Holman, in his last sermon at the Foothill Boulevard church that has been entangled in a legal dispute with the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. "Next Sunday, as many of you know, we will be worshiping in a different building," Holman said. "All because we have chosen to stand for the gospel and the authority of God's word over our lives."

Episcopal Church traditionalists are predicting that more and more parishes and dioceses will opt to withhold funds from the national church to protest what they perceive as extreme liberalism at top levels of the denomination. The Rev. Robert Shackles, president of the traditionalist Prayer Book Society based in Louisville, Ky., predicts that a budget crisis in the denomination could be the result of dissenters withholding funds.

A resolution supporting the right of persons "in hopeless and irreversible conditions" to terminate their lives has been passed by delegates to a regional conference of the United Church of Christ and recommended to the denomination's national legislative body for adoption. Delegates at the Rocky Mountain Conference annual meeting also voted to accept a working document that establishes conference policy for handling charges of sexual misconduct by clergy.

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles on Saturday elected the first openly gay bishop since the national church lifted a ban that kept gays out of its highest ordained ministry, a move that deepened divisions between liberals and conservatives in the faith. Clergy and lay leaders, meeting in Riverside for their annual convention, chose the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, 55, who has been in a committed relationship with another woman since 1988, from a field of six candidates. She is a canon, or senior assistant, to the Diocese of Maryland bishops.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Wednesday ordered leaders of a former Episcopal church in La Crescenta by Oct. 12 to turn over church property to the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, marking the latest wrinkle in a long-running legal dispute. St. Luke's Anglican Church and the diocese have been feuding since 2006, when a majority of the parish's congregants voted to pull out of the diocese and the 2.1-million-member Episcopal Church because of differences over biblical authority and interpretation, including the national church's decision to consecrate an openly gay bishop.

Representatives from the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh voted to approve constitutional amendments that are the first step in leaving the national church in a widening rift over homosexuality and interpretation of Scripture. Pittsburgh joined dioceses in San Joaquin, Calif., and Quincy, Ill., in granting preliminary approval to separating from the national church. The dioceses contend the national church has abandoned Scriptural authority and teachings on truth and salvation.

The Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles on Saturday elected the first openly gay bishop since the national church lifted a ban that kept gays out of its highest ordained ministry, a move that deepened divisions between liberals and conservatives in the faith. Clergy and lay leaders, meeting in Riverside for their annual convention, chose the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool, 55, who has been in a committed relationship with another woman since 1988, from a field of six candidates. She is a canon, or senior assistant, to the Diocese of Maryland bishops.

The marquee outside St. Luke's Anglican Church in La Crescenta was a bit sardonic in its scripture from the Book of Hebrews: "You joyfully accepted confiscation of your property." That was the message delivered Sunday by the Rev. Rob Holman, in his last sermon at the Foothill Boulevard church that has been entangled in a legal dispute with the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. "Next Sunday, as many of you know, we will be worshiping in a different building," Holman said. "All because we have chosen to stand for the gospel and the authority of God's word over our lives."

The people of St. Luke's Anglican Church have called their La Crescenta parish home for 85 years. Generations of families have grown up within its historic stone walls. On Sunday, Father Rob Holman will deliver his final sermon there, an epitaph to a bruising legal fight the congregation waged and lost to practice its conservative brand of Christian theology and hold on to the church. On Monday, St. Luke's leaders will hand over its keys to the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles.

A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Wednesday ordered leaders of a former Episcopal church in La Crescenta by Oct. 12 to turn over church property to the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, marking the latest wrinkle in a long-running legal dispute. St. Luke's Anglican Church and the diocese have been feuding since 2006, when a majority of the parish's congregants voted to pull out of the diocese and the 2.1-million-member Episcopal Church because of differences over biblical authority and interpretation, including the national church's decision to consecrate an openly gay bishop.

The nation's largest Lutheran denomination Friday reversed a long-standing ban on the appointment of non-celibate gays to the clergy, becoming the second major Christian group in a month to liberalize policies governing who may minister the faith. Leaders of the 4.6-million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, meeting in Minneapolis, gave local congregations the authority to choose ministers or lay leaders who may be in "lifelong, monogamous, same-gender relationships."

Episcopal Church leaders in Los Angeles on Sunday nominated two openly gay priests as bishops, becoming one of the first dioceses in the national church to test a controversial new policy that lifted a de facto ban on homosexuals in the ordained hierarchy. The nominations of the Rev. John L. Kirkley of San Francisco and the Rev. Canon Mary D. Glasspool of Baltimore are likely to further inflame theological conservatives in the U.S.

In a public rebuke to the Episcopal Church, the Diocese of San Joaquin voted Saturday to affirm its membership in the worldwide Anglican Communion after distancing itself from the American denomination over issues of sexuality and the ordination of women. Some delegates to the convention called it a first step toward a formal break with the national church, although the proposal makes relatively minor changes to the conservative diocese's status.

The nominee to replace a breakaway bishop ousted by Episcopal leaders is meeting with San Joaquin Valley congregations ahead of an upcoming vote. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, the head of national church, has recommended Jerry A. Lamb to serve as the new bishop for the Diocese of San Joaquin. National church leaders on Wednesday removed Bishop John-David Schofield as the head of the Fresno-based diocese, which seceded last December over the Episcopal Church's ordination of women and gays.

Rebellious congregations that part ways with their denominations may lose their church buildings and property as a result, the California Supreme Court said Monday in a unanimous ruling. The state high court decision came in a case involving the Episcopal Church, but lawyers said it would apply to other denominations as well. Several Protestant denominations, including United Methodists and Presbyterians, have faced upheaval over gay rights issues.