Sameiningin - 01.03.1912, Page 19

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ity of the members of the Church may decide for themselves whether
they adhere to the doctrines of the Church embodied whether in an
impiied trust attached to the conveyance under which the property
is held or in the Constitution of the Church itself. Some authority
is cited to sustain that position, hut that view does not hamonize
with my ideas of justice and sound legai principle. Nor do I think
that subdivision 1, of article 5 of the Constitution, was intended to
confer such power upon a majority of the members. Smith vs.
Pedigo, (Ind.) 33 N. B. 777, 782, 783. I think the Supreme Courts
of Indiana and Iowa have adopted the correct rule of law. In Smith
vs. Pedigo, (Ind.) 33 N. E. 777, 781, the Supreme Court of Indiana
says: “While the courts of this state have no ecclesiastical jurisdic-
tion whatever, yet they are charged with the duty and clothed with the
jurisdiction of protecting property rights of religious societies, eor-
porations, and churches, as well as that of individuals, and thereby
of necessity they may be compelled to decide auestions of ecclesiastical
law when that law becomes a fact upon whieh property rights de-
pend.” Again, in Tanthis vs. Kemp, 85 N. E. 976, that court said:
“Civil Court cannot determine questions of a purely ecclesiastical
nature. All such questions, so far as possible, should be settled by
the organizations themselves; but when such questions become facts
upon which property rights depend, the civil courts may decide
them.” And in Ramsey vs. Hicks, (Ind.) 91 N. E. 344, 350, the
Court, in substance, says that where the church is independent and
there is no higher ecclesiastical authority to review its acts the courts
must examine ecclesiastical questions in settling property rights.
In Mt. Zion Baptist Church vs. Whitemore, (la.) 49 N. W. 81, 85,
the Supreme Court of Iowa says: “The minority lay at the door of
the majority the charge of heresy. The majority say: ‘We constitute
the church. AIl power is vested in the church, and hence in us.
We determine that the charge is false.’ This is the precise claim
made by appellees as to power of a majority, and it is the preeise
action taken by appellees as a majority in Mt. Zion Baptist Church,
after which the council was called, the action of which it would now
repudiate. In view of this, the claim of the majority that ‘if it de-
sires to change to a Mormon church it may do so, and no person or
persons, no man or body of men, either civii or ecclesiastical, has
any right or power to interfere’ is not strange. The position leads
to this: Consider the majority of a. particular Baptist church as
guilty of the grossest violations of and the widest departure from
the church covenants and faith. Being accused by the minority, the
accused sit in judgment, which it declares in its favor,. and then
pleads the judgment it declares as conclusive of its innocenee, be-
cause no other man or body of men has authority to interfere.
However such a rule may serve in purely ecclesiastical relations, we
unhesitatingly say the civil law will not adhere to it where the re-
sult is to divert trust property from its proper channel.”
Since the factional differences in Thingvalla Congregation arose
the defendants (the majority of its members) have incorporated the
Church and the corporate name is Thingvalla Lutheran Church. I
find nothing in the evidence to lead me to doubt that the incorpora-
tion of the Church was legal.
Judgment will be entered for the plaintiffs, that they are en-
titled to the possession and use of the property described in the com-
plaint.