Matthew Namee

Matthew Namee serves as editor of OrthodoxHistory.org. He specializes in the history of Orthodoxy in America from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries. He's written a lot about church history, both at this website and elsewhere, and he's spoken at numerous conferences and events. Matthew is the former research assistant to Bill James, the legendary baseball author and Boston Red Sox executive. He went on to earn a J.D. from the University of Kansas and serves as General Counsel and Chief Operating Officer for Orthodox Ministry Services. He and his wife Catherine and their children attend Holy Apostles Orthodox Church in Vancouver, WA. Matthew can be contacted at mfnamee [at] gmail [dot] com.

mfnamee@gmail.com

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 it Primate from here on out. This case involved a Massachusetts ROCOR parish that left ROCOR...

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 on the grounds that the Holy Assembly hadn't followed its own rules. The US Supreme Court...

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 Calendar. Predictably, this wasn't universally well-received. The majority of St. Basil Orthodox Church in Simpson, PA...

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 diocesan bishop's authority over the local parish. The bishop had dismissed certain members of the parish board of...

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 in 1910. The parish was under St. Raphael, and all seemed to be well. But in...

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 defrocked by the Serbian Holy Assembly. The big question, which the Court answered in the negative,...

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 position taken by the Supreme Court in both of its major Orthodox cases, Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral...

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). Justice Brennan's majority opinion includes a lengthy historical background on the case, and I won't go...

1965 Yale Law Journal article on the Moscow-Metropolia Supreme Court case

In May 1965, the Yale Law Journal published a paper entitled, "Judicial Intervention in Church Property Disputes: Some Constitutional Considerations," by Dennis E. Curtis. (For the lawyers reading this, the citation is 74 Yale L.J. 1113.) This paper focuses primarily on Kedroff v. St. Nicholas Cathedral, which we've been discussing...