Political implications to Episcopal Church court ruling

From the Washington Post-

There's big news from the Virginia Supreme Court today, which Post religion writer Michelle Boorstein reports has sided with the Episcopal Church in its long-running dispute over church property with conservative breakaway congregations.

It's a fascinating case that had the court parsing a 19th century law to determine whether the congregations had a fundamental division. The court's opinion potentially impacts millions of dollars in church property and could play a role in the national schism within the Episcopal Church over the consecration of gay bishops and the performing of same-sex marriages. (The justices remanded the case back to Fairfax Circuit Court.)

The case and its surrounding issues is also one that has some long tentacles into the Virginia political world. As Attorney General, Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) in 2008 joined the case on the side of the breakaway congregations, defending the Virginia statute on church splits when the Church argued it was unconstitutional. Church lawyers had contended that the statute meant the state was meddling in religious disputes to determine when a church has experienced a fundamental divide, a violation of church and state.

McDonnell opposed that point of view, defending the statute before the Fairfax Circuit Court, intervening while the case was still at the local level, in a move legal experts had characterized as unusual.

The Fairfax judge agreed with McDonnell that the law was constitutional and then sided with the breakaway church -- the latter half of the ruling was overturned by today's Supreme Court ruling. But McDonnell's not the only former attorney general who's been entangled in this issue.

More here-

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/virginiapolitics/2010/06/episcopal_church_ruling.html