The Falls Church News-Press has a strong article and editorial on the recent move of the Falls Church - CANA leadership to use ministry dollars to pay legal costs associated with its lawsuit against the Episcopal Church and Diocese ofVirginia.
The letter Falls Church -CANA sent to its donors can be found here: Download Southgate Letter011. Previous Blueweeds posts on the ongoing church property dispute between the continuing congregation of Falls Church Episcopal Church and the conservative breakaway conservative Falls Church-CANA can be found here.
My reaction to the article is dismay. The historic Falls Church Episcopal, and the role of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, is part of the foundation of our nation and the government of Virginia. That role has ebbed and changed over the generations, but until very recently the historic Falls Church remained essentially a local parish church.
The historic church let go of its roots in the 1980s when it recruited the Rev. John Yates as an agent to change and rebuild the congregation. I have had occasion to talk to many members of the Falls Church Episcopal Church who were part of the congregation at the time and, indeed, some of whom were instrumental in recruiting Yates into leadership. The stories will be told someday. They are fascinating.
The essence of the change was the ambition to grow the congregation. Building initiatives. Recruiting drives. Subtle and not so subtle modifications made over time in services, liturgy, the focus of ministries, and church management.
The Southgate development is part, albeit the end part, of an ambitious vision to transform the historic Falls Church Episcopal Church into a more corporate church. The corporate church was formed with deep connections to conservative politics and an orthodox religious worldview. Stories in Time about the congregations connections to the Bush Administration. Its members associated with global commentary on social, political, and religious matters on Fox, the Wall Street Journal, and in recruiting Republican superstars like Sarah Palin.
The trade-off for the Falls Church community has been things like Southgate. Local Falls Church ethnic haberdasheries which provided some flair to our community, but had the unlucky coincidence of having an emerging mega church as a landlord. As the changes swept through the historic church, those local businesses got swept away. Buildings unused. Plan abandoned.
What is left behind is the parish church and the role the historic church has played in the Falls Church community since the colonial times. There are other local parish churches in Falls Church, of course, but the continuity of a local Episcopal Church in Falls Church has been severly challenged.
The continuing congregation of the Falls Church Episcopal (of which frequent readers know I am a member) still meets across the street from the historic church in a loft at the Presbyterian Church. The congregation thrives and has begun to re-focus an Episcopal ministry focused our community, but the challenges of rebuilding in our parish without a home and with great uncertainty about the eventual outcome of the legal dispute over the historic property, is daunting.
So that is my reaction. The request from the conservative Falls Church - CANA leadership to use money which an Episcopal congregation had given in hopes of developing a church-based community center in Falls Church is now being used to pay lawyers which are suing the church organization which is its progenitor.
Our old historic parish church which was an anchor for our community since the 1720s is gone ... and the in vogue conservative leadership of today, which operates among the graves of generations of Falls Church Episcopalians, is asking to use the money it was given to invest in rebuilding our community to sue the church which was the foundation (and namesake) of our community.
Which is ... dismaying.











Recent Comments