The Historical Development of the Book of Church Order

Chapter 25 : Congregational Meetings

Paragraph 8 : Of Title to Property

25-8. The corporation of a particular church, through its duty elected trustees or corporation officers, (or, if unincorporated, through those who are entitled to represent the particular church in matters related to real property) shall have sole title to its property, real, personal, or mixed, tangible or intangible, and shall be sole owner of any equity in any real estate, or any fund or property of any kind held by or belonging to any particular church, or any board, society, committee, Sunday school class or branch thereof. The superior courts of the Church may receive monies or properties from a local church only by free and voluntary action of the latter.

DIGEST: This paragraph reflects one of the provisions that the founding fathers of the PCA were careful to establish in the Constitution of the Church. Regretably there was no similar safeguard in the PCUS. A few changes have been effected since 1973: for "person" the text now has "personal" and several redundancies have been removed, resulting in the conflation of what were the first two sentences. These changes date to ______.

BACKGROUND & COMPARISON:
PCA 1973, 26-8, Adopted text, as printed in the Minutes of General Assembly, p. 144
and
Continuing Presbyterian Church 1973, 26-8, Proposed text, p. 36
The corporation of a particular church, through its duty elected trustees or corporation officers, (or, if unincorporated, through those who are entitled to represent the particular church in matters related to real property) shall have sole title to its property, real, person, or mixed, tangible or intangible, and shall be sole owner of any equity it may have in any real estate. No superior court of the church, as such, shall have any claim whatsoever upon any real property or any equity in any real estate, or any fund or property of any kind held by or belonging to any particular church, or any board, society, committee, Sunday school class or branch thereof. The superior courts of the church may receive monies or properties from a local church only by free and voluntary action of the latter.

No comparable text in the following editions:
1. PCUS 1933
2. PCUS 1925
3. PCUS 1879
4. PCUS 1869 draft
5. PCUS 1867 draft

COMMENTARY:
F.P. Ramsay, Exposition of the Book of Church Order (1898)
[no comparable text for discusssion]