RELIGIOUS SOCIETY. A body of per sons associated together for the purpose of maintaining religious worship. In this coun try they are not ecclesiastical corporations in the English sense, but ordinary private, civil corporations, and as such subject to the or dinary civil jurisdiction; Watson v. Jones, 13 Wall. (U. S.) 679, 20 L. Ed. 666; Gram v. Prussia Emigrated Evangelical Lutheran Ger man Soc., 36 N. Y. 161; Smith v. Nelson, 18 Vt. 511.
The religious corporation and the church are distinct bodies, independent of each oth er, though one may exist within the other. When a church and society are united, the society commonly owns the property and makes the pecuniary contract with the cler gyman, but in many instances a society ex ists without a church and a church without a society; Silsby v. Barlow, 16 Gray (Mass.) 329. Membership in the church is not ordi narily a prerequisite to membership in the corporation, and the excommunication of a member who was trustee of a religious so ciety did not disqualify him from holding that office; Bouldin v. Alexander, 15 Wall. (U. S.) 131, 21 L. Ed. 69. This distinction between the church and the society has been stated by Judge Cooley, who said that the statute under consideration contemplates a church connected with the corporation, though that may not be essential. The church is not incorporated and does not con trol the property or the membership of the society, while the corporation has nothing to do with the church except to provide for its temporal wants; Hardin v. Second Bap tist Church of Detroit, 51 Mich. 137, 16 N. W. 311, 47 Am. Rep. 555. The unincorporat ed ecclesiastical body has power to control and discipline its membership, but the reli gious corporation has no power to try or disfranchise a corporator for moral delin quency, and in case of an attempt to do so, he has his remedy at law; People v. Church,, 53 N. Y. 103.
Their powers, like those of other corpora tions, are construed with reference to the object of their corporate existence and . ex tend so far, and so far only, as necessary to effectuate them. It has been held that a church corporation the object of whose incorporation was "the more efficient wor ship of God, the preservation and perpetua tion of said church, and the better control and regulation of the property thereof," had no power to charter a steamboat, manage a public excursion, and sell tickets therefor, in order to raise money to pay debts of the church ; Harriman v. Church, 63 Ga. 186, 36.
Am. Rep. 117.
Where there is a dispute over the rights of contending factions of an unincorporated church to the use of the church property, an injunction will lie at the suit of the faction entitled to the property to restrain trespass es thereon by the other faction; Fulbright v. Higginbotham, 133 Mo. 668, 34 S. W. 8:5.
Even where the corporation is defective, yet where land has been acquired for the use of a religious society, equity will enforce that use no matter where the legal title is vested or though it be in an individual. So the corporation itself will be compelled kc the courts to administer the property up on the trusts attached to it in the grant or donation. "The corporation or society are trustees and can no more divert the property from the use to which it was originally dedi cated than any other trustee. If they should undertake to divert the funds, equity will raise some other trustee to administer them and apply them according to the intention of the original donors or subscribers." Shars wood, J., in Appeal of Schnorr, 67 Pa. 138,, 5 Am. Rep. 415.
The effect of church divisions upon such trusts is discussed by Mr. Justice Miller in Watson v. Jones, 13 Wall. (U. S.) 679, 20 L. Ed. 666. He classifies the cases under three beads: (1st.) Was the property in question de voted, by the express terms of the gift, grant, or sale, to the support of any specific reli gious doctrine, or was it acquired for the general use of the society for religious pur poses, with no other limitation? (2d.) Is the society which owned it of strictly congregational form of church gov ernment, owing no submission to any organi zation outside the congregation? (3d.) Or is it one of a number of such so cieties, united to form a more general body, with ecclesiastical control in the general as sociation over the members and societies of which it is composed? In the first class of cases, the court will, when necessary to protect the trust to which the property has been devoted, inquire into the religious faith or practice of the parties claiming its use or control, and will see that it shall not be diverted from that trust.