ABSTRACT
The churches in the United States, as other institutions, have felt and have reacted to the great social and political problems and movements of domestic or world scope. Factional struggles within the churches led to legal struggles for the possession of church property, and these struggles afforded the courts an opportunity to attempt an accommodation of freedom of religion and of the doctrine of separation of church and state to questions of ownership of church property as they arise out of doctrinal or factional disputes. Southern Presbyterians who supported the Confederate cause and slavery organized in 1861 the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States. Until 1924 there was no question but that the Russian Church in America was subject to the jurisdiction of the Most Sacred Governing Synod or the Patriarchate in Moscow. St. Nicholas Cathedral was in the possession of Archbishop Benjamin, appointed by Moscow.
