Kirk pays $1.75 million
to buy its own property
By John H. Adams, The Layman, December 16, 2008
Using money borrowed from a bank, Kirk of the Hills Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Tulsa, Okla., gave the Eastern Oklahoma Presbytery a check for $1.75 million, bringing to an end a legal and ecclesiastical property dispute that lasted more than two years.
Representatives of the Kirk, the presbytery, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and insurance and banking interests – about 10 people in all – took part in the closing of the sale Monday morning at Guarantee Abstract, a title company.
“It happened,” said Timothy T. Trump of Conner & Winters, a Tulsa law firm, expressing the relief felt by Kirk leaders and members and attorneys.
It is believed to be the highest price a congregation has paid in the Presbyterian Church (USA) to buy back its own property. In the current flight of PCUSA congregations, which began in 2000, the highest previous exit fee was the $1.25 million that Rivermont Presbyterian Church in Lynchburg, Va., paid to the Presbytery of the Peaks.
As conditions for the property agreement, the Kirk and the presbytery pledged to cease all litigation and to refrain from any more lawsuits, including the Kirk’s planned appeal of a Tulsa civil court’s decision to award the property to the presbytery.
The judge cited the property trust clause in the Book of Order and a Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling in his decision to award the property to the presbytery. His ruling was based on what’s known as the U.S. Supreme Court’s “hierarchical principle,” which allows governing bodies to impose their will on local congregations in the same way that the Vatican controls worldwide Catholicism.
The hierarchical standard was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1871. In more recent decisions in 1969 and 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court recommended that state courts use “neutral principles” of law that do not require ceding property to a hierarchical church government. Many of the Kirk’s leaders and a segment of the congregation, as well as the lawyers representing the Kirk, believe their case had a good chance of prevailing on appeal. But the mounting legal costs – estimated at $540,000 for the Kirk –convinced the majority of the 2,400-member congregation that it was time to move on.
For the presbytery, it was a windfall. Investing $1.75 million and earning a return of slightly more than 4 percent annually would pay the Kirk’s full amount of per-capita support requested for the General Assembly, the synod and the presbytery – without ever drawing down the principle.
The property dispute began after the presbytery, without forewarning, filed affidavits in April 2006 in 62 counties to encumber all church property in its jurisdiction. One of the affidavits named the Kirk. The Kirk argued that the affidavits were aimed at it; the presbytery said they were filed because of property title problems with some Native American congregations.
Whatever the reason, relations between the Kirk and the presbytery, already tense because of theological differences, became more strained. The Kirk took steps to leave the denomination with its property by touching up its deed, charter and other documents and voting 967-36 on August 30, 2006, without prior notification to the presbytery, that it was aligning with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
Following that action, the Kirk filed a civil claim for a clear title to its property and successfully petitioned the court for a temporary restraining order that prevented the presbytery from intervening with an administrative commission that could have defrocked the pastors, replaced the session, and changed the locks on the Kirk’s property.
But Tulsa District Court Judge Jefferson Sellers ruled Nov. 4 that the presbytery owned the Kirk’s property, resulting in serious negotiations over selling the property back to the Kirk.
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