Title: Mount Olive Baptist Church v. Williams

State: alabama

Issuer: Alabama Supreme Court

Document:

529 So. 2d 972 (1988)
MOUNT OLIVE BAPTIST CHURCH, et al.
v.
Henry L. WILLIAMS.
87-303.

Supreme Court of Alabama.
July 8, 1988.
Harry Asman, Birmingham, for appellants.
Jerome Tucker III of Schmitt, Cromer & Tucker, Leeds, for appellee.
BEATTY, Justice.
This appeal is from a judgment in which the trial court refused to act upon certain motions in litigation between members of the Mount Olive Baptist Church. We affirm.
The trial court's order contains a statement of the relevant facts of the cause as well as the reasons for its decision. We quote from that order:
"`4. Based on the holding of the Alabama Supreme Court in the case of McKinney v. Twenty-Fifth Avenue Baptist Church, Inc., [514 So. 2d 837] ([Ala.] 1987), and In re Galilee Baptist Church, 279 Ala. 393, 186 So. 2d 102 (1966), this Court does not have the authority to determine which members are eligible to vote. Therefore, the ballots of all persons voting September 27, 1987, including the 35 challenged ballots, should be counted to determine the issues presented.'
We agree with the trial court that the controlling authorities do not authorize courts to determine the eligibility of church members to vote, and that to order that certain votes be counted, which theretofore were not counted, would have been tantamount to doing that very thing, i.e., determining eligibility. McKinney v. Twenty-fifth Avenue Baptist Church, Inc., 514 So. 2d 837 (Ala.1987), and the legal authorities preceding it explore the long history of non-interference in spiritual matters by the courts. McKinney itself encapsulates the precise question at hand, at 839:
Because each Baptist church is a democratic institution whose membership possesses the right to vote, perforce it is the church itself under its rules that must examine the eligibility of its individual members to participate in that democracy.
Let the judgment be affirmed.
AFFIRMED.
TORBERT, C.J., and MADDOX, ALMON and HOUSTON, JJ., concur.