United Methodist Judicial Council Narrows Exit Ramps

This week, the United Methodist Church’s Judicial Council, at the urging of the officers of the Council of Bishops (COB), effectively made one of the United Methodist Book of Discipline’s congregational exit ramps unusable for this present season of separation.

This means that the windows and opportunities for congregations to leave the denomination and keep their properties are narrowing, and congregations should move quickly before they run out of time.

In Decision #1449, the Judicial Council, once again, gave leading liberal bishops everything major they asked for, largely invalidating Discipline ¶2548.2 for this season of separation.

This provision, originally part of the Methodist Church’s 1948 Discipline, allows for a congregation’s property to be transferred to “another evangelical denomination” at the request of the congregation and with the consent of the annual conference, the bishop, proper representatives of the receiving denomination, and key leaders within the annual conference. Its basic terms have remained legally unchallenged and largely unchanged for decades. Apart from paragraph re-numberings, General Conferences held in 1952, 1956, 1968, 1976, 1988, 2000, and 2012 re-adopted this provision with only minor tweaking. Perhaps the most substantive change was when the 1988 General Conference made clear that this may be used for other Pan-Methodist Commission denominations with whom the UMC has a close formal relationship or “another evangelical denomination” not in this category.

There was never any serious legal question that this could potentially be used to allow congregations to transfer into the Global Methodist Church.

In practical terms, ¶2548.2 gives each bishop veto power to prevent any use of this provision in their respective conferences. And “the overwhelmingly majority” of bishops have already made clear their lack of interest in using it. There were probably never more than four or five American United Methodist bishops, at most, who may have ever been willing to use this alternative to offer more gracious exit terms. But for those few conferences, this could have made a huge difference in making this season of separation more amicable and less punitive.

In terms of politics, the COB’s dominant liberal-institutionalist faction wanted to make sure that not even a tiny minority of more fair-minded United Methodist bishops could even be allowed to use ¶2548.2’s more gracious exit possibilities. Four main differences between ¶2553, the “Disaffiliation” policy adopted by the 2019 General Conference, explain the opposition to using ¶2548.2 as an alternative:

• Paragraph 2553 requires a two-thirds supermajority vote of a congregation’s whole membership in order to disaffiliate. Paragraph 2548.2 lets congregations depart via a simple-majority vote of its membership (as would the “Protocol” which many of these bishops previously claimed to support) or of a smaller charge conference. Essentially, the COB wants conservative-leaning congregations in which even a 66-percent majority does not want to go along with the UMC’s liberal new direction to be held hostage by a mere 34-percent minority.
• Paragraph 2553 requires congregations leaving the United Methodist Church to immediately pay needlessly high exit fees supposedly for unfunded pension liabilities. But others have explained how a conference’s unfunded pension liability is not the same as a debt, as the liability refers to what might potentially need to be paid in unlikely “worst-case scenarios.” And if annual conferences receive more money for “unfunded pension liabilities” than they need for this purpose, then at least sometimes this money can be re-designated for other purposes. Congregations leaving under ¶2548.2 could use promissory note rather than an immediate payment (see page 7), and only pay later what, if anything, was actually needed to care for retirees. The COB majority wants to force departing congregations to pay much more than is necessary.
• Paragraph 2548.2 requires departing congregations to transfer their property to “another evangelical denomination,” while ¶2553 allows them to go independent. For all of bishops’ sanctimonious talk of the value of “connectionalism,” by closing off separation options other than ¶2553 (such as the Protocol and ¶2548.2), they are knowingly helping make the conservative side of the split more splintered, as Pastor Chris Ritter has observed. This is consistent with their other efforts to weaken the Global Methodist Church. But then again, the GMC, unlike the UMC, has no “trust clause,” so congregations own their own properties.
• Paragraph 2553 expires next year, and effectively will become unusable for U.S. congregations within a few months or even a few days, depending on their annual conference. Paragraph 2548.2 has no such expiration, and could potentially be used indefinitely. The COB majority wants to limit the window of opportunity for congregational departures.

Again, none of these are legal problems for ¶2548.2.

