Plan to Relocate 13th-Century Church From England to Orange County Blocked

Plans to dismantle the remains of a small, 13th-Century church in the English countryside and rebuild it in Orange County received an apparently fatal blow in London on Thursday.

Anglican Church officials, reportedly unhappy about the prospect of permitting the church to go to a breakaway congregation of the U.S. Episcopal Church, barred the sale of St. Bartholomew’s of Covenham to a group in Corona del Mar.

Sir Douglas Lovelock, a member of a commission that controls the finances of the state Church of England and that is responsible for the upkeep of its buildings, said in a telephone interview that the panel decided “to leave it to the Bishop of Lincoln.” And the bishop, the Rt. Rev. Simon Phipps, “wasn’t happy about the proposal,” Lovelock said.

As a result, he said, “The commissioners decided not to intervene.”

Phipps could not be reached for comment.

U.S. Episcopalians, who with the Church of England belong to the worldwide Anglican Communion, split over changes in their liturgy and the ordination of women priests. Among those who broke away was the Diocese of Christ the King, which includes the Corona del Mar congregation.

The Rev. David Lambert, rector of St. Bartholomew’s, said he believed that Phipps advised the commissioners not to approve the sale because of the split.

“I was told by our diocesan secretary today that the commissioners did not want to embarrass the bishop in California, as the people who wanted to buy St. Bartholomew’s Church at Covenham belong to the breakaway Continuing Episcopal Church,” Lambert told the Associated Press in London.

St. Bartholomew’s is in the village of Covenham, population 253, about 130 miles north of London near England’s east coast.

The proposal to move it was made by the 64-member congregation of St. Matthew’s-by-the-Sea in Corona del Mar.

The Rev. Samuel Scheibler, formerly assistant pastor of the Corona del Mar congregation, was the force behind the proposal and was full of confidence last January that the plan would work. He said there had been some “sticking points” in negotiations, among them the feelings of some villagers.

“The formal name of the village is Covenham, St. Bartholomew’s. Without St. Bartholomew’s, it loses some of its identity,” Scheibler said.

“It’s one thing for it to be a British ruin, but it is something else for it to be an American church.”

Scheibler said in January that he had raised enough money among his small but well-to-do congregation to pay for the dismantling of the old church and its transport to Orange County.