After presbytery’s administrative commission wrote Memorial Park’s session, the session sought a temporary restraining order to prohibit the commission from contacting or taking any action to address or approach the church. The court issued a restraining order that obstructed the presbytery.
The congregation’s complaint noted it was doctrinally independent from any national body. Yet its by-laws stated:
Memorial Park Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), being a particular congregation of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), recognizes that the Constitution of the said Church is, in all its provisions, obligatory upon it and its members.
Memorial Park sought the imposition of “neutral principles” by the court in resolving the dispute. Neutral principles was outlined in a 1969 federal Supreme Court ruling — Presbyterian Church in the United States v. Blue Hull Memorial Church — and was further developed in Jones v. Wolf (1979). Jones instructed religious organizations to arrange their relationships in such a way that civil courts could resolve them without entangling the courts in theological issues. The decisions encouraged a 1983 constitutional amendment that included a property trust clause when the northern and southern Presbyterian Churches merged. Six Memorial Park commissioners supported that new constitution during Pittsburgh Presbytery’s vote.
The property trust clause expresses a Presbyterian principle that was stated in 1644 by the Westminster Divines.
Scripture holds forth … the several congregations in Jerusalem being but one church and the elders of that church being mentioned as meeting together for acts of government, do prove that those several congregations were under one presbyterial government.1
The Presbyterian Church declared in 1797, “ … several different congregations of believers, taken collectively, constitute one Church of Christ, … that a larger part of the Church … should … determine matters of controversy which arise … the apostles [practice] and the practice of the primitive Church are considered as authority.”2
Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court applied the Blue Hull Memorial decision in Beaver-Butler Presbytery v. Middlesex Presbyterian Church, in 1981. The court stated, “In order for a court to find that a trust has been created there must exist in the record clear and unambiguous language or conduct evidencing the intent to create the trust.”3 Middlesex never recognized a denomination trust interest through its corporation documents. Commonwealth court ruled in Middlesex’s favor, “A trust … cannot arise from loose statements admitting possible inferences consistent with other relationships.”4
Historically, the PCUS exercised its trust interest in the Walnut Street Presbyterian Church in Louisville, Ky. In 1865, the PCUS General Assembly declared that clergy from the southern Presbyterian Church who sought reentry into the northern Church must swear an ecclesiastical oath that disavowed slavery. Walnut Street Church dissidents seized the sanctuary. In 1871, Watson v. Jones, the denomination claimed jurisdiction over congregation’s property matters. In response, the Supreme Court defined a “deference rule,” or “polity approach:”
… whenever the questions of … ecclesiastical rule, custom, or law have been decided by the highest of these church judiciaries … legal tribunals must accept such decisions as final, and as binding upon them.5
Blue Hull’s 1969 neutral principles decision departed from Watson’s deference rule.
In Pennsylvania, the St. James the Less (2005) decision ruled St. James’ property was deeded solely to congregation, not an Episcopalian diocese. The court found “the settlor of the local church’s property was the local church, rather than the national church.”6 Memorial Park’s charter and title to its property mirrored St. James the Less – remaining silent as a settlor of a trust. Despite Memorial Park by-laws’ submission to the Church’s constitution, Pittsburgh Presbytery’s trust interest was questionable.
Neutral principles separate theology from religious bodies’ practice. Appellants and Appellees are not divorced from doctrines that establish a religious body’s corporate identity. When civil courts ignore religious bodies’ corporate identity while resolving property disputes, they regard religion as a non-existent factor. Religious faith’s disassociation from personal and corporate practice benefits civil leaders’ efforts to obtain exclusive authority over citizens’ consciences.
Civil courts’ promotion of individual property rights, exclusive of a denomination’s theology that unites congregations, fosters church members’ disenfranchisement with denomination leadership. It diminishes the societal role of shared religious convictions. Civil courts, rather than theological councils, become religious controversy’s final arbiter.
Westminster’s Divines acknowledged presbyterial government’s necessity for preserving a just, free society. Individuals united in congregations act as a social conscience that challenges civil leaders who possess the authority to employ death’s threat to compel citizen submission to the state’s ends. Tyranny can result when corporate religious authority is subverted by the state.
When congregation independence from higher judicatories’ authority is judicially established, the court’s “neutrality” violates the religious liberty of those citizens who believe congregations are accountable to a higher religious authority than their own self-interest. Neutral principles leads to Presbyterianism’s decentralization, and the diminishment of a united Church voice against state injustice. It produces, in its place, a congregational establishment.
Property trust law elevates a civil real estate document above life-long religious beliefs and demonstrated religious practices. Neutral principles fail to acknowledge that a religious community conveys property from one generation to the next without a deed, or written arrangement. A shared confession orally conveys property trust interest under church judicatories’ supervision.
Prior to 1969, no denomination met the test of a congregation’s written conveyance of a property trust interest. Jones v. Wolf compelled presbyterial and episcopal church governments to insist that congregations incorporated before 1969 amend their charter, deeds, and by-laws to conform to the court’s standard in order to preserve the denomination’s corporate identity. It threatens resources that are diverted from the Church’s mission in order to resolve legal disputes that arise.
Historically, the state has legalized practices that oppose Church teachings, creating conflict among church members who endorse the state’s libertarianism and those who remain convicted by the Church’s teachings. Were the Church’s authority to influence the conscience ended through state intervention, the state would destroy its greatest ally in promoting social order. What is at stake is of far greater significance than church property ownership.
John J. Lolla Jr. is pastor of Plum Creek Church in Pittsburgh, Pa.
1George Gillespie, Notes of Debates and Proceedings of The Assembly of Divines and other Commissioners at Westminster, ed. by David Meek (Edinburgh: Robert Ogle and Oliver and Boyd, 1846), 6-7. The Divines referred to I Tim. 4:14, Acts 2:11, 42, 46; 6:2; 8:1; 11:1ff.; 12:5; 15:2, 4, 6; 21:17, 18. The wider Church’s property trust interest can be related to Acts 4:32, where the Jerusalem Council received the proceeds from the sale of church members’ property for the benefit of all.
2 Book of Order, G-1.0400.
3 507 Pa. 255, 489 A.2d 1317.
4 Ibid.
5 80 U.S. 679, 20 L.Ed. 666 (13 Wall. 1871).
6 Ibid.
