Thursday, February 10, 2005
Virginia's Senate dodged a church-state bullet
From the RoundTable blog
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Lauren Stanley ±
Cox is a retired Episcopal priest in Lexington. Stanley is associate rector of St. Alban's Episcopal Church in Annandale. Virginia's state Senate dodged a bullet this week that the Senate seemed to have been aiming straight for its foot. In the end, it sidestepped telling churches how to govern themselves.
Senate Bill 1305 was the bullet. It purported to clarify the rights of congregations to hold onto their property while withdrawing from parent entities, like dioceses.
Supporters called it a matter of justice for congregations. Opponents charged that the government would interfere in ecclesiastical disputes, such as over the ordination in the Episcopal Church of a bishop living in a same-sex relationship. Indeed, the proposer of the bill, Sen. William Mims, R-Loudoun, belongs to a congregation in which that action is widely unpopular.
As dangerous as governmental interference in church arguments is, the basic issue goes far deeper.
By setting forth the conditions under which local congregations may secede from their denomination, the bill would have altered the fundamental relationship of all congregations with the denomination itself. If the bill had passed, the commonwealth would be changing the very governance of these church bodies.
And that, if nothing else, is blatantly unconstitutional.
Out of their varying understandings of the Bible, Christian denominations organize themselves according to one of two general doctrines.
Without going into the theology behind each - and there is much, developed over centuries - one is that each local entity (the congregation) stands on its own. It has the right to set its own beliefs, call its own clergy, and own its own property. This ideal developed in the Reformation and characterizes congregational churches like the United Church of Christ, and traditionally typifies Baptist churches.
The other doctrine understands the local entity to belong to a larger body. The Roman Catholic Church epitomes this ecclesiology. Some, like the Episcopal Church, take a "catholic" point of view while including "congregational" elements. Its fundamental understanding, however, remains that the local parish is inherently part of a larger whole, such as a diocese which itself in turn is part of something greater.
These balances were worked out by each denomination over long periods of time and after careful thought, theological reflection and, yes, prayer.
It is for this reason that the election of a controversial bishop, who heads the diocese, can become so factious. In fact, the actions of the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A., and of dioceses in its sister church in Canada over blessings of same-sex relationships, have prompted an international re-examination of basic relationships within the worldwide Anglican Communion, of which the American and Canadian churches are a part.
For the legislature of one state, then, to tell local congregations what they may or may not do plunges the government into extraordinarily tricky ecclesiastical waters where it has no business and even less expertise. The bill at hand would have essentially declared that all denominations in Virginia adopt congregational modes of governance (unless some legal document existed precluding it).
In other words, the state would be dictating how the church runs itself, regardless of what the church has to say.
Thank goodness, wiser heads prevailed, and so did the Bill of Rights. But the near-miss illustrates why, on venturing into matters relating to religion, the government runs into tremendous dangers.
For the government is shooting a legislative blunderbuss where bullets can unintentionally fly anywhere, including into its own foot, or worse, through the heart of religious organizations.
