Attorneys for Jack Iker have asked a Texas court for permission to challenge the authority of Provisional Bishop Ted Gulick Jr. and the standing committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.
Iker, who left The Episcopal Church in 2008 but refused to relinquish church property or assets, is responding to a pending lawsuit filed by The Episcopal Church and the continuing Diocese of Fort Worth in April to establish the authority of the new diocesan leadership and to recover diocesan assets, according to chancellor Kathleen Wells.
He and his attorneys are "still operating under this faade that they're the Diocese of Fort Worth which, of course, is easily refutable," added Wells in a telephone interview on August 31.
A September 9 hearing has been set to consider Iker's motion, filed in 141st District Court in Tarrant County, Texas. The motion seeks "the court's permission to bring in Bishop Gulick and members of our standing committee as third party defendants," Wells said.
Basically, Iker and his attorneys are asking the court to declare that Gulick and the current standing committee "are not the real bishop and standing committee of the Diocese of Fort Worth which, of course, they are," she added.Another motion challenges the authority of Jon Nelson and Wells to serve as diocesan attorneys.
Iker disaffiliated from TEC in November 2008, citing longstanding theological differences over the ordination of women and gays, a fact omitted in the court filings, according to a statement released by the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth.
"All those on whose behalf these motions were filed have voluntarily left the Episcopal Church and thus are no longer officials of the diocese or the diocesan corporation," the statement said. "The vacancies left by their departure have been filled by Episcopalians as part of the same reorganized and continuing Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth," according to the statement.
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