No priest, rabbi, accredited Christian Science practitioner, or a clergyman or ordained minister of an established church shall be competent to testify in any action, suit or proceeding concerning any information which was communicated to him and entrusted to him in his professional capacity, and necessary to enable him to discharge the functions of his office according to the usual course of his practice or discipline, wherein such person so communicating such information about himself or another is seeking spiritual counsel and advice relative to and growing out of the information so imparted, provided, however, that this section shall not apply where communicant in open court waives the privilege conferred.
N.C. Gen. Stat. § 8-53.2
Communications between clergymen and communicants
Applied in 7 court decisions — leading case 180 N.C. App. 54 - State v. Pulley (2006)
Most recently applied in Doe v. Old Dominion Univ. (January 2018)
1959, c. 646; 1963, c. 200; 1967, c. 794.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: North Carolina General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain North Carolina statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.