LCMS Wins Supreme Court Case- But at What Price?

LCMS Wins Supreme Court Case - But at What Price?
Christian News, January 23, 2012
Vol. 50, No. 4

The unanimous Supreme Court Decision published on January 11, 2012, to protect the right of churches to fire a church worker under the free expression of religion has been praised by American denominations/church corporations and by many religious rights organizations. (See page 39 opinion at http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/11pdf/10-553.pdf ).

There is no question that under the First Amendment a church has the authority to remove any church worker, pastor or teacher, without government intervention, for moral turpitude, incompetence, dereliction of duty, incapacity, false doctrine, and financial duress. But this is not why Hosanna Tabor Lutheran Church fired Lutheran School teacher Mrs. Cheryl Perich.

Perich was fired because she threatened to sue her church. In other words, the U. S. Supreme Court has agreed with the LCMS that a member of the LCMS surrenders their right to due process because LCMS pietism teaches it is a sin against the Bible to file suit against another Lutheran.

The U. S. Supreme Court has now recognized the LCMS Doctrine of Dispute
Resolution, invented by the LCMS Council of District Presidents and adopted by the 1992 Convention, as the religious doctrine of the LCMS.

We quote Chief Justice Roberts from the transcript published by the LCMS Reporter, “It’s possible for Lutherans, he said, to say, ‘[L]ook, our dispute-resolution belief is just as important to a Lutheran as the all-male clergy is to a Catholic."

The LCMS has convinced the U.S. Supreme Court that Dispute Resolution, as understood by no less than U. S. Chief Justice Roberts, is “…an important and central tenet of our [LCMS] faith.”

LCMS church workers who object to decisions by church courts, Dispute Resolution Panels, Commission on Constitutional Matters Opinions, Convention resolutions and Handbook by-laws now have no standing in American Courts.

Under LCMS Dispute Resolution all LCMS Pastors and teachers have a right to be judged by a panel of their superiors. So if you choose to work for them you have to ask yourself, “Do I trust these people?”

We quote part of Chief Justice Roberts opinion in favor of the LCMS:

“Reversing that judgment, this Court explained that the First Amendment ‘permit[s] hierarchical religious organizations to establish their own rules and regulations for internal discipline and government, and to create tribunals for adjudicating disputes over these matters.’ Id., at 724. When ecclesiastical tribunals decide such disputes, we further explained, ‘the Constitution requires that civil courts accept their decisions as binding upon them.’ Id., at 725. We thus held that by inquiring into whether the Church had followed its own procedures, the State Supreme Court had ‘unconstitutionally undertaken the resolution of quintessentially religious controversies whose resolution the First Amendment commits exclusively to the highest ecclesiastical tribunals’ of the Church. Id., at 720.”

The Obama administration, no friend of religion, went in way over its head in defending this obscure test case all the way to the U. S. Supreme Court. They thought they found a weak link and could fly under the radar of the large democrat leaning denominations like the Catholic Church, the ELCA, the Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church U. S. A., and the United Methodist Church; not to mention Jews, Mormons, and Muslims. Who is going to pay attention to a small Republican oriented church body like the LCMS that represents less than three quarters of one percent of the U. S. population? The LCMS projected greetings from President Bush on a large screen at its 2004 and 2007 Conventions.

Instead of arguing about a violation of equal employment, the Obama administration should have argued that the First Amendment negate the right to due process. If a church body says it is a sin to pay taxes is the U. S. Government going to agree with that? What was the Obama administration thinking in a 9 to 0 defeat including two of its own appointees to the court? Their performance is beyond inept, unless they purposely took a dive in order to promote Shariah law in United States courts.

There was great rejoicing in the Vatican and Mecca over this Supreme Court decision. The right to sue includes the right to discovery and force church corporations to open their financial records. It was reported on FOX news that the Catholic Church and other large denominations had been waiting for a decision like this for 30 years.

The unique feature of this new Supreme Court ruling is that the LCMS can file suit against whomever they please but it is a sin and false doctrine for laypeople, churches, pastors, and teachers to sue the Synod.

Legal Counsel to the LCMS Board of Directors, Sherri Strand filed suit against Sharon Bowles, Mary-Ann Hill, Portia Ridgeway, and Celia Moyer for the church property of Our Redeemer Lutheran Church of Oakland, CA (case number RG07363452). She is representing California-Nevada-Hawaii District President Robert Newton in the suit for the church property. Strand also asked the court to make other members such as Ben Chavis show all his financial records including personal accounts, business activity, and tax filings.

Attorney Leondra Kruger argued for the Obama administration. “We’re saying the ‘government’s interest in preventing retaliation against those who would go to civil authorities with civil wrongs is foundational to the rule of law.” This was an excellent point. But Kruger pressed too many other Non sequiturs. How can the First Amendment nullify the right to due processes for American citizens?

