Polen v. Cox

Finan, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This case is before us on appeal from an order of the Circuit Court for Dorchester County dismissing appellant’s bill of complaint for injunctive relief. The factual background of this case must be examined at some length. The Church of God is an unincorporated religious denomination with national headquarters in Cleveland, Tennessee.

Prior to 1966, it was the practice of the Church of God to maintain separate white and colored branches within the church structure. The administrative headquarters of the colored branch was located in Jacksonville, Florida. A consequence of this separation was that there were two sets of regional or state directors (known in Church of God parlance as Overseers) for the white and colored branches respectively. The appellee, the Reverend Mr. J. B. Cox, was the State Overseer of the Colored Division of the Church of God for the State of Maryland as well as the minister of the colored congregation of the Church of God, located at 815 Center Street, Cambridge, Maryland.

In 1964 at the General Assembly of the Church of God, it was resolved that there should be no further reference to race within the church structure. This resolution was ²⁸ implemented in August, 1966, by the merger of the white and colored branches of the Church of God. One effect of this merger was that the position of colored overseer for specific regions was no longer necessary. Thus the appellee was relegated to his local ministry when the Church of God appointed another to the position of Overseer for the Maryland, Delaware and District of Columbia region.

The dispute in the present case arises from events which transpired at a meeting held in the Cambridge Church on February 22, 1967. The appellee served as moderator of the meeting. The purpose of the gathering was to have the trustees of the congregation lease the property to the pastor and the congregation. The Minutes disclose that the following action was taken: “ (2) Moved and favored authority be invested in the hands of the Colored Congregation of the Church of God in the City of Cambridge to lease to the pastor and colored congregation the parsonage and church chapel for five years at an annual nominal fee of one dollar renewable for an additional five years at the option of the pastor and church congregation.

The said property to be used for divine worship and religious purposes (carried by a vote of 18-2).” Thereafter on February 24, 1967, the trustees leased to the appellee the property at 815 Center Street for a period of five years at an annual rental of one dollar. Part of the lease which was recorded among the land records of Dorchester County provided: “(1) That the hereindescribed property will be used by the said Jeremiah B. Cox and the local congregation of said Church for divine worship and religious purposes only.” On April 1, 1967, the appellee and four others formed a religious corporation known as the National Church of God, Inc. This body presently holds its services in the church on the disputed property. The ministry of the ap ²⁹ pellee in the Church of God was officially revoked in September, 1967. The bill of complaint for injunctive relief was filed by Thomas W. Day who had been appointed Overseer of the Maryland, Delaware, and District of Columbia region when the merger took place.

When Mr. Day died, the lower court allowed the new Overseer and present appellant, O. W. Polen, to be substituted as party plaintiff. The bill of complaint sought to end the appellee’s use and control of the leased property and of certain funds which were on deposit in the National Bank of Cambridge. The complaint charged that: (1) the meeting at which the trustees were authorized to lease the property was never properly convened since such a meeting could not be called without the permission of the Overseer; (2) the vote of 18-2 was not properly taken because those opposed were asked to stand and anyone who did not stand was considered as in favor of the authorization; (8) the proper trustees of the congregation did not sign the lease; (4) the terms of the deed by which the trustees held the property did not give them power to make this lease. After a hearing the chancellor dismissed the bill.

He concluded that the Supreme Court’s decision in Presbyterian Church in the United States v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Church, 893 U. S. 440 (1969) and our own decision in The Maryland and Virginia Eldership of the Churches of God et al v. The Church of God at Sharpsburg, Inc., 249 Md. 650 (1968), preclude the intervention of a civil court in deciding this property dispute. Thus he stated: “While strictly speaking the question involves property rights, it certainly would appear that the controversy arises from a dispute over doctrine and practice within the church assignment of its clergy. It seems to me that if this court intervened here it would certainly be attempting to provide discipline and control of a denomination over its clergy and to maintain that denomination’s ‘purity of doctrine’ which was condemned in Sharpsburg.” The learned chancellor went on to note, however, that if the controversy involved only a neutral ³⁰ principle of law, he would still conclude that the appellee should have control of the property. From his examination of the deed and other relevant church documents, the chancellor found that the national church had power over the local property only if the local church ceased to function or exist as distinguished from withdrawing from the national church.

Thus on the authority of Sharpsburg which he thought analogous, the chancellor concluded the local church should keep control of the property since it had withdrawn. We think the chancellor erred in both of these conclusions. I The legal standard which the chancellor adopted to determine that the court had no jurisdiction to intervene in this dispute is founded upon an erroneous interpretation of the Presbyterian and Sharpsburg cases. These cases do not hold that the source of the controversy — that is whether the property dispute is motivated by a controversy over doctrinal practices—is determinative of whether the civil courts can intervene to decide church property disputes.

