St. Luke’s Anglican Church in La Crescenta is being returned Monday to the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. A judge ordered the move, and the state Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal.

The congregation voted to leave the national church three years ago. The diocese sued to retain the property.

In his sermon Sunday, the Rev. Rob Holman said fighting for principles is more important than a building.

The congregation has rented a chapel in Glendale and joined the new Anglican Church in North America, which was founded last year by breakaway Episcopal parishes.

The high court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from the St. James Anglican Church in the Diocese of Los Angeles. It is one of several dozen individual parishes and four dioceses nationwide that voted to split from the national church after the 2003 consecration of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire.

California courts have ruled that, while St. James had the right to split off from the larger church, the congregation could not take parish property with it, even though the parish has held the deed to the church for decades.

The Episcopal Church has argued that its rules bar anyone from walking away with denomination property, which often includes large endowments and land worth millions of dollars. The conservatives who want to separate say they have spent years, even decades, spending money to maintain and improve the buildings.

St. James is now allied with an Anglican diocese in Uganda.

The case is St. James Parish v. Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, 08-1579.

But she may have to give up the bayside sanctuary, where sunlight filters through watery blue stained-glass windows and glints off the flawless copper pipes of an organ purchased with parishioners’ tithes.

Kear is among theologically conservative breakaway Episcopalians fighting over parish property in a long-running rift over how churchgoers should interpret what the Bible says about gay relationships and many other issues.

St. James Anglican, in the Diocese of Los Angeles, is one of several dozen individual parishes and four dioceses nationwide that voted to split from the national church after the 2003 consecration of the first openly gay Episcopal bishop in New Hampshire.

“It’s not just about the building, it’s about the church,” said Kear, 70, who participates in group prayers for the property even while she says the congregation could continue without it.

The congregation may have to do just that. State courts have sided with the Los Angeles diocese throughout the five-year legal case, most recently in January. St. James has filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court in hopes that it might take up what has so far been a losing battle. St. James expects to know next month whether the nation’s highest court will take the case.

Two other seceding parishes – All Saints Church in Long Beach and St. David’s Church in North Hollywood – are parties in the lawsuit. A high court decision could also affect the Fresno-based Diocese of San Joaquin, one of the dioceses that voted to split off and is now involved in a complex property dispute with the national church.

Both sides make similar claims to the individual properties beyond their legal positions. Each has strong emotional and spiritual ties to the parishes, and views its interpretation of Scripture as the right one. Traditional Episcopalians believe that the Bible bars gay relationships; liberal Episcopalians emphasize social justice teachings of Scripture.

The Episcopal Church has argued that its rules bar anyone from walking away with denomination property, which often includes large endowments and land worth millions of dollars. Theological conservatives who want to separate say they have spent years, even decades, spending money to maintain and improve the buildings.

The 2-million-member denomination also includes many parishioners who disagree on the issues, but don’t see the rift as a reason to leave. Los Angeles Bishop Jon Bruno issued a letter to the diocese’s parishioners urging reconciliation.

“The Episcopal Church continues its long tradition of welcoming among its members a diversity of opinion, including loyal dissent. Our church remains a large tent expansive enough to include many views and voices while united in common prayer,” he wrote. “I ask each of us to keep working for reconciliation and renewal within this diocese.”

But reconciliation is a long shot.

Committing to leave the Episcopal Church five years ago and risking litigation was a somber decision for the St. James parish, especially because ties to the buildings run deep.

Kear remembers an expansion project about eight years ago when parishioners wrote prayers on scraps of paper and set them in the cement of the new sanctuary’s foundation.

There was “really a feeling (we were) building the new building,” Kear said.

Chad Sutton, a member of St. James’ lay leadership committee, said it’s particularly painful to hand the property to leaders with such different theological views.

“The prayers that have gone on at that altar – it almost gives you goosebumps,” Sutton said. “The saints that have gone before us and surrendered their lives, confessed their sins there – that has some significance.”

