Editor’s Note: The author has also provided this Executive Summary.

by Lonnie D. Brooks

The United Methodist Judicial Council met in October 2024 for the first session it would convene following its unprecedented election in which all nine of the members along with the alternate members were elected at the same time. And the sea change that one might have expected from such an election out of an unprecedented General Conference was exactly what we got.

In her report of October 29th for United Methodist News Service, Heather Hahn used the title, “Church Court: Season of Church Exits is over.” Now, mind you, Heather has done a bit of interpretation of the effect of the Judicial Council’s action in choosing her title, because the language, “Season of Church Exits is Over” was not used by the Judicial Council (JC) in either of the two decisions that can be argued to relate to the matter of local church exits, JCD 1507 and JCD 1512. In actuality, JCD 1507 was argued by the petitioner who raised the question for the JC to be related to exits, but I argued that any relationship to exits of the changes made by the General Conference that led to the posing of the question was in the perception of the questioner, not in the action by the General Conference.

Judicial Council Decision 1512

JCD 1512 was, on the other hand, directly related to exit pathways and it was in that decision that the Judicial Council made the statements that led to Heather’s use of the language she used. The JC said the following:

Connectionalism is a bedrock principle of United Methodist constitutional polity, and the Trust Clause is its foundational element. Disaffiliation is a radical departure from connectionalism, and, therefore, church property can be released from the Trust Clause only to the extent authorized by Church law.

With the expiration and deletion of ¶2553, the postponed 2020 General Conference effectively removed from The Book of Discipline, 2016, [hereinafter Discipline] the only pathway for the disaffiliation of local churches. Except for the General Conference, no body or entity in the Church has the power to reinstate or replicate ¶2553 or adopt legislation, policies, guidelines, rules, or regulations authorizing the departure of local churches. Any such action, plan, or attempt to do so intrudes upon the exclusive prerogative of the General Conference and is unconstitutional, null, and void.

Further, ¶2549 cannot be construed or used as legislation permitting the “gracious exit” of local churches because it applies to church closure and the sale of property, not disaffiliation. Any application of ¶2549 to that end would be a misapplication of Church law.

So, Heather’s paraphrase summarizing what the JC said is fair and totally in keeping of what it seems the JC was attempting to convey to the Church. And to anybody who has been paying attention to what we’ve been doing in the Church for, oh, say the last 50 years or so, there are some parts of this that are nothing short of astounding in their categorical rejection of common practice.

Take the opening sentence: “Connectionalism is a bedrock principle of United Methodist constitutional polity, and the Trust Clause is its foundational element.” I’m pretty sure that virtually every person who’s ever studied United Methodist Church law knows that the foundation of Church law is the Constitution. The Constitution is bedrock, foundational, basic, and fundamental. All of those words convey the same thing, and that is that all the laws of the Church other than those in the Constitution are derivative, taking their authority from the Constitution. When derivative law is not consistent with the Constitution, it is illegitimate and must be stricken.

The thing that’s wrong with the quoted sentence is that by simple declaration here, without any action by the Church to amend its Constitution, the JC has extended the fundamental status of the Constitution to the Trust Clause. It simply declares that “the Trust Clause is its foundational element,” where the antecedent of “its” is Connectionalism.

Connectionalism has long been interpreted to be part of constitutional principle in UM polity, so that’s not a controversial part of what the JC has said. But the Trust Clause, though part of UM polity from its beginning, all the way back to John Wesley, has never been part of the Constitution in any Church from which the UMC has descended. The Trust Clause now is and has always been in the part of the Book of Discipline that is derivative law. It may be changed or eliminated by majority vote at any General Conference. In fact, it has been changed many times in such a manner, most recently at General Conference 2008 when ¶2501.2 was added to state that the trust is and always has been irrevocable. In fact, the only reference to property in the Constitution is in ¶7, dealing with property owned by churches prior to the merger that created the UMC. And that provision, if it says anything related to the Trust Clause, provides a clear declaration that a local church that owned its property prior to the merger will continue to own such property unaffected by the merger.

You will search the Constitution in vain to find even a reference to the Trust Clause in the Constitution. It’s just not there.

This is a stunningly clear case of judicial legislative action, as oxymoronic as that might sound.

But it doesn’t end with that. The JC went on to say, “Disaffiliation is a radical departure from connectionalism, and, therefore, church property can be released from the Trust Clause only to the extent authorized by Church law.” Whether or not disaffiliation “is a radical departure from connectionalism” is a matter of Church policy intricately related to theology and doctrine. Theology and doctrine are not within the jurisdiction of the JC; they are matters within the authority of the General Conference. So, when the General Conference decided to empower the annual conference to implement a policy of disaffiliation as provided in the now deleted ¶2553, it was up to the General Conference to decide whether or not such a policy was a radical departure from connectionalism. Moreover, the Judicial Council repeatedly affirmed the validity of ¶2553, as long as the annual conferences had the final vote in affirming the disaffiliation of any local church.

A clearer case of judicial encroachment on the legislative authority of the General Conference can’t be found than this one.

This judicial overreach keeps on coming. Next we have this: “With the expiration and deletion of ¶2553, the postponed 2020 General Conference effectively removed from The Book of Discipline, 2016, … the only pathway for the disaffiliation of local churches.” It did no such thing! By the deletion of ¶2553, the General Conference removed that one pathway to disaffiliation, if “disaffiliation” is a synonym for withdrawal from The United Methodist Church. Local churches have withdrawn from the UMC since it was created and from its predecessor churches, as well. They did so before ¶2553 was created, they did so by other pathways while ¶2553 was in effect, and they will continue to do so now that it has been deleted from our polity. Churches that come immediately to mind are Fraser Memorial UMC in Montgomery AL, Granger UMC in Granger IN, Mt. Bethel UMC in Marrietta GA, Glide Memorial UMC in San Francisco CA, Bering Memorial UMC in Houston TX. This list is representative, not exhaustive, and these representative cases were all really high-profile cases. And the high profile of these cases suggests that the members of the JC knew that what they were writing here was not the truth.

