Should the court have considered whether the Episcopal Church had abandoned or departed from the tenets of faith and practice that it had held at the time of St. James’s affiliation? Why or why not?

The Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America organized in 1789 after seceding from the Church of England during the Revolutionary War. The Episcopal Church is divided into dioceses, and each diocese is divided into missions and parishes, which are individual churches where members meet to worship. The Los Angeles Diocese in California included St. James Parish. In 1950, the Episcopal bishop in Los Angeles, who governs the diocese, deeded to St. James Parish the property on which its church building stands. In 1979, the Episcopal Church added to its “general convention” (its governing document) a canon to provide that “all real and personal property held by or for the benefit of any Parish . . . is held in trust for this Church.”