Eight more churches disaffiliated from the United Methodist Church on Sunday, including the 4,936-member Christ Methodist Church in Mobile, one of the city’s largest congregations.
Christ Methodist was one of seven churches in Alabama approved for disaffiliation from the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church in a meeting conducted by conference call from Huntingdon College in Montgomery.
One church in the Florida panhandle, Salem Church in the Marianna-Panama City district, also was approved for disaffiliation.
The other Alabama churches that disaffiliated on Sunday were Benton, Hayneville and Lowndesboro from the Montgomery-Prattville district of the conference; Macedonia from the Montgomery-Opelika district; and Marietta and Oak Grove from the Demopolis district.
“Somehow, some way, we’ve got to get to a better place,” said Bishop David Graves,who presided over the special called meeting.
“There’s a lot of emotion within the people called Methodists throughout the Alabama-West Florida Conference,” said Graves. “It has really ramped up and escalated since the June announcement from the conference board of trustees of the eligibility statement that is required.”
A group of 42 United Methodist congregations in south Alabama and the Florida panhandle filed a lawsuit Oct. 31 against Bishop Graves and the Alabama-West Florida Conference, saying he has delayed the disaffiliation process and won’t let them leave the denomination by the end of the year. Sunday’s vote was the last disaffiliation vote scheduled this year.
The lawsuit, filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court, names Graves and his cabinet as defendants, saying the bishop is trying to “run out the clock” by not letting them leave the denomination and take their property with them as allowed by church law by Dec. 31.
“There are church congregations that wanted to be before the annual conference this day, to be voted on for disaffiliation,” Graves said. “People on both sides of this issue have dug in on their thoughts and opinions.”
Before Sunday’s vote, 240 congregations had disaffiliated from the Alabama-West Florida Conference. This brings that total to 248. The total of disaffiliated churches in the North Alabama Conference rose to 348 on Sept. 12, the last disaffiliation vote for that conference. Prior to disaffiliation, both conferences had more than 600 churches each.
The departing churches had all voted by 66.7 percent or more to leave the denomination, either to become independent or join more conservative denominations where traditional Christian bans on same-sex marriage are not up for debate.
Although the United Methodist Church still holds its traditional stance banning same-sex marriage and ordaining openly gay clergy, decades of fighting on the issue prompted many conservatives to leave when a door was opened clearing the way for them to take church property with them.
“It seems like every aspect of leadership, no matter if it’s Washington, D.C., to the church, has become political, leading to divisions,” Graves said.
The Methodist churches that are leaving the denomination have either remained independent or joined more conservative denominations such as the Global Methodist Church, formed last year to welcome new conservative Methodist congregations, or the Free Methodist Church, or the Foundry movement, a network of affiliated churches in the Methodist tradition.
Last year, Frazer Memorial Methodist Church in Montgomery, which had long been the largest membership United Methodist Church in Alabama with more than 7,000 members, disaffiliated. Frazer joined the Free Methodist Church, a more theologically conservative denomination.
Graves welcomed all those from the departing churches who want to stay United Methodist to attend a remaining church or put their names on a general church roll to be matched with a United Methodist church in the future. “We are working to start new places of worship,” Graves said.
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