PCUSA ‘waving the flag of God and country’ in joining Episcopal property lawsuit in Virginia, attorney says
By Patrick Jean, Staff Writer, May 23, 2008
The Presbyterian Church (USA) is “waving the flag of God and country” in joining the Episcopal Church’s legal fight against a Virginia law that grants property to congregations departing a divided denomination, a legal counsel for many PCUSA congregations said.
“If the case was just about the statute, then its effect would stop at the borders of Virginia because the statute in question is very specific to that particular state,” said Lloyd Lunceford, an attorney in Baton Rouge, La., and an elder of First Presbyterian Church of Baton Rouge. “This question, however, of constitutionality has much wider significance.”
On April 3, a circuit court judge in Fairfax County, Va., ruled that Virginia’s Civil War-era “division statute” applies to 11 northern Virginia congregations that were taken to court by the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia after they left the diocese in late 2006 for the Convocation of Anglicans in North America.
“The court finds that a division has occurred in the diocese,” Judge Randy Bellows wrote. That finding means the congregations get to keep their property under state law – at least until a trial to resolve the property issue, which is scheduled for October.
The diocese and the Episcopal Church are challenging the division statute. They say there shouldn’t be a property trial this fall because the statute is unconstitutional, Lunceford said.
On April 24, four denominations – the African Methodist Episcopal Church, African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, United Methodist Church and Worldwide Church of God – and two UMC officials filed an amici curiae (friend of the court) brief supporting the challenge to the statute. In mid-May, the PCUSA and two of its presbyteries – Eastern Virginia and National Capital – joined the brief along with two more Episcopal dioceses in Virginia, two synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and one district each of the AME Zion Church and the Church of the Brethren.
The brief argues that Virginia’s division statute expresses “frank preference for congregational autonomy” and requires a state official to “adjudicate church property disputes by resolving which religious institutions ‘qualify’ as ‘churches’ or ‘religious societies,’ whether they have experienced defections of a ‘magnitude’ sufficient to constitute a ‘division,’ and whether any such division has spawned a ‘branch’ to which a majority of adult congregants have become attached.
“More than 150 years later, the bare statement of these criteria should be enough to conclude that this framework is unconstitutional,” the brief argues. “The only arguably ‘neutral’ task is counting heads; everything else plunges the state deeply into a morass of ecclesiastical inquiry and denominational preference.”
The PCUSA’s argument, Lunceford said, is that “any state statute does not defer to whatever property decision is made internally by PCUSA authorities – whether it’s the presbytery, synod or whatever – is an unconstitutional abridgment of that ecclesiastical body’s right to organize itself internally as it pleases. It violates their religious freedom. And that’s how the PCUSA is characterizing or positioning this matter, and they’re really waving the flag of God and country.
“On the other hand,” Lunceford said, “the local churches are arguing that a statute that allows a local congregation to determine property ownership protects the religious freedom of the local majorities, and to ignore such a statute, and to instead as a matter of state law automatically defer to whatever decisions made by presbytery or diocese, represents an unconstitutional state establishment of that hierarchy’s religion. It puts the power of the state behind the decision of an ecclesiastical body, and you can’t do that in America.”
The Fairfax County Circuit Court ruled May 16 that those who filed and joined the friend-of-the-court brief can participate in oral arguments at a constitutional issues hearing on May 28. Lunceford said he would be surprised if the division statute is ruled unconstitutional after that.
“These hierarchical denominations realize that a lot is at stake, and so they’re putting up a fight and waving the flag,” Lunceford said. “So those northern Virginia cases really have a national significance, just like the case now pending in the Supreme Court of California which involves Episcopal churches but likewise presents the occasion for the California Supreme Court to determine whether or not California will follow neutral principles or the hierarchical deference method for Episcop al, Presbyterian, Methodist churches and hierarchical denominations of all stripes.
“Because of the churches involved, which are among the most historic in the nation – George Washington slept there – they have huge emotional weight and persuasive value,” Lunceford said. “These are among the mother churches of American Anglicanism.”
(Editor’s Note: Lloyd Lunceford served from 1995 through 2002 on the board of directors for the Presbyterian Lay Committee, which publishes The Layman. He is also the author of A Guide to Church Property Law: Theological, Constitutional and Practical Considerations, available from Reformation Press.)