Tag: civil authorities
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Orthodoxy and the First Shot of the American Civil War
This is about as unlikely a title for an article on American Orthodox history I ever expected to come up with! But a visit to a used bookstore in Canada a week ago has…
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Hierarchical, Congregational, and the problems of the “parish”
In 1993, the Appeals Court of Massachusetts rendered its decision in (brace yourself) Primate and Bishops’ Synod of Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia v. Russian Orthodox Church of Holy Resurrection, Inc. We’ll just call…
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The Dionisije Conundrum and why deference doesn’t work
I’m assuming, in this short article, that you’ve read about Serbian Diocese v. Milivojevich. But for those who haven’t: the Serbian Holy Assembly deposed Bishop Dionisije Milivojevich, and Illinois courts basically overruled the deposition…
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Orthodoxy & the Courts: ecclesiastical questions are unavoidable
Until the early 1980s, some OCA parishes in the Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania used the Old Calendar. In 1982, then-Bishop Herman Swaiko of Philadelphia ordered all of his parishes to switch to the New…
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Neutral Principles of Law in a Bulgarian parish dispute
Today I’ll be discussing Aglikin v. Kovacheff, a 1987 Illinois appellate court case involving a dispute over control of St. Sophia Bulgarian Orthodox Church in Chicago. The key question, in this case, concerns the extent of the…
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Hanna v. Malick: the Russy-Antacky schism in the Michigan Supreme Court
Prior to Bishop Raphael Hawaweeny’s death in 1915, pretty much all the Syrian (Antiochian) Orthodox in America recognized his authority. This included St. George Syrian Orthodox Church of Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was incorporated…
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Ecumenical Patriarch denied appeal of Bishop Dionisije
Well, this is interesting. Lately, I’ve been looking at the Supreme Court case Serbian Diocese v. Milivojevich, which pitted the representatives of the Serbian Church against the incumbent American bishop, Dionisije, who had been…
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Neutral Principles of Law and the Problems of Deference
So far, we’ve been discussing the role of civil courts in church property disputes in the context of the “deference” approach: that is, the courts will defer to the decisions of the highest church authorities. This was the…
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Serbian Diocese v. Milivojevich, Part 2: Justice Rehnquist’s Dissenting Opinion
In my last article, I wrote about Justice Brennan’s majority opinion in Serbian Diocese v. Milivojevich, the 1976 Supreme Court case that deferred to the Holy Assembly of the Serbian Church in its defrocking…
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Serbian Diocese v. Milivojevich, Part 1: Justice Brennan’s majority opinion
We’ve introduced the first major Supreme Court case dealing with Orthodoxy, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral (1952). Today, we’ll begin an analysis of the other landmark case, Serbian Eastern Orthodox Diocese v. Milivojevich (1976).…