Flushing, Queens, we are reminded by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, was the birthplace of religious freedom in America. In the 17th century, the Dutch government of New Amsterdam persecuted Quakers who came to Flushing to practice their faith. An Englishman named John Bowne defied the law by opening his home for the Quakers to hold religious services. Mr. Bowne was fined and arrested, but he and other leading citizens of Flushing appealed to the Dutch West India Company with a document that came to be known as the Flushing Remonstrance.

“We cannot condemn them,” they wrote of the Quakers, “neither stretch our hands against them, to punish, banish or persecute them…We are commanded by the Law to do good to all men.” The remonstrance won the Quakers their rights of free worship, and Flushing became a refuge of religious tolerance.

Today, another conflict over religious freedom is taking place at Flushing. It concerns the oldest Hindu temple in America, which is on the street in Flushing named after Bowne. The Ganesha Temple was incorporated in 1970 under article 9 of New York’s Religious Corporations Law, the so-called Free Church Article. The founder of the temple, Alagappa Alagappan, indicated in a 1997 interview that he wanted to keep the temple’s governance free of the politicking that plagues similar institutions. So he formed it with a self-perpetuating board rather than one open to elections.

A set of draft by-laws, probably written by a now-deceased lawyer retained by the temple 35 years ago, surfaced during litigation. Justice Joseph Golia of the Supreme Court of New York has taken these by-laws as a mandate “to establish,” as he clarified in a recent ruling,”a Board of Directors of the Hindu Temple who will serve only upon the imprimatur of the members of this Hindu Temple.” But the temple, which has never held elections, maintains no list of voting members. So Justice Golia appointed a lawyer from Long Island, Anthony Piacentini, to act as a referee for the court in forming a membership list and holding an election of new trustees. Mr. Piacentini has sent out an application to everyone who has ever signed the temple’s guest book, giving them an opportunity to become voting members and to choose the temple’s new leaders.

There’s no record that the Ganesha Temple ever adopted the by-laws that Mr. Piacentini has been charged to enforce, though even if they had, by-laws cannot stand if they contradict state law or the institution’s certificate of incorporation — both of which provide for a self-perpetuating board of trustees. There’s a more important issue, too. The state is imposing its own secular authority into a matter of ecclesiastical governance. A lawyer from Long Island is now in the position of determining who qualifies as a Hindu and who should be entitled to choose the leaders of a Hindu Temple, the people who determine what ceremonies and doctrines the institution will follow.

According to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, this kind of entanglement by the state threatens religious freedom. As the United States Supreme Court explained over a century ago, in Watson v. Jones, the First Amendment includes “a spirit of freedom for religious organizations, an independence from secular control or manipulation, in short, power to decide for themselves, free from state interference, matters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine.” Justice Golia has said, in another ruling, that he “finds no such violation of the First Amendment or an entanglement of any kind.” The temple, represented by the Beckett Fund, is appealing his decision, inspired by the example Bowne set so long ago at Flushing.