Four retired Episcopal bishops have issued a challenge to their own denomination, asking where church leaders are finding the funds to mount simultaneous lawsuits against fleeing conservative congregations.
In an open letter dated July 14 to the church's 40-member Executive Council, the bishops called the lawsuits "an outrageous example of exacerbating rather than reconciling the divisions in this church."
Thousands of Episcopalians have departed since the 2003 consecration of the openly homosexual New Hampshire Bishop V. Gene Robinson. Numerous congregations in several states, including several in Northern Virginia, are holding onto their property, provoking legal responses from the denomination, which says it alone holds title to church properties and assets....