Church added to Connecticut Church Map

We've added a new church to the Connecticut Church Map. Not really a "new" church, but one that's been in the news for a number of years for standing for the truth of orthodox Christian belief:
Bishop Seabury Church, in Groton.

We thank God for this church and its leadership under Rev. Ron Gauss. He is a remarkable individual and I would encourage you to read this profile at Virtue Online.

Watertown Episcopal Church leaves denomination

In his 2007 Annual Report, Rev. Allyn Benedict ripped the modern Episcopal Church to shreds.

Significant news today in Connecticut's religion and culture wars: Christ Church in Watertown has left the Episcopal Church.

It was the last Sunday service at Christ Church. Unable to go "further in a church that continued in a false gospel," the entire congregation, including the rector and church leaders, will sever ties with the national Episcopal Church and reform under a new name: New Hope Anglican Church.

One of the "Connecticut six," the half-dozen churches in the state diocese that disagree with national leadership on departure of scripture, including the appointment of a gay bishop, the congregation will trade its historic building on the town green for a free community room at the Thomaston Savings Bank around the corner.

The Sunday service will be held at the bank, starting Jan. 6, until they find or build another house of worship.

"We need to celebrate today, but we need to recognize there is a dying," the Rev. Allyn Benedict said in his final homily at the church. Reading off an overhead projector, church members sang hymns enthusiastically, clapping and raising hands in acknowledging their faith. They hugged one another, wishing peace.

Read the rest here from the Courant. Channel 8 reports that they will give up the $7 million property.

Breakup of the Episcopal Church begins in earnest

Ridley and Latimer meet their end.


And so it begins, although it won't happen in our Cute Little State.

A California diocese overwhelmingly voted on Saturday to sever ties with The Episcopal Church, becoming the first diocese in the church's history to do so.

Despite warning from the head of the national church, delegates of the Diocese of San Joaquin voted 173-22 to secede and realign with the Anglican Province of the Southern Cone.

"This is the first time, I believe, that a diocese has finally said 'enough' in terms of the liberal theology of The Episcopal Church," said Bishop John David Schofield of the San Joaquin diocese before the vote.

Episcopal Church seeks to intervene in lawsuit against Bristol church

The saga continues:

The national church has filed papers in court seeking intervenor status in a lawsuit against Trinity Episcopal Church brought by the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut. It accuses the Rev. Donald Helmandollar and church leaders of trespassing on church property.


Members of the Trinity parish voted to leave the Episcopal Church last May because of disagreement over the 2003 election of an openly gay New Hampshire bishop and the church's blessing of same-sex unions. Around the same time, Trinity members voted to join the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a self-described mission of the conservative Anglican Church of Nigeria.

Read the rest here in the Courant.

More on Trinity Episcopal Church in Bristol

Thanks to the sharp-eyed anonymous reader who alerted us to the fact that the Episcopal Diocese lawsuit against Rev. Helmandollar and church vestry members was mentioned today in the Bristol Press. (Link unavailable.) Other folks are now picking it up as well:

Hartford Courant (an AP story which was also picked up by Channel 3 and some newspapers)

Channel 8

Channel 30

I'm sure we'll be hearing about this one for months to come. I'll be interested to see just how deeply the Connecticut courts want to enmesh themselves in matters of church governance. Oddly, there are actually sections of our State statutes (see Sect. 33-266) dealing with the polity of the Episcopal Church:

The manner of conducting the parish, the qualifications for membership of the parish and the manner of acquiring and terminating such membership, the number of the officers of the parish, their powers and duties and the manner of their appointment, the time of holding the annual meeting of the parish and the manner of notification thereof and the manner of calling special meetings of the parish shall be such as are provided and prescribed by the constitution, canons and regulations of said Protestant Episcopal Church in this state.