We are saying that the First Amendment gives Hosanna Tabor the right to fire Cheryl Perich for parting her hair the wrong way, but not for the right to due process, a right guaranteed in the U. S. Constitution. What is the Supreme Court saying? “If you want the full protection of the U. S. Constitution, don’t join a Church body?”

This was her sin. Hosanna Tabor argued: “As grounds for termination, the letter cited Perich’s ‘insubordination and disruptive behavior’ on February 22, as well as the damage she had done to her ‘working relationship’ with the school by ‘threatening to take legal action.’”

Last week was pivotal for Religion America. The Supreme Court Decision issued on January 11, 2012 was in favor of the LCMS. However the day before on January 10, 2012, a federal appeals court upheld a ruling that blocked the implementation of an Oklahoma law barring judges from considering international or Islamic law in their decisions.

The U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a ruling released Tuesday, affirmed an order by a district court judge in 2010 that prevented the voter-approved state constitutional amendment from taking effect. The ruling also allows a Muslim community leader in Oklahoma City to continue his legal challenge of the law’s constitutionality.

If the LCMS Church courts have the force of law that suspend constitutional rights, the same is true for every other religion including Muslim, Islamic or Shariah Law. If the Supreme Court says First Amendment protects LCMS Dispute Resolution, it also protects Shariah Law, and Vatican Cannon Law.

In his opinion Chief Justice Roberts reflects on the problems of religious influence in Colonial American courts prior to the U. S. Constitution. But hasn’t the Supreme Court just laid the ground work for a revival of the same problem and a new ecclesiastical feudalism?

There is great rejoicing in LCMS District Offices and St. Louis headquarters over this new ruling. The irony is that the LCMS was founded on Waltherian congregational polity and abhorred every kind of European clerical hierarchy and sacerdotal legalism. However, now the LCMS rejoices over words such as “this Court explained that the First Amendment ‘permit[s] hierarchical religious organizations to establish their own rules and regulations for internal discipline and government, and to create tribunals for adjudicating disputes over these matters.”

This is the same position that Strand argued in her motion to the Court in Oakland on September 9, 2010, filed for Newton:

“‘The LCMS is a connectional religious denomination, under which each member congregation has agreed to and are committed to act in accord with the Synod’s Bylaws and Constitution. (Resp. Fact 1). The LCMS more resembles—at least for present purposes involving secular court determinations of properly disputes —a ‘hierarchical’ structure where the congregation is ‘itself part of a large and general organization of some religious denomination, with which it is more or less intimately connected by religious views and ecclesiastical government.’ Episcopal Church Cases, 45 Cal.4th at 480 (citing Watson v. Jones, 80 U.S. 679, 726-27 (1871)). Therefore, the cases resolving property disputes involving so called ‘hierarchical’ churches are most applicable to resolving a property dispute within the LCMS. In such cases, as here, ‘whenever the questions of discipline, or of faith, or ecclesiastical rule, custom, or law have been decided by the highest of these [hierarchical] 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 408 (citing Watson, 80 U.S. at 727; Serbian Orthodox [sic] Diocese v. Milivojevich, 426 U.S. 696, 710 (1976)).”

The Supreme Court has now agreed that the LCMS is a “hierarchical religious organization” regardless of what they tell the Convention delegates and the laypeople in the congregations. Under the Dispute Resolution Process LCMS District Presidents now function as regional church magistrates whose jurisdiction is recognized by the U. S. Supreme Court. This wasn’t nearly as much a victory for the small-fry LCMS as it was for the Vatican, Mecca, and Salt Lake City.

We predict that LCMS Districts, the LCMS Convention, not to mention numerous other religious organizations, will be busy crafting new resolutions, opinions, by-laws etc. to clarify, strengthen, and increase the scope of their newly confirmed legislative and judicial powers over church property and lay people.

This author accused the LCMS of real-estate fraud over an opinion issued by the LCMS CCM in May of 2004. We now must apologize. It is not real-estate fraud for a District President to have the right to suspend proper channels in congregational constitutions. According to the Supreme Court they have that right even if the laypeople are not aware of it.

As for me, I wish to thank the Chairman of the Council of the District Presidents and the Michigan District President, William Hoesmann, for removing me from the LCMS clergy roster without a hearing for complaining about LCMS real-estate fraud. Dispute Resolution is not my religion; I do not confess it, and I do not believe the same religion the LCMS confessed to the U. S. Supreme Court, even if it did cost me half of my pension for the rest of my life. In the future lay people will be advised to see what a congregation’s constitution actually says and also the jurisdictional and legal controls the parent church body exercises over the congregation before they join it.