This month, the Texas Supreme Court handed down a stunning victory on the issue of the authority of the local church to discipline its own members. The decision was a unanimous affirmation of the true doctrine of the separation of church and state. It was also a defense of the historic, biblical, and legal right of local churches to discipline their own members and to exercise self-governance free of state intrusion. Christian attorney Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel for Liberty Legal Institute, should be commended for his able handling of this landmark case on behalf of religious liberty and in defense of the independence of the Church from the State.

The Court’s unanimous ruling left no doubt about the constitutional impropriety of the state interfering with pastors and congregations who are exercising church discipline. It also largely quashed the unaccepted and non-statutory theory of “clergy malpractice” which is sometimes promoted by Leftists within the legal community as a vehicle for state regulation of the church.

The story behind the case is revealing: A woman goes to her pastor to talk about crisis in her life. He holds himself out not only as her pastor, but as a licensed professional counselor bound by a code of ethics. In the course of the counseling session, the woman discusses the immediate problems in her life and her marriage, and then the woman informs her pastor that she is going to divorce her husband and had an affair with another man because her marital troubles had not improved. She professes to be sorry for some things, but remains steadfast, defiant, biblically unrepentant, and unwilling to heed the counsel and admonition of her shepherds. The church follows 1 Corinthians 6 and excommunicates the unrepentant women. The embittered and unrepentant excommunicant then sues the pastor for violating a “pastoral confidence” for following Matthew 18 by bringing the relevant facts to the local church for disciplinary purposes. Because the pastor is not only a church leader, but a licensed professional, she asks the Court to find him guilty of ethical impropriety.

From these facts, the following question arose: Are pastors and local churches subject to secular lawsuits for obeying Christ’s command to discipline congregants engaged in serious unrepentant sin? Specifically, what happens when an adulterer discusses her adultery with a pastor? Does she become immune from accountability before Christ’s church for ongoing sins merely because she did not want the pastor ever to reveal facts related to unrepentant and ongoing sins to others? Can professing Christian members of local churches demand what is essentially a “get out of discipline and accountability free card” when they counsel with or are confronted by their pastors?

Answer: No. First, there is no such thing at law as a “pastoral confidence”— (i.e., a communication with church leaders by a congregant engaged in sin that then requires the church leaders to be silent and refrain from honoring their duties as commanded by Christ.) Biblically, the opposite is true. Shepherds have an affirmative duty to instruct, admonish, and even reproach members for unrepentant moral sins before the body.

Bob Renaud has written a very helpful overview of this important, unanimous decision by the Texas Supreme Court. This is important reading for pastors, lawyers, Christian students, and families in general who want to see the integrity of Christ’s church spared harassment from those who would persecute Christ’s church, including left wing attorneys, hate-mongering feminists, and vindictive rebels.

Click here to read it