c. 2008 Religion News Service

Protestants join Virginia fight over church property

(RNS) Sixteen Protestant denominations and regional districts have joined a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia in contesting a Reconstruction-era state law that governs church splits.

The post-Civil War splintering of Methodist and Presbyterian churches in 1867 prompted the Virginia law, which allows congregations to keep their property when seceding from a church or “religious society” that’s dividing.

This spring, however, the United Methodist Church and the Presbyterian Church (USA), two of the largest U.S. mainline Protestant denominations, say the law is unconstitutional.

On Friday (May 16), a judge in Fairfax County, Va., ruled that the UMC, the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church and the Worldwide Church of God may participate in oral arguments May 28 to assess the law’s constitutionality.

The amicus curiae brief is a sign of how closely Protestants are following the multimillion-dollar battle between the Episcopal Church and 11 conservative congregations that left to join a branch of the Anglical Church of Nigeria.

What began as a tussle over the Episcopal Church’s liberal stance on homosexuality has become a contentious legal fight over church property.

The Protestants’ amicus brief says the law draws “civil courts into a theological thicket” and favors congregational-based denominations over hierarchical churches.

The Episcopal Church, the UMC, the PC(USA) and other denominations argue that local congregations hold property _ from the stained glass to bank accounts _ in trust for the denomination. Their hierarchical structures, they say in the amicus brief, are religiously based, and civil courts have no business resolving “fundamentally religious questions.”

The General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, and Virginia-area districts of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Church of the Brethren have also joined the amicus brief.

Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell and lawyers for the Congregation of Anglicans in North America, the umbrella group of breakaway churches, will defend the law at oral arguments.

Jim Oakes, co-chair of the Anglican District of Virginia, which is part of CANA, said Protestants’ concerns are not relevant to the lawsuit.

“It’s almost like they’re hyperventilating, saying, `This will destroy hierarchical churches,”’ he said. “It will do nothing of the sort.”

The property dispute is expected to take years to settle; Oakes said CANA has already paid $2 million in legal fees.

_ Daniel Burke

Canadian Lutherans ordain openly gay married man

TORONTO (RNS) Despite stern warnings and threats of discipline, a Lutheran church north of Toronto on Friday (May 16) ordained an openly gay man who is legally married to another man.

Lionel Ketola, 45, will now serve as associate pastor at Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Newmarket, Ontario, and will also assume the non-official title of “ambassador of reconciliation.”

It was the first Lutheran ordination of a non-celibate gay pastor in Canada, following at least 14 such ordinations in the United States.

“It’s a privilege, but it’s about so much more than one individual,” a beaming Ketola said just before the ordination ceremony, held before a packed church. “It’s about claiming justice within the church.”

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada, to which Holy Cross Lutheran belongs, narrowly defeated an attempt last summer to allow churches to bless same-sex unions. It does not allow for the ordination of practicing gay or lesbian clergy.

In the lead-up to the ordination, the bishop for the church’s eastern synod, the Rev. Michael Pryse, warned that Holy Cross would face disciplinary action if the ordination and hiring of Ketola went ahead.

“I am fearful that your actions have the potential to do irreparable damage to the already fragile connecting fabric of our church,” Pryse wrote in one letter posted on the denomination’s Web site.

He also sent a separate letter to Lutheran ministers telling them they would be subject to disciplinary action if they took part in the ordination service in an official capacity.

_ Ron Csillag

Texas megachurch pastor charged in sex sting

(RNS) A minister to married adults at Prestonwood Baptist Church, a prominent Dallas-area Southern Baptist megachurch, has resigned after being charged in an Internet sex sting.

Joe Barron, 52, was charged Friday (May 16) with soliciting a minor online, the Associated Press reported. Police said he had communications of a sexual nature with undercover officers posing as a 13-year-old girl for a couple of weeks and then drove almost 200 miles to meet her in Bryan, Texas, where he was arrested.

“We are appalled by the disgraceful and grievous actions and subsequent arrest of one of our ministers,” Prestonwood pastor Jack Graham, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, told his congregation Sunday. “I am so very, very sorry for the injury this has caused to individuals and certainly our testimony in the community.”

Graham said the church requested and received Barron’s resignation.

“We have taken a hit from the enemy, a huge hit, and the Scripture is true,” Graham said. “Satan is roaming about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, but I’m certain by the grace and the power of Jesus that we will rise above this dark hole.”

A written statement from the church in Plano, Texas, added that staffers will cooperate with the police investigation.

“We have not had record or knowledge of prior improprieties, or observed any inappropriate behavior in the 18 months Joe Barron has served on our staff as one of our ministers to married adults,” it reads.

_ Adelle M. Banks

Vatican reports highest growth in Africa

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Africa is the Catholic Church’s region of biggest growth, with rising numbers of faithful, clergy and religious orders, according to Vatican statistics. The church’s growth in the Americas has largely stalled, meanwhile, and Europe’s share of the world’s largest church continues to decline.

The findings appeared in the Sunday (May 18) issue of the official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, in an article summarizing the new edition of the church’s statistical yearbook, which features a survey of worldwide Catholicism in the period 2000-2006.

Though the world’s proportion of baptized Catholics remained roughly the same over the seven-year period, amounting to 17.3 percent of the world’s 1.1 billion people in 2006, its geographical distribution shifted markedly.

The most notable change was in Africa, whose share of the worldwide church rose from 12.4 percent to 14 percent. Even more dramatic was the increase in church personnel there. While the world total of Catholic priests barely increased, and the number of female religious actually fell, the church in Africa reported nearly a quarter more priests and almost one-sixth more nuns after seven years.

The Western Hemisphere held steady with about half of the world’s Catholics and 30 percent of its priests. Asia’s share of the world’s Catholic population also remained unchanged at 10 percent, yet the continent produced an increasing share of the world’s priests and nuns.

The church continued to shrink in its traditional heartland, Europe, whose portion of the world’s Catholics fell from 26.8 percent to 25 percent, and where the number of priests declined by nearly 6 percent.

In an indication of future trends, fewer than one-fifth of all men preparing for the Catholic priesthood were studying at European seminaries at the end of 2006, the study showed, down from nearly a quarter in 2000.

_ Francis X. Rocca

Quote of the Day: Pope Benedict XVI

(RNS) “The union of love, based on matrimony between a man and a woman, which makes up the family, represents a good for all society that cannot be substituted by, confused with, or compared to other types of unions.”

_ Pope Benedict XVI, speaking on Friday (May 16), one day after the California Supreme Court ruled that gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right to marriage. It was not immediately clear if Benedict was directly referencing the California ruling in his remarks.

KRE/PH END RNS