{"id":1737,"date":"2009-10-15T17:22:13","date_gmt":"2009-10-15T17:22:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/10\/va-supreme-court-agrees-to-hea.php"},"modified":"2009-10-15T17:22:13","modified_gmt":"2009-10-15T17:22:13","slug":"va-supreme-court-agrees-to-hea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/va-supreme-court-agrees-to-hea","title":{"rendered":"Va. Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Property Dispute Case"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) The Virginia Supreme Court has agreed to review a lower court decision that awarded property rights to nine conservative congregations that broke from the Episcopal Church in 2006.<br \/>\nA circuit court judge in Northern Virginia&#8217;s Fairfax County sided with the secessionist parishes last year, ruling that a Civil War-era state law allows churches to retain property when leaving a denomination in which a &#8220;division&#8221; has occurred.<br \/>\nThe Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Virginia maintain that the law infringes on their First Amendment rights to practice religion without government interference. They also argue that church laws stipulate that parish property is held in trust for the diocese and the denomination.<br \/>\nThe breakaway congregations include several large, historic churches whose property is estimated to be worth millions of dollars.<br \/>\n<em>By Daniel Burke<br \/>\nCopyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) The Virginia Supreme Court has agreed to review a lower court decision that awarded property rights to nine conservative congregations that broke from the Episcopal Church in 2006. A circuit court judge in Northern Virginia&#8217;s Fairfax County sided with the secessionist parishes last year, ruling that a Civil War-era state law allows churches to&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Va. Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Property Dispute Case<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/va-supreme-court-agrees-to-hea\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Va. Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Property Dispute Case\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(RNS) The Virginia Supreme Court has agreed to review a lower court decision that awarded property rights to nine conservative congregations that broke from the Episcopal Church in 2006. A circuit court judge in Northern Virginia&#8217;s Fairfax County sided with the secessionist parishes last year, ruling that a Civil War-era state law allows churches to&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/va-supreme-court-agrees-to-hea\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-10-15T17:22:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"mconsoli\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Va. 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A circuit court judge in Northern Virginia&#8217;s Fairfax County sided with the secessionist parishes last year, ruling that a Civil War-era state law allows churches to&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/va-supreme-court-agrees-to-hea","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-10-15T17:22:13+00:00","author":"mconsoli","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/va-supreme-court-agrees-to-hea","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/10\/va-supreme-court-agrees-to-hea","name":"Va. 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