Whose Cathedral? Russian Orthodoxy in the Supreme Court

Cases: St. Nicholas Cathedral vs. Kedroff 302 N.Y. 1 (1950); Kedroff vs. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 344 U.S. 94 (1952); St. Nicholas Cathedral vs. Kreshik 7 N.Y.2d 191 (1959); Kreshik vs. St. Nicholas Cathedral, 363 U.S. 190 (1960)

Case Synopses: Kedroff vs. St. Nicholas Cathedral, decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1952, was but one episode in a decades-long legal battle over St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox Cathedral on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The Kedroff case was inextricably tied to the geopolitical implications of the Cold War, weighing competing claims to ecclesiastical authority by two Russian Orthodox Christian jurisdictions in the United States: The Patriarchal Exarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, under the jurisdiction of the Soviet Union-based Moscow Patriarchate, and the Russian Metropolia, a New York-based jurisdiction that had declared its autonomy from Moscow in 1924.

Kedroff examined a 1945 act passed by the New York State Assembly which modified the Metropolia’s 1925 Act of Incorporation to give it jurisdiction over all Russian Orthodox churches in the state. The Metropolia had lobbied for the change in part to assuage Cold War fears of communist infiltration the church. The law in turn denied the Exarchate’s property rights in New York, including St. Nicholas Cathedral.

The court’s decision refocused its opinion in Watson v. Jones (1871), determining that the 1945 act—though well-meaning—violated First Amendment protections of the free exercise of religion, which the Fourteenth Amendment had extended to the states. The court struck down the law and awarded the cathedral to Moscow, finding that religious institutions held constitutional rights to select clergy and operate free of state interference. It also established that the court must always defer to the church’s own decisions in questions of religious faith and ecclesiastical rule. Remanded back to New York and retried, the Supreme Court again ruled in Moscow’s favor in St. Nicholas vs. Kreshik (1960), striking down the Metropolia’s efforts to use the court to replicate the intent of the 1945 law without legislative action.

This case originates in the work of Aram Sarkisian.

Context