Court Opinion

ID: 9488051
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:35:00.542163+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:52:39.790428
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. GIBSON, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring and dissenting.
I concur in parts I and II of the Court’s decision today, affirming the district court with respect to church property. These parts of the opinion decide a property dispute on the basis of neutral principles.
I respectfully dissent, however, with respect to part III of the Court’s opinion, relating to occupancy of the pulpit and, thus, control of the spiritual charge of Faith Mission. The right to appoint a spiritual leader to a parish lies at the heart of issues of religious doctrine or polity that must be decided by some ecclesiastical authority. Indeed, the dispute between the Church and Faith Mission goes to whether there is any relation of spiritual authority between the two bodies. The court today makes a telling reference to the “spiritual relation” between the two institutions, supra at 2, which is the very thing in question.
It is true that Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich, 426 U.S. 696, 96 S.Ct. 2372, 49 L.Ed.2d 151 (1976), involved an admittedly hierarchical church. Milivoje-vich presented issues of control of church property, which could only be resolved by deciding an underlying religious dispute in*529volving the right to structure and administer a church and to appoint and defrock bishops of the church. These issues are essentially indistinguishable from the dispute in this case, which questions the very existence of any relationship between the Church and Faith Mission. As Milivojevich held, “[i]t suffices to note that the reorganization of the Diocese involves a matter of internal church government, an issue at the core of ecclesiastical affairs.” 426 U.S. at 721, 96 S.Ct. at 2386. The issues in this ease involve the existence and nature of the relationship between the Church and Faith Mission. That relationship is an ecclesiastical one, especially insofar as it involves authority to appoint a spiritual leader for a parish. As in Milivoje-vich, this is an issue that cannot be determined without “engaging in a searching and therefore impermissible inquiry into church polity.” Id. at 723, 96 S.Ct. at 2387.
The First and Fourteenth Amendments prevent this Court and the district court from deciding such issues. Accordingly, I must respectfully dissent from part III of the Court’s opinion.