To so hold would too narrowly restrict the scope of the court’s jurisdiction. The relevant inquiry must be whether the court can resolve the property dispute on the basis of neutral principles of law which do not involve the resolution by the court of ecclesiastical issues. Thus in the present case, it does seem that the underlying source of the controversy stems from the mother church’s assignment of clergy to the position of overseer and the decision to abolish the bifurcated church structure. However, as long as the court does not have to resolve the doctrinal propriety of these changes in order to determine who has legal control of the property, there is no unconstitutional intervention by the state in church affairs.

Mr. Justice Brennan stated the limits of judicial intervention in the following terms in Presbyterian: “It is obvious however, that not every civil court decision as to property claimed by a religious organization jeopardizes values protected by the ³¹ First Amendment. Civil courts do not inhibit the free exercise of religion merely by opening their doors to disputes involving church property. And there are neutral principles of law, developed for use in all property disputes which can be applied without ‘establishing’ churches to which property is awarded. But First Amendment values are plainly jeopardized when church property litigation is made to turn on the resolution by civil courts of controversies over religious doctrine and practice.

If civil courts undertake to resolve such controversies in order to adjudicate the property dispute, the hazards are ever present of inhibiting the free development of religious doctrine and of implicating secular interests in matters of purely ecclesiastical concern.” 393 U. S. at 449. The type of controversies in which the courts cannot intervene is made clear by an examination of the situation before the Supreme Court in Presbyterian. Two Georgia churches which were affiliated with the Presbyterian Church in the United States voted to withdraw from the national body and form their own autonomous organizations. They did this in the belief that certain actions of the national church were in violation of that organization’s constitution and were departures from the doctrine and practice in force at the time they had affiliated with the national church.

The national church acknowledged the withdrawal and proceeded to take over the local property until new leadership could be appointed. The two local churches filed suit in the Georgia state courts to prevent trespass by the national church. The case was submitted to the jury on the theory that Georgia law implies a trust upon local property for the benefit of the national church upon condition that the national church adhere to its doctrine as it existed at the time of affiliation by the local churches. The jury found that the national body had substantially departed from the doctrine which was in existence at the time of affiliation. ³² The Supreme Court found this departure-from-doctrine test unconstitutional because it required civil courts to determine which doctrines were fundamental to church beliefs and whether substantial departures from such fundamental doctrines had occurred.

Since the departure-from-doctrine aspect of the implied trust theory required this judicial resolution of doctrinal matters in order to decide who had legal right to the property, the state courts were forbidden from using this standard to resolve the property dispute. It seems clear that the dispute in the Presbyterian case had as its underlying source a sharp difference between the litigants as to church doctrine and practice. However, it was not this factor with which the Supreme Court found fault. As noted above, the objectionable feature was that in order to solve the property questions the court had to resolve matters of doctrinal dispute.

Applying this analysis to the facts before us, it can be seen that the “source of the controversy” standard used by the chancellor was incorrect. The standard must be whether the parties by the acts and documents which have governed their relationship have made it possible for a civil court to resolve control of property without the court itself having to make ecclesiastical determinations. This we think was the message of Presbyterian when it stated: “Hence States, religious organizations, and individuals must structure relationships involving church property so as not to require the civil courts to resolve ecclesiastical questions.” 393 U. S. at 449. II In considering the relationship between the Church of God and the colored congregation as it might bear on the resolution of this property dispute, we think the following portion of Judge Barnes’ opinion in Sharpsburg will help to focus the inquiry : “In considering questions in regard to the use of church property it is usually important in absence of express language in the deed convey ³³ ing the property or making the gift to consider the polity or form of church government which the particular denomination has.

In the note in 75 Har. L. Rev. at pp. 1143-4, the three general types of church polity are defined as follows: ‘At least three kinds of internal structure or polity may be discerned; congregational, presbyterial, and episcopal. In the congregational form each local congregation is self-governing. The presbyterial polities are representative authority being expressed by laymen and ministers in an ascending succession of judicatories—presbytery over the session of the local church, synod over presbytery, and general assembly over all.

In the episcopal form power reposes in the clerical superiors such as bishops. Roughly presbyterial and episcopal polities may be considered hierarchical as opposed to congregational polities in which the autonomy of the local congregation is the central principle.’ “In many of the hierarchical churches there may be provisions in their constitutions, canon law, or other controlling documents or statutues which make it clear that the property is held in trust for the uses of the parent church and its discipline and appointments * * * It thus appears that there are three methods by which a hierarchical denomination may maintain control of local church property: (1) It may require reverter clauses in the deed to the property of the local churches. (2) It may provide in its constitution or by some authoritative source for the reverting of the local church property to the hierarchical body upon withdrawal by a local congregation with an implied consent by the local church to this provision. (3) It may obtain from the General Assembly ³⁴ an act providing for such a