Pearson v. Church of God
| Decision Date | 02 November 1994 |
| Docket Number | No. 2336,2336 |
| Citation | 318 S.C. 417,458 S.E.2d 68 |
| Court | South Carolina Court of Appeals |
| Parties | Frank C. PEARSON, Respondent, v. The CHURCH OF GOD, Appellant. . Heard |
Thomas A. Bright and D. Chris Lauderdale, Haynsworth, Baldwin, Johnson & Greaves, Greenville, for appellant.
Graves H. Wilson, Jr., Greenville, for respondent.
This is a breach of contract action. Frank C. Pearson sued the Church of God for breach of an implied contract alleging the Church wrongfully discontinued his pension benefits. The jury returned a verdict for Pearson for $71,000, which was remitted by the court on its own motion to $70,116 to conform to the evidence. The Church appeals. We reverse.
Pearson was an active minister for the Church from 1952 until he retired in 1986. During his 33-year active ministry, he made the required monthly contribution to the Aged Ministers Pension Plan Fund of four percent of his gross income from the ministry. Following his retirement, Pearson began receiving payments from the Fund.
Payments from the Fund are governed by the Minutes of the 62nd General Assembly of the Church of God (Minutes ) which read, in pertinent part:
S62. RETIREMENT PLANS
I. AGED MINISTERS' PENSIONING PLAN
A. PENSIONING POLICIES
....
3. Any minister who has been licensed by the Church of God and in active service in the Church for the consecutive past twenty years of his life, at the age of sixty and upon the option of either his part or the part of those officials of the Church to whom he is answerable, or at the superannuating age of sixty-five, shall be eligible to receive an aged minister's pension, provided that he has for those consecutive past years subscribed to the Aged Ministers' Pensioning Plan.
....
19. Any aged minister receiving benefit from the Aged Ministers' Fund whose ministry has been revoked shall cease to draw compensation from the fund....
1. The license of a minister must be revoked when found guilty of adultery or fornication. He shall never be ordained in the Church of God. He shall not be permitted to conduct revivals, preach, or teach for a period of at least three years from the date found guilty....
The contract clearly and unambiguously provides for forfeiture of one's pension upon revocation of one's ministry. 1 Paragraph 3 of S62 gives the eligibility requirements for receiving benefits while paragraph 19 is a more specific provision governing only that class of ministers whose ministries have been revoked. Various other provisions under S60 of the Minutes define disciplinary procedures for disorderly ministers. Separate paragraphs govern different offenses. Paragraph 1, set out above, governs the offense of adultery or fornication. It provides for the revocation of a minister's license upon a finding of adultery. Section 61 sets out the procedure, trial and appeal of offending ministers. The procedure is described as follows:
[T]he State Board, consisting of not less than three Ordained Ministers, appointed by the State Overseer where available, shall give [the offending minister] due notice of time and place where charges will be considered. The minister shall have a right to attend and be heard at that time. If the State Board shall determine that the conduct of said minister warrants such action, his ministry shall at once be revoked.
In September of 1989, the Church revoked Pearson's license after Pearson confessed to the Church's State Trial Board that he had committed adultery. A Revocation of Ministry form was prepared by the Church of God Headquarters in Tennessee. This form reflects the ministry was recalled by "Voluntary surrender." Thereafter, Pearson stopped receiving pension payments.
Pearson sued the Church claiming that although the Church revoked his pastoral "license," the Church did not thereby effectively revoke his "ministry" as set forth in S62 Paragraph 19 of the Minutes. Pearson also argued at trial the Church could not have revoked his ministry by revoking his license because once he retired he had no "ministry" to revoke. Pearson contends that after he retired he had, at most, a "borrowed ministry" which allowed him to preach at the invitation of other Church ministers.
Pearson's arguments revolve around the meaning to be assigned to the words "license" and "ministry" under the Minutes. As a threshold issue, the Church of God has consistently maintained that this is an ecclesiastical matter, and this court is constitutionally barred from inquiring into the meaning of these words under its doctrine. This court must resolve that issue first, as we are not at liberty to reach a decision premised upon a legal theory which is dependent upon civil judicial authority to intervene.
