Mount Helm Baptist Church v. Jones

Citations

• 79 Miss. 488

Syllabus

<p>1. Jurisdiction, Ecclesiastical. Courts. Property Bights. Churches.</p> <p>The courts of this state do not exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction. They accept whatever the highest authority of a church determines to be its faith and practices; but property rights of churches are within their protecting power.</p> <p>2. Same. Change of name. Renouncing faith, etc. Quieting title.</p> <p>Where the majority faction of a Baptist church, by entries on its records, repudiated all creeds as “man-made devices,” expelled the minority members, elected new trustees, and changed the name of their church from “Baptist ” to “Church of God,” and of their house of worship from “Mount Helm Baptist Church ” to “Christ’s Tabernacle, Church of God,” the courts will entertain a suit by the old organization to quiet title to church property.</p> <p>3. Same. New church. New faith.</p> <p>A majority faction in a church which, by declarations on its minutes, severs its connection with the denomination to which it belonged and reorganizes as a new church, with a new faith, cannot longer claim to be the church whose faith it has repudiated, and has no right to property donated to the old organization.</p>