Fonken v. Community Church of Kamrar

• Citation: 339 N.W.2d 810
• Decision Date: 19 October 1983
• Docket Number: No. 68478,68478
• Parties: Doris FONKEN, Alvin Van Langen, Lester Klaver, et al., Appellees, v. COMMUNITY CHURCH OF KAMRAR, Hamilton County, Iowa, et al., Appellants.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Iowa

Page 810

339 N.W.2d 810

Doris FONKEN, Alvin Van Langen, Lester Klaver, et al., Appellees, v. COMMUNITY CHURCH OF KAMRAR, Hamilton County, Iowa, et al., Appellants.

No. 68478.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

Oct. 19, 1983.

W.K. Doran of Doran, Doran, Courter & Quinn, Boone, for appellants.

James L. Kramer and Thomas J. Bice of Johnson, Erb, Latham & Gibb, P.C., Fort Dodge, for appellees.

Larry J. Cohrt of Swisher & Cohrt, Waterloo, and Timothy Belz of Young & Belz, Clayton, Mo., for amicus curiae the membership of Colfax Center Presbyterian Church.

Considered en banc.

McCORMICK, Justice.

It is a paradox that disputes among church members, like disputes in families, can become emotional and bitter despite the high motives and essential decency of the people involved. When a schism occurs, the civil courts are sometimes asked to decide which faction is entitled to the property owned by the church. As the present case illustrates, the decision is difficult when church interests in property are not established through traditional legal instruments. The trial court held that title to the local church property was subject to an implied trust in the general church. On defendants' appeal from the decree for plaintiffs, we affirm. We also affirm on plaintiffs' cross-appeal from the trial court's order keeping defendants in possession of the property before the appeal was taken.

The role of civil courts in resolving church property disputes is affected by decisions of the United States Supreme Court construing the impact of the free exercise and establishment clauses of the first amendment of the federal Constitution. Because these decisions set the constitutional limits of state court inquiry, we first briefly summarize their holdings.

The starting point is Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 679, 20 L.Ed. 666 (1871), a pre-Erie diversity case applying federal common law in resolving a property dispute between a national Presbyterian organization and local churches affiliated with it. The Court characterized three kinds of church property disputes: one in which the title document requires the property to be devoted to use for some specific doctrine; a second in which the property is held by a congregation owing no fealty to a higher church government; and a third in which the local church is subordinate in a hierarchical scheme of ecclesiastical government. Id. at 722-23, 20 L.Ed. at 674. In the third category, which includes Presbyterian churches, the Court posited a principle of compulsory deference to decisions of church government: "It is of the essence of these religious unions, and of their right to establish tribunals for the decision of questions arising among themselves, that those decisions should be binding in all cases of ecclesiastical cognizance, subject only to such appeals as the organism itself provides for." Id. at 729, 20 L.Ed. at 677.

In Gonzalez v. Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila, 280 U.S. 1, 50 S.Ct. 5, 74 L.Ed. 131 (1929), the Court imposed a qualification on the deference principle by making it applicable "[i]n the absence of fraud, collusion or arbitrariness." Id. at 16, 50 S.Ct. at 7-8, 74 L.Ed. at 137. The principle of Watson as qualified in Gonzalez was approved as a Constitutional principle in Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral of Russian Orthodox Church in North America, 344 U.S. 94, 116, 73 S.Ct. 143, 154-55, 97 L.Ed. 120, 136-37 (1952).

The Supreme Court subsequently held in Presbyterian Church in the United States v Mary Elizabeth Blue Hull Memorial Presbyterian Church, 393 U.S. 440, 89 S.Ct. 601, 21 L.Ed.2d 658 (1969) that civil courts are precluded by the first amendment from deciding doctrinal issues. Id. at 449, 89 S.Ct. at 606, 21 L.Ed.2d at 665. Two local Georgia churches had withdrawn from their affiliation with a national Presbyterian organization. Georgia law recognized an implied trust in favor of the national church conditioned on adherence by the national organization to the same tenets of faith as existed at the time of original affiliation. This principle had been applied in the Georgia courts and resulted in an award of church property to the two local churches. In reversing and remanding, the Supreme Court held that civil courts cannot resolve doctrinal controversies in adjudicating church property disputes. On remand, the Georgia court refused to apply the implied trust theory without the departure-from-doctrine element, holding instead that the local churches were entitled to the property because the deeds to it were in their names. See Presbyterian Church in the United States v. Eastern Heights Presbyterian Church in the United States, 225 Ga. 259, 167 S.E.2d 658 (1969), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 1041, 90 S.Ct. 680, 24 L.Ed.2d 685 (1970).

