Was PCUSA’s exemptions provision ‘nothing more than bait?’
Reid Memorial trustees file Georgia Supreme Court amicus
By Parker T. Williamson, The Layman, November 9, 2011
Trustees of the Reid Memorial Presbyterian Church in Augusta have filed an amicus curiae brief before the Georgia Supreme Court in support of the Timberridge Presbyterian Church. The Timberridge property was confiscated by the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta after the congregation left the Presbyterian Church (USA) to join the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. The presbytery’s action was affirmed at the trial court level but overturned on appeal. The case is now before the Georgia Supreme Court.
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After affirming their agreement with an Amicus brief that was filed earlier by the Presbyterian Lay Committee on behalf of Timberridge, Reid Memorial’s trustees focused their argument on a clause in the PCUSA constitution that allowed former Southern congregations to declare themselves exempt from denominational property claims appearing elsewhere in the constitution. That exemptions clause, said the trustees, assured congregations of their right “to safeguard and underscore their independent ownership of their properties.”
Remembering the urge to merge
The trustees’ amicus recounted a brief history of events leading to the merger of former Southern and Northern Presbyterian denominations in 1983. It pointed out that the exemptions provision was a key factor leading to the merger. “That provision of the constitution was obviously hard-fought, adamantly insisted upon, and cast in the strident language insisted upon by churches which would not have otherwise joined the merger,” said the trustees.
Many local churches would not have allowed the merger to occur without the inclusion of that exemptions clause, argued the trustees. “It [the clause] clearly supports the unassailable conclusion that those local churches at all times intended to preserve their property and their property rights for themselves and to not cede those rights, which they had enjoyed for many decades, to the national denomination. The exceptions provision says what it says and can be accorded no other meaning.”
Bait and switch?
“Whether this exceptions provision of the constitution was a ‘safe harbor’ or simple ‘bait’ to attract congregations and sessions into the fold of PCUSA is, in fact, the crux of this case,” said the brief. “If this exceptions provision is interpreted in the manner suggested by Appellant Presbytery, then it was nothing more than ‘bait,’ used to lure congregations and members of the old-line southern churches into the fold and framework of the PCUSA, where their valuable realty interests can now be stripped from them and forever relieved.
A ‘very limited hierarchy’
Denominational lawyers claim that the PCUSA is a hierarchical church and that as such, decisions by the higher governing bodies trump decisions by local churches. The trustees’ brief argued that this view of Presbyterian governance is simplistic and misleading. “The Presbyterian Church governance rests in a system of courts, rather than the typical hierarchical chain,” said the brief. “These courts have overlapping ecclesiastical, non-civil jurisdiction.”
The trustees’ brief argued that church governance in the United States spans a spectrum from “rigidly hierarchical,” e.g., the Roman Catholic Church to “congregational,” e.g., Baptist churches. There are numerous, often delicately nuanced gradations between these two extremes, the Presbyterian Church being a “hybrid” form of government that contains elements of each. The Presbyterian Church, said the brief, “is hierarchical only because it is not congregational. If it must be within one group or the other, it falls within the hierarchical category, albeit barely within the circumference of the tangent of that circle of organizations.” If one is forced to place Presbyterian churches on the hierarchical ladder, said the trustees, then it must be “situated on the first rung of the hierarchical ladder.”
The Book of Order is not civil law
Reid Memorial’s trustees took issue with the denomination’s claim that its ecclesiastical form of government applies to real property issues. They pointed out that the PCUSA’s constitution explicitly limits its own scope to “spiritual or moral matters” and states that its religious constitution may not be “aided by the civil power.”
“Therefore,” continued the brief, “to the extent the Appellant Presbytery argues that the court should find an enforceable trust merely because the denomination asserts a trust, this argument contradicts that same constitution.” The denomination’s trust clause “expresses only the beneficiary’s desire,” said the brief. That desire would be enforceable by civil authority only if it were “met by the consent of the owner and by compliance with state property and trust law.” The mere fact that the denomination declares a trust does not make it so.
‘Hemorrhagic attrition’
The trustees’ brief called attention to the precipitous membership decline suffered by the PCUSA. “There is no question that the PCUSA … is losing enrolled members at an alarming rate,” said the brief, suggesting that this “backdrop of hemorrhagic attrition” may explain attempts by presbyteries to stem the flow with property claim tourniquets that violate both their denomination’s constitution and the requirements of state property law.
Unlike Timberridge, the Reid Memorial congregation has not chosen to leave the PCUSA, but it understands that if the PCUSA can violate Timberridge’s property rights, then property held by churches staying within the denomination are similarly vulnerable. “The import and result of this case may ultimately determine the rights of many Georgia Presbyterian congregations and hundreds of millions of dollars of value in church real properties,” said the brief.
“Accordingly,” it concluded, “Amicus Reid trustees respectfully and urgently submits that the decision of the Georgia Court of Appeals should be affirmed in all of its particulars and that the affirming decision should clearly delineate the neutral principles by which similar disputes should be judged.”