The Lead

In the Diocese of San Joaquin, letters have been sent to nine parishes in the diocese inviting the leaders of the parishes to arrange the transition of all properties and assets back to the Episcopal Church.

The nine parishes are St. Columba, Fresno; St. Francis, Turlock; St. John’s, Porterville; St. John’s, Stockton; St. Paul’s, Bakersfield; St.Paul’s, Visalia; St. James, Sonora; St. Michael’s, Ridgecrest; Redeemer and Hope, Delano.

Bishop Jerry A. Lamb reflected, “I hope these churches will respond to this invitation, and that we can begin a conversation to move forward with this transition.”
Earlier this year, two landmark decisions were issued by the California Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal that clearly uphold the Episcopal Church and its Dioceses’ property rights. These cases held that a parish church’s disaffiliation with the general church caused parish property to revert to the general church. In other recent activity the Episcopal Church of St. John’s in Petaluma, California was returned to the Diocese of Northern California. St. Paul’s Church in Modesto has entered into agreement to return its property to the Diocese of San Joaquin on July 1, 2009

Download the press release here.

Comments (1)

Thank you Bishop Lamb for offering a genial path. I hope they take it.

Posted by Michael Russell | June 13, 2009 12:54 PM

Add your comments

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

Reminder: At Episcopal Café, we hope to establish an ethic of transparency by requiring all contributors and commentators to make submissions under their real names. For more details see our Feedback Policy.

Name:

Email Address:

URL:

Remember personal info?

Comments: (you may use HTML tags for style)

CATEGORIES

Organizations