St. James has aligned with the Anglican Church of North America, a network of seceding Episcopal parishes and other congregations that was formed by theological conservatives as a rival to the Episcopal Church. At recent Sunday services in Newport Beach, parishioners voiced prayers for “our legal situation.”

Beyond awaiting word from the U.S. Supreme Court, there is no timeline for when the separationist parishes might hand over the grounds.

Sutton hopes, at least, it can wait a few months.

He and his wife are expecting a baby, and he said he knows exactly where they would like to have the child christened.

Leaders of the Episcopal Church, the Anglican province in the United States, insisted they were still committed to membership in the Anglican Communion. Some Anglican leaders, however, predicted the vote would break their fellowship.

The Episcopal General Convention, meeting in Anaheim, Calif., gave final approval to the measure during their once-every-three-years legislative assembly, which runs through Friday.

“God has called and may call” gays in committed relationships to “any ordained ministry” in the church, the resolution says.

Lay people voted 78-21 and clergy voted 77-19 to approve the measure. The House of Bishops had earlier voted 99-45 to adopt the statement. In the debates, delegates said they worried about the reaction of other Anglicans, but felt a duty to vote yes.

“I personally believe we had to do this,” said John Cheek, a delegate from the Diocese of Western Massachusetts, based in Springfield. “It’s the way we see the Gospel.”

Episcopalians caused an uproar in 2003 by consecrating the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Since then, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader, has struggled to prevent a permanent Anglican split.

Last month, breakaway Episcopal conservatives and other like-minded traditionalists formed a rival national province to the Episcopal Church called the Anglican Church in North America.

The new body includes four seceding Episcopal dioceses and is supported by several overseas Anglican leaders who have broken ties with the Episcopal Church.

The 77 million-member communion is the third-largest grouping of churches worldwide, behind Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian churches.

Williams attended the convention in its opening days last week, telling delegates, “I hope and pray that there won’t be decisions in the coming days that could push us further apart.”

To ease tensions with overseas Anglicans, the Episcopal General Convention three years ago passed a resolution that urged restraint by dioceses considering gay candidates for bishop.

The latest statement is widely viewed by advocates for gay clergy, theological conservatives and others in the Anglican world as repealing that pledge.

The Episcopal gay advocacy group Integrity said in a statement that the declaration “effectively ends” the temporary prohibition on gay bishops. Robinson, in a post on his diocesan blog, acknowledged the risk the bishops’ took in adopting the measure.

“No doubt, they will pay a price for opening their hearts, much as gay and lesbian people in this church have paid a price for their exclusion,” Robinson wrote. “I applaud them for their courage and will stand with them in the consequences of their vote.”

The few traditional Episcopalians who attended the convention said they were there to express the conservative view, but had largely resigned themselves to the liberal direction of the denomination, which has about 2.3 million members.

“If you think you’re going to convince the Episcopal Church, you’re smoking something funny,” said Bishop Peter Beckwith, a theological conservative from the Diocese of Springfield, Ill. “That’s unrealistic, but we’re still called to be faithful.”

Episcopalians and Anglicans have been debating for decades how to interpret the Bible on issues from salvation to homosexuality. Traditionalists believe Scripture bans same-gender relationships, while liberals emphasize the Bible’s social justice teachings on tolerance.

Church of England Bishop N.T. Wright, a prominent Anglican scholar, wrote in an op-ed in The Times of London, that this week’s vote “marks a clear break with the rest of the Anglican Communion” and formalizes the Anglican schism.

When Williams learned that the latest statement was heading toward approval, he told British reporters that he “regrets” the move.

Bishops at the Episcopal General Convention in Anaheim, Calif., voted 99-45 with two abstentions for a statement declaring “God has called and may call” to ministry gays in committed lifelong relationships.

