The Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church asked a judge on Monday to order 44 churches that had sued to keep their property and leave the denomination to stop suing as individual churches.
On Tuesday, Montgomery County Circuit Judge Brooke E. Reid declined the request, after previously ruling the dispute should be handled in church courts.
In its original defense in the case, the Alabama-West Florida Conference argued that civil courts had no standing to decide the case. On Nov. 10, 2023, the court agreed, and said the churches would have to take their case for a hearing on disaffiliation to the denominational court system. On May 31, 2024, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld that ruling.
But this week, the Alabama-West Florida Conference went back and asked the original judge for a further ruling to prevent churches from bringing individual lawsuits arguing to maintain ownership of their property.
On Tuesday, Reid stood by the original ruling and declined to enforce any settlement preventing churches from suing individually or ordering them to transfer their property to the denomination. Reid said the court did not rule on those issues.
It’s the latest twist in an onslaught of litigation. The Alabama-West Florida Conference last year cracked down on disaffiliation and made it more difficult for churches to leave and take their property with them by the Dec. 31, 2023, deadline set by the denomination for those who disagreed with the denomination’s handling of human sexuality issues.
Since the Alabama Supreme Court agreed that the 44 churches in the group lawsuit would have to take their case for disaffiliation to the church court, individual churches have been filing lawsuits on their own, arguing that they had never signed onto the denomination’s “trust clause” that holds church property is ultimately owned by the denomination.
Selma Methodist Church, founded in 1835, is the most recent of the group of 44 churches to file its own lawsuit, saying it never signed a trust clause giving the denomination authority over its property and asking a Dallas County judge to declare that the congregation’s trustees had the only legal claim to the property.
The First Methodist Church of Demopolis, founded in 1847, sued in August saying it has owned its own property throughout its history and has never signed a trust clause giving ownership to the denomination. The 177-year-old Demopolis church, one of the 44 plaintiffs in the group case, filed its new solo lawsuit on Aug. 16 in Marengo County.
Guy’s Chapel, a 114-year-old church in Baldwin County, sued the conference in July saying it could prove its historic ownership of its property had never been relinquished by signing documents for the denomination to hold it in trust.
Harvest Church in Dothan, not a part of the group lawsuit, was the first to sue individually, arguing that it could prove its historic ownership had never been signed over in a trust clause. While other churches negotiated payments to the conference, Harvest argued it owed no money to keep its own property. The state Supreme Court sent that case back to a lower court for a ruling, denying the conference’s request that the lawsuit be dismissed.
For years, conservative churches complained that the denomination’s rules banning same-sex weddings and ordination of LGBTQ clergy were not enforced. United Methodists elected their first openly LGBTQ bishop in 2016, Bishop Karen Oliveto. This year at the United Methodist General Conference, the denomination officially dropped the bans on same-sex weddings and LGBTQ clergy.
The total of churches that disaffiliated from the Alabama-West Florida Conference by the 2023 deadline was 248. The churches that sued said the conference tried to “run out the clock” and they were not allowed to leave and take their property before the deadline.
In the North Alabama Conference, 348 churches disaffiliated. Both conferences had more than 600 member churches before the disaffiliations.
North Alabama and the Alabama-West Florida conferences previously each had their own bishop. In the North Alabama Conference, those churches who applied for disaffiliation were allowed to leave.
Bishop Jonathan Holston, who took office in September as bishop over all United Methodist churches in Alabama and the Florida Panhandle, said he needs to consult with the Alabama-West Florida Conference trustees about the spate of lawsuits.
“Everyone wants to put disaffiliation behind them,” Holston said in a recent interview.
