The Texas Supreme Courtroom will hear arguments on Wednesday in a battle over whether or not Southern Methodist College can separate from the United Methodist Church. The college, based in Dallas by Methodists within the early twentieth century, has been attempting to extricate itself since 2019, a interval of intense turmoil within the denomination over whether or not the church ought to settle for homosexual clergy or homosexual marriage.
At stake is the query of who in the end controls the college: its personal board or the church that based it greater than a century in the past and wrote its possession into the college bylaws. The case will decide whether or not one of many flagship establishments of Methodism will stay linked to the church, which is the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination.
The personal college abruptly modified its articles of incorporation in 2019 to call its personal board as its “final authority.” That transfer displaced one of many church’s regional governing our bodies, the South Central Jurisdictional Convention, which oversees congregations in eight states together with Texas.
The college’s articles of incorporation beforehand said that the college can be “eternally owned, maintained and managed” by the convention, which had a say in choosing and approving board members, together with three United Methodist bishops.
In response, the convention sued Southern Methodist, arguing that the college didn’t have the authority to declare independence with out the church’s approval. A Texas district decide dominated in favor of the college in 2021, however an appeals courtroom reversed the choice.
Southern Methodist College was based within the early twentieth century by Southern Methodists who needed to ascertain a flagship establishment west of the Mississippi River. However immediately, the college and the church’s convention have comparatively few sensible entanglements. Representatives from the convention don’t take part in hiring selections, and the convention has made no direct monetary contributions in “practically a decade,” in keeping with a short filed by the college.
The college’s president, R. Gerald Turner, stated in 2019 that the college wanted a proper separation from the church due to turmoil over its stance on homosexual rights — which the college argued impeded its capacity to draw college students from all denominations. Amongst college students who report a spiritual affiliation at Southern Methodist, about 9 p.c are MethodistMethodists are lower than 4 p.c of the U.S. inhabitants.
On the time, the denomination accredited a plan strengthening bans on same-sex marriages and homosexual and lesbian clergy. Dr. Turner instructed The Dallas Morning Information that 12 months that the college needed to sever formal ties earlier than the church splintered.
However within the years since, dynamics within the church have modified drastically. In 2024, the church overturned the longstanding ban on “self-avowed practising homosexuals” as clergy and formally allowed same-sex marriage. By that point, greater than 1 / 4 of the denomination’s church buildings had already departed over their disagreements. Some have remained unbiased, and others have joined the brand new World Methodist Church, a rival denomination that claims it won’t ordain or marry homosexual folks.
A spokeswoman for the college, Megan Jacob, stated the college doesn’t touch upon pending litigation.
Though there is no such thing as a direct monetary relationship between the college and the church, the connection is necessary to the church and its dissolution dangers “diminishing the distinct Methodist character that has formed the college’s id,” the Rev. Dr. Derrek Belase, chairman of the South Central Jurisdiction Mission Council, stated in a press release.
In a short filed on behalf of the church, the Becket Fund for Non secular Liberty argued that if the courtroom permits the college to unilaterally separate itself from the church, it will violate the authorized precept of church autonomy, overriding church-written bylaws and primarily letting the federal government intrude in ecclesiastical affairs.
“On the core of this case is the query of who decides” how non secular establishments are structured, stated William Haun, senior counsel on the Becket Fund. He stated it may have a “chilling impact” on church buildings and different non secular organizations which can be contemplating opening an affiliated school, hospital or homeless shelter.
Critics of the separation stated the college had performed little to incorporate the church’s enter within the determination.
“It was deeply offensive to church leaders to be thrown apart,” stated Ted Campbell, a retired elder of the Texas Annual Convention of the United Methodist Church. “It felt like we had been being ignored.” Dr. Campbell can also be a professor on the college’s Perkins Faculty of Theology.
Many distinguished American universities had been based with distinctly non secular missions however later shed their formal ties and Christian identities.
Vanderbilt College, one other faculty based by Southern Methodists, declared itself unbiased of the church earlier than Southern Methodist College was based, a severance in the end supported by the Tennessee Supreme Courtroom. In response, church leaders enshrined the church’s connection to Southern Methodist within the faculty’s bylaws.
Within the century that adopted, Southern Methodist grew within the path its bold founders imagined. It now has 12,000 college students and an endowment of greater than $2 billion. Dr. Turner, who turned president in 1995, landed George W. Bush’s presidential library in 2008. The college joined the Atlantic Coast Convention final 12 months, and its soccer workforce made the playoffs.
The board introduced final week that Jay Hartzell, presently president of the a lot bigger College of Texas at Austin, might be Southern Methodist’s subsequent president.
