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I guess the legal point here would be to determine whether “a division” has occurred within the Episcopal Church, and you’re right that the yammerings of the Dioceses of Pittsburgh, Fort Worth, etc., will contribute to the impression that this is a schism in the national church, rather than a few discontented dioceses breaking away. But here’s my question: There has obviously NOT been a breakup of the Anglican Communion; that’s the whole point of what these Dioceses are trying to do. They don’t want to be in the Episcopal Church, but do want to be in the Anglican Communion. So, one wonders if there’s really been a schism.

The reason that question is important is because the statute does NOT say that it applies where the churches simply decide to leave one denomination and join another. The Methodists in Virginia apparently had a big dust-up in the late 1800s, and the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia ruled that this statute was unconstitutional to the extent that it attempted to defeat a legitimate trust set up for the use of one denomination. Finley v. Brent, 87 Va. 103, 12 S.E. 228 (Va. 1890). So, as Frank points out, if this really is a schism in the denomination, the congregation gets to vote on which side to take, but they don’t have the right to simply leave and play for another team. This could get interesting.

Part B of the statute applies to individual congregations not affiliated with denominations: “If a division has heretofore occurred or shall hereafter occur in a congregation whose property is held by trustees which, in its organization and government, is a church or society entirely independent of any other church or general society, a majority of the members of such congregation, entitled to vote by its constitution as existing at the time of the division, or where it has no written constitution, entitled to vote by its ordinary practice or custom, may decide the right, title, and control of all property held in trust for such congregation.” This obviously doesn’t apply to this situation, because the one thing these churches and dioceses aren’t claiming is that they are as independent as hogs on ice, though they are acting that way.