Methodist Church swimsuit in opposition to SMU reaches Texas Supreme Courtroom


A contentious, six-year authorized battle between the United Methodist Church and Southern Methodist College is coming earlier than the Texas Supreme Courtroom right this moment.

The controversy facilities round who maintains management over the college—its Board of Trustees or the church—after the college tried to distance itself in 2019. The transfer got here at a time when the church strengthened restrictive insurance policies towards LGBTQ+ ordinations and marriages, exacerbating ideological fault traces inside the denomination. SMU president R. Gerald Turner mentioned on the time that the church choice would don’t have any bearing on the college as “a separate company entity ruled by the SMU Board of Trustees” and the college would proceed to observe its nondiscrimination assertion, which incorporates “sexual orientation and gender id and expression.”

The United Methodist Church has since backed away from its hard-line stance on LGBTQ+ points, however that didn’t finish the ability battle over the non-public Dallas college, which now enrolls greater than 12,000 college students and has a $2.2 billion endowment. The battle began when college leaders modified its articles of incorporation in November 2019 “to make it clear that SMU is solely maintained and managed by its board as the last word authority for the college,” Turner mentioned on the time. The Board of Trustees additionally eliminated language that the college was “to be perpetually owned, maintained and managed by the South Central Jurisdictional Convention of The United Methodist Church.”

The convention, which oversees church buildings in eight states together with Texas, sued the college a month later, arguing the church’s relationship with the college couldn’t be severed with out church approval. The church based the college in 1911 with a present of 133 acres, the place the primary campus nonetheless sits, with the church because the college’s “electing, controlling and parental physique,” in response to the lawsuit. The college filed its new articles of incorporation with the Texas secretary of state “with out the Convention’s information, authorization or approval,” relatively than notifying the church it needed to disaffiliate, the church asserted in court docket paperwork.

“Put merely, the Trustees of SMU had and don’t have any authority to amend the Articles of Incorporation with out the prior approval and authorization of SCJC,” the 2019 lawsuit reads. The church has accused the college of breach of contract and fiduciary duties.

An SMU spokesperson advised Inside Greater Ed that the establishment doesn’t touch upon pending litigation. However the college asserted in court docket paperwork that its board did nothing out of compliance with Texas company legislation and that a few of the college’s former provisions about church authority fell exterior authorized bounds. The college additionally argued that the church had already been “ceasing to play any position in administering SMU” by not sending representatives to board conferences, taking part in tenure and hiring choices, or contributing a lot cash to the college. The college claimed the church hadn’t given it any funds for 5 years previous the lawsuit.

The church and the college have since been locked in a prolonged, winding authorized saga. A district choose dominated in favor of the college in 2021. However two years later, after an enchantment by the denomination, Texas’s Fifth Courtroom of Appeals sided with the church. An enchantment of that call by the college has landed the case within the state’s highest court docket.

Divisions Over LGBTQ+ Rights

When the college moved to separate itself, Methodist larger ed establishments extra broadly have been at odds with the United Methodist Church over LGBTQ+ points.

United Methodist Church delegates voted in favor of what was known as the “Conventional Plan” in February 2019—a set of insurance policies that reaffirmed a ban on homosexual clergy and established stricter penalties for clergy members who carried out same-sex marriages.

Forward of the vote, presidents of 93 faculties and universities affiliated with the church, together with SMU, launched a joint assertion calling on church leaders to “affirm full inclusion within the life and ministry of the United Methodist Church of all individuals no matter their race, ethnicity, creed, nationwide origin, gender, gender id/expression or sexual orientation.” Some larger ed establishments formally disaffiliated from the church over the choice, together with Baldwin Wallace College, the College of Mount Union and Randolph School, whereas others put their official ties to the church on pause.

“College students in 2025 don’t attend an establishment in the event that they assume they’re going to be discriminated in opposition to,” mentioned Scott Miller, president of Virginia Wesleyan College and the previous president of what was known as the Nationwide Affiliation of Faculties, Faculties and Universities of the Methodist Church. His establishment pulled a transfer just like SMU’s in 2017, revising its bylaws so the church wouldn’t must approve its board members.

Even then, debates inside the church over LGBTQ+ points have been heating up, so “we felt it was necessary to overtly ship a message to all that we’re a welcoming group and that no exterior entity was going to affect our coverage or observe,” Miller mentioned.

A sign that reads "Southern Methodist University" with trees behind it.
A lawsuit in opposition to Southern Methodist College makes its strategy to the Texas Supreme Courtroom right this moment.

Brian Harkin/Stringer/Getty Photographs Information

For the reason that lawsuit began, a traditionalist offshoot, known as the World Methodist Church, broke away from the denomination to type its personal as extra conservative congregations grew leery the church would reverse course on its earlier restrictions. 1 / 4 of United Methodist church buildings, greater than 7,000, disaffiliated from the denomination between 2019 and December 2023, both becoming a member of the World Methodist Church or changing into impartial.

For essentially the most half, the break up introduced a renewed peace between the United Methodist Church and Methodist larger ed establishments, mentioned Miller. Even so, he’s discovered that faculties and universities that disaffiliated from the church throughout that interval of upheaval aren’t dashing to come back again into the fold. He believes that as church attendance amongst Individuals declines, college leaders could not really feel as nice a necessity for church affiliation.

“There’s much less curiosity proper now than there was 5 years in the past in church buildings,” Miller mentioned. He added that the church was already pretty hands-off with a few of these establishments and contributes minimal funding to their backside traces, particularly now {that a} schism has winnowed down church membership.

Affiliated establishments are required to undergo a course of each 10 years the place they affirm they’re following church insurance policies and procedures, though they’ve the choice to let their affiliation lapse. However the United Methodist Church and its advocates are adamant that SMU went about asserting its independence within the mistaken manner.

Will Haun, senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Spiritual Liberty, a Washington, D.C., legislation agency targeted on non secular freedom points, mentioned the “key distinction” between SMU and different establishments that disaffiliated is the specific language in its governing paperwork that the college can’t revise its relationship with the church with out church approval.

“The difficulty right here is, can SMU go to the Texas secretary of state and file new company articles that eradicate that language with out ever going by means of the church’s channels,” Haun mentioned. “It’s a ‘who decides’ query, versus ‘are you able