Case ID: mo_69/html/0492-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Napton, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Boyce et al., Appellants, v. Christian.
    Devise to Old School' Baptists void under the Constitution of 1865. The Old School Baptist Church of Flint Hill, in Ralls county, Missouri, is a religious sect, order or denomination within the meaning of section 13, article 1, of the Constitution of 1865, and was, therefore, not incapable under that section of receiving a devise, notwithstanding it was but a local congregation uncontrolled by any general ecclesiastical organization.
    
      Appeal from Balls Circuit Court. — Hon. John T. Redd, Judge.
    
      A witness for the defendants testified : I am a member of the church or denomination of Christians known as “the Old School Baptist Church,” sometimes called the Ironside Baptist Church; as a religious denomination, the Old School Baptist Church is organized on the congregational plan, each congregation composed .of individual members, meeting by common consent, at the same place for religious worship; the congregations, or such of them as desire to do so, located in any territorial limit, appoint delegates, or messengers, to meet together once a year, for the purpose of consultation, and giving and receiving information as to progress and prospects of the common cause. This meeting of delegates .is called an association, and this meeting or association has no power over a congregation in any matters of faith or practice. Each congregation owns its own property, transacts its own business, and governs itself, and is known and distinguished from other congregations, of like faith and order, by its own distinctive name; any name that the congregation itself chooses to adopt; frequently the name of the place where the building, or place of worship, is located; the congregation of which Sarepta Glascock, in her life-time, was a member, met for worship at place called Flint Hill, and the congregation itself was known by the name of “ the Old School Baptist Church of Flint Hill;” there is no religious sect, order or denomination known by the name of “ the Old School Baptist Church of Flint Hill,” so. far as I am informed.
    
      Lancaster § Dimmitt for appellants, cited Schmucker v. Heel, 61 Mo. 592; Kenrick v. Cole, 61 Mo. 572.
    ' William P. Harrison and Wm. Christian for respondents. "
    The devisee is not a sect, order or denomination, in the sense of section 13, article 1, of the Constitution of 1865. The devise prohibited by the constitution is one which gives the property to the whole religious body, of which the local congregation is usually only a small part. The words “sect,” “order” and “ denomination,” in the constitution, are used to denote and include bodies composed of many local congregations, linked together by the rules of those “sects, orders or denominations,” so that what property one holds belongs in some sense to the whole, and on the dissolution of the local congregation remains the property of the “ sect, order or denomination.” In this sense this devisee is not a “ sect, order or denomination,” being wholly unconnected with any other ecclesiastical organization.
   Napton, J.

The only question in this case arises on the validity of the will of Sarepta Glascock, which is in the following words : “ Whatever portion of my estate that may remain over after paying the expenses above named, I will and bequeath to the Old School Baptist Church, called Elint Hill, in Ralls county, Missouri, to be placed in the hands of such trustees as the said church shall or may appoint, who shall use and manage this bequest for the use and benefit of the said church, according to its directions.” The circuit court decided in accordance with the opinion of a witness who was a member of the church at Elint Hill, that the Old School Baptist Church was not a religious sect or order or denomination, within the meaning of the 13th section, of the 1st ai’ticle of the Constitution of this State in 1865, but we cannot concur in this conclusion. It would not be respectful to the worshipers at that church to be told that they did not belong to any religious denomination. The judgment will, therefore, be reversed and the cause remanded.

The other judges concur.

Reversed.