Lay and priest delegates to the meeting had comfortably approved a nearly identical statement, and were expected to adopt the latest version before the meeting ends Friday.

Leaders of the Anglican Communion have been pushing Episcopalians to roll back their support for gays and lesbians since 2003, when the U.S. denomination consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. The Episcopal Church is the U.S. Anglican body.

Robinson’s election brought the 77 million-member Anglican fellowship to the brink of schism. Last month, breakaway Episcopal conservatives and other like-minded traditionalists formed a rival national province called the Anglican Church in North America.

To calm tensions, the Episcopal General Convention three years ago passed a resolution that urged restraint by dioceses considering gay candidates for bishop. No other Episcopal bishops living openly with same-sex partners have been consecrated since then.

Drafters of the latest statement insisted that the resolution only acknowledges that the Episcopal Church ordains partnered gays and lesbians and is not a repeal of what was widely considered a moratorium on consecrating gay bishops.

“The constitution and canons of our church as currently written do not preclude gay and lesbian persons from participating,” in any part of the church, said the Rev. Gay Clark Jennings, on the committee that drafted the statement. “These people have responded to God’s call.”

However, the Episcopal gay advocacy group Integrity, said in a statement Monday night that the declaration “effectively ends” the temporary prohibition on gays in ministry. Integrity called the vote “another step in the Episcopal Church’s `coming out’ process.”

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, who leads the Episcopal Church, was among bishops who voted to approve the declaration. The statement also affirms the Episcopal Church’s commitment to participate in and help fund the Anglican Communion, the third-largest grouping of churches worldwide, behind the Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Christian churches.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader, had attended the Episcopal national meeting in Anaheim, Calif., in its opening days last week. He said, “I hope and pray that there won’t be decisions in the coming days that could push us further apart.”

“It’s important that we recognize the equal stature of all Christians in the church so that we model that type of inclusivity in civil society,” Bishop Marc Andrus of the Diocese of California said.

This is the first national convention of the Episcopal Church in three years. The Episcopal Church, with 2.1 million members, is the U.S. branch of the global Anglican communion, which has 77 million members, many of them religious conservatives in Africa. The church has been divided over the consecration of gay bishops since the ordination of Rev. Gene Robinson in 2003.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has tried to hold the fragile communion together by getting churches to observe a voluntary moratorium on consecrating another openly gay bishop and developing prayers for same-sex unions. But many fear a split is inevitable.

“If we are not extremely careful at this convention, we could find ourselves outside the Anglican Communion, and that would be a tragedy for all of us,” Bishop William Love of Albany, N.Y., said. “My fear is that the Episcopal Church destroys itself.”

“What we have to work against is countless centuries of tradition which has judged homosexual people to be an abomination before God,” said Robinson, the Episcopal church’s only openly gay bishop.

Robinson sat in the front row of the gallery in the state House of Representatives last week, hands clasped at times, praying for lawmakers to push a little green button that indicates a “yes” vote.

In the end, there were 198 green lights to legalize gay marriage, and 176 red ones.

The gallery erupted and Robinson was caught up in a sea of hugs, which continued as he walked through the Statehouse to a rally outside.

“There are a lot of people standing here who, when we grew up, could not have imagined this,” Robinson said. “You can’t imagine something that is simply impossible. It’s happened, in our lifetimes.”

But Robinson, who was elected bishop six years ago this month, said more must happen to change attitudes in churches.

“The law says that every church gets to choose what it will do,” he said, meaning they can refuse to perform gay marriages. Robinson approves, saying the law protects religious freedom.

“But now we need to be working in our religious institutions to come to this new place about what is God’s will about this,” Robinson said. “I think a close look at that will reveal God loves all of God’s children, not just certain ones, and that’s the harder work.”

The law spells out that churches, their employees and religious groups cannot be forced to officiate at gay marriages or provide other services.

They were key elements pushed by Gov. John Lynch to win his approval.

