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Injunction Against Former Accokeek Rector Lifted
The Christian Challenge (Washington, DC)
Auburn Traycik
July 12, 2003
An injunction barring the orthodox former rector of Maryland's Christ Church, Accokeek, the Rev. Samuel L. Edwards, from conducting services on or close to the Episcopal parish was dissolved July 11 by the judge who first imposed it.
Acting on a motion filed by counsel for the rector and vestry of Christ Church, Judge Peter J. Messitte of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland lifted the injunction which resulted from a lawsuit filed by former Acting Washington Episcopal Bishop Jane Dixon, who sought to remove Edwards as the parish's rector.
Messitte's October 2001 decision in Dixon's favor was affirmed by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in May 2002.
Messitte's agreement now to remove the order barring Edwards from holding himself out as an Episcopal Church (ECUSA) clergyman or conducting services on or near Christ Church's property is based on changed circumstances in the case and the absence of opposition to the motion to dissolve the injunction.
In June 2002, Edwards left ECUSA for the Anglican Province of Christ the King
(APCK), a Continuing Anglican body (while Christ Church opted to remain in the Episcopal diocese, having secured some assurances from new liberal Washington Bishop John Chane; the parish is now led by conservative cleric, Fr. Stephen Arpee).
In addition, Dixon, the plaintiff, is no longer ecclesiastic authority in the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, a necessary condition for the injunction.
"While Mrs. Dixon would not agree to the motion, she did not oppose it, essentially, we feel, because she no longer had standing to do so, based on the Fourth Circuit's Decision," said Canon Law Institute (CLI) Director, the Rev. Charles Nalls, who had been handling the civil case as private counsel for the defendants.
The lifting of the injunction puts a final point on a chapter that conservatives saw as starkly exposing the escalating persecution of ECUSA's faithful.
"We are satisfied that this particular matter has been put to rest," he said.
He went on to thank co-counsel Rufus Peckham, assisting counsel Mark Jakubik of CLI (on briefs), as well as John Hollister, advisory counsel, and Kenneth R. Matticks, who represented the Episcopal Bishops of Fort Worth, Jack Iker, and Pittsburgh, Robert Duncan, in a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Fr. Edwards and the vestry.
Christ Church's Senior Warden, Barbara Sturman, had not yet responded at this writing to TCC's request for comment.
For his part, Fr. Edwards said: "I'm glad that it's over finally. It was silly that [the injunction] stayed in place as long as it did. And there were aspects of it that were ridiculous," such as the judge's demand that he not come within 300 feet of the church property.
"At the time of the injunction, I was still an Episcopal priest, but judges seem to have a propensity for redefining reality these days," he went on. "Once I decided that being an Episcopal priest was not a good idea any more, there was no reason not to lift the injunction a year ago."
-Far-Reaching Impact-
Yet, while that task has now been accomplished, Nalls said the main impact of Dixon v. Edwards remains far-reaching. He added that, "in view of recent events in the Episcopal Church, as well as in other denominations, this is by far not the last of such cases CLI anticipates."
"We've been inundated with questions as to what this means for [parish] property, and the answer is not much," Nalls told TCC. But it means a great deal for "the prerogatives of episcopal authority."
In Dixon v. Edwards, both District and Circuit judges backed the bishop's claim that she, as top authority for ECUSA in her diocese, was empowered to "interpret" church canons. In this case, Dixon discerned them to mean that she could intervene against Edwards' call as Christ Church's rector at any time after the 30-day time limit cited by the canons. Over two dozen ECUSA bishops had supported this contention about a diocesan bishop's authority in a friend-of-the-court brief.
This decision "sets up, civilly, far more power in an Episcopal bishop than is contemplated in ECUSA canons," said Nalls. "We heard from the court that the bishop becomes the absolute local authority on interpreting canon."
And "at a baseline level," he added, "the vestry is in the same position as it was before it started. It didn't get the priest that it called."
The vestry maintained that it carefully followed canonical procedures in calling Edwards, who was then illegally refused by Dixon. Fifty-three days after the canonical 30-day review period, Dixon decided that Edwards, the former executive director of Forward in Faith, North America, and a priest in good standing in the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, was not "duly qualified" to serve in the D.C. diocese. Among the disqualifying points was that he had said some harshly critical things about the heavily liberalized national church, and could accept her as a bishop only administratively, not sacramentally--a view held by a few other clergy already serving in Washington.
Edwards, who now leads a Maryland APCK mission, St. Mary the Virgin, announced his departure from ECUSA on June 27, 2002. At the time, he said in part that: "I now believe that, beyond a reasonable doubt, [ECUSA] is neither desirous of reform from within nor capable of reform from without. Indeed, the evidence indicates that, while some people of good will remain within it, the institution taken as a whole is unremittingly hostile to any calls to halt and reverse its decline from authentic Christianity."
He also contended that Dixon's litigation had ended any pretense that the rule of law was still maintained in ECUSA.
"When the process of this lawsuit began, it was still possible for reasonable and hopeful people to imagine that the Episcopal Church at bottom was a constitutional church in which all its members--even bishops--were answerable to the rule of law in the Church under the Word of God," Fr. Edwards said last year.
Instead, ECUSA now "stands revealed as an institution that still wears the vesture of constitutionality, but which in reality has become a cartel of ecclesiastical despots who, because only they are allowed authoritatively and individually to interpret the law of the church, are themselves above that law." END
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