A Maryland court has ruled against 37 churches that filed a lawsuit against a regional body of The United Methodist Church (UMC), claiming that the rules governing their departure from the denomination were unfair.
Judge Michael Malone of the Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County issued an order and opinion last Friday, siding with the UMC Baltimore-Washington Conference in the dispute over the disaffiliation process.
Malone upheld the Conference's assertion that the denomination possesses “an irrevocable trust” over the properties of the UMC, including the church buildings associated with congregations seeking to disaffiliate. He stated, “Maryland law provides that trust is presumed irrevocable unless ‘the power to revoke has been reserved.’ And there is no language in the trust clauses in the Discipline reserving the right to revoke. Thus, the trust created is irrevocable.”
He added, “Defendants in this case are entitled to summary judgment on this claim, as the local churches consented to the authority of the denomination, and the local church properties are merely held by the churches in trust for the UMC.”
In a statement, Bishop LaTrelle Miller Easterling, head of the UMC Baltimore-Washington Conference, expressed gratitude for the resolution of the matter and noted the importance of upholding the United Methodist Trust Clause and the role of annual conference trustees.
On the other hand, One of the plaintiffs in the case, who requested to remain anonymous, emailed Christian Post a statement expressing disappointment with the ruling and accusing the Conference of “financial malfeasance, greed, and unjust harm toward the local congregations.”
He stated, “Most of, if not all, the local congregations in this case have never received any financial support from the Baltimore-Washington Conference and have built and maintained their properties from the sacrificial giving of their congregants.”
The plaintiff further remarked that the Conference acted similarly to “Pharaoh in the book of Exodus and the scribes whom Christ Himself speaks of in Luke 20:45-47.” He described Judge Malone’s decision as a “momentum killer” and stated that they would consult their legal counsel to determine their next steps.
While the temporary disaffiliation process was still in effect, 37 churches filed a lawsuit against the Conference in March of last year, arguing that the regional body’s implementation of the process was unfair to them.
From 2019 until the measure's expiration at the end of 2023, around 7,500 primarily conservative churches were disaffiliated from the UMC. Earlier this year, at the General Conference, delegates overwhelmingly voted to allow same-sex marriages and the ordination of openly gay clergy.
