It matters how an Episcopal diocese came into being

The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh's diocesan convention voted yesterday to secede from the Episcopal Church. Many conservative Episcopalians take the view (erroneous, in my judgment) that any Episcopal diocese can secede  According to these folks, a diocese voluntarily 'joins' TEC and can voluntarily withdraw at will.

This view, however, seems to presuppose that a given diocese was formerly an independent, free-standing association or entity that existed outside TEC, and which mutually agreed with TEC to change that status. Think of the Republic of Texas joining the Union in 1845 following nine years as an independent state. (Or as was half-seriously proposed a number of years ago, Canada's Western provinces deciding to become the 51st etc. states of the United States.) 

A handful of Episcopal dioceses may have originated in this way. My guess, however, is that for most dioceses the reality is otherwise. Many Episcopal dioceses originated, not as free-standing churches like the Republic of Texas, but because Episcopalians 'colonized' mission territory as an extension of the existing Episcopal Church, eventually petitioning for full diocesan status in the church.  This would be comparable to, say, the states of Oklahoma, Arizona, and Alaska: If memory serves, each of those states was colonized by Americans as an extension of the United States (I'm not going to get into the rights-of-indigenous-peoples argument here), and later sought and received full statehood status from the Congress.

Ironically, two of the present cases involve the Episcopal dioceses of San Jose and, in all likelihood, Fort Worth.  Each began when it was carved out of an existing diocese by authority of the General Convention. In that regard, these dioceses are like the state of Maine, which was carved out of the existing state of Massachusetts by Congress as part of the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

In the coming months, it will be useful to keep  in mind these distinctions of origin, I think.

Comments

[C. Wingate]

The problem with this logic is, as usual, that it shoots down all Anglican legitimacy. All one needs to do is translate this to "see of Canterbury established by Roman Catholic Church". All corporate legitimacy of ECUSA dioceses traces back, through one route or another, to the bishops of the Anglican schism, and thence, through St. Augustine's throne, to Rome. Since the Anglican schism was corporately illegitimate, that's the end of that. Well, yes, they got away with it; but surely there has to be a better legal argument than that.

And anyway, the real issue isn't legitimacy, but 815's desire to keep the property in the first place. That's where the GM analogy really breaks down, because God and GM's stockholders do not really serve well as analogues to one another. GM does have stockholder votes, but last I checked, God's will in this is not uncontested. (And indeed, the argument is that 815 is engaged in a kind of gross mismanagement against the plainly revealed direction of God. YMMV.) There is no way that 815 or the HoB could possibly support a claim of being the sole reps for God, and really, they don't. The denomination could resolve this by working out a division; but partly out of the hubris of various parties trying to pretend that they aren't schismatic, partly out of this defective corporatist model of the church, and partly out of a desire to injure the conservative cause, they won't do it. Sure, 815 has legal traction due to the legal details, but only a partisan would mistake this for some sort of ecclesiological or moral justification.