Title: Ex parte Board of Trustees/Directors and/or Deacons of Old Elam Baptist Church. PETITION FOR WRIT OF MANDAMUS: CIVIL (In re: Concerned Members of Old Elam Baptist Church v. Board of Trustees/Directors and/or Deacons or Old Elam Baptist Church)

State: alabama

Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court

Document:

REL:10/05/2007 Ex parte Bd of Trustees
Notice: This opinion is subject to formal revision before publication in the advance
sheets of Southern Reporter.  Readers are requested to notify the Reporter of Decisions,
Alabama Appellate Courts, 300 Dexter Avenue, Montgomery, Alabama 36104-3741 ((334) 229-
0649), of any typographical or other errors, in order that corrections may be made before
the opinion is printed in Southern Reporter.
SUPREME COURT OF ALABAMA
OCTOBER TERM, 2007-2008
____________________
1050184
____________________
Ex parte Board of Trustees/Directors and/or Deacons of Old
Elam Baptist Church
PETITION FOR A WRIT OF MANDAMUS
(In re: Concerned Members of Old Elam Baptist Church
v.
Board of Trustees/Directors and/or Deacons or Old Elam
Baptist Church)
(Montgomery Circuit Court, CV-05-1783)
On Application for Rehearing
SMITH, Justice.
APPLICATION OVERRULED. 
Cobb, C.J., and See, Lyons, Woodall, Stuart, Bolin, and
Murdock, JJ., concur.
Parker, J., concurs specially.
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2
PARKER, Justice (concurring specially).
I agree with the majority that the application for
rehearing filed by the Concerned Members of Old Elam Baptist
Church ("the concerned members") should be overruled.  I write
separately to emphasize that courts must navigate a veritable
minefield whenever they involve themselves in church matters.
In earlier times, this Court held that issues of church
membership and discipline were beyond the jurisdiction of the
courts.  In Gewin v. Mt. Pilgrim Baptist Church, 166 Ala. 345,
349, 51 So. 947, 948 (1910), this Court stated that "the
courts have no power to revise ordinary acts of church
discipline or pass upon controverted rights of membership."
Likewise, in Hundley v. Collins, 131 Ala. 234, 243-46, 32 So.
575, 578-79 (1902), this Court stated:
"Admitting, therefore, ... that petitioner had no
notice of this proceeding [expelling him from church
membership], and that it was irregular according to
common usage, the church being independent, and not
subject to higher powers, and being a law unto
itself for its own procedure in religious matters
what it did towards the expulsion of petitioner was
not unlawful, even if it was not politic and
wise....
"....
     "...[W]henever the questions of discipline or
of faith, or ecclesiastical rule, custom, or law
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3
have been decided by the highest of these church
judiciatories to which the matter has been carried,
the legal tribunals must accept such decisions as
final, and as binding on them, in their application
to the case before them."
Relying upon these principles, this Court stated in Mt.
Olive Primitive Baptist Church v. Patrick, 252 Ala. 672, 674,
42 So. 2d 617, 618 (1949): "[T]he civil courts will not
interfere in a case of a division in a religious society
unless property rights are affected, nor even then if the
basis 
of 
the 
schism 
is 
due 
merely 
to 
a 
disparate
interpretation of doctrine."  The Court in Mt. Olive Primitive
Baptist Church did not directly address a situation in which
membership and property rights are interrelated, such as when
certain property rights are contingent upon church membership.
In Abyssinia Missionary Baptist Church v. Nixon, 340 So.
2d 746 (Ala. 1977), the Court seems to have expanded the
circumstances in which the courts may intervene in church
disputes.  In that case, which involved the expulsion of a
pastor, this Court held: 
"[I]t is proper for the courts to inquire whether a
congregational meeting, at which church business is
to be transacted, was preceded by adequate notice to
the full membership, and whether, once called, the
meeting was conducted in an orderly manner and the
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4
expulsion was an act of the authority within the
church having the power to order it." 
340 So. 2d at 748.  This Court further stated: 
"We recognize here there are civil, as opposed
to ecclesiastical, rights which have cognizance in
the courts.  A determination of whether the
fundamentals of due process have been observed can
be made in the judicial arena."
340 So. 2d at 748.
The problem with this approach is that it assumes that a
church is bound to define due process in a manner similar to
the way the courts define it.  In Lott v. Eastern Shore
Christian Center, 908 So. 2d 922 (Ala. 2005), this Court once
again considered a case involving the termination of church
membership and the right of an allegedly wrongfully terminated
member to examine the church's financial records.  In that
case we stated:
"The mere threat of expulsion, which is all the
TRO [temporary restraining order] motion in this
case involved, obviously did not involve an issue
regarding a secular, or neutral, procedural defect.
A challenge such as this one essentially alleges
violation of a substantive right, such as a right to
