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Alan Wisdom, vice president of the IRD, says it is hard to estimate how many mainline congregations want out because those that make their intentions known leave themselves open under canon law and civil law to have the property seized. The legal wrangling over All Saints, which officially began in 2000, has already cost the parish $250,000 in legal fees.

In addition, some All Saints members who did not agree with the split formed a new congregation and claim legal rights to the worship facility and other assets. All Saints conservatives informally offered the old church building, cemetery, and rectory to the minority that chose to stay in ECUSA. Conservatives would keep the new, larger building and the rest of the property. The land and building they offered the ECUSA congregation were worth $2 million. The offer was rejected.

The All Saints conservatives saw the state appeals court reverse a lower court ruling in their favor and likely face a trial in circuit court next year.

While the IRD's position is that conservative churches should aim to stay and fight in the denomination, Wisdom called on denominational bureaucrats to show some grace: "It is not becoming for a denomination to hold a congregation against its will when they feel their conscience has been violated."

The All Saints conflict has an added twist, in that All Saints actually agrees with its immediate governing body—the Diocese of South Carolina—on most theological issues.

At the United Methodist church in Gove, there was not $10 million in real estate at stake, but generations of interfamily relationships in jeopardy.

"This is a county of less than 3,000 persons, and most of these people are related to one another by blood or marriage or long-standing friendships," Pat Ault-Duell, administrative head of the Kansas West Conference, said in a written statement. The schism caused "very deep hurts and a large sense of betrayal," she said.

On May 25, two weeks after the majority faction elected to leave the denomination, further severing occurred when denominational leaders showed up unannounced to conduct Sunday worship. Though the group of 70 had voted to leave the national church, it continued to use the church facility for worship.

"The members of the splinter group were free to leave the denomination," Ault-Duell said, "but they were not free to take property built for and used by the United Methodist Church."

Similar to Episcopal canons, the Methodist Book of Discipline states that all properties accumulated in the name of the UMC are to be held in trust for use by the denomination.

An argument ensued—and Ault-Duell called the remaining members to the parking lot for an ad hoc worship service.

On that day families were divided, Vaughn Tuttle recalls. Children elected to leave the UMC, while parents and grandparents stayed with the denomination. "My son's girlfriend, her family left," Tuttle says. "Her grandmother came over and said, 'Hey, are you going with us?' and she said, 'No.'"

Six weeks later, the Kansas West Conference froze the assets of the local church, saying the Gove church was subject to the denomination's "trust clause."

Paul Woodall, presiding pastor of Gove UMC when the body elected to split, says he did not think the trust clause applied to the church because the phrase was not in the deed. Likewise, Woodall says, the congregation believed the trust relationship described in the Book of Discipline referred to a mutual obligation to uphold both church doctrine and church law.

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September 2004, Vol. 48, No. 9