Here's my short list of questions:

• Will the State follow this statute, and is it even constitutional for Connecticut to have legislated in this manner?
• What if the Episcopal Church has severed itself from the Anglican Fellowship worldwide?
• What if Bishop Smith has acted improperly in taking this step?
• In other words, should a Connecticut Superior Court judge be deciding this or should the Episcopal or Anglican bishops?

Connecticut Episcopal Bishop reportedly sues priest, church members

In the latest chapter of this saga, the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut has reportedly brought a lawsuit against the Rev. Donald Helmandollar and ten other persons for trespass and other claims. Although I might have missed it, but I haven't seen this hit the media outlets yet. However, a PDF copy of a civil complaint brought in New Britain Superior Court has been posted on the Connecticut Six blog.

It's quite possible that the mainstream media is unaware of the suit because the suit papers have not been returned to the Court yet. Under Connecticut practice, a lawsuit papers are first served upon the defendants and only then are they filed in the Court. The lawsuit bears a return date of September 11 and would not technically be pending in the New Britain Superior Court until a couple of days after that. For this reason suit papers are sometimes served on people as a negotiating tactic in hopes the persons sued will wish to avoid going to Court altogether.

Stay tuned...

New York Times covers Bristol Episcopal controversy

“I’m ashamed to be an Episcopalian,” said Father Helmandollar, who has a certificate in Anglican studies from Yale Divinity School and two master’s degrees. He said he grew up the youngest of seven children in West Virginia coal country, and lived on the streets for two years after dropping out of ninth grade. A father of three, he spent 20 years in the Navy and 17 more as a military contractor before pursuing a career in the clergy.

He said he was dismayed that the church’s philosophy of inclusion did not seem to extend to conservative factions like his own, complaining, “It includes everybody except us.”

“In the last 50 years, as society has changed, the church has changed,” he added. “It has become more revisionist and more liberal.” While he could accept those changes on theological grounds, he said, the recent quarrel over sexuality “has turned out to be the tripwire.”

With the showdown looming, banners made by parishioners have been taken down from Trinity’s nave for safekeeping, and Father Helmandollar has packed up some books he kept in his office. Bank accounts and valuables, he said, have been left alone until an agreement or court order decides their fate.

Read it all here.

Connecticut Episcopal Bishop defrocks priest

Bishop Seabury would have a hard time figuring this one out.

What was this man of the cloth's crime? Did he steal from the collection plate? Or, perhaps, was he found drunk and disorderly on a public street, unshaven and snarling? Did he, one wonders, leave his wife and family for a man and begin a homosexual and very public relationship with him, expressing a desire for legal marriage between two men?

Actually no: in this priest's denomination, that last one qualifies you to be made a bishop.

The pastor in question is the Rev. Donald Helmandollar of Trinity Episcopal Church in Bristol. The Courant explains:

The pastor of a Bristol parish that voted itself out of the Episcopal Church in May has been removed from ministry by the Connecticut Diocese, and church members have been given until July 8 to vacate their building.

Connecticut Bishop Andrew Smith said the Rev. Donald Lee Helmandollar "renounced his orders" and was deposed - the equivalent of being defrocked - on June 13 by the clerical members of the diocesan standing committee. Smith said he has since written to leaders at Trinity Episcopal Church informing them that the diocese intends to take over the property July 8.

The diocese's decision to claim the property was not unexpected: The same scenario is playing itself out in other parts of the nation as the Episcopal Church grapples with the fallout from the 2003 election of the openly gay Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire.

That decision has united conservative congregations in the U.S., such as Trinity, with like-minded African churches that believe the Episcopal Church's liberal position on homosexuality goes against the Anglican beliefs inherited from the Church of England.

Trinity was the first parish in Connecticut to split with the wider Episcopal Church. The congregation voted in January to join the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, a self-described mission of the conservative Anglican Church of Nigeria, but a formal announcement of the split didn't come until May 27.

Trinity has since hired a lawyer and intends to fight the diocese's order to vacate the property, Helmandollar said Friday. He also said he has continued to lead worship services in the church, despite being notified by Smith that he is no longer a priest in the Episcopal Church.

