Key points:
- An appellate court ruled in favor of the Baltimore-Washington Conference in a legal battle with 37 churches that sought to leave with property while bypassing the denomination’s disaffiliation process.
- The ruling marks a victory for the denomination’s centuries-old trust provision, instituted by Methodism founder John Wesley.
- The appellate decision also has the potential to influence other disaffiliation-related cases pending before civil courts.
The Appellate Court of Maryland has upheld a lower-court ruling against 37 churches that sought to leave The United Methodist Church while taking property with them.
The three-judge panel’s ruling, in favor of the Baltimore-Washington Conference, marks a significant affirmation of the denomination’s centuries-old trust clause — the provision in the United Methodist Book of Discipline that that says all church property is held in trust for the benefit of the entire denomination.
“The trust requirement is thus a fundamental expression of United Methodism,” the Book of Discipline says, “whereby local churches and other agencies and institutions within the denomination are both held accountable to and benefit from their connection with the entire worldwide Church.”
The opinion, released Oct. 5, has the potential to influence the outcome of other legal challenges to United Methodist Church governance winding their way through civil courts in multiple U.S. states.
“I’m heartened that the trust clause that has been part of The United Methodist Church since our inception has been upheld,” said Bishop LaTrelle Miller Easterling, who leads both the Baltimore-Washington and Peninsula-Delaware conferences.
Bottom line: The appellate court concluded that civil courts lack jurisdiction to resolve an internal church dispute that requires interpretation of church doctrine and church governance.
Ongoing cases
The Appellate Court of Maryland ruled in Methodist Church of Cape St. Claire, et al v. The Baltimore Washington Conference of the United Methodist Church, et al. The ruling is available here.
Here is a look at other ongoing cases related to disaffiliation and the church’s trust clause:
- A judge in South Carolina indicated this week that he plans to dismiss a consolidated lawsuit that the South Carolina Conference has filed against 68 churches seeking to leave with property. The final orders have not yet been written or entered, but the South Carolina Conference said it already plans to appeal.
- The Susquehanna Conference has moved to dismiss a federal lawsuit filed by Queen Memorial Church in Kimmel Township, Pennsylvania, seeking to get the federal court to overturn the trust clause altogether.
- The Alabama-West Florida Conference has appealed a lower-court ruling in favor of Harvest Church in Dothan, Alabama. The church went to court about four years ago to leave without going through the denomination’s church-exit process.
- The North Carolina Supreme Court has agreed to hear the North Carolina Conference’s appeal of a decision by the state court of appeals regarding the closure of the former Fifth Avenue United Methodist Church in Wilmington while it was trying to disaffiliate. The United Methodist Church’s Judicial Council has already ruled in the conference’s favor.
The decision, written by Judge Douglas Nazarian and joined by the two other judges, agreed with the lower court that the local churches had not brought “a genuine dispute of material fact” in arguing for termination of the trust.
“Resolving the claims alleged in this case,” Nazarian wrote, “would require a trial court to examine the UMC’s religious doctrine and the Conference’s management of church resources in a manner prohibited by the First Amendment.”
The ruling stems from a lawsuit that the Methodist Church of Cape St. Claire and 36 other congregations brought in March 2023 against the Baltimore-Washington Conference, its board of trustees and Bishop Easterling.
The churches filed the suit in Anne Arundel County Circuit Court at a time when the denomination had a policy that allowed temporary release from the trust clause if churches met certain procedural and financial obligations.
The United Methodist Church’s General Conference approved the policy in 2019 amid deepening division over the status of LGBTQ people in the denomination.
Among the exit requirements was that a congregation vote by at least two-thirds to leave and that it pay a fair share of unfunded clergy pension liability — that is, what its conference owes retired clergy.
The temporary disaffiliation policy, Paragraph 2553 in the Discipline, also allowed conferences to “develop additional standard terms” for church exits. The Baltimore-Washington Conference added the condition that disaffiliating churches must also pay 50% of the assessed value of real property they wished to retain.
The 37 churches’ suit challenged these required payments. In two phases, the county circuit court granted summary judgment in favor of the conference, and the appellate court upheld the lower court’s decision.
The appellate panel agreed with the lower court’s reasoning “that the text of the Book of Discipline states expressly that the trust is irrevocable, that its trust clauses don’t reserve for local churches the right to revoke, and that Maryland case law presumes that trusts are irrevocable unless the power of revocation has been reserved.”
The ruling also agreed that any dispute about the additional payments or the interpretation of the Discipline should be taken to the Judicial Council, The United Methodist Church’s top court.
All told, more than 7,600 churches — a quarter of U.S. churches — withdrew from the denomination under the disaffiliation policy. That total included 25 churches that left the Baltimore-Washington Conference, paying the additional property costs. Today, the conference has 562 churches across Maryland; Washington, D.C., and the West Virginia panhandle.
The disaffiliation policy expired on Dec. 31, 2023, and the Judicial Council has since ruled that the trust clause is back in full force.
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The appellate court’s decision leaves the 37 churches with four options: Appeal to the Maryland Supreme Court, stay in the denomination, leave the denomination and its property or negotiate a settlement with the conference to pay for its property and leave.
“We are in a season of prayerful discernment regarding the future of these church properties,” Easterling told UM News.
The Cape St. Claire congregation, the lead plaintiff, still identifies as United Methodist on its website. The church declined comment and referred questions to the National Center for Life and Liberty, a non-Methodist legal nonprofit, that represented the 37 churches and others across the U.S. seeking to leave The United Methodist Church without paying exit fees. The center did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The denomination’s trust clause has a good track record in U.S. civil courts. In recent years, The United Methodist Church has seen courts in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania all uphold the trust clause.
But multiple cases related to disaffiliation are still pending.
One of those cases is directly related to the Maryland lawsuit. In September, the Baltimore-Washington Conference filed a federal lawsuit against Calvary United Methodist Church in Martinsburg, West Virginia, one of the churches involved in the Maryland case. The conference’s suit seeks to defend the trust clause after the Calvary congregation in March filed documents in West Virginia to incorporate as Calvary Methodist Church, Inc., and filed a “quitclaim deed” that purported to transfer Calvary United Methodist property to the new corporation.
“It grieves my heart that we have arrived at a place where the Conference has no viable alternative but to pursue relief in our civil courts,” Easterling wrote in a letter announcing the suit. “It is always my preference to work collaboratively with congregations in a spirit of prayer, mutual respect and holy conferencing to discern a faithful and viable path forward.”
Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Contact her at (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umnews.org. To read more United Methodist news, subscribe to the free UM News Digest.