be 
free 
from 
the 
arbitrary 
action 
of 
an
ecclesiastical body.  However, the United States
Supreme Court has clearly stated that no such right
exists.  Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese for the
United States of America & Canada v. Milivojevich,
426 U.S. 696, 96 S.Ct. 2372, 49 L.Ed. 2d 151 (1976).
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5
"In Milivojevich, the Court considered whether
the Illinois Supreme Court had properly invalidated
the decision of the Holy Assembly of Bishops and the
Holy Synod of the Serbian Orthodox Church ('the
Mother 
Church') 
to 'defrock' Bishop Dionisije
Milivojevich 'on the ground that [the decision] was
"arbitrary" because "a detailed review of the
evidence disclose[d] that the proceedings resulting
in Bishop Dionisije's removal and defrockment were
not in accordance with the prescribed procedure of
the constitution and the penal code of the Serbian
Orthodox Church."' 426 U.S. at 718, 96 S.Ct. 2372.
The Court held 'that the inquiries made by the
Illinois 
Supreme 
Court 
into 
matters 
of
ecclesiastical cognizance and polity and the court's
action pursuant thereto contravened the First and
Fourteenth Amendments.' 426 U.S. at 698, 96 S.Ct.
2372.  In doing so, it explained:
"'The 
conclusion 
of 
the 
Illinois
Supreme Court that the decisions of the
Mother Church were "arbitrary" was grounded
upon an inquiry that persuaded the Illinois
Supreme Court that the Mother Church had
not followed its own laws and procedures in
arriving at those decisions.  We have
concluded that whether or not there is room
for "marginal civil court review" under the
narrow rubrics of "fraud" or "collusion"
when church tribunals act in bad faith for
secular 
purposes, 
no 
"arbitrariness"
exception in the sense of an inquiry
whether the decisions of the highest
ecclesiastical tribunal of a hierarchical
church complied with church laws and
regulations 
is 
consistent 
with 
the
constitutional mandate that civil courts
are bound to accept the decisions of the
highest 
judicatories 
of 
a 
religious
organization of hierarchical polity on
matters of discipline, faith, internal
organization, 
or 
ecclesiastical 
rule,
custom, or law.  For civil courts to
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analyze whether the ecclesiastical actions
of a church judicatory are in that sense
"arbitrary" must inherently entail inquiry
into 
the 
procedures 
that 
canon 
or
ecclesiastical law supposedly requires the
church judicatory to follow, or else into
the substantive criteria by which they are
supposedly to decide the ecclesiastical
question.  But this is exactly the inquiry
that 
the 
First 
Amendment 
prohibits;
recognition of such an exception would
undermine the general rule that religious
controversies are not the proper subject of
civil court inquiry, and that a civil court
must accept the ecclesiastical decisions of
church tribunals as it finds them....
"'"..."
"'Indeed, it is the essence of religious
faith that ecclesiastical decisions are
reached and are to be accepted as matters
of faith whether or not rational or
measurable 
by 
objective 
criteria.
Constitutional concepts of due process,
involving secular notions of "fundamental
fairness" or impermissible objectives, are
therefore hardly relevant to such matters
of ecclesiastical cognizance.'
"426 U.S. at 712-16, 96 S.Ct. 2372 (emphasis added
[in Eastern Shore]; footnotes omitted).  See also
Kaufmann v. Sheehan, 707 F.2d 355 (8th Cir. 1983);
Green v. United Pentecostal Church Int'l, 899 S.W.2d
28 (Tex. Ct. App. 1995)."
908 So. 2d at 929-30 (footnote omitted).
Thus, the Court in Eastern Shore seems to have modified
Abyssinia and has concluded that civil courts may not even
require churches to employ judicial notions of due process in
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disciplining, suspending, or expelling members, and for good
reason -– civil courts have neither the competence nor the
jurisdiction to judge the basis on which churches make such
decisions.  I disagree with any such attempted expansion of
the courts' role in ecclesiastical concerns.  In the case at
hand, a civil court might perceive the concerned members as
exercising good stewardship by seeking to inspect church
records to determine whether the leadership has engaged in
fraud or financial mismanagement; the church leadership might
view the same actions as sinful rebellion against church
authority.  This Court has no business taking sides in any
such dispute.
In overruling the concerned members' application for
rehearing, this Court has allowed the writ of mandamus to
remain intact.  That writ directs the trial court to vacate
its order stating that the concerned members are members of
the church and requiring the church leadership to allow them
to inspect the church records.  However, that writ did not
disturb the trial court's order that the concerned members be
given the opportunity to present evidence regarding the
appropriate membership-termination authority in the church.
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I write to note that even in this remaining portion of
the trial court's order, courts must be very careful not to
overstep their bounds.