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church says that the numbers of those leaving the Church is small. She is probably right. Many of those who are concerned over biblical orthodoxy left a long time ago for more welcoming shores. Those that are leaving now are those who felt led by God to hang in and fight to turn the ship around before it heads over the falls.

Tags: Connecticut, Christian, Christianity, Episcopal, Anglican, Bristol

Bristol parish becomes part of Nigerian Church

Trinity Episcopal Church in Bristol, one of the "Connecticut Six," has become part of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America. This is truly a momentous story:

Trinity Episcopal Church in Bristol, as of Sunday, became part of the Convocation of Anglicans in North America, said Trinity's rector, the Rev. Donald Helmandollar. The convocation is a self-described mission of the Nigerian church serving Episcopalians who hold traditional beliefs.

"We have remained with the Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church has demonstrated, continues to demonstrate, that they are walking apart from the communion," Helmandollar said.
Trinity and five other parishes had sued Connecticut Bishop Andrew Smith in 2005 seeking several million dollars in damages. They say he violated their civil and property rights after they tried to break away from his authority because he supported the election of Gene Robinson, bishop of New Hampshire. A federal judge dismissed the case last year and the parishes are appealing.

Some parishes in Virginia have aligned themselves with the Nigerian church.

The Episcopal Church has splintered since the 2003 consecration of Robinson. The denomination has adopted a general acceptance of gays.

Helmandollar said the congregation voted nearly unanimously to make the move because its members see the Episcopal Church abandoning "the orthodox tenets" of Christian belief.

So says the AP, but you have to love the ridiculous headline: "After schism, Connecticut church becomes ally of Nigerian sect." Given that there are probably more Anglicans in Nigeria nowadays than in Merry Olde England itself, I'm not sure whether to chalk up that kind of thing to ignorance of religion, ignorance of the facts on the ground, or patronizing. There's also the sneer factor of putting the phrase "the orthodox tenets" in quotes.

And they say the mainstream media doesn't "get" religion!

Rearranging the furniture on the deck of the Titanic

Powerful commentary by Canon Gary L'Hommedieu on the Episcopal Church and the destruction of that church and society in general by guilt-driven leftists: I'm Guilty: You Repent - The Spiritual Impulse of Liberalism.

This is not fluff; it is real meat, and deserving of your time. Here's a statement of the problem:

If anyone thinks the present spiritual malaise is mainly about The Episcopal Church, or mainline Christianity in America, then I daresay they're naïve about spiritual warfare - not to mention reality outside their window. The demons that have ransacked TEC (to take a single example) are the same ones which have targeted the West as a whole. Indeed, the assault upon orthodox Christianity only makes strategic sense as part of a massive assault upon civilization as we know it.

The Episcopal Church makes an important study as a group that sold itself to play in a high stakes game before it was clear what the game was. Here we see the promiscuous quality of the affluent American Left that emerged from the Viet Nam era. The time was an eschaton of sorts. Here at last was a generation uniquely qualified to fix and save everything that was broken or oppressed, and it literally jumped into bed with any cause that promised a moment's notoriety.

Here at last was the generation qualified to overhaul a 450-year-old liturgy - one universally acknowledged as embodying the spirit of a global communion. That was just the beginning. From now on the visionaries would declare open season on any aspect of the church's tradition that could be tinkered with in such a way as to leave signs of their tinkering, all in the name of "liberation".

What's driving their tinkering?

Today's liberals live a pretty good life, and they feel bad about it. They have more of everything than any generation before them, and they sense this is unfair. But rather than repent and become Gandhians, they remove Christmas trees from the village green, or put bike lanes on four or five roads in their town. They might tighten up rules on what people can eat, drink, or smoke, and when. Are these the abuses that have been crying out for redress for the welfare of the community? Probably not. More likely they are the result of conscience-stricken busybodies scanning the horizon for opportunities to impose their heightened awareness on others.

Don't forget the name of the disease: I'm guilty; now you need to repent.