It is amazing how emotional a few church members can become over the name of the church. For most, the church name is simply an evangelistic marketing tool like the now ubiquitous ever changing electronic sign. But for some it becomes something as intrinsic as identity. Thus, changing the name of a church is usually done with slow care and consensus building in congregation governed churches. Also, name changes are as easily done as undone in most states. In most states, indeed, the church corporation name can remain the same and the new name can be adopted by merely filing a fictitious name certificate, or whatever the certificate is called in a particular state. Changing the name back merely requires filing a revocation of the certificate. Some churches will vote to adopt an alias name for a year and at the end of the year vote to keep the name or revert to the old name. That is a tried and true method to prevent what happened as described in the next paragraph.

In Gunn v First Baptist Church, Slip Op. (Tenn. App. 2018), the member did not want the name changed to “The Church at Sugar Creek.” The opinion of the court does not recite enough facts to know the basis or content of the objection by the member. Also, it is not clear whether the church corporation changed its name or merely adopted a new alias name using a procedure similar to the one described above. The member sued claiming the congregational vote to change the name was void because non-members or ineligible persons were allowed to vote. The opinion does not state whether the vote was close, recorded in any manner such as with paper ballots or a web-based tally, or whether it was a show of hands or otherwise secret. The court merely looked at the bylaws of the corporation, noted that membership was determined by ecclesiastical considerations, and affirmed the trial court’s dismissal of the case holding the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine limited the court’s jurisdiction over internal church management decision making.

The lesson from this is given in the first paragraph above. But, the other thing to note is that the brief filed on behalf of the member failed to cite a legal authority opposing the notion the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine prevented the court from reviewing a congregational vote. As has been reported on this website more than once, neutral principles of law are often applied to procedural irregularities in congregational votes using state laws governing corporations. While that is rare because it can easily go further than the First Amendment allows, and courts loathe supervising something like that, apparently that authority was not presented to this court.

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