A private religious society

The right of people to associate privately, choose their own members, and govern their own affairs is among the oldest freedoms in American law. The Supreme Court has protected it repeatedly: NAACP v. Alabama (1958), Roberts v. United States Jaycees (1984), Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000). A church is the clearest case of all, because the First Amendment protects both association and religion.

Spiritual Results is organized as a private religious society. That is what the Membership Covenant is: an agreement among members about who we are, how we treat one another, how we settle disputes, and what the church owes and does not owe. Our gatherings are for members and their invited guests. Our pastoral conversations are confidential. Our internal decisions are ours.

What being private genuinely does

• We decide who is received into membership and who is not, according to our faith.
• We govern our own worship, doctrine, discipline, and ministry, and no civil authority may review those decisions.
• We are not a public accommodation. We are not open to whoever walks in.
• Our members agree to resolve disputes within the church, and civil disputes by arbitration, rather than in court.
• We keep our membership roll and our records private.

What being private does not do

There is a version of the "private membership association" idea, sold in seminars and document packages, which claims that membership places people outside the reach of licensing laws, health and safety codes, tax, or regulation generally. It is false, and it has been false in every court that has heard it. A federal judge called a raw-milk "private buying club" a "subterfuge" and enjoined it. State boards prosecute unlicensed practice inside "private associations" routinely. The IRS lists the argument among its frivolous positions.

We say this in our own Covenant, in section 8, because we would rather our members hear it from us: membership in Spiritual Results is a religious relationship, not a legal shield. It does not exempt anyone from a law of general application, a tax lawfully owed, or a license the law requires. The Church claims no such immunity, and no one may claim it in the Church's name.

Why we are glad to be private anyway

The point of privacy is not to escape. It is to be free to be what we are: a community that decides for itself what it believes, whom it receives, and how it worships, and that does not need anyone's permission to do so. That freedom is real, it is protected, and it is enough.