Diocese evicts Anglicans and sells church to Muslims

(Staff)  An Anglican priest in upstate New York was taken aback this March when he saw a crane removing the cross from the bell tower of his former church. He had expected the building to remain as a place of Christian worship.

After winning its lawsuit against the Church of the Good Shepherd in Binghamton, the Diocese of Central New York served notice on the parish rector and his wife. Because the diocese could take “immediate possession,” the Revs. Matt and Anne Kennedy had to vacate the church property -- including the rectory, which was home for themselves and their four children -- in a matter of days in January 2009.  

Two years earlier, in 2007, Good Shepherd had voted to leave the Episcopal Church and become a member of the Anglican Church in North America. Before any court proceedings began, Good Shepherd had offered to buy the church building and rectory but the diocese had refused.

The church buildings were padlocked and agents for the diocese even removed signs which referred the homeless to the new temporary location of the parish's weekly soup kitchen, The Shepherd’s Bowl. Through the generous help of other local churches, the Kennedys and their congregation were quickly relocated in much larger and better-equipped premises. Soon the Church of the Good Shepherd was boasting a higher Sunday attendance than ever (more than double what it had been when the Kennedys first came to town).

Yet many observers were outraged this spring when it was discovered that the diocese had sold the church building to a Muslim group. Interestingly, the diocese refused an offer from the ACNA congregation that was three times more than the amount it received from the sale of the building to the Muslim group. The Episcopal Church has a policy that buildings vacated by departing congregations can never be sold back to the original congregations.

In court the diocese's complaint had alleged that the parish was no longer using the property for the purposes for which its Episcopal ancestors had intended it. Yet critics wondered how the diocese could be seen to be upholding the purposes of the original donors by letting the property become an Islamic Awareness Centre.

Commentator Christopher Johnson observed: “Other churches have sold empty buildings. But to my knowledge, no allegedly-Christian church has ever gone to court to evict a thriving, Christian parish from its meeting house only to turn around and sell the building to non-Christians.”

The diocese has been losing members for more than a decade.