BYU Law Review Volume 1995 | Issue 2 Article 5 5-1-1995 Associational Structures of Religious Organizations Patty Gerstenblith Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/lawreview Part of the Organizations Law Commons, and the Religion Law Commons Recommended Citation Patty Gerstenblith, Associational Structures of Religious Organizations, 1995 BYU L. Rev. 439 (1995). Available at: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/lawreview/vol1995/iss2/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Brigham Young University Law Review at BYU Law Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in BYU Law Review by an authorized editor of BYU Law Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Associational Structures of Religious Organizations Patty Gerstenblith* A legal structure is the organizational framework within which the law permits business to be conducted. Over the past four centuries, religious organizations have used various structures to gain legal recognition, status, and rights, particularly the right to acquire and to hold property. During the colonial era, the colonists borrowed extensively from English law in all areas, including the treatment of religious societies. Guided by the prevailing English method of the time, most of the colonies (and subsequently the states) provided legal status and certain rights to religious organizations, as to business corporations, by the granting of special charters. The purpose of a special charter was to create a corporation for a particular purpose and to assure certain rights or powers. A special charter required an act of the sovereign or legislature. Just as the Crown and the Parliament in England held the power to approve or deny the creation of a corporation, the states similarly continued to maintain the special charter system to which both ecclesiastical and lay corporations were subject.