But in a series of recent cases, the Judicial Council has consistently given the COB everything major it requested, even going to great lengths to judicially establish major changes in denominational policy.

And so in Decision #1449, the Judicial Council dutifully gave the COB leadership what it wanted, redefining church law to make ¶2548.2 unusable for this season of separation. In response to the COB arguing that ¶2548.2 is not “a legal pathway for a local church to separate from the UMC as an alternative to” other Discipline processes like ¶2553, the Judicial Council largely accepted this novel interpretation.

But in a powerful, succinct dissent, Judicial Council member Dennis Blackwell observes that this ruling “fails to acknowledge that ¶1504.23 provides that ¶ 2548.2 is an additional option for congregations to change their connectional relationship with the United Methodist Church.” Indeed, ¶1504.23, adopted at the 2019 General Conference, was originally developed in consultation with the General Board of Pension and Health Benefits (aka Wespath) and submitted as part of the liberal One Church Plan.

Furthermore, for months the COB’s current president, Thomas Bickerton of New York, had worked in extensive negotiations with the Rev. Keith Boyette (then the president of the Wesleyan Covenant Association) over ways they could develop and promote policies to use ¶2548.2, with the knowledge of the rest of the COB and the involvement of a task group of the COB, among others. It is hard to see how this would have ever happened for even one week if Bickerton and the COB believed all along that ¶2548.2 could not legally be used for this context.

So again, even very recently, this decades-old provision of church law was widely accepted—including by the liberal architects of the One Church Plan, the denomination’s pension agency, and the leadership of the Council of Bishops—as indeed legally providing a pathway for congregations to leave the UMC, and this understanding was officially written into the Discipline when the last General Conference adopted ¶1504.23. It is simply disingenuous for the COB to now suddenly claim that there are legal problems, not previously suggested in this United Methodist exit provision’s 74 years of existence, when there has been no relevant change in church law, but rather only changes in the COB’s politics of how much church-property they want to hoard for themselves.

Furthermore, this shows how heavy-handed most United Methodist bishops have become in derailing amicable separation. It is not enough for them to table the Protocol. Then it was not enough for them to prevent annual conferences from departing apart from the Protocol. Then it was not enough for them to impose needless burdens on disaffiliating congregations in almost all U.S. annual conferences. Now because of the possibility that of even a tiny minority of bishops potentially being willing to let congregations go according to ¶2548.2’s less punitive terms, the COB’s dominant faction went out of their way to use the Judicial Council as a tool to forcibly prevent any bishop from even having this as an option.

This COB-directed ruling relies on Discipline ¶431.1, which the Judicial Council quotes to unreasonably claim (1) that the COB must have authority over all arrangements with other denominations potentially employing ¶2548.2 in any annual conference, and (2) that such COB-endorsed agreements “must be approved and ratified by General Conference, before coming into effect.” While the COB continues preventing General Conference from meeting and potentially approving any such agreements or other measures for amicable separation.

Rev. Blackwell’s dissent, however, observes that this ruling “invests authority within the Council of Bishops that the General Conference has not given them in the Book of Discipline,” since “Paragraph 431.1 does not give the Council of Bishops, as the ruling suggests, the authority to define an evangelical denomination, to determine what constitutes a denomination nor sign a comity agreement.”

Indeed, if you read the whole section of ¶431.1 quoted by the Judicial Council to justify its ruling, you will see that it expressly applies only to “denominational level agreements of formal ‘full communion’ relationships and permanent membership in ecumenical organizations.” But by its own terms, ¶2548.2 applies to regional rather than “denominational level” agreements, has nothing to do with ecumenical organizations, and does not require the level of commitment of a “full communion” agreement. Furthermore, ¶2548.2 does not even require a vague “comity agreement,” but merely lists this as one of several alternatives under which church property may be transferred.

So on top of the six layers of approval ¶2548.2 already requires, this decision imposes two new additional layers of approval (by the COB and 2024 General Conference) that are frankly unrealistic, given the COB’ growing hostility, and not actually required by the Discipline. 

