The body of the United Methodist Church (UMC) has filed a lawsuit against the church leaders of the Cortez UMC, alleging that the church leaders violated the UMC's bylaws by not disaffiliating from the denomination appropriately.
Lawsuit Against Cortez United Methodist Church
Fox News reported that the case filed in Lackawanna County Court claims that Cortez United Methodist Church leaders in Jefferson Township, located approximately 15 miles west of Scranton, disobeyed the UMC bylaws regarding disaffiliation when the congregation independently split off to form Cortez Community Church.
The church members Daniel Hulse Jr., Cathy Strickbein, Alicia Clarke Witkowski, Ken Witkowski, and Abbigale Clarke have been named as defendants in the UMC complaint Susquehanna Conference brought forward.
As per The Christian Post, the legal filing said that on February 9, the church altered its signs to reflect its new identity, and on February 19, the church began taking steps to assume control of its bank accounts. According to the information presented in the publication, Lackawanna County Judge Julia Munley will preside over the hearing that will take place on May 28. Moreover, the former congregation members continue serving inside the Cortez Road church structure.
Despite taking on a new identity and becoming affiliated with a different church, it is said that the congregation has kept meeting on the church premises, where it has done so in the past.
Also Read:United Methodist Church Renounce Disaffiliation Process, 186 Churches Filed Lawsuit
Disaffiliation from UMC
According to People Need Jesus, separating the UMC was at a halt while it awaited the adoption of a comprehensive separation protocol from an August 2022 General Conference. However, on March 3, 2022, everything underwent a fundamental change. Because of concerns with COVID, the general commission on the conference decided to delay the assembly of the sole body authorized to speak for the UMC until 2024. Traditionalists, both inside and outside the commission, saw this move as commercial sabotage against the courteous Feinberg Protocol. The announcement that day that the Global Methodist Church would be beginning its operations marked the beginning of the end for traditionalists' patience. In addition, a new disaffiliation language that was only approved in the last minutes of GC2019 (and was mostly disregarded subsequently) became the most significant piece of Methodist legislation to be enacted in a generation.
Leaving according to the terms of the Protocol would have resulted in the following:
A process of denomination-wide separation would be initiated;
Break-away denominations would be given official recognition;
Local church exit costs, such as pension liabilities, would not be incurred;
Annual conferences would each take a vote on whether to stay or leave;
Individual congregations could leave with a simple majority vote.
Disaffiliation as the exit process made leaving expensive, self-triggered, requiring super-majority local church support, and a demand to abandon the UM yearly meetings and their possessions. It was no longer an option to bypass a vote at the local level by deferring to the decision made by the conference as a whole. Over 2,000 congregations agreed to those parameters, communicated them to their members, held super-majority votes, raised/paid the cash, and got multiple annual conference approvals.
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