Leaders of Pittsburgh Presbytery believe religious liberty is endangered because civil courts are preventing presbyteries from exercising religious authority over congregations that want to take property out of the denomination.

In response they have organized a convocation, "Our Freedom of Religion at Risk -- A Presbyterian Crisis," for Thursday, from 2 to 5:30 p.m., in Beulah Presbyterian Church, Churchhill. Attendance is free, but a live Webcast for long-distance viewing costs $10. Registration is at www.presbyterianconvocation.org.

Over the past two years, dozens of the 10,000 congregations in the Presbyterian Church (USA), including three in Pittsburgh Presbytery, left for the more theologically conservative Evangelical Presbyterian Church. Some cases, including one in Pittsburgh Presbytery, landed in civil court.

Church law says that individuals may leave the church but property is held in trust for the denomination. Nevertheless, some presbyteries, including Pittsburgh, allowed departing congregations to negotiate to keep their property.

"We want to share what we've learned about the church as a body and property issues and what it means to be connected together" said the Rev. Bob Anderson, interim pastor of Pittsburgh Presbytery, which includes 154 congregations in Allegheny County.

The program, which features prominent theologians, historians and experts on church-related litigation, will argue that current trends in civil law cause courts to ride roughshod over biblically based forms of church government. While the program is intended to discourage litigation, organizers insisted it isn't an attack on New Wineskins, the conservative group that mobilized movement to the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

The Rev. Jack Lolla, a member of presbytery council, said the New Wineskins churches should also be concerned because, if civil courts can interfere with government of church property, they might move into other areas of church discipline.

The Rev. Dean Weaver, co-moderator of New Wineskins and pastor of Memorial Park Presbyterian Church in McCandless, which litigated its move into the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, disagreed.

"If two parties are unable to amicably resolve a church property issue, the question rightly belongs before the state, because this is where real property is handled," he said.

Presbytery officials believe that allowing a congregation to unilaterally vote to take its property from the larger church changes a form of church government that is based on the Bible.

"Our understanding is based on the Book of Acts, and the supervisory role of the Council of Jerusalem over individual congregations. Elders and apostles acted together to resolve theological differences among the separate congregations," the Rev. Lolla said.

Presbyterianism is rooted in the 1648 Westminster Assembly. It rejected self-government by congregational vote as unbiblical, he said.

The presbytery leaders believe part of the current problem is that Supreme Court justices who wrote the decisions on which church property law is based were not theologians.

In Pennsylvania, civil courts tried to avoid delving into the theology of church government by using civil documents, such as property deeds and the church's corporate charter, to decide who owns the property. But presbytery officials say that elevates the state charter above the church law that pastors make vows to obey.

"The courts, in trying to stay out of ecclesiastical matters, have gotten themselves enmeshed in them," said Kears Pollock, an attorney and past moderator of the presbytery.

Presbytery leaders conceded that there is sometimes a role for civil courts. The Memorial Park case, they believe, displayed both appropriate and inappropriate court action after negotiations between the presbytery and congregation stalled.

They believe it was inappropriate for the first judge in the case to stop the presbytery from installing an administrative commission to oversee the church as it was trying to leave.

But they lauded the later role of Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge R. Stanton Wettick, Jr., who pushed both sides to reach a $575,000 settlement for the church property.

Mr. Pollock believes, however, that a similar settlement would have been reached with less cost and less risk to religious freedom, if Memorial Park had continued to pursue the presbytery's negotiation plan.

"In all probability, Memorial Park would have been out of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in approximately the same amount of time if there had never been a lawsuit filed," he said.