This COB-directed ruling offers no clear guidance to which denominations could currently qualify as “another evangelical denomination” under ¶2548.2 other than the three non-Pan-Methodist denominations with which the UMC has established “full communion agreements.” (The first such bilateral “full communion agreement” was only established in 2009, after ¶2548.2 had been unchallenged and repeatedly reaffirmed for decades). But the Judicial Council stated very explicitly what the COB leaders wanted it to say: that ¶2548.2 cannot currently be used for the Global Methodist Church.

Yet as Blackwell’s dissent indicates, this ruling judicially redefines the plain meaning of Discipline ¶¶ 431.1 and 2548.2 to give a new level of authority to the COB apart from General Conference giving them any such authority. In making this major policy change requested by the bishops, the Judicial Council disregards some of its own legal precedents and basic questions of consistency.

Together with partners from Good News, the Wesleyan Covenant Association, and others, I jointly prepared and submitted “friend of the court” briefs. Removing only signatures, personal information, and submission technicalities, I have posted our opening brief outlining at length why ¶2548.2 is clearly permissible to use in our present context of separation and why arguments to the contrary were legally unserious attempts to make our separation needlessly difficult. I have similarly posted the content of our reply brief refuting the arguments by the COB and their allies, including arguments that the Judicial Council adopted apparently without seriously considering our rebuttals.

Among other things, we highlighted the implications of the COB’s extreme position that ¶2548.2’s use of the phrase “another evangelical denomination” could not be used until General Conference defines in detail which specific denominations qualify. Even though eight General Conferences adopting and re-adopting this provision saw no need to limit annual conferences’ discretion here. There are many other provisions of church law broadly related to “other denominations” that do not meticulously define every denomination that counts as “another denomination”—such as provisions for appointing or receiving clergy from other denominations, or removing from our rolls members who have joined other denominations, among other things.

The Judicial Council dodged such concerns by focusing on “who has the authority to determine whether an entity is ‘another evangelical denomination’ within the meaning of ¶ 2548.2” (emphasis original). But they did not explain to what extent their logic—that both the COB and General Conference must take formal action before another denomination qualifies as “another denomination”—would apply within the meaning of other church law.

At the urging of the COB, the Judicial Council also made another radical policy change by requiring that any use of ¶2548.2 must comply with the terms of Discipline ¶¶ 206 – 213. But the Judicial Council ignored the Discipline’s own language, highlighted in our renewal leaders’ legal briefs, making clear that these provisions should only apply to the clearly irrelevant situations of cooperative parishes, ecumenical shared ministries, and churches in transitional communities. This part of the ruling (Question 6) makes especially little logical or legal sense. But it serves the COB’s purposes of making separation needlessly difficult.

I know of at least one United Methodist conference where the bishop has been claiming “there is no need to rush in making a decision on disaffiliation” and holding out the possibility of using ¶2548.2 for exits. Now that possibility has been removed.

If your United Methodist congregation is in a position to afford your annual conference’s exit fees but you are somehow holding out hope that perhaps you will get a better deal than ¶2553’s bare terms from the 2024 General Conference or from the new bishop your conference may get in January and/or in 2024, consider the trajectory of United Methodist politics since the start of 2022:

• Liberal leaders and organizations who were among the Protocol’s earliest supporters now openly oppose the Protocol;
• The Judicial Council, at the behest of the Council of Bishops, issued Decision #1444 denying the right of U.S. annual conferences to leave the denomination apart from the Protocol;
• The “overwhelming majority” of the COB has declared it is not interested in using less punitive disaffiliation policies than ¶2553;
• Bishops and conference officials are increasingly adding additional burdens on disaffiliating congregations beyond what ¶2553 requires; and
• Now the COB has used the Judicial Council to block the possibility of even a tiny number of conferences using the Discipline’s only other disaffiliation provision to allow congregations to separate without needless difficulties.

This is not a trajectory that points towards United Methodism’s 2024 General Conference offering less punitive separation terms.

United Methodism’s self-serving bureaucracy is increasingly narrowing the exits, and time is running out.