Church property laws face stiff challenges in civil courts By John H. Adams The Layman Online Tuesday, December 14, 2004 (corrected 2/2/05) The idea that a congregation whose members paid for and used their church facilities must forfeit the property if they decide to leave their denomination is being challenged by several mainline churches. Furthermore, there appears to be some cracks in the commonly held legal principle that denominational laws – which state that local church property is held in trust for the benefit of hierarchial bodies – are inviolable. The most recent case involved St. Luke's United Methodist Church, a Fresno, Calif., congregation that left the 8.5-million denomination in 2000 to become an independent Methodist church. Earlier this month, the California Supreme Court declared that the congregation had the right to revoke the United Methodist property trust agreement and keep its property. Earlier this year, a Maryland state court ruled in favor of a dissident congregation that left the AME Zion Church. Similar challenges of church property laws are being pursued by dissident congregations in the Episcopal Church (USA). The Layman Online has not learned of any case in which a congregation in the Presbyterian Church (USA) has challenged PCUSA church law – which is essentially the same as church property laws in the United Methodist Church, the AME Zion Church and the Episcopal Church (USA) – but several have considered doing so. During 2002-2003, five PCUSA congregations left the PCUSA to align with other Presbyterian denominations that do not have property trust laws. Rather than fight the property issue in court, four paid negotiated cash settlements. In the fifth case, the presbytery confiscated the property before the congregation could formally withdraw from the PCUSA. Historically, the mainline Presbyterian denomination and its predecessors have been in the forefront of the property dispute. It was a Presbyterian case in 1871 that provided one of the prevailing legal precedents for secular court interventions in church property disputes. The case is known as Watson v. Jones and involved a dispute in Louisville, Ky., which is now the national headquarters for the Presbyterian Church (USA). One reason it was chosen as the headquarters city was its history of Presbyterian congregations from both the Southern and Northern streams. But that history was not always a model for unity. After the Civil War, Louisville was plagued by the acrimony that accompanied Southern reconstruction. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church added to the contentiousness by issuing an order that Southerners seeking membership or employment as missionaries or ministers of the church to repent and forsake their sins if they had voluntarily aided the Confederacy or held the doctrine of the denomination's faction that had supported slavery. That decree birthed an angry split at one Presbyterian church, with two groups each claiming the right to own and use the church property. In Watson v. Jones, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the General Assembly, saying that the hierarchial body had the right to enforce the denomination's policies and church laws. The Watson Rule – which is often cited in contemporary court cases – became the prevailing guideline for civil courts to use in their consideration of property disputes. Essentially, it declared that the civil courts could not arbitrate issues of doctrine because of limits imposed by the First Amendment ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …") and therefore must defer to the highest governing body of the denomination. In later court decisions, the application of the First Amendment to church property disputes was meshed with the 14th Amendment, which says in part, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." In their interpretations of the First and Fourteenth amendments, the civil courts applied the Watson Rule as an absolute restriction against intervening in doctrinal disputes – which are often the boiling issues in church property disputes – and a necessary reason to defer to denominational governing bodies. While most Supreme Court decisions in property disputes have been based on the Watson Rule, another legal principle has come to the fore. It's called "neutral principles of law," meaning that disputes could be settled using other factors, even though those principles sometimes creep over the doctrinal divide. For instance, the Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that the Jehovah's Witness doctrine against blood transfusions was illegal because it jeopardized lives – a "neutral principle." The California Supreme Court ruling fell into the "neutral principle" category – California's Corporations Code, Section 9142. In a decision that currently affects only California, the California Supreme Court said the state's Corporations Code gave the Fresno congregation the right to revoke the denomination's property trust clause. "We know of no principle of [California] trust law stating that a trust can be created by the declaration of a nonowner … that the owner holds the property as trustee for the non-owner," the California Supreme Court said. The court added that the language of the state's Corporations Code "indicates that its purpose was to limit, and not to expand, the circumstances in which the assets of a religious corporation would be 'impressed with any trust, express or implied, statutory or at common law.'" Because of the uniqueness of its Corporations Code, California is fertile ground for congregations of the PCUSA and other mainline denominations to attempt to leave the denomination. All of the five congregations that left the PCUSA in 2003 and 2004 were Confessing Churches – congregations that said they were increasingly concerned about the direction of the denomination. California has 79 Confessing Churches. If California's Confessing Churches, with the sanction of the civil courts, successfully bolted with their property from the denomination en masse, the PCUSA could face resentment from congregations in other states if it sought to enforce the denomination's property laws. Pennsylvania alone has 235 Confessing Churches. The Confessing Church Movement within the PCUSA is essentially a doctrinal response to decisions and actions by the denomination's hierarchy. It adheres to three tenets that traditionally have been foundational for Presbyterians – Jesus alone is Savior and Lord for all; the Bible is the infallible guide for faith and practice; and God's holiness standards, as revealed in Scripture, must not be accommodated to cultural changes. Many of the leaders of the 1,307 Confessing Church congregations, which have more than 430,000 members, are opposed to the denomination's property law, which says, "All property held by or for a particular church, a presbytery, a synod, the General Assembly, or the Presbyterian Church (USA), whether legal title is lodged in a corporation, a trustee or trustees, or an unincorporated association, and whether the property is used in programs of a particular church or of a more inclusive governing body or retained for the production of income, is held in trust nevertheless for the use and benefit of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)" G-8.0100, Book of Order. Representatives of Confessing Churches and other conservative Presbyterian congregations are expected to attend a national convocation in Minneapolis June 15-18 to discuss the future of the denomination. Whether formally or informally, the participants are likely to take another look at the PCUSA's property law and its future implications. The hierarchial bodies of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and other mainline denominations have shown little willingness to back off their church property trust requirements. They have responded to isolated challenges by mounting aggressive legal defenses of the status quo. But where is the issue headed? In February 2000, Kenneth E. North, director of International Relations at Regent University and the author of numerous books and articles on church law, spoke about the church property law issue during an address at the Duquesne University School of Law. The text of North's presentation is posted on the Web Site of the Canon Law Institute. North focused on the Watson Rule and neutral principles of law during a review of several court cases. He said, "At first blush the current state of Constitutional law on matters of church property disputes in secular courts appears to be a choice of two separate but equal rules, viz. (1) compelled deference to hierarchical church judicatories, or (2) neutral-principles of state law. But let us not so willingly accept the obvious as the end of the story. Rather, let us view current [Supreme]Court membership and its voting on key cases to see if a future trend may be discerned." North concluded: "Of the current Court membership, five have never voted on a church property dispute in secular court. Two have only voted to deny a petition for certiorari. The remaining two, Mr. Chief Justice Rehnquist and Mr. Justice Stevens, have consistently voted in favor of the neutral-principles of state law rule, and consistently against the Watson Rule as one of Constitutional dimension and current application. From this simplistic analysis, one could conclude that a properly framed case before the Court might result in the total abandonment of Watson in favor of neutral-principles.

Respond to this article

Home · Archives · The Layman · PLC Publications Presbyterian Lay Committee · Feedback · Links