East Coast Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America, Inc. v. Supervisor of Assessments

Couch, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The East Coast Conference of the Evangelical Covenant Church of America, Inc., et al., appellants, take this appeal from an order of the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County, reversing the order of the Maryland Tax Court, which had granted a tax exemption under Art. 81, § 9 (c), to certain real property owned by the Conference. The single question presented in this appeal is one of statutory construction — whether the “parsonage” tax exemption found in Art. 81, § 9 (c), includes any property owned by a church and used exclusively as a residence by a pastor, whether or not there is an existing congregation or church building. The facts involved in this case are largely undisputed.

The Evangelical Covenant Church of America was duly organized in 1885, now having a membership over 70,000 in more than 550 churches. The East Coast Conference is one of its ten regional conferences. After determining to make a major effort to establish new churches in areas where the church was not well known, the Conference selected the Washington, D. C. Metropolitan Area as a project area. To implement its plan, appellant issued a “call” to Reverend Njaa to become the area nucleus builder.

Reverend Njaa was a duly ordained minister of the church and had previously served as pastor of three covenant churches. The main function of Reverend Njaa was to organize local members of the church into groups which would ultimately be large enough and interested enough to support their own parish. When and if Reverend Njaa’s organizing efforts were successful, these groups would call their own minister. On occasion, Reverend Njaa performed typical pastoral duties with a particular group in the Gaithersburg-Rockville area and he maintained that the entire Washington Metropolitan Area was his parish.

While admitting .that his job was to start new churches, he stated he also served as pastor. ²¹⁵ A few months after Reverend Njaa’s arrival in the Washington area,- the East Coast Conference purchased a house in Bowie, Maryland to be used exclusively as a residence by the Reverend and his family; the house was admittedly used for no other purpose. In due course, appellants filed an application with the Supervisor of Assessments of Prince George’s County requesting an exemption from real property assessment and taxation on their property being used as a residence, on the ground that said house constituted a “parsonage” within the meaning of Art. 81, § 9 (c), of the Annotated Code of Maryland (1957 Repl. Vol.). The exemption was denied by the Supervisor of Assessments and an appeal was taken to the Property Tax Assessment Appeal Board for Prince George’s County, which affirmed the Supervisor’s denial.

A further appeal was then taken to the Maryland Tax Court and, for the first time, appellants were successful. The Tax Court reversed the Supervisor of Assessments and granted the § 9 (c) exemption. The Supervisor of Assessments appealed the Tax Court decision to the Circuit Court for Prince George’s County, and that court reversed the decision of the Maryland Tax Court, in effect denying the exemption to appellants. Undaunted, appellants ask this Court, on appeal, to reverse the Circuit Court and to reinstate the Maryland Tax Court decision.

We decline to do so. Article 81, Sec. 9, provides for real and personal property exemptions generally. Section 9 (c) provides: “Property owned by a religious group or organization and actually used exclusively for public religious worship, including parsonages and convents ... shall be exempt.” There is no dispute that the subject property is owned by a religious group or organization. The question is whether the subject property is a parsonage as used in that section.

Distilling the many definitions found in standard dictionaries, 1 it seems fair to say a parsonage is, in general, ²¹⁶ a house supplied to a parish minister by the parish congregation or church. Whether or not there must be an existing local church or congregation, to which the parsonage is an adjunct, is the disputed point. Art. 81, § 9 (a) requires that all exemptions be strictly construed. The Court of Appeals in Perdue v. State Dept. of Assessments & Taxation, 264 Md. 228, 232-3 , 286 A. 2d 165, 167 (1972), stated: “To determine the applicability of a legislative exemption to particular facts it is necessary to ascertain whether the language of the act clearly and unambiguously included the claimed items by words used in their ordinary and popularly understood meaning ....

It is fundamental that statutory tax exemptions are strictly construed in favor of the taxing authority and if any real doubt exists as to the propriety of an exemption that doubt must be resolved in favor of the State.” ²¹⁷ Appellants argue that the legislature eliminated any doubt as to the construction of “parsonage” by repealing and reenacting Art. 81, § 9 (c), with amendments in Acts 1972, ch. 350, § 1. Formerly Article 81, Sec. 9 (4) provided: “Houses and buildings used exclusively for public worship, and the furniture contained therein, and any parsonage used in connection therewith, and the grounds appurtenant to such houses, buildings and parsonages and necessary for the respective uses thereof.” Article 81, Sec. 9 (c) was passed in 1972; it repealed Article 81, Sec. 9 (4) and reenacted the former law, providing in pertinent part: “(c) Churches. — Property owned by a religious group or organization and actually used exclusively for public religious worship, including parsonages and convents, and property owned by any such group or organization and actually used exclusively for educational purposes.” The amendments in part eliminated the requirement of a “connection” with houses and buildings used exclusively for public worship, arguably indicating that no identifiable church is required. On the other hand, it may be argued that