In Maryland & Virginia Eldership of the Churches of God v. Church of God at Sharpsburg, Inc., 396 U.S. 367, 90 S.Ct. 499, 24 L.Ed.2d 582 (1970), the Court upheld a state court decision awarding property to local churches who withdrew from a general church where the state court based its decision on a state statute, deeds, and local church charters giving property control to the local churches. Governing documents of the general church were found not to give it control of the property. Thus the Supreme Court approved a state court's adjudication of a property dispute through use of neutral principles of law affecting ownership rather than through use of the compulsory deference approach of Watson. In a special concurrence, Justice Brennan suggested that the Watson and neutral principles approaches were complementary and not merely alternative. Id. at 370 n. 4, 90 S.Ct. at 501, 24 L.Ed.2d at 585.

The Watson approach was approved again in Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese for the United States v. Milivojevich, 426 U.S. 696, 96 S.Ct. 2372, 49 L.Ed.2d 151 (1976). The Court also cut back the Gonzalez qualification on the Watson holding by precluding an inquiry into arbitrariness of ecclesiastical decisions. Id. at 712-13, 96 S.Ct. at 2382, 49 L.Ed.2d at 164-65.

Finally, in Jones v. Wolf, 443 U.S. 595, 99 S.Ct. 3020, 61 L.Ed.2d 775 (1979), the Supreme Court held that a state may adopt any of various approaches for settling church property disputes so long as the approach involves no consideration of doctrine. Id. at 602, 99 S.Ct. at 3025, 61 L.Ed.2d at 784. The Court explicitly approved neutral principles as an alternative to the Watson deference approach in resolving hierarchical church property disputes. Id. at 604, 99 S.Ct. at 3026, 61 L.Ed.2d at 785. It distinguished the approaches by noting that compulsory deference, unlike neutral principles, requires inquiry into church polity to determine where church authority lies and whether an ecclesiastical decision of the controversy has been made. In contrast, the neutral principles approach requires examination of sources like those in Maryland & Virginia Eldership to determine where ownership and control of church property is vested. The Court said:

The primary advantages of the neutral-principles approach are that it is completely secular in operation, and yet flexible enough to accommodate all forms of religious organization and polity. The method relies exclusively on objective, well-established concepts of trust and property law familiar to lawyers and judges.

Id. at 603, 99 S.Ct. at 3025, 61 L.Ed.2d at 784-85. The Court concluded that the national church had no interest in the local church property and that title was in the local congregation.

The Jones decision did not resolve the issue of which faction constituted the local congregation, and the case was remanded to permit the Georgia courts to adjudicate that issue. The Court suggested two methods that would be consistent with the first amendment. One is a presumptive rule of majority control, "defeasible upon a showing that the identity of the local church is to be determined by some other means ...." Id. at 607, 99 S.Ct. at 3027, 61 L.Ed.2d at 787. The other is a rule of deference to the decision of the church's hierarchical tribunal. Upon remand, the Georgia court applied a presumptive rule of majority control. See Jones v. Wolf, 244 Ga. 388, 260 S.E.2d 84 (1979).

This court quoted the Watson compulsory deference principle with approval in Bethany Congregational Church v. Morse, 151 Iowa 521, 522-23, 132 N.W. 14, 18 (1911). Other decisions involving hierarchical church disputes are consistent with the Watson approach. See, e.g., Helbig v. Rosenberg, 86 Iowa 159, 53 N.W. 111 (1892); Bird v. St. Mark's Church of Waterloo, 62 Iowa 567, 17 N.W. 747 (1883); First Constitutional Presbyterian Church v. Congregational Society, 23 Iowa 567 (1867). The departure-from-doctrine concept was employed in resolving disputes between factions of local churches. See, e.g., Ragsdale v. Church of Christ in Eldora, 244 Iowa 474, 55 N.W.2d 539 (1952); Keith v. First Baptist Church of Algona, 243 Iowa 616, 50 N.W.2d 803 (1952). That concept can, of course, no longer be used by the courts.

Plaintiffs in this case include the First United Presbyterian Church, Kamrar, Iowa, four of its members, the Presbytery of North Central Iowa, and the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (UPCUSA). Defendants are the Community Church of Kamrar, Hamilton County, Iowa and the trustees of that church. The petition is in equity. Plaintiffs alleged defendants illegally appropriated the real and personal property of plaintiff First United Presbyterian Church of Kamrar which was held in trust for UPCUSA. They asked for an accounting, injunctive relief, and recognition of the trust. Defendants denied the material allegations of the petition, alleged the First United Presbyterian Church of Kamrar became the Community Church of Kamrar through restated articles of incorporation, and asserted property rights and freedom of religion in bar of the action.

Like Jones v. Wolf, the present case involves a hierarchical church and a dispute...