Presbyterian Church has been at center of property disputes before Supreme Court
By John H. Adams, The Layman Volume 38, Number 1, April 12, 2005
The Presbyterian Church (USA) and its predecessor denominations in America, which date back to the 17th century, have been rife with theological and property disputes that have resulted in a number of landmark cases in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Ironically, the precedent Supreme Court ruling in 1871 emerged from a property dispute in Louisville, Ky., where the PCUSA is headquartered and where theology and property issues are still in great contention.
Today, the Presbyterian Church (USA) aggressively defends its property trust clause in light of Watson v. Jones (1871), which held that civil courts could not resolve church property disputes on the basis of theological differences – even if the denomination abandoned its founding beliefs.
Citing the requirements of the First Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled in Watson v. Jones that state courts must defer to the policy of the denomination’s governing body.
“The law knows no heresy, and is committed to the support of no dogma, the establishment of no sect,” the court said.
The court added, “The right to organize voluntary religious associations to assist in the expression and dissemination of any religious doctrine, and to create tribunals for the decision of controverted questions of faith within the association, and for the ecclesiastical government of all the individual members, congregations, and officers within the general association, is unquestioned … All who unite themselves to such a body do so with an implied consent to this government, and are bound to submit to it.”
But subsequent rulings by the Supreme Court have increasingly emphasized that church property rules must be resolved by a “neutral principles of law” analysis.
In Jones v. Wolf (1979), the court declared, “The primary advantages of the neutral-principles approach are that it is completely secular in operation, and yet flexible enough to accommodate all forms of religious organization and polity,” they said. “The method relies exclusively on objective, well-established concepts of trust and property law familiar to lawyers and judges. It thereby promises to free civil courts completely from entanglement in questions of religious doctrine, polity, and practice.”
The court added, “As a means of adjudicating a church property dispute, a State is constitutionally entitled to adopt a ‘neutral principles of law’ analysis involving consideration of the deeds, state statutes governing the holding of church property, the local church’s charter, and the general church’s constitution.”
Here’s a summary of Presbyterian cases that have gone before the U.S. Supreme Court:
Watson v. Jones, 1871
This was a case of divided loyalties still simmering after the Civil War. The two sides in the schism were Confederate loyalists (the congregation’s majority) and Northern loyalists (who agreed with the General Assembly’s edict that ministers and elders who had supported the Confederate cause or who had supported slavery must repent of those views before they would be considered eligible for re-ordination).
There were several lawsuits in lower courts, generally favoring the Southern Presbyterians in their efforts to control a congregation that had been a part of the Confederate Presbyterian Church, later the Presbyterian Church in the United States.
The Southerners argued that the case should be settled by English law, which generally held that property disputes should be handled according to religious principles. But the U.S. Supreme Court finally declared that the First Amendment’s religious establishment clause prohibited the civil courts from adjudicating cases according to religious principles.
The civil courts simply were not qualified to decide such matters, the justices said. “It is not to be supposed that the judges of the civil courts can be as competent in the ecclesiastical law and religious faith of all these bodies as the ablest men in each are in reference to their own. It would therefore be an appeal from the more learned tribunal in the law which should decide the case, to one which is less so.”
The court found that the Presbyterian Church U.S., like the Methodist, Roman Catholic and Episcopal denominations, was a “hierarchal” religious society in which the members agreed to be governed by a national General Assembly.
“[I]t is easy to see that if the civil courts are to inquire into all these matters, the whole subject of the doctrinal theology, the usages and customs, the written laws, and fundamental organization of every religious denomination may, and must, be examined into with minuteness and care, for they would become, in almost every case, the criteria by which the validity of the ecclesiastical decree would be determined in the civil court. This principle would deprive these bodies of the right of construing their own church laws, would open the way to all the evils which we have depicted as attendant upon the doctrine of Lord Eldon [in England], and would, in effect, transfer to the civil courts where property rights were concerned the decision of all ecclesiastical questions.”
Shepard v. Barkley, 1918
In 1918, the Supreme Court was asked to review a lower court ruling that upheld Watson v. Jones. The case, Shepard v. Barkley, evolved out a Presbyterian merger in which the members of the minority church found themselves under the dictates of a denomination that departed from what they believed to be the historic principles of Presbyterian faith and doctrine.
Chief Justice Edward D. White expressed the court’s view that it wasn’t about to expend the energy necessary to justify the Watson rule. “The doctrines by which the case is controlled have been so affirmatively and conclusively settled by a prior decision of this court as to cause it to be unnecessary as a matter of original consideration to restate them.”
Presbyterian Church v. Hull Church, 1969
During the 1960s, the leaders of the Southern mainline denomination, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.), were trying to emulate their Northern counterparts, the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. Both had their eyes on coming back together in reunion after their split at the beginning of the Civil War.
Thus, the Southern denomination began weighing in “prophetically” on a number of social issues. There were plenty – especially the Civil Rights movement and the War in Vietnam.
Some of the PCUS declarations caused bitterness in local congregations, which included Eastern Heights Presbyterian Church and Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church in Georgia. The congregations voted to separate from the PCUS to form autonomous Presbyterian churches. The ministers of the two congregations renounced the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian Church U.S. and so did all but two of the members.
A lower state court ruled in favor of the majorities who voted to leave the PCUSA and enjoined the PCUS from interfering with the use of the two congregations’ property. The Georgia Supreme Court agreed.
The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the Georgia courts. It declared that Watson v. Jones was the ruling authority. But it also ruled that “there are neutral principles of law, developed for use in all property disputes, which can be applied without ‘establishing’ churches to which property is awarded. But 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.”
Jones v. Wolf, 1979
On May 27, 1973, the congregation of Vineville Presbyterian Church in Vineville, Ga., voted 164-94 to withdraw from the Presbyterian Church US and become part of the more conservative Presbyterian Church in America. An administrative commission from the Presbytery of Augusta-Macon decided that the property belonged to the “true church” – those who voted against separating from the PCUS.
The case went to trial in the state court. A jury awarded the property to the majority, and the Georgia Supreme Court, declaring that a majority vote was decisive under “neutral principles” of law in settling property issues, upheld the decision. Thus, the stage was set for an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Six years after the congregational vote, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 majority, concluded:
1. That state courts were not wholly bound by the hierarchal policies of the denomination’s property laws, whether or not they had implicit or explicit constitutional requirements that stated that congregations held their property in trust for the general church.
2. Denominations were advised that they would be wise to adopt explicit property trust clauses. Both the PCUS and UPCUSA quickly approved amendments declaring that local congregations held their property in trust for the general church.
A large part of the decision in Jones v. Wolf dealt with “neutral principles” of law. The Supreme Court ruled that, although the Georgia courts had claimed to decide the issue on the basis of neutral principles, it had failed to make clear what principles were involved. Instead, the Supreme Court concluded, the Georgia courts had been persuaded by a congregation’s majority vote and its opposition to the theological direction of the PCUS. Those alone, the Supreme Court said, did not constitute neutral principles; rather, they were factors that the Georgia courts could not consider because they violated the First Amendment.