By David Paulsen
Episcopal News Service
The church property at 4301 Meadowbrook Drive on the east side of Fort Worth, Texas, has long been a hub of Episcopal activity, even during the COVID-19 pandemic. St. Luke’s in the Meadow, a congregation of about a hundred members, has worshipped there since 1948. Its Sunday school wing now houses Fort Worth’s diocesan offices. A thriving feeding ministry, 4Saints Food Pantry, operates from the parish hall every Friday.
The congregation, the diocese and the feeding ministry will carry on, but church leaders and parishioners are preparing to say goodbye to 4301 Meadowbrook Drive. The diocese is grieving the loss of a 12-year-old court battle that likely will leave St. Luke’s in the Meadow and dozens of other diocesan properties in the hands of a breakaway group that is affiliated with the Anglican Church of North America, or ACNA. …
St. Luke’s in the Meadow is one of six congregations in and around Fort Worth that may need to give up their worshipping spaces after the U.S. Supreme Court on Feb. 22 declined to review the diocese’s court case. The displacements would be the latest and likely final round in a legal dispute that dates to 2008, when then-Bishop Jack Iker led a majority of the diocese’s congregations out of The Episcopal Church over doctrinal differences, particularly the breakaway group’s opposition to the ordination of women and LGBTQ clergy.
The full Episcopal News Service article provides more detail on the current situation. It also features a thorough history of Bishop Iker’s exodus and related events, with links to ENS’s extensive archives of contemporaneous reporting. Read the rest.
Kirk Petersen began reporting news for TLC as a freelancer in 2016, and was Associate Editor from 2019 to 2024, focusing especially on matters of governance in the Episcopal Church.
