Secular Courts Must Avoid Doctrinal Disputes

The U. S. Supreme Court January 27 issued the century’s most important ruling on church property. The gist of the decision: the nation’s secular courts must steer clear of any church-property disputes that involve religious judgments.

The court uttered this declaration of independence over the attempt of two Georgia congregations to pull out of the Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (“Southern”), and keep their local property. The unanimous decision, written by William Brennan, Jr., the court’s only Roman Catholic, is likely to discourage many dissidents from trying similar withdrawals.

The court handed the case back to Georgia courts to settle on grounds of property law alone. It said “there are neutral principles of law, developed for use in all property disputes, which can be applied.…” So next time around the case will hinge on whether paragraph 6–3 of the Book of Church Order means property goes to a pull-out congregation or to the denomination.

The previous Georgia rulings were based on the contention that the Southern Presbyterian Church had departed significantly from its original doctrines, thus breaking the “implied trust” of denominational affiliation. At issue were such things as ordination of women, political pronouncements, and liberalizing theology.

(Justice John Harlan added a brief concurring opinion that if someone “expressly” gives money to the church on the condition that it will never ordain women, for instance, then civil courts could hold that he “is entitled to his money back.”)

The main opinion called the denomination “a hierarchical general church organization,” a matter which some may dispute. And it noted that the local churches made no effort to appeal the presbytery ruling against holding property to the Synod of Georgia or to the annual General Assembly, the denomination’s own supreme court.

Under the new ruling, that’s all a local church can do—if some general issue of legal property rights is not involved. The court recognizes a proper state role in resolving property disputes but says “special problems arise … when these disputes implicate controversies over church doctrine and practice.”

In particular, they run against the First Amendment guarantee that government won’t hinder “free exercise” of religion. The logic of an 1871 Supreme Court ruling on a northern Presbyterian church in Louisville, the 1969 document says, “leaves the civil courts no role in determining ecclesiastical questions in the process of resolving property disputes.” But Twentieth-century Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox cases have established “some circumstances in which marginal civil court review of ecclesiastical determinations would be appropriate,” such as fraud or arbitrariness. All church-property suits in civil courts do not necessarily inhibit “free exercise.”

But in cases like Presbyterian Church in the U. S. et al. v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church et al.:

“First Amendment values are plainly jeopardized when church property litigation is made to turn on the resolution by civil courts of controversies over religious doctrine and practice. If civil courts undertake to resolve such controversies in order to adjudicate the property dispute, the hazards are ever present of inhibiting the free development of religious doctrine and of implicating secular interests in matters of purely ecclesiastical concern.… Hence, States, religious organizations, and individuals must structure relationships involving church property so as not to require the civil courts to resolve ecclesiastical questions.”

The U. S. Supreme Court objected because the Georgia county-court jury and State Supreme Court had had to decide whether the denomination was changing substantially, then whether change was on such an important matter that legal trust was terminated. This “departure-from-doctrine element,” it said, violates the First Amendment and is a legal standard created by the state, not by church law itself.

Both sides claimed victory in first reactions to the ruling. The Savannah Presbytery executive who has been trying to retain the properties for the denomination, J. Lehmon Brantley, was “pleased” and said the argument that ecclesiastical matters should be settled in church courts “is consistent with what our position has been throughout.” Denominational attorney Charles Gowen, who hadn’t yet read the text, said he assumed the local property now must revert to the presbytery.

But the Rev. Todd Allen of Eastern Heights Church, which withdrew with the Blue Hull Church, said, “We still own the property. If the denomination wants the property they will have to enter a [civil] suit. We are back where we started.” He hopes the denomination now “will let us live in peace. I hope they are tired of fighting us in court and are tired of gouging us out of our property.”

Church Panorama

Recent goings-on in church include: A hip eucharist at arty St. Clement’s Episcopal Church, New York City, in which barefoot and blindfolded communicants went into the basement for the general confession, and had sins symbolically flushed away in the bathroom. A reading by poet Leroi Jones at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Cleveland, taken over by black militants who threw out whites in the audience under threat. And a production of “Paradise Now” in a Unitarian church near Madison, Wisconsin—after it was banned at a theater—that featured swearing, spitting, and a “flesh pile” for sexual revolution, and ended with seven members of the audience shedding all their clothes.

The Presbyterian Church in the U. S. (“Southern”) appeared headed for approval of merger with the Reformed Church in America January 30. Thirty-four of the needed fifty-eight presbyteries had voted in favor, nine opposed.

The Chicago Conference on Religion and Race’s tri-faith employment project found jobs for more than 20,000 unemployed adults last year.

Faced with discord over a shift to emphasize social involvement and an immediate debt of $6,000, the Louisville Council of Churches issued an emergency fund appeal to keep going.

The Rev. John Coventry Smith, one of the presidents of the World Council of Churches, predicts the Roman Catholic Church will join the WCC within a decade.

Personalia

The Rev. Ray Wolfe, called to a church in Hulbert, Michigan, is believed to be the first Negro pastor of a white congregation in the Southern Baptist Convention. Wolfe served two decades in military service, retired from a Michigan air base, and had been an active church worker.

