Key points:
- The United Methodist Church’s top court faces legal questions about actions at the recent General Conference, including voting rights for deaconesses.
- The Judicial Council’s fall docket also includes items about church exits, U.S. bishop assignments and a property dispute in Liberia.
- The fall session in October will mark the Judicial Council’s first session since the recent General Conference elected all nine of its members.
When it holds its first session since General Conference, The United Methodist Church’s top court will face a docket that is relatively short but still weighty.
The Judicial Council’s 11-item fall docket includes questions about General Conference actions, U.S. bishop assignments, a property dispute in Liberia and the handling of church exits now that the denomination’s disaffiliation policy has ended.
Briefs for the docket items are due Aug. 23, and reply briefs are due Aug. 28. The church court plans to meet for deliberations in October in Los Angeles.
Most of the items request declaratory decisions — Judicial Council rulings that explain the meaning, application and effect of church law.
The last day of General Conference on May 3 saw a flurry of such requests related to changes that the denomination’s international lawmaking assembly had just passed.
The Judicial Council, then completing its term, deferred two of those requests — one made less than half an hour before General Conference adjourned — until its successor council could convene. The recent General Conference elected all nine of the church court’s current members — with only two members returning from the previous slate.
Deferred items
One of the deferred items before the newly elected council stems from General Conference’s decision to extend annual conference voting rights to include both active and retired deaconesses and home missioners. Currently only active deaconesses and home missioners — United Methodist lay people called to ministries of love, justice and service — have such voting rights.
After approving this change on May 2, General Conference voted the next day to ask how its decision lines up with Paragraph 32 in the Book of Discipline, the denomination’s law book. Paragraph 32, which is part of the denomination’s constitution, only lists “active” deaconesses and home missioners among an annual conference’s members — that is, those with voting rights.
Sheila Faye Binuya, a delegate, deaconess and chair of the Commission on Deaconess Service in the Philippines, brought the question to the floor. “This declaratory decision must clarify and reconcile the membership and rights of active and retired deaconesses in the annual conference,” she said.
More on the church court
The other deferred item — raised just before General Conference’s closing devotion — relates to changes the legislative assembly made to the Discipline’s Paragraph 101. That provision extends the mandate for United Methodist leaders to develop a proposed General Book of Discipline that would specify which parts of the church policy book are adaptable and what can only be changed by General Conference action.
At this point, central conferences — church regions in Africa, Europe and the Philippines — each have the authority under the denomination’s constitution to adapt portions of the Discipline to their respective legal contexts and missional needs. But the U.S., including its jurisdictional conferences that elect bishops, does not have that authority.
Nevertheless, the changes made to Paragraph 101 reference jurisdictional conferences having the ability to make adaptations. General Conference voted to ask the Judicial Council whether this mention of jurisdictional conferences is constitutional.
The Rev. David Livingston, a delegate from the Great Plains Conference, put forward the request for the Judicial Council ruling.
“The paragraph in question was amended and then approved in that big bundle so we didn’t have a chance to debate it,” he said. “Adding jurisdiction there doesn’t appear to be constitutional.”
He said his expectation is that ratification of regionalization will make the mention of jurisdictions “irrelevant.”
By a 78% margin, General Conference approved amending the constitution to transform each central conference and the U.S. as a whole into regional conferences with the same adaptation authority. But to be ratified, amendments need the support of at least two-thirds of annual conference voters around the world. Annual conferences are church regions within central conferences and jurisdictions that each consist of multiple congregations.
Church exits
Other questions before the church court follow General Conference’s decision to delete Paragraph 2553, a provision instituted by the 2019 special General Conference that allowed churches to leave with property if they met certain financial and procedural obligations. About 7,600 churches — a quarter of U.S. United Methodist congregations — left the denomination under the policy. At least half of those congregations have since joined another denomination, in particular the Global Methodist Church — a theologically conservative breakaway denomination that launched in 2022 and has done most of its recruiting from the United Methodist fold.
Paragraph 2553 actually expired at the end of last year. But instead of extending the measure, the General Conference majority opted to eliminate it altogether. That has left some United Methodist conferences wondering how they should handle church exits going forward.
Both the Kentucky and Alabama-West Florida conferences are asking the Judicial Council whether Paragraph 2549, which deals with church closures, or some other Discipline provision can be used for churches to separate with property.
The Alabama-West Florida Conference also is asking the Judicial Council to rule on a change General Conference made to Paragraph 2549 that allows a church council to propose the church’s closure to its annual conference. The Alabama-West Florida Conference seeks to know whether this change conflicts with the role of a local church’s charge conference, which has general oversight of a church council.
Two other items before the Judicial Council deal with the aftermath of disaffiliations.
A question of law from the Peninsula-Delaware Conference asks whether retired United Methodist clergy serving in churches that are not United Methodist could be accused of violating church law. The same item also asks for a ruling on how to handle clergy withdrawals from the conference.
The church court also faces a related question about delegates to General Conference and/or jurisdictional conferences. The Northeastern Jurisdiction asked for a declaratory decision on whether annual conferences can adopt a rule on the eligibility of a delegate who is actively serving or providing leadership in a denomination not in full communion with The United Methodist Church.
Questions of law are different from requests for declaratory decisions because they are first brought to a bishop and must not deal with constitutional matters. The Discipline requires the Judicial Council to review all bishops’ rulings of law.
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Bishop assignments
Both questions of law and requests for declaratory decisions seek clarity on church legal matters.
A number of United Methodists want clarity around the recent history-making move of two bishops being assigned to lead conferences across jurisdictional lines. Bishops Carlo A. Rapanut and Debra Wallace-Padgett will begin their new assignments on Sept. 1.
The Northeastern Jurisdiction voted to request the Judicial Council for two declaratory decisions on the matter.
One request deals with the role of the Interjurisdictional Committee on the Episcopacy, the group of jurisdictional leaders that developed the recommendations for cross-jurisdictional assignments. The other request asks whether it is permissible for a bishop to be assigned across two jurisdictions and hold membership simultaneously in two jurisdictions’ colleges of bishops.
During the jurisdictional conference, Bishop LaTrelle Easterling also faced a question of law on whether the Discipline bars a bishop elected in one jurisdiction from being assigned to oversee an episcopal area in another jurisdiction unless that bishop has agreed to a wholesale “transfer” or been assigned by the Council of Bishops to an interim role. Easterling ruled that Wallace-Padgett's assignment did not violate the Discipline. The Judicial Council must review Easterling's decision.
Property dispute in Liberia
United Women in Faith, formerly known as United Methodist Women, is asking the Judicial Council to weigh in on how church law applies to a property dispute between the United Methodist agency and the Liberia Annual Conference.
The dispute is over beachfront property in Liberia currently being used for United Methodist missionary housing. The Women’s Division, the name under which United Women in Faith was originally incorporated, bought the property in 1949 for the purpose of serving the church’s mission work.
The Liberia Annual Conference board of trustees recently asked a Liberian civil court to declare that the property belongs to the annual conference.
United Women in Faith says it is not asking the church court to interpret the local laws of Liberia or adjudicate the property dispute. However, since the annual conference cites the Discipline in its court proceedings, the women’s organization is asking the Judicial Council to rule on whether the Discipline gives the conference the authority to take, develop and lease the property.
Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free Daily or Friday Digests.
