Washington, D.C. (Map, News) - Virginia's attorney general intervened this week in a roiling property dispute between the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia and a group of splinter churches, calling part of the Episcopal legal argument "simply wrong."

The motion from Attorney General Bob McDonnell could grant legal heft to the dissident congregations, which are seeking to keep millions of dollars worth of land and buildings after they left the diocese in late 2006.

The churches, now affiliated with a conservative Anglican bishop in Nigeria, argued the national Episcopal leadership had veered too far from Scripture, especially with the consecration of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire.

The congregations in question, about a dozen of them, hold property estimated between $30 million and $40 million in combined value, and include two major Northern Virginia churches: Truro in Fairfax and the Falls Church in Falls Church.

McDonnell, a Republican, injected himself in the legal tangle Thursday to defend the constitutionality of a Virginia law, specifically a Civil War-era statute governing land quarrels that arise from religious schisms.

How a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge decides to interpret that law will influence the outcome of the land dispute. The Episcopal Diocese argues the state statute can apply only in a case in which the split is declared by the governing body of a church, which didn't occur in the Virginia rift.

"As a matter of federal constitutional law, the Episcopal Church is simply wrong," McDonnell wrote in a motion to intervene in the case. "The Constitution does not require that local property disputes be resolved by deferring to national and regional church leaders."

The attorney general's office "routinely intervenes in civil suits where one of the parties is alleging that a state statute is unconstitutional," McDonnell spokesman Tucker Martin said in a statement.

Patrick Getlein, secretary of the Virginia diocese, said the Fairfax County judge has asked the diocese to deliver its position on McDonnell's motion by Jan. 24 but declined to comment further.

wflook@dcexaminer.com