A Prince by any other name heads to court to win back Zion pulpit
Ex-pastor Adolphus C. Princes hearing on an injunction to block a 2nd vote by Zion Baptist Church on his job is set for tomorrow.
A COMMON PLEAS judge is expected tomorrow to hear a request by the Rev. Adolphus C. Prince for an injunction to block a second vote on his employment at Zion Baptist Church. The hearing comes one day before Saturday's scheduled revote.
In a filing to stop the vote and be reinstated, Prince, also known as A. Carl Prince, alleged that the July 12, 2014, vote that dismissed him was illegal because members were not given three months' notice as called for by the church's bylaws.
The complaint said Prince signed a contract or "covenant" when he was hired in January 2012 requiring that prior to a vote, "there must be full disclosure to the church of the facts on which the termination is based."
Prince's suit claims he was fired after raising questions about the finances of the church, at Broad and Venango Streets in North Philadelphia.
Left out of the complaint's statements of events before the July 12 vote is that on June 21, 2014, Prince brought two armed security guards into a Saturday church meeting to discuss Prince's status as pastor.
The Daily News received an email from church member Robert Adams on June 25, 2014, saying that on June 21, ". . . the pastor invited armed body guards wearing bullet proof vests into our sacred sanctuary.
"The average age of our membership is about 50 years old, the average length of membership is about 25 years. There were over 300 members in attendance. We came in wheel chairs, carried walkers and canes, and got out of sick beds, rearranged busy schedules for the purpose of voting on this matter concerning the pastor."
Both Adams and Ronald Harper, chair of Zion's trustee board, said that members called 911 and that police ordered the armed guards to move to the back of the sanctuary.
Contacted this week, Robert T. Vance, Prince's attorney, said he had no information about Prince's bringing armed guards to a church meeting. He said that the issue is whether the church followed its contract in firing him.
Vance said Prince was not part of an agreement settled in September 2015 by some of his supporters who sued to challenge the vote that ousted him. That agreement called for a second vote, now set for Saturday.
"He was not part of that agreement," Vance said. "He was not present when that agreement was negotiated."
In the 2012 contract, Prince signed his name A. Carl Prince. In his legal complaint filed Dec. 22, he signed it Adolphus C. Prince.
The June 21 meeting with armed guards came months after the church deacons wrote a four-page letter dated Feb. 27, 2014, listing numerous complaints from church members about Prince's behavior.
"The pastor does not abide by a key phrase in the Covenant of Pastor-Church Relationship which he signed on January 23, 2012," the letter says, " . . . being an undershepherd who lovingly models the behavior of the Good Shepherd set by Jesus Christ in John 10:1-18."
One complaint in the letter was that Prince often told "inappropriate stories in the pulpit."
It also alleged that Prince asked longtime church members to pay a cash fee to give a graduation party, and that he charged members $300 in cash for a relative's funeral, even when the deceased was also a member.
Supporters and opponents of Prince have accused each other of being interested in the real estate assets of the church, once led by the Rev. Leon Sullivan. It is near the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University.
Kathleen Thomas, the attorney representing Zion, said the American Baptist Churches USA, to which Zion belongs, has no hierarchy.
"Each [Baptist] congregation has absolute say. The congregation calls the pastor . . . and if the congregation grows unsatisfied, they say to their leadership, 'We don't want this person anymore.' "
John Allen, a former trustee at Mount Hope Baptist Church in Prince George's County, Va., said Prince kept the small church in litigation for eight of the 10 years he was pastor there.
On Dec. 8, 2011, Prince signed a retirement agreement to leave Mount Hope. In it, he asked "that all litigations and investigations both civil and criminal, present and future be ceased. . . ."
Three weeks later, he walked into Zion Baptist Church.
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