The South Carolina Constitution, Article 1, Section 2, and the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, assures religious freedom, without secular interference. The South Carolina Court of Appeals first addressed this issue in the case of Harmon v. Dreher, 17 S.C.Eq. (Speers Eq.) 87 (1843). In that case our court recognized the following principle:
It belongs not to the civil power to enter into or review the proceedings of a Spiritual Court. The structure of our government has, for the preservation of Civil Liberty, rescued the Temporal Institutions from religious interference. On the other hand, it has secured Religious Liberty from the invasion of Civil Authority. The judgments, therefore, of religious associations, bearing upon their own members, are not examinable here ... Where a civil right depends upon an ecclesiastical matter, it is the civil court, and not the ecclesiastical, which is to decide. The civil tribunal tries the civil right, and no more, taking the ecclesiastical decisions, out of which the right arises, as it finds them.
Id. at 120-21 (emphasis added).
Following the Harmon decision, the United States Supreme Court first addressed this issue in a diversity case, before the First Amendment had been made applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment. In the case of Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. (13 Wall.) 679, 20 L.Ed. 666 (1872), the Supreme Court, quoting from and relying in part upon the analysis of South Carolina Constitutional law in Harmon, addressed a controversy over real property between different factions of the same church. In its ruling, the Court recognized the following principle:
In this class of cases we think the rule of action which should govern the civil courts, founded in a broad and sound view of the relations of church and state under our system of laws, and supported by a preponderating weight of judicial authority is, that, whenever the questions of discipline, or of faith, or ecclesiastical rule, custom or law have been decided by the highest of these church judicatories to which the matter has been carried, the legal tribunals must accept such decisions as final, and as binding on them, in their application to the case before them.
Id. at 727. The legal principle that ecclesiastical decisions are not proper subjects of inquiry in civil courts thus was first formally recognized under both South Carolina Constitution Article 1, Section 2, and federal law. 2
The United States Supreme Court next addressed the scope of civil review in cases involving ecclesiastical matters in Gonzalez v. Roman Catholic Archbishop of Manila, 280 U.S. 1, 50 S.Ct. 5, 74 L.Ed. 131 (1929). In that case a will bequeathed income to the Roman Catholic Church, dependent upon the appointment of a certain individual to a chaplaincy. The Court alluded to limited civil review of ecclesiastical decisions, stating:
Because the appointment [to the chaplaincy] is a canonical act, it is the function of the church authorities to determine what the essential qualifications of a chaplain are and whether the candidate possesses them. In the absence of fraud, collusion, or arbitrariness, the decisions of the proper church tribunals on matters purely ecclesiastical, although affecting civil rights, are accepted in litigation before the secular courts as conclusive, because the parties in interest made them so by contract or otherwise.
The Supreme Court thereafter revisited this issue in Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 344 U.S. 94, 73 S.Ct. 143, 97 L.Ed. 120 (1952), in Kreshik v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 363 U.S. 190, 80 S.Ct. 1037, 4 L.Ed.2d 1140 (1960), and again in Presbyterian Church v. Hull Church, 393 U.S. 440, 89 S.Ct. 601, 21 L.Ed.2d 658 (1969). Meanwhile, the South Carolina Supreme Court similarly decided cases involving ecclesiastical matters. See, e.g., Wilson v. Presbyterian Church of John's Island, 19 S.C.Eq. (2 Rich.Eq.) 192, 210 (1846) ("The court disclaims, altogether, any authority to decide on questions of religious faith, or on the fitness and propriety of the forms of government which a church or congregation may adopt, if it inculcates nothing that is prohibited by law or subversive of good morals."); Morris St. Baptist Church v. Dart, 67 S.C. 338, 342, 45 S.E. 753, 754 (1903) ( ); Turbeville v. Morris, 203 S.C. 287, 315, 26 S.E.2d 821, 832 (1943) ( ...
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Pearson v. Church of God
...for Petitioner. TOAL, Justice: We granted certiorari to review the decision of the Court of Appeals in Pearson v. The Church of God, 318 S.C. 417, 458 S.E.2d 68 (Ct.App.1995), which held that the lower court erred by adjudicating this "quintessentially ecclesiastical" matter, in violation o......