"In this country the full and free right to entertain any religious belief, to practise any religious principle, and to teach any religious doctrine which does not violate the laws of morality and property, and which does not infringe personal rights, is conceded to all. The law is not committed to the support of any dogma, the establishment of any sect. The right to organize voluntary religious associations, to assist in the expression and dissemination of any religious doctrine, and to create tribunals for the decision of controverted questions of faith within the association, and for the ecclesiastical government of all the individual members, congregations, and officers within the general association, is unquestioned. All who unite themselves to such a body do so with an implied consent to this government, and are bound to submit to it. But it would be a vain consent, and would lead to the total subversion of such religious bodies, if any one aggrieved by one of their decisions could appeal to the secular courts and have them reversed. It is of the essence of these religious unions, and of their right to establish tribunals for the decision of questions arising among themselves, that those decisions should be binding in all cases of ecclesiastical cognizance, subject to only such appeals as the organism itself provides for.
"Nor do we see that justice would be likely to be promoted by submitting those decisions to review in the ordinary judicial tribunals.
"The Catholic Church has constitutional and ecclesiastical laws of its own that task the ablest minds to become familiar with. It cannot be expected that judges of the civil courts can be as competent in the ecclesiastical law as the ablest men in the church. It would therefore be an appeal from the more learned tribunal in the law, which should decide the case, to one which is less so.
"These views are supported by the preponderant weight of authority in this country."
And according to the American rule, where the subject-matter of dispute, inquiry, or decision is strictly and purely ecclesiastical in its character, it is a matter over which the civil courts should not exercise any jurisdiction—a matter which concerns theological controversy, church discipline, ecclesiastical government, or the conformity of the members of the church to the standard of morals required of them, the civil court has not and should not have any jurisdiction. If the civil courts were at liberty to inquire into the whole subject of doctrinal theology, usages, and customs, the written laws and fundamental principles would have to be examined into with minuteness and care, for they would be the criteria by which the validity of the ecclesiastical decree would be determined in the civil court. And that would deprive the authorities of the church of their proper right and power to construe their own church laws, and would open the way to the evil of transferring to the civil courts, where the rights to property were concerned, the decision of all ecclesiastical questions.[4]
Of all the cases in which this doctrine is applied, no better representative can be found than that of Shannon v. Frost,[5] where the principle is ably supported by the learned Chief-Justice of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, wherein he says:
"This court, having no ecclesiastical jurisdiction, cannot revise or question ordinary acts of church discipline. Our only judicial power in the case arises from the conflicting claims of the parties in the church property, and the use of it. We cannot decide who ought to be members of the church, nor whether the excommunicated have been justly or unjustly, regularly or irregularly, cut off from the body of the church."
The same principle was laid down in the subsequent case of Gibson v. Armstrong,[6] and of Watson v. Avery.[7]
One of the most careful and well-considered judgments on the subject is that of the Court of Appeals of South Carolina, delivered by Chancellor Johnson in the case of Harmon v. Dreher.[8] That case turned upon certain rights in the use of church property claimed by the minister, notwithstanding his expulsion from the synod as one of its members:
"He stands," says the chancellor, "convicted of the offences alleged against him by the sentence of the spiritual body of which he was a voluntary member, and whose proceedings he had bound himself to abide. 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 religious liberty rescued the temporal institutions from religious interference; on the other hand, it has secured religious liberty from the invasion of the civil authority. The judgments, therefore, of religious associations, bearing on their own members, are not examinable here; and I am not to enquire whether the doctrines attributed to Mr. Dreher were held by him, or whether, if held, were anti-Lutheran, or whether his conduct was or was not in accordance with the duty he owed to the synod or to his denomination.... When a civil right depends upon an ecclesiastical matter, it is the civil court and not the ecclesiastical which is to decide. But the civil tribunal tries the civil right, and no more, taking the ecclesiastical decisions out of which the civil right arises as it finds them."