Houston, USA - Peggy Lee Penley’s marriage was going sour when she turned to her pastor. They had been friends for years and had started a Bible church together in Fort Worth. He was more than Ms. Penley’s spiritual shepherd, also serving as a licensed professional counselor, and had helped her before.
C. L. Westbrook Jr., the pastor of CrossLand Community Bible Church, and his wife, Letty.
But Ms. Penley says that after she confided her sexual relationship with another man and her plans for divorce, the pastor, C. L. Westbrook Jr., disclosed her “biblically inappropriate relationship” to church elders. Mr. Westbrook eventually informed the full congregation of the church, CrossLand Community Bible, she says, shaming her publicly and urging members to discipline her by shunning her.
In 2001, Ms. Penley sued her pastor for defamation and negligence, saying he had violated his responsibilities as a professional counselor. Her lawsuit has attracted considerable attention from church groups trying to prevent court intervention in religious matters. The case went before the Texas Supreme Court on Tuesday, and the outcome will once again help define the evolving line between church and state.
While courts have long held that religious practices and discipline are immune from court review under a legal doctrine known as “ecclesiastical abstention,” secular misconduct by religious figures is not automatically protected.
Ms. Penley’s lawyer, Darrell L. Keith of Dallas, told the court that the issue was simply a matter of professional negligence by a counselor.
“She believed that she was talking to him in a confidential setting as her secular marital counselor, not as her pastor,” Mr. Keith said. “And she didn’t believe she was at risk.”
Mr. Westbrook’s lawyer, Kelly J. Shackelford, told the judges that Ms. Penley “obviously knew what she signed on for” and that the court was being asked to enter “the internal processes of the church,” where it did not belong.
“Since 1871, the U.S. Supreme Court has said courts can’t enter these cases,” said Mr. Shackelford, chief counsel for the Liberty Legal Institute in Plano, a conservative group that often represents churches in religious freedom cases. Church discipline and doctrine, he said, are inherently ecclesiastical.
“The very entry of the court into these areas is a violation and causes entanglement,” he said.
A lower court had dismissed Ms. Penley’s suit, but an appeals court revived it, leaving Mr. Westbrook to appeal to the state’s highest civil court to bar the way to a trial.
Ms. Penley, who has married the man she became involved with and now lives on the East Coast, was not in court on Tuesday, and Mr. Keith said she would have no comment.
Mr. Westbrook was present but stayed silent. “He’s trying not to say anything and get in the middle of everything,” Mr. Shackelford said after the hearing. “The fact that they took this appeal and heard this case means there’s a chance that we’ll have protection, not only for Pastor Westbrook, but for all churches and all pastors, not to have to go through that kind of thing.”
Church groups have leapt into the case, submitting briefs that warn of growing attacks on religious autonomy.
“For a church to be compelled to submit to extensive discovery and an invasive public trial before a jury, that alone can chill religious freedom — even if the church is eventually vindicated by the court,” said a brief filed by the National Association of Evangelicals in support of Mr. Westbrook.
According to their briefs, Ms. Penley and Mr. Westbrook say that in 1998, Ms. Penley and her husband at the time, Benny Stone, consulted Mr. Westbrook in his office about their marital troubles. They paid him a fee for his services.
The following year, Mr. Westbrook and his wife, the Stones and several other couples founded the CrossLand Community Bible Church, with Mr. Westbrook as pastor. Ms. Penley said she and other couples attended group counseling sessions at the pastor’s home in 2000. Then, realizing her marriage was over, she says, she “engaged in a sexual relationship” with her current husband, Bobby Penley, while she was in Tennessee.
She says that she told the pastor of the relationship upon her return and said to him that she was planning to divorce her husband, and that Mr. Westbrook recommended a lawyer.
But when the pastor discussed disciplining her, Ms. Penley’s brief says, she told him she was leaving the church and wrote a letter of resignation. It was after that, the brief says, that the pastor told the elders and issued a letter to the congregation to “shun and ostracize” her.
Mr. Westbrook says that he learned of her infidelity from others and that his counseling as pastor was not part of her earlier professional visits. He also says she agreed in writing to submit to church discipline, including an injunction from Matthew 18:17: “If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.”
In the hearing on Tuesday, the nine justices struggled with the nuances, and there were indications that they found the case difficult.
“If the damages arise from the ecclesiastical act,” Justice Harriet O’Neill said, “then really, we’re dancing on the head of a pin in terms of trying to parse the secular versus pastoral counseling.” A ruling could take a year or more.
Recent legal records are thick with thorny ecclesiastical cases.
In Mississippi, the former wife of the governor sued her Episcopal priest and her church after learning that the priest had taped her admission of adultery for use against her in a custody case by her ex-husband. The case was dismissed. In Royal Oak, Mich., outside Detroit, a man who had left his church sued his pastor for revealing the confidence that he had been with prostitutes. That case was also dismissed.
Courts have had no trouble convicting religious figures of sexual misconduct, since the charges involve clearly secular actions that by their nature fall outside accepted religious practices.