{"id":65358,"date":"2017-11-14T12:10:00","date_gmt":"2017-11-14T17:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=65358"},"modified":"2017-12-09T11:22:13","modified_gmt":"2017-12-09T16:22:13","slug":"amicus-brief-filed-by-religious-leaders-in-support-of-the-diocese-of-south-carolina","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=65358","title":{"rendered":"Amicus Brief Filed By Religious Leaders in Support of the Diocese of South Carolina"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Statement by the Rev. Canon Jim Lewis:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cFriday\u2019s brief illustrates well two essential problems with the current ruling of the Court. Because there is no legal consensus among the Justices, the ruling as it stands is, as stated in the brief, a \u201crecipe for endless litigation.\u201d As a consequence of misapplying neutral principles of law as intended by the U.S. Supreme Court, it violates rather than preserves, the First Amendment protections of religious liberty they are meant to ensure. Resolving these significant issues merits rehearing by the Court.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>The Diocese also provided the following list of additional details from Friday\u2019s filed\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.diosc.com\/sys\/images\/documents\/tec\/2017_11_10_amicus_brief.pdf\"><strong>Brief<\/strong><\/a><strong>:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\u201cFor over 300 years, since before the Founding of this Nation, members of the Respondent\u2019s congregations contributed land, money and labor in reliance on settled South Carolina law \u2013 only to have this Court divest them of their property based on a canon unilaterally adopted centuries later by a national denomination. This outcome was possible only because the Court fashioned a new rule of law solely for this case, and this denomination. But that rule of law departs from this court\u2019s precedents and imposes special burdens on religious associations relative to secular ones. Those burdens violate the First Amendment.\u201d [p. 1]<\/li>\n<li>\u201c<em>Amici<\/em>\u00a0believe strongly that churches freely associated with each other can also freely choose to disassociate. And the exercise of that freedom should not come at the price of the tools for ministry established by local sacrifice\u2026 \u201d [p. 4]<\/li>\n<li>\u201c\u2026 the Court\u2019s fractured decision leaves church property law in this state in utter confusion\u2026. This confusion is a recipe for endless litigation.\u201d [p. 2]<\/li>\n<li>The U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s ruling in\u00a0<em>Jones vs. Wolf<\/em>\u00a0established the use of neutral principles of law to settle church property disputes\u2026 \u201cA court applying a neutral principles approach can\u00a0<em>only<\/em>\u00a0apply state law as it normally would; any other approach would be the opposite of neutral principles.\u201d [p. 9]<\/li>\n<li>As the Court has done in this case, \u201cGiving legal effect to trusts declared in denominational documents is not even mere deference. It is giving denominations power to rewrite civil property law.\u201d [p. 14] and that is in violation of the free exercise of religion.<\/li>\n<li>\u201cIf that conception of \u201cneutral principles\u201d is correct, then no church can join a denomination without jeopardizing its property.\u201d [p. 16]<\/li>\n<li>\u201cAny denomination could pass a retroactive internal rule that would appropriate congregants gifts and church property.\u201d \u2026 \u201cWithout secure property ownership, many rounds of future litigation are inevitable.\u201d [p. 18]<\/li>\n<li>\u201cIf ownership no longer turns on publicly recorded deeds and trust instruments, but on the meaning of internal church rules and relationships, no one can know for certain who owns church property.\u201d [p. 18]<\/li>\n<li>\u201cMoreover, the Court\u2019s ruling could eviscerate otherwise clear titles\u201d and harm \u201cthe rights of insurers and lenders\u201d all with \u201cnot a single justice agreeing as to exactly how State title and property law apply in this dispute.\u201d [p. 19]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.diosc.com\/sys\/news-events\/latest-news\/822-amicus-brief-filed-by-religious-leaders-in-support-of-diocese\">Read it all<\/a> and please take the time to read the full brief.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Statement by the Rev. Canon Jim Lewis:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cFriday\u2019s brief illustrates well two essential problems with the current ruling of the Court. Because there is no legal consensus among the Justices, the ruling as it stands is, as stated in the<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=65358\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54,66,168,631,114,632,154,184,373,108,441,372,646],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-south-carolina","category-episcopal-church-tec","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-katherine-jefferts-schori","category-law-legal-issues","category-michael-curry","category-other-churches","category-parish-ministry","category-presiding-bishop","category-religion-culture","category-stewardship","category-tec-bishops","category-tec-conflicts-south-carolina"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65358"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65361,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65358\/revisions\/65361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}