Did Dean leave the Episcopalians over a bike path?

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Well yes and no. Here is the whole story, the part that the Boston Globe and others won't tell you.

http://www.prospect.org/print/V14/10/franke-ruta-g.html

Dean's own conversion to Congregationalism was a more mundane political affair. He'd been christened as a Catholic and was raised Episcopalian. But he converted to the local Vermont religion as a consequence of his battle to make over the shoreline. "I had a big fight with a local Episcopal church about 25 years ago over the bike path," he told This Week with George Stephanopoulos in September. "We were trying to get the bike path built. They had control of a mile and a half of railroad bed, and they decided they would pursue a property-rights suit to refuse to allow the bike path to be developed." Dean eventually talked church leaders out of the lawsuit, recalls Sharp, but other railroad neighbors refused to budge and litigated the case all the way to U.S. Supreme Court.

Here is the Boston Globe's take for comparison.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/dean/arti... /

Dean himself made a decision about religion in the early 1980s, opting to leave the local Episcopal church when it sided with landowners seeking to preserve private property in lieu of a bike path in Burlington.

"Churches are institutions that are about doing the work of God on earth, and I didn't think was very Godlike and thought it was hypocritical of me to be a member of such an institution," Dean said.

end of quotes

Let's take a look at the piece of work, now shall we. The American Prospect reported accuratly what Dean's problem actually was, the fact the church was being out and out selfish. They wanted money for right of way instead of helping the common good. All the while, of course, paying not one cent in taxes.

The Boston Globe has the church siding with landowners, completely leaving out the fact that it was one. Then in the middle of a quote for some odd reason whatever Dean said was replaced by (opposing the bike path). Maybe he just used it. But even if that were the case, it had an antecedent and we have to rely on this reporter to know if she supplied the correct one. Let me be blunt here. I don't think she did. I don't think she did due to her lying in our faces in the paragraph preceding. I don't think she did due to her lying about Richard Gephardt and Joe Lieberman.

"Some of Dean's competitors have made no secret of their religious beliefs. US Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri regularly describes his son's recovery from an illness as a gift of God, while Lieberman takes pains to emphasize his inability to attend campaign events on Saturdays because of the Jewish Sabbath"

This quote is an utter lie about both of those candidates. Richard Gephardt tells the story of his son at nearly every debate and his point isn't that it is a gift from God but a gift from health insurance. And Lieberman only lets people who wish him to speak or campaign on Saturday that he won't campaign on the Sabbath.

It is plain as day why Dean left that church. That wasn't the story the reporter liked so she made one up. Next time someone tells you this bildge don't believe them.