To date, St. Andrews and its priest, Fr. Robert Hackendorf, have successfully resisted the attempt by the diocese to take the parish through legal action, when action was first taken by the diocese in July 2006 and again in September.

In September, the judge dismissed that part of the lawsuit where the diocese was suing individual members of the parish vestry, and also denied a request for a preliminary injunction against the local church. The lawsuit against the parish and the rector was allowed to continue.

"It is this lawsuit which the larger church corporation now seeks to join," said Dague to VOL.

This move by The Episcopal Church is the first such action against a local parish since the newly elected Mrs. Schori took office in November of 2006. Early in 2006 a similar attempt by The Episcopal Church was made to intervene and assert claims against three parishes in the Diocese of Los Angeles Diocese. However it was dismissed by the trial court judge. "Neutral principles" are strongly upheld in the State of California. Those cases are now on appeal.

Shortly before Mrs. Schori took office last fall, David Booth Beers, the presiding bishop's attorney announced that local parishes that attempted to leave their dioceses or the national church would meet with strong resistance.

This is the first lawsuit since the Diocese of Los Angeles cases where the Episcopal Church has resorted to suing local parishes.

"With more parishes leaving the Episcopal Church, it is widely expected by legal experts on both sides that the national church will file more lawsuits like this one," said Raymond Dague, the attorney for St. Andrews. "I expect that they will be no more successful here than they were in the California litigation. Still, this is all very sad, because it reveals how mean-spirited the folks on the other side of this issue can be. This is a long way from how a church should behave."

"Mrs. Schori and the parish are on opposite sides of a controversy over homosexual bishops and the authority of Scripture which has for years engulfed the Episcopal Church. St. Andrews adheres to the traditional teaching of the church that sex outside of marriage is prohibited by the Bible, while the Bishop and the leaders of the larger church have been outspoken supporters of the actively homosexual bishop of New Hampshire," said Dague.

Over the last three and a half years, twenty-two of 38 primates of the World Wide Anglican Communion have declared broken or impaired communion with the Episcopal Church of the United States of America (ECUSA) because of this issue, and the vast majority of the Communion believes ECUSA has abandoned the faith and practice of Anglicanism as well as historic Christian teaching.

"Perhaps she needs to educate me further on the theology of her shalom," said Dague to VirtueOnline.

The Episcopal Church has an estimated one third of a billion dollars in endowments to fight lawsuits.

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