Greetings,

   The recent church departures in the PC(USA) have hit the
national press with a review article from the Washington Post.  I
didn’t see anything new in the articles, other than the fact that it
was in a newspaper from a city that did not currently (to my knowledge
and their reporting) have a church looking at leaving.  And the
article did not make the distinction about the Los Angeles cases that
those are divided congregations not congregations united in departing
the PC(USA).

   One other thing different about the article was the large
number of quotes from Jerry Van Marter from the PC(USA) news
service.  Previous articles have relied mostly on PC(USA) press
releases.  However, Jerry does say that “… he could not recall
one instance in which the denomination lost a legal dispute with a
congregation over church property.”  I guess they don’t consider
the Ridgebury Presbyterian Church case from Orange County, New York, settled yet.

The full article is “Presbyterians fight for custody of the church.”