Opinion ID: 391211
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Who are the Ministers?

Text: 26 This is a more difficult question. The parties have identified three categories of Seminary employees: faculty, administrative staff, and support staff. The district court concluded that the first two groups should be considered ministers, while the latter group were not ministers in the formal sense. To the extent that these findings indicate determinations of fact by the district court, they must be accepted unless clearly erroneous. Fed.R.Civ.P. 52. The status of these employees as ministers for purposes of McClure remains a legal conclusion subject to plenary review. The Seminary urges that all its employees serve a ministerial function. While religious organizations may designate persons as ministers for their religious purposes free from any governmental interference, bestowal of such a designation does not control their extra-religious legal status. 27 The district court found that the Seminary makes employment decisions regarding faculty members largely on religious criteria. This finding is supported by the record. As previously discussed, the level of personal religious commitment of faculty members is considered more important than their devotion to the Baptist church or their academic abilities, though all of these qualities are desirable. According to Dr. Dilday, President of the Seminary, there is no course taught at the Seminary that has a strictly secular purpose; Dr. Naylor, the Seminary's President Emeritus, testified similarly. Though the record indicates that ministers are ordained by local churches and not by the Seminary, most of the faculty have been ordained. The Seminary expects the faculty to teach by example as well as by other means. 3 The faculty models the ministerial role for the students. Based on the district court's findings of fact, we conclude that the faculty at the Seminary fit the definition of ministers for the purpose of applying McClure. 28 The facts in Mississippi College were not the same. There, we explained: 29 The faculty members are not intermediaries between a church and its congregation. They neither attend to the religious needs of the faithful nor instruct students in the whole of religious doctrine. That faculty members are expected to serve as exemplars of practicing Christians does not serve to make the terms and conditions of their employment matters of church administration and thus purely of ecclesiastical concern. 30 Id. at 485. In this case, the faculty are intermediaries between the Convention and the future ministers of many local Baptist churches. They do instruct the seminarians in the whole of religious doctrine, and only religiously oriented courses are taught. 4 Thus, the role of the faculty of the Seminary is different from that of Mississippi College's faculty. Candor compels acknowledgment, moreover, that we can only dimly perceive the lines of demarcation in this extraordinarily sensitive area of constitutional law. Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 612, 91 S.Ct. 2105, 2111, 29 L.Ed.2d 745, 755 (1971). The line, though dimly perceived, is there. McClure establishes that Title VII does not apply to the employment relationship between this Seminary and its faculty. Given the unique role of the faculty of any school, they are afforded unique protection. See N.L.R.B. v. Catholic Bishop of Chicago, 440 U.S. 490, 500-502, 99 S.Ct. 1313, 1319, 59 L.Ed.2d 533, 541-42 (1979). 31 The support staff consists of approximately twenty-two full-time personnel and several hundred part-time personnel who perform a variety of non-academic functions. The part-time workers are almost exclusively students, spouses of students, or spouses of faculty. At least four of the full-time workers have been ordained in the Baptist denomination. By their own testimony, their calling is service in the maintenance department of the Seminary. Thus, we must determine whether under McClure, though one need not be ordained to be a minister as indicated previously, ordination is a sufficient factor to make one a minister. Our analysis is complicated by the fact that Mrs. McClure, though an ordained minister, was functioning principally as a secretary at the time she was discharged. The failure of any party to challenge Mrs. McClure's status as a minister engaged in the religious or ecclesiastical activities of the church relieved this court from clearly explicating the test for such a determination in that case. See id. at 556. Moreover, Mrs. McClure's status as an ordained minister, a commissioned officer in the Salvation Army, was neither incidental to nor depreciated by her service as a secretary. According to the district court's fact findings in McClure, commissioned officers may be assigned field duty, similar to a local pastorate, or staff duty, consisting of various assignments in one of the Army's regional headquarters. McClure v. Salvation Army, 323 F.Supp. 1100, 1101-02 (N.D.Ga.1971). Mrs. McClure's position as a secretary was the staff duty assigned to her. She was still fully qualified and authorized to perform the ceremonies of the Army, which, the district court found, included swearing in officers, conducting weddings and funerals, and dedicating babies. Id. at 1101, 1104. The role of the support staff at the Seminary is qualitatively different from Mrs. McClure's role in the Salvation Army. 32 The undisputed testimony of the Director of the Physical Plant, Mr. James R. Leitch, was that ordination was not a requirement for the positions held by the four ordained ministers. Unlike Officer McClure, these workers' ordination is not an integral part of their total vocation. These support personnel are not engaged in activities traditionally considered ecclesiastical or religious. Indeed, the district court found that they were not ministers in the formal sense. We conclude they are not ministers in the McClure sense. The same analysis applies to the part-time staff. Though these workers are drawn from a restricted group, and though many of them are training to be ministers or to serve as spouses of ministers, the tasks they perform in these jobs are not of an ecclesiastical or religious nature. With respect to their employment relationship with the Seminary, these employees are not entitled to ministerial status under McClure. 33 Much of the reasoning applied to the faculty is pertinent to some of the administrative staff of the Seminary. The President and Executive Vice President of the Seminary, the chaplain, the deans of men and women, the academic deans, and those other personnel who equate to or supervise faculty should be considered ministers as well. On the other hand, those administrators whose function relates exclusively to the Seminary's finance, maintenance, and other non-academic departments, though considered ministers by the Seminary, are not ministers as we used that label in McClure. Their positions are akin to support staff positions. When churches expand their operations beyond the traditional functions essential to the propagation of their doctrine, those employed to perform tasks which are not traditionally ecclesiastical or religious are not ministers of a church entitled to McClure -type protection. In the absence of exact job descriptions of all positions on the administrative staff, we are unable to be precise as to the category of all personnel. Should the parties be unable to agree as to whether any particular administrative staff position is traditionally ecclesiastical or ministerial, the resolution of the dispute may be referred to the district court.