Atkins v. Walker

• Decision Date: 12 December 1973
• Docket Number: No. 69,69
• Citation: 284 N.C. 306,200 S.E.2d 641
• Court: North Carolina Supreme Court
• Parties: R. E. ATKINS, Trustee of Little Mountain Baptist Church, et al. v. C. L. WALKER et al.

Page 641

200 S.E.2d 641

284 N.C. 306

R. E. ATKINS, Trustee of Little Mountain Baptist Church, et al. v. C. L. WALKER et al.

No. 69.

Supreme Court of North Carolina.

Dec. 12, 1973.

White & Crumpler by James G. White and Michael Lewis, Winston-Salem, for plaintiff appellants.

Seawell, Pollock, Fullenwider, Van Camp & Robbins, by H. F. Seawell, Jr., Carthage, for defendant appellees.

LAKE, Justice.

In Reid v. Johnston, 241 N.C. 201, 85 S.E.2d 114 (1954), this Court affirmed a judgment to the effect that a minority of the members of the North Rocky Mount Missionary Baptist Church were the true congregation thereof and entitled, as against the majority, to the use and possession of the church property. Speaking through Justice Parker, later Chief Justice, the Court recognized that, 'nothing else appearing,' the majority of the members of a self-governing Missionary Baptist church is entitled to control the church property. The Court then said:

'While it is true the membership of the North Rocky Mount Missionary Baptist Church is a self-governing unit, a majority of its membership is supreme and is entitled to control its church property only so long as the majority remains true to the fundamental faith, usages, customs, and practices Of this particular church, as accepted by both factions before the dispute arose. (Citations omitted.) (Emphasis added.)

'A majority of the membership of the North Rocky Mount Missionary Baptist Church may not, as against a faithful minority, divert the property of that church to another denomination, or to the support of doctrines, usages, customs and practices radically and fundamentally opposed to the characteristic doctrines, usages, customs and practices of that particular church, recognized and accepted by both factions before the dissension, for in such an event the real identity of the church is no longer lodged with the majority group, but resides with the minority adhering to its fundamental faith, usages, customs and practices, before the dissension, who, though small in numbers, are entitled to hold and control the entire property of the church.'

As authority for this proposition the Court cited Dix v. Pruitt, 194 N.C. 64, 138 S.E. 412 (1927), which involved a controversy in a Primitive Baptist church concerning the calling to its pastorate of a minister who had been expelled by another Primitive Baptist church. According to the evidence in Dix v. Pruitt, supra, the then long established rule, apparently unwritten, of the Primitive Baptist denomination was that no Primitive Baptist church could call to its pastorate one who had been expelled from another Primitive Baptist church, until such person was readmitted to the church which had so expelled him. In Dix v. Pruitt, supra, this Court held there was sufficient evidence in the record before it on the appeal to justify submitting to the jury this issue: 'Were the plaintiffs (the minority) and those united with them the Sole and only members of the Dan River Primitive Baptist Church on October 9, 1923?' (Emphasis added.) The jury answered that issue in the affirmative. In affirming the judgment upon the verdict, this Court said, through Justice Brogden:

'All Baptist Churches have the congregational system of government. They are independent sovereignties and exclusively self-governing units. * * * Hence it must necessarily follow that a majority of the membership, in any given congregation, Nothing else appearing, is entitled to control the church property and direct and control the administrative affairs of the congregation. But it is equally true that each church or congregation is an orderly unit, as well as a self-governing unit, and that there are certain fundamental faiths, immemorial customs, and usages and uniform practices which form a part of the church life and constitute an integral part of its function. (Emphasis added.)

'In other words, a majority in a Baptist Church is supreme, or a 'law unto itself' so long as it remains a Baptist Church or true to the fundamental usages, customs, doctrine, practice, and organization of Baptists. * * *

'It is the duty of this court to determine the merits of the controversy upon the record as presented. If the testimony in this particular record is to be believed, then there is a limitation to the independent sovereignty of a Primitive Baptist Church, and that limitation is the order, practice, and doctrine of the denomination, or to state the proposition differently, according to the testimony in the record before us, a Primitive Baptist Church is a sovereign, self-governing unit so long as it remains in the order, practice, and doctrine prescribed by the written and unwritten law.'