But gay marriage opponents said the constitution already provides those protections to religious institutions. They argued the protections should be expanded to cover commercial vendors, such as photographers and caterers. That drew fire from gay marriage supporters who said the state’s anti-discrimination laws would be unraveled by allowing people to discriminate at will.

The law goes into effect in January.

In a speech in Washington last month, Robinson said despite recent momentum, the struggle continues for gay rights supporters in churches.

“Religion in general still presents the greatest obstacles we face in full equality,” he said. “Ninety-five percent of the oppression that we know in our lives comes from the religious community.”

Robinson’s election in 2003 caused a rift in the global Anglican Communion, intensifying a long-running debate over what Anglicans should believe about salvation, sexuality and other issues. The Episcopal Church, the Anglican body in the U.S., is more liberal than growing Anglican churches in Africa and elsewhere.

Meeting in Egypt in February, Anglican leaders requested their churches continue a temporary ban – enacted after Robinson’s election – on consecrating openly gay bishops and writing prayers for gay unions.

New Hampshire legalized civil unions for gay couples last year, but in a pastoral letter, Robinson told Episcopal clergy he would prefer they not preside at civil unions, instead, presiding over a blessing, afterward.

“It is my hope that we will be able to provide for the private, pastoral needs of the faithful people entrusted to our care, while causing a minimum of further furor in the Church,” he wrote in February, 2008, a month after civil unions became legal in the state.

But he said he would be “personally and institutionally supportive” of clergy who did not want to bless a civil union.

Robinson and his partner of 20 years were united in a civil union a year ago this month.

He said legislators recognized that gay marriage is more than a policy question and hopes churches will do the same.

“A lot of New Hampshire families have come to know people in their families who are gay, co-workers, former classmates and that’s what really made this difference. We are no longer talking about an issue,” he said. “We are talking about people.”

That was the message today from a conference call organized by the Center for American Progress with Rev. Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire and Rev. Rebecca Voekel, Director of the Institute for Welcoming Resources and Faith Work of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, plus the authors of two new reports on gay marriage and religion.

What was most interesting is that the two reports -  one analyzing an anti-gay marriage propositon in Michigan that passed, and one analyzing the Prop 8 campaign in California – come to the same conclusion: It is very important for the gay marriage movement to break the monopoly that the religious right has on religious and moral arguments around marriage.

In the past, the battle has gone like this: The anti-gay right uses Biblical and religious language, plus the infrastructure of religious institutions, to make the case that equal marriage invalidates the sacredness of limited straight marriage.

Gay activists, on the other hand, have a secular message of civil and human rights, focusing on the benefits gays and lesbians get from marriage. We reach out to religious groups, sure, but only once the battle lines have been drawn, and then haphazardly.

This is why we lose, when we do.

The solution?

First, that we acknowledge that religious opposition requires a religious response. Those on the call said that it is very important that we call on GLBT’s who are religious to speak up both in their faith communities and in their queer communities in order to help find common ground.

We must cultivate and support progressive religious leaders who speak out in the media and in the pulpit on our issues. We must show the media and the public that the Religious Right does not speak for all people of faith, or even all Christians.

We must emphasize to legislators and the public that religious marriage and civil marriage are two different states that share the same noun. We must say, as Robinson does, that forbidding gay marriage is a case where religions are infringing on a state’s right to marry those they deem fit.

We must build “strong and authentic alliances” with religious leaders and convince them that gay rights is a matter of justice.

And we must not write off any religious group as unmovable – all denominations and religions have moderate voices.

Voekel said that there are 5 million members of Welcoming Congregations across the nation – congregations that have voted to affirm that they are open to GLBTs. Younger evangelicals are twice as likely as evangelicals over all to support gay marriage, said Winne Stachelberg, vice president for external affairs for the Center for American Progress. 60 percent of Catholics under 30 support gay marriage. 2/3 of mainline Protestant clergy support gay relationships.

