Category: Uncategorized

CHURCH SPLIT PURGATORY

Church splits that spill out into the street and the Courts often lead people that have never been through one to react with judgmental disdain.  The lesson of these conflicts, however, should not be missed.  First, very often, “but for the grace of God go I,” is usually true of those who react with judgmental disdain whether they admit it or know it.  Second, a church split often resembles, at least to this observer, a divorce with some of the same or very similar emotional drives and fallout.  Third, the causes of a church split are from the outside often incomprehensible; they seem irrational.  Fourth, on the inside, the irrationality of the church split is not apparent because convoluted emotional reasoning has often replaced reason and unthinkable motives like greed, lust for power, or primal fear threat reactions run rampant.

While the summer production of court opinions is often slower, this summer the Supreme Court of Alabama has issued, subject to revision, an opinion over 11,000 words long about church splits.  Taylor v Paradise Missionary Baptist Church, Slip. Op. (Ala. 2017). The opinion is notable because Alabama has declared that the Ecclesiastical Abstention Doctrine deprived the Alabama courts of jurisdiction to resolve a church split by declaring who was the elected pastor of the congregation.  The congregation was left to resolve the church split without resolution of the dispute by a Court.  Legal fees and five years of litigation ended with a dismissal of the case and no verdict.

The stupendous effort of the Alabama Supreme Court to “get it right” in this lengthy opinion was necessitated because a church with sixteen (16) members fractured into two (2) groups.  One group favored terminating and replacing the pastor.  The pastor led the resistance group.  Although the church was congregational, it belonged to an association and engaged a mediator from the association.  But, the failure to settle led to litigation in 2012 that resulted in five years of employment for lawyers and the Supreme Court opinion summarized herein.

Structurally, while the church had bylaws, it had not adjusted the bylaws to its diminutive size and did not elect the boards called for in their own bylaws.  Thus, the church learned the cost of operating like a rabble.  There appears to be a lack of convention speakers on the dangers of mob rule and no course in bible colleges in church administration.

No doubt, normal economic forces will resolve a church split, e.g., foreclosure, inability to pay the pastor, that cannot be resolved in Court.  If normal economic forces do not resolve it, other events in the lives of the disputants inevitably will resolve the church split, e.g., death, divorce, retirement, illness, loss of interest.  Rarely, a mediator will be engaged to resolve it.  Nevertheless, most church splits end by one of these means rather than by Court judgment.  In most states, a Court will finally resolve it by employing neutral principles of law.  But, not in Alabama if the result is the appointment of the pastor.  If the result is control of property, the result might be different, because the Court stated:  “As discussed above, the removal of Taylor as the pastor of PMBC was purely an ecclesiastical matter not involving a property right and the trial court lacked the jurisdiction to consider it.”

The Alabama Supreme Court opinion is also notable, and long, because of its recital of the century long history of church split litigation in Alabama.  This by itself made the opinion interesting.

LITIGATION RISKS OF HELPING — MINISTRY IN SECULAR ENTITIES

Many secular organizations, such as jails and public hospitals, allow priests and ministers to serve as chaplains. Sometimes the chaplain is also an employee of the secular organization. More likely, a para-church organization or a church employed the priest or minister and sponsors their ministry on the premises of the secular entity. If the minister or priest is accused of misconduct or negligence, the issue of control the priest or minister might be resolved by a determination the minister or priest is supervised by both the secular and religious entity. Or, it might be determined a minister or priest thought to be solely supervised by the religious entity is, while on the grounds of the secular organization, supervised by the secular organization unilaterally.

In Savin v San Francisco, et al, Order Granting in Part and Denying in Part Motion to Dismiss (ND Cal. 2017), the priest was accused of misconduct. The Court held it was a fact question, at that point in the proceedings, whether the priest was supervised by the secular organization, too, or just the Archdiocese that employed the priest.

The issue of control, which I have relabeled “supervisory oversight,” might not be limited to tracing payroll checks. The inquiry might include, for example, access to patient records, access to non-public areas, or whether the priest or minister is part of the services hierarchy and reports to it. Even broad autonomy might have limits that would seem to be a level of supervisory oversight. The identification badge issued to the priest or minister by the secular organization might be “enough” control.