It will be observed that in Reid v. Johnston, supra, this Court applied to a Missionary Baptist church the rule laid down in Dix v. Pruitt, supra, concerning a Primitive Baptist church, with the modification that in the Missionary Baptist church the determinative faiths, doctrines and practices are those of the local church. It is also to be noted that, according to the record in Dix v. Pruitt, supra, the Primitive Baptist churches, collectively, exercised some measure of control over who might be called to the pastorate of a local church. Thus, the Primitive Baptist churches were shown by the record in Dix v. Pruitt, supra, to be, in part, connectional in their government. A denomination may be, in its government, congregational in part and connectional in part. See Conference v. Creech, 256 N.C. 128, 140, 123 S.E.2d 619, which involved a Free Will Baptist church. In this respect, and in others, there are differences between the several bodies of Baptist churches. Missionary Baptist churches are completely congregational in government. See: Baker, a Baptist Source Book (Broadman Press, 1966), p. 200; Annual of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1925, pp. 71--76, Article 22; Annual of Southern Baptist Convention, 1963, pp. 261--281, Article XIV; McDaniel, The People Called Baptists (published by Sunday School Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, 1925), pp. 43, 48; Encyclopedia of Southern Baptists (Broadman Press, 1958), pp. 140, 148, 277, 281; Semple, History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia (Beale's Edition, 1894), p. 62; Ryland, The Baptists of Virginia (1955), pp. 205, 206; Paschal, History of North Carolina Baptists (published by the General Board, North Carolina Baptist State Convention, 1930), p. 7.

The rule thus stated in Dix v. Pruitt, supra, was, itself, a departure from Trustees v. Seaford, 16 N.C. 453 (1830), apparently the first case to reach this Court concerning rights in the property of a divided church, in that instance a Lutheran church. There, this Court, then consisting of Chief Justice Henderson and Justices Hall and Ruffin, speaking through Jutice Hall, after expressing the opinion that the grantor in the deed to the church would have had no claim, said:

'If the grantor had no right, on what foundation does the plaintiffs' claim rest? It appears that they are seceders from the church, and are not the trustees or representatives of it; that they were a minority of the members before their secession. Had they remained in the church, they must have yielded to the government of the majority. Much less can they have any control over it when they are no part of it.

'With respect to the allegation made by the plaintiffs that the defendants, or the church which they represent, have strayed from the true faith, or that errors have crept into the church government, the answer is that on that question it is not for them nor this Court to decide.'

The above quoted pronouncements by this Court in Reid v. Johnson, supra, and in Dix v. Pruitt, supra, have been relied upon and followed in a number of more recent decisions of this Court. See: Paul v. Piner, 271 N.C. 123, 155 S.E.2d 526 (1967) (Free Will Baptist); Conference v. Piner, 267 N.C. 74, 147 S.E.2d 581 (1966) (Free Will Baptist); Conference v. Miles, 259 N.C. 1, 129 S.E.2d 600 (1963) (Free Will Baptist).

An earlier dictum in Kerr v. Hicks, 154 N.C. 265, 70 S.E. 468 (1911) (Missionary Baptist), cited with approval in Western North Carolina Conference v. Tally, 229 N.C. 1, 47 S.E.2d 467 (1948) (Christian), states, 'In church organizations, those who adhere and submit to the regular order of the church, local and general, though a minority, are the true congregation.' This is a quotation from Roshi's Appeal, 69 Pa. 462, which dealt with a controversy in the German Reformed Church, a connectional denomination. The only other authorities cited by this Court in Kerr v. Hicks, supra, in support of this statement are Gable v. Miller, 10 Paige 627 (N.Y. Chancery Court, 1844), which also concerned a controversy in the German Reformed Church, and General Assembly of Free Church of Scotland et al. v. Overtoun et al., L.R.1904, Appeal Cases 515 (House of Lords, 1904), which dealt with a controversy in the Free Church of Scotland, a connectional denomination. Thus, the cited authorities for the quoted statement dealt with situations quite different from that presented by a division among the members of a local church having a completely congregational government.

In 1969 the Supreme Court of the United States rendered its decision in Presbyterian Church in the United States v. Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church, et al., 393 U.S. 440, 89 S.Ct. 601, 21 L.Ed.2d 658. In that case two local Presbyterian churches in Georgia withdrew from the hierarchical general church organization due to their belief that certain actions and pronouncements of the general church were violations of that organization's constitution and were departures from doctrines and practices in force at the time of the affiliation of the two local churches with the general church. The ministers of the two local churches and the majority of the ruling elders thereof renounced the jurisdiction and authority of the...