New Hampshire showed us the way to a new strategy: confirm religious liberties in the same law that passes equal marriage. Robinson said that “this is a new dimension to the discussion and a very effective one.”  He said that the religious liberties confirmed in the NH marriage law are redundant ones, already part of state law. But if re-affirming them is what leads to gay marriage passing, then so be it.

Robinson said, “We need to change the attitudes of religious people and clergy toward LGBT’s, but that’s a fight for another day. That’s a conversation that needs to take place in the denominations. We’re here to change the civil law.”

Former Bishop John-David Schofield led the Diocese of San Joaquin to become the first full diocese to secede from the U.S. denomination in 2007. Four years earlier, Episcopalians consecrated their first openly gay bishop, setting off a wide-ranging debate within the church and upsetting conservative congregations.

Schofield ultimately was removed as head of the diocese and barred from performing any religious rites. He maintains he is an Anglican bishop under the worldwide church.

Episcopal leaders said Wednesday they were deposing all clergy who severed their ties and joined Schofield in affiliating with an Anglican archdiocese in Argentina.

Jerry Lamb, the new Episcopal Bishop of San Joaquin, called the decision to oust the clergy “heartbreaking.”

“But, the fact is, they chose to abandon their relationship with the Episcopal Church,” he said.

Schofield said in a statement Wednesday that Anglican leaders across the globe recognized the deposed clergy as priests and deacons in good standing.

“Clearly, the traditional understanding of what it means to be a member of this historic Communion has been tragically altered by this action,” he said. “The Episcopal Church needlessly isolates itself from their brothers and sisters around the world.”

In December, the breakaway diocese joined with three others and dozens of individual parishes in the U.S. and Canada to announce that they were forming a North American Anglican province to rival the Episcopal Church. Schofield said Wednesday that 23 dioceses now plan to affiliate with the new province.

Its future status in the worldwide Anglican Communion is unclear. It’s unprecedented for an Anglican national province to be created where a national church already exists.

An Anglican advisory panel also raised deep concerns about a North American province sought by theological conservatives to rival the Episcopal Church.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, the Anglican spiritual leader, will arrange professional mediation for all leaders involved in the North American conflict, leaders said.

“If a way forward is to be found and mutual trust to be re-established, it is imperative that further aggravation and acts which cause offense, misunderstanding or hostility cease,” the Anglican leaders said Thursday.

The statements were released as the Anglican archbishops, or primates, ended a five-day private meeting in the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria.

The 77 million-member Anglican Communion has been splintering since 2003, when the Episcopal Church – the Anglican body in the U.S. – consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire. Robinson’s election intensified a long-running debate over what Anglicans should believe about salvation, sexuality and other issues.

Anglican leaders requested the moratoria in 2004, in a document known as the Windsor Report, and have been meeting regularly ever since to avoid a permanent break. Williams formed a six-member committee to advise him on how the communion can move forward. The group presented their recommendations at the Alexandria gathering.

The report painted a largely grim picture of the state of the fellowship, saying “positions and arguments are becoming more extreme” and rivals are engaging in “fear-mongering, deliberate distortion and demonizing.”

Four conservative U.S. dioceses and dozens of individual Episcopal parishes have voted to leave the national denomination since 2003. Many have affiliated with like-minded overseas Anglican leaders. The Anglican Church of Nigeria started a Convocation of Anglicans in North America, including breakaway Episcopal churches in Virginia.

The Anglican advisory panel said such overseas interventions in U.S. territory should stop and they urged an end to lawsuits over who gets to keep Episcopal property.

Of the North American province, the panel said it “foresees formidable problems in the way ahead,” saying it could become a “haven for discontented groups” and formalize a schism.

The top governing body of the Episcopal Church, the General Convention, will take up the moratoria at its July meeting in Anaheim, Calif. Several Episcopal dioceses have been developing prayers to bless same-sex couples despite the requested ban.