Church Property Litigation, Liberty of Conscience, and the Ordeal of African Methodists in St. Louis
Focusing on the St. Louis Circuit Court case Farrar v. Finney, which culminated in a Supreme Court of Missouri decision, chapter 3 reveals that intra-congregational conflicts over church property among Methodists became especially heated when they pitted independently minded urban slave and free black congregants against all-white proslavery congregational factions. Like civilly and ecclesiastically disempowered white women, African American congregants, both men and women, had substantial spiritual and material stakes in the biracial churches they helped to build. The Supreme Court of Missouri, however, discounted informal biracial church customs for handling the affairs of virtually independent black congregations and ignored rules of law and equity in order to safeguard the material interests of proslavery churchgoers. As well, chapter 3 reveals that highly publicized litigation battles over church property, such as Farrar v. Finney, occurred almost exclusively in the slaveholding border states of Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia.