Separatist congregation asks for injunction to protect property
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, February 3, 2005
A Korean congregation that voted to leave the Presbyterian Church (USA) will present arguments Friday in California Superior Court that its bitter dispute with the Presbytery of Hamni should be resolved in court, rather than through the “intimidation of its members.”
Serone Church of Artesia, which recently reincorporated as an independent church, is seeking an injunction to prohibit the presbytery from seeking to seize the church property.
According to a brief on behalf of the congregation, Serone Church had to employ armed guards to prevent seven members of the presbytery’s “Administrative Commission for Serone Church” from disrupting its Jan. 23 worship service and trying to seize control of the property.
The brief’s description of that confrontation included:
- “On Sunday, January 23, 2005, seven representatives of Hanmi Presbytery tried to seize the property of Serone Church, Inc., and to disrupt its worship and business meetings, and to otherwise disturb the peace. But for the presence of armed guards obtained by Serone to protect its property, Hanmi would have succeeded. Hanmi’s intentions were disclosed in a written document addressed ‘To the Former Members of the Serone Church,’ which demands that Serone turn over to Hanmi all of Serone’s property.”
- “Law Enforcement had to be called to keep the peace. The verbal shouting and disruption that the defendant precipitated echoed these words from its written demands which it attempted to pass out: ‘The Serone Administrative Commission is now the only body empowered to act as Serone Church ¼ The Serone Administrative Commission hereby demands that [a]ll ecclesiastical and business records of Serone Church be turned over to the Serone Administrative Commission immediately; All personal property of Serone Church be left [at the church]; All financial resources of Serone Church be turned over to the control of the Serone Administrative Commission immediately; Keys to real property owned by Serone Church be delivered¼immediately; All persons, except as authorized by [the defendant] cease and desist in use of any property, including real property; Each prior member or representative of Serone Church forthwith cease and desist from purporting to engage or retain legal counsel on behalf of Serone Church.”
The Serone congregation is arguing that California state law, as recently interpreted in an appellate court ruling in a United Methodist Church case, gives the congregation the right to retain its property. The Hamni Presbytery’s administrative commission staked its claim to the property in accordance with a property trust clause in the PCUSA Constitution.
That clause, G-8.0201 in the Book of Order, says:
- “All property held by or for a particular church, a presbytery, a synod, the General Assembly, or the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), 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.).”
In his brief, Serone’s lawyer, Paul Rolf Jensen, cited the recent United Methodist case, in which California’s 5th Appellate District Court held that a local congregation had the right, under California’s state property and trust laws, to revoke the ecclesiastical policy.
“California law has never allowed for the imposition of such an involuntary irrevocable trust, as urged by Hanmi Presbytery, Inc., and to the contrary, has consistently held that real property (far and away the largest element of plaintiff’s property) cannot be transferred into a trust except by a written instrument,” the Serone brief states.
It adds, “[T]he property in question – which is all of the property of the plaintiff – was purchased by the small donations over time of those members of the congregation … The Hanmi Presbytery has contributed nothing in this regard, but yet argues it should be able to confiscate all of that property by the imposition of a trust in its favor, and not merely any trust, but an irrevocable trust.”
In the Methodist case, the California appellate court ruled that a breakaway Methodist Church had the right to revoke the ecclesiastical property trust law of the United Methodist Church. “We know of no principle of 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 court said.
The appellate court also said the denomination’s trust law, as applicable in California, cannot simply be imposed by a hierarchical church. Quoting from state property law, the court added, “[U]nless a trust is expressly made irrevocable by the trust instrument, the trust is revocable by the settlor.” The court said the defendant local congregation was the settlor in the Methodist case.
The Serone brief also asks the judge to rule under “neutral principles of law,” without considering doctrine or hierarchal decisions of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Historically, the Presbyterian Church has consistently – through its own cases and through amicus curiae briefs in property disputes in other denominations – defended a standard that the U.S. Supreme Court adopted in 1871.
In that case, which involved a Presbyterian property dispute in Louisville, Ky., the court established a rule that prevailed for more than a century in Supreme Court decisions: that civil courts had no right to countermand the property decisions of hierarchal religious bodies involved in doctrinal disputes.
More recent Supreme Courts, however, have opened the door for consideration of church property disputes on the basis of “neutral principles of law” – involving such matters as such matters of deeds, states’ trust and property statutes and other nondoctrinal issues.