.jpg)
A Letter to Elders in the PCA
This is a letter to fellow presbyters from Rev. Todd Allen, an honorably retired teaching elder from Northwest Georgia Presbytery. In this letter he urges Presbyteries to vote against the BCO 14 amendments that were sent to Presbyteries by the 38th General Assembly. TE Allen was the pastor of the Eastern Heights Presbyterian Church in Savannah, Ga., from 1962-1974, during the time frame he refers to in his narrative when the church withdrew from the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) and went through years of litigation to keep the property.
Please forward to other elders.
Dear Brothers,
Property is power! We fought long and hard through 3 1/2 years of litigation to keep church property rights for PCUS congregations. Those property rights were written into the Book of Church Order when we formed the Continuing Presbyterian Church (Now the Presbyterian Church in America in December of 1973 at the Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham, Alabama.
We once believed without question that we had local church property rights in the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Those rights were challenged in 1966 when two Savannah churches (Eastern Heights Presbyterian Church and Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Church) voted on April 17, 1966 to withdraw from the PCUS over departures from the PCUS constitution. The Savannah Presbytery then named an Administrative Commission to defrock the two ministers and the ruling elders of both churches and install presbytery appointed ministers and sessions.
The two churches obtained a court injunction to stop the presbytery from assuming this original jurisdiction and taking over the government and property of the two churches. The presbytery then went to the Superior Court of Chatham County and declared that they were justified in assuming original jurisdiction because there was an implied trust on church property in favor of the PCUS presbytery.
The two churches therefore had to prove to a twelve member jury that the PCUS had violated its trust by departing from its constitution.. The jury unanimously ruled in favor of the two churches and awarded them rights to their church property. The presbytery then appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court and in a unanimous decision that court also awarded the property to the two local churches.
The presbytery then appealed the case to the United States Supreme Court. That court took the case and in a unanimous decision remanded the case back to the Georgia Supreme Court, stating on remand that civil courts are proper forums to adjudicate church property disputes but that they cannot determine church doctrine. The Supreme Court enunciated three neutral principles for courts to use in adjudicating church property disputes. The three neutral principles are as follows: (1) who holds the deeds to church property, (2) what does state law say, (3) what does the hierarchical church law say.
Following that Supreme Court remand the Georgia Supreme Court determined that the two Savannah churches satisfied all three neutral principles that the Supreme Court had been enunciated and in a second unanimous decision awarded the church property to the two local congregations. The Georgia Supreme Court also struck down a Georgia statue known as Mack vs. Kime that had given church hierarchies an implied trust vested interest in the property of its connectional congregations.
The Savannah Presbytery then again appealed to the United States Supreme Court. In January of 1970 the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari, thus ending 3 1/2 years of litigation.
Dominic Aquila has written a very important and incisive article on the inherent possibility of a civil court ruling that there is a hierarchal civil connection between PCA church courts if BCO 14 amendments are adopted. This would very likely result in a loss of local church control of its church property. He recommends that these BCO amendments be defeated. I certainly concur with him.
Please take time to read Dominic Aquila's article below before voting on the BCO 14 Amendments.
Your brother in Christ,
Todd W. AllenPCA Honorably Retired MinisterMidway PCA Pastor Emeritus
3 comments:
As a member of a local PCA church, I'm just wondering how the legal system got involved in the first place. Don't we prove ourselves to be outside biblical counsel when we take brothers to court? This seems like a no-brainer to me: Christians are not to sue other Christians.
Lance,
First, just because Christians aren't supposed to do something doesn't mean they will not do so. This is evident in the ARP which many members, even elders took the ARP General Assembly to court. The PCUS did it too as churches left for the PCA, and they are doing it for those going into the EPC right now.
Second, what this letter is stating is that from the experience of leaving the PCUS for the PCA, they dealt with the civil courts over church property. He is saying here that if the amendments to BCO 14-1, 14-2 are passed in the presbyteries, this will open up the same situation where the denomination could take our own individual church properties away if they wanted to. And they will be able to do so because of the change to the BCO. As it stands now, there is no way they could do that, but this change will allow it. Does that make sense?
Andrew
Hey Barnes. I just came across this entry on your blog. A couple of quick notes. First, the law differs from state to state. In Jones v. Wolfe, the US Supreme Court held that states may adopt either a neutral principles approach or a hierarchical approach. What this means is that a state that adopts the neutral principles approach will look at the four corners of the deed to the church property. If it says the property is owned by First Presbyterian church, that's who owns it. If it says XYZ Presbytery, then they own it. This is a straightforward approach and it is the best. It's also why churches should incorporate, because unincorporated voluntary associations cannot hold title to real property, thus exposing church members to liability.
The hierarchical approach is much different. Under this approach, the court defers to the denomination as to who makes up the congregation in question. Obviously, the denomination acknowledges that faction loyal to it as the legitimate congregation and they therefore keep the property. That's a little oversimplified, but you get the gist.
In a state using the neutral principles approach, to lose its property the congregation would need to accede to the changes at the higher level and there would need to be some sort of trust relationship created with regards to the property. In a state using the hierarchical approach, nothing more would need to be done and you would have to fight it out in court as to whether or not the PCA is in fact hierarchical. And that fight would have to be fought in each separate state because property ownership is a question of state law, and whether or not the PCA is hierarchical is a question of fact for the trial court to decide. So even if the State of Alabama decides that the PCA is hierarchical, Mississippi is not bound by that precedent. The biggest problem with all of this is that the religious background of the judge usually determines the extent to which he or she can really understand whether a church is hierarchical or not. To a Baptist, the PCA looks hierarchical, but to a Roman Catholic it does not.
Excellent resource for more information: Lloyd Lunceford, ed., A Guide to Church Property Law.
Post a Comment