Newsmen Drew Pearson and Willmar Thorkelson joined speculation that Lyndon Johnson will become a Roman Catholic soon.

New Orleans Baptist Seminary theology teacher Robert Soileau resigned under protest, then complained to the regional and seminary accrediting agencies. He says the school has taken a conservative turn and blames it largely on colleague Clark Pinnock, though his public statement didn’t mention the name.

Dr. John W. Snyder, 44, Lutheran seminary graduate and board president of the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies, was named chancellor of the main Bloomington campus of Indiana University. Snyder, a Presbyterian layman, is a specialist in ancient history, and has been acclaimed one of the Big Ten’s “most exciting teachers” by the Chicago Tribune Magazine. (See his essay, “Presenting Christian Truth at University Level,” February 16, 1968, issue.)

Two years after noted Catholic writer John Cogley left as New York Times religion editor, the Rev. Edward B. Fiske, a religion reporter on the paper for three years, has been given the title. Young Fiske is a Phi Beta Kappa who served as assistant minister of a United Presbyterian church in Harlem. Another Princeton Seminary graduate, the Rev. Russell Chandler, assumed the same post at the Washington Evening Star six months ago.

A Quaker, a Methodist, and a Presbyterian were fired by the University of Kansas Medical Center after they refused to sign a required loyalty oath.

Dr. Joe K. Menn, just 34, was named president of Texas Lutheran College, affiliated with the American Lutheran Church.

Dr. George Bird, former graduate journalism director at Syracuse University and a Christian and Missionary, Alliance layman, is globe-hopping to run journalism workshops for Evangelical Literature Overseas.

A “t” and sympathy to Baptist pastor Ellis Eklof, Jr., whose church ad in the Minneapolis Star listed his sermon topic as: “I Believe in Immorality.”

Jewish law forbids an unmarried girl to be alone with a boy and inaccessible to a third party, so Ruth Friedman jumped twenty-five feet off a ski lift where she was stranded with a date. Now New York State seeks to recover $35,000 awarded for her injuries in a damage suit.

Miscellany

Benjamin Glick was seated on the jury for the Sirhan Sirhan murder trial after denying his “religious background” would prejudice him against the Arab defendant.

B’nai B’rith says “raw, undisguised” anti-Semitism, “unchecked” for two years, has reached a crisis level in New York City public schools, sparked mainly by “black extremists.” And a mayor’s committee concludes that the school decentralization dispute has surfaced “an appalling amount” of racial and religious bias. Meanwhile, Rabbi Marc Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee says Arab propagandists are trying to “penetrate” Christian agencies, including the National and World Councils.

Presbyterian backers upset over use of the interdenominational campus center at San Francisco State College by student strikers forced it to close January 29 pending an objective investigation.

The 3,200 public-school students in Clairton, Pennsylvania, because of public demand, are again beginning the day with prayer and Bible-reading, in apparent defiance of the 1963 Supreme Court ruling.

The Gallagher Report, a newsletter for corporation executives, says former clergymen form a talent pool to offset the expected shortage of executive personnel in the 1970s.

Canada’s Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau returned from an audience with Pope Paul confirmed in his interest in selling the nation on sending an ambassador to the Vatican. Leaders of the United Church of Canada and other Protestant groups are against the idea.

India’s home minister V. C. Shukla warned that the government wants to replace all foreign missionaries with nationals and is keeping a close watch to expel any missionary engaging in politics. In the next three years, the Roman Catholic Church could have to replace as many as 2,000 foreign clergy and nuns.

Church and state: San Antonio County church colleges must now pay taxes on faculty homes. Florida’s Supreme Court ruled tax-exempt a Baptist church parking lot used commercially during the week. Kentucky’s attorney general ruled legal the Louisville area plan in which public-school teachers instruct Catholic pupils in classrooms the public systems rent from Catholic schools.

The Fort Lauderdale (Florida) city council passed a pornography ordinance so explicit in language that most papers (including this one) won’t quote it.

They Say

“When one wonders what type of man Mr. Nixon is and which direction his political program is going to take, one could well suggest that his choice of religious figures dramatized the coming political years. Since Cox, Moody, Altizer, Bennett, Boyd, Brown, and Father Groppi were absent from the Inauguration doings, we can almost conclude that the next four years will not be ‘swinging years’ politically unless the important events of the day catch up with the Washington processional and force a re-evaluation of priorities and needs.”—The Rev. Frank A. Sharp, director of press relations, American Baptist Convention.

DEATHS

W. Y. CHEN, 70, last living bishop of China’s mainland Methodists, imprisoned 1950–59 and under house arrest since; in Chungking, of cancer and liver failure.

KAROL KOTULA, 84, bishop emeritus of Poland’s Lutherans; in an auto accident.

DAVID C. BROWN, 34, Bible Presbyterian minister and radio preacher; shot in Seattle while meeting in a home with church elders; police charged Rodney Mahaffey, son of a state legislator.

WILLIAM A. LAWRENCE, 79, former Episcopal bishop of western Massachusetts; in Springfield, after a heart attack.

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