Finally, there is this assertion by the JC: “Further, ¶2549 cannot be construed or used as legislation permitting the “gracious exit” of local churches because it applies to church closure and the sale of property, not disaffiliation. Any application of ¶2549 to that end would be a misapplication of Church law.”

First, let me say that I agree with the JC that ¶2549 was intended by the General Conference to provide for the discontinuance, or closure using our current language, of a local church that no longer serves the purpose for which it was created, a situation always to be lamented even when closure is likely the best way forward in those missional circumstances. But that doesn’t mean that a law put in place with an intended purpose ought to be restricted to serve only that purpose. The law regarding evasion of federal income tax was applied to infamous crime boss Al Capone to end his murderous career. And Alger Hiss was convicted of perjury and sentenced for that crime rather than the crime of treason and selling US secrets to the Soviet Union, thus ending Hiss’s career as a highly placed espionage agent. The adage, “If the shoe fits, wear it,” applies here as it does in much of life inside and outside the Church.

In this context one must remember that the authority of an annual conference to close a local church is as absolute as a power gets in the UMC. ¶2549.2.d) says, “If the annual conference closes any local church, the failure to complete any of the prior steps will not invalidate such closure.” That means that despite the inclusion of a whole long list of steps that ought to be followed in the process of considering whether or not a local church should be closed, when the annual conference votes to close it, it is closed. There will be no ground for an appeal to the JC in such a matter, because the General Conference has already said it doesn’t matter whether the prescribed steps have been followed, meaning the JC has no jurisdiction over the process. There is nothing for it to decide in such a case. The JC statement, “Any application of ¶2549 to that end would be a misapplication of Church law” is another example of judicial overreach.

Judicial Council Decision 1507

If judicial activism was abroad in JCD 1512, it was arguably even more egregious in JCD 1507, though perhaps more subtle. Well, on second thought, there was nothing subtle about the JC’s activism in JCD 1512.

The question addressed in JCD 1507 was whether or not the General Conference’s decision, adopted on a consent calendar, and thus overwhelmingly approved, to expand the authority for proposing the closure of a local church beyond its currently exclusive prerogative of the clergy to include lay people was constitutional. As the provision for closure currently reads, only the District Superintendent can make a recommendation to the annual conference to close a local church. That means that no other person or body of the UMC has authority to make a motion to the annual conference for the closure of a local church.

The General Conference decision was to provide that a Church Council or a lay member of the local church or another local church on the same charge could make such a motion. In JCD 1507 the JC ruled that these changes were unconstitutional because they bypassed the Charge Conference which is recognized in the Discipline as the connectional body of the local church.

But, wait a second. Even if we grant that the Charge Conference is the only connectional body of the local church, current law gives the authority for recommending the local church be closed, not to the Charge Conference, but to the District Superintendent. So, if it is unconstitutional for a Church Council to be given authority to recommend closure, how can it be constitutional for a District Superintendent to be given such authority? And if the General Conference has authority to grant such authority to a DS, who is not the Charge Conference, why does it not have authority to grant such authority to a Church Council?

You might be surprised to know that the Constitution is totally silent on who has authority to recommend a local church be closed. The only power assigned in the Constitution to the Charge Conference is a conditional authority to elect the officers of the local church. Otherwise, the Constitution says that the Charge Conference shall have “such powers as the General Conference shall provide.”

So, if the Constitution is silent, where does the JC find authority for its decision? It has done two things, neither of which is persuasive nor likely legitimate. First, it has cited an unspecific principle of the Constitution that the UMC is in its essence a connectional institution and that all features of its polity must be consistent with that principle. Second, it has then specifically cited multiple places in the existing derivative law of the Discipline with which the changes proposed by GC2020/24 are in conflict, since those citations (¶¶244.1, 246.1, and 252) can be read to support an argument that the charge conference is the exclusive connectional body linking the local church to the rest of the connectional structure of the Church. There is no citation of a similar statement in the Constitution, because the Constitution makes no such statement. The JC said, “Thus, ¶2549.2b and 2549.3 conflict with ¶¶244.1, 246 and 252 are unconstitutional.” I didn’t have to make this up! To show that the changes made to ¶¶2549.2.b) and 2549.3 by the General Conference, the only body authorized to adopt legislation for the entire Church, are unconstitutional, the JC has made reference, not to anything in the Constitution, but to three paragraphs in the Discipline not in the Constitution.

To be clear, the JC has authority to decide when portions of the Discipline are in conflict which will be the prevailing law. But it is restricted to making those decisions based on established legal criteria, which include prominently the principle of recency and the principle of specificity, in which, respectively, the more recent law prevails and the more specific law prevails over the more general. In this case the changes made by GC2020/24 win on both criteria. The General Conference can change its mind! The JC has made its decision in this case not on the basis of established criteria, but on the basis of a theology of connectionalism. Theology and its interpretation for the Church are not within the jurisdiction of the JC. They are the exclusive domain of the General Conference.

The JC has thus in JCD 1507 made up a new power for the Charge Conference of recommending the closure of a local church on the charge, and it has totally ignored the existing law which assigns that authority to the District Superintendent.

Now that I think about it, that’s not so subtle, after all.

This I suspect establishes the pattern we can expect from this Judicial Council. It might be a long four years. Or maybe it’ll be eight. We’ll see.

Lonnie Brooks has served as a lay delegate or reserve delegate to most UM General Conferences since 2000. He is a member of St. John United Methodist Church of Anchorage and has served on four general church agencies and committees.