The relationship between the secular entity and the religious entity, and the priest or minister assigned, should be described and defined in writing. This should be considered even if it has never been done before. A Memorandum of Understanding might be sufficient if all sides are disclaiming control but a contract should be considered if promises must be exchanged or if money will be paid.

GROWTH BY FISSION THROUGH LITIGATION

From the outside looking in, many church splits seem driven by primal urges rather than any spiritual forces.  Admittedly, to those involved in the dispute, spiritual or doctrinal issues might seem to be driving the clash, but from the outside, those issues may not be visible or understood.  A Court cannot become entangled in the spiritual or doctrinal issues, if there are any, and even if the Court understands the spiritual or doctrinal issue.  Thus, that may leave a Court using secular law, neutral principles of law, to settle a church split.

In Brother Alger Mullins v Jim Wicker, 2017 Ohio 5663 (Ohio App., 4th Dist., 2017), on a split decision, 2-1, the appellate court affirmed the trial court’s Judgment which had the effect of acknowledging the two factions had, indeed, split the church into two separate churches.  Both sides were enjoined from interfering with the use of the church property by the opponent.  One group had the church property on even weekends and the other had the property on odd weekends.  Each became responsible for half of the expenses and no expenses could be incurred on behalf of both without consent from both.  The church was congregation, i.e., self-governing.

The appellate opinion also was interesting because of its recital of other court resolved church splits in other cases that resulted in published or otherwise available opinions. Further, the appellate opinion was a split decision because one of the three judges on the panel dissented on Ecclesiastical Abstention Doctrine grounds.  The result of a decision based on the dissent would have been to leave the factions stuck in their dispute until they either resolved it, one party finally drove off the other, or an unpaid church vendor or property mishap ended the congregation’s ownership of the property.  Of course, arguably, the mutual injunctions might have the same effect.  The dispute between the factions also involved whether adult female members could vote and whether the congregation should be a member of an association of congregations.

One other interesting fact that might have accounted for the outcome was that the church held a monthly business meeting and maintained meetings of those minutes, but otherwise there were no bylaws or other governing documents.  The governance through the monthly church business meeting broke down when each side decided to expel the other and each side began to conduct business meetings without inviting all of the members of the church.  The meeting minutes were the governance documents for decades until the minutes were no longer recognized by both sides.

INTRAMURAL ECCLESIASTICAL KERFUFFLES

It seems astonishing that a church member would, to enforce a claimed religious view of the member, litigate with the member’s own church.  But, that was what the Court called an Intramural Ecclesiastical Kerfuffle in Flynn v Estevez, Slip Op. (FL. App. 1st Dist. 2017).  The Plaintiff was the parent of a child headed to parochial elementary school and sued when the church school would not admit his child without a vaccination.  The Plaintiff sought an injunction to compel the church school to admit the unvaccinated child on the grounds the Plaintiff, as parent, had a right guaranteed by statute to omit vaccinations on religious grounds.  The church school, a church school of the very denomination of which the Plaintiff was a member, considered the requirement of vaccinations compliance with the “public good” and part of the church’s doctrine.

The Court held that the statutory parental right had to give way to the church’s constitutional rights which we by short hand refer to as the Ecclesiastical Abstention Doctrine.  Also, because the dispute was an “intramural ecclesiastical kerfuffle,” i.e., the religious view asserted by the Plaintiff was contrary to the religious view of his own church was, according to the Court, a “devotee’s tail wagging the corpus of church leadership.”  Because it would require discernment of religious doctrine to compare the beliefs of the Plaintiff to the defendant church school to chose between them, under Florida law the Court determined it did not have jurisdiction of the dispute and affirmed dismissal.  The Court went to on to hold, at least in dicta, that the operation of the church school made church school operations as religious as church administration.

While Florida views the Ecclesiastical Abstention Doctrine as a limitation on jurisdiction of the court, as learned a couple of days ago in the article The Finger in the Dike, Michigan does not.  The case reviewed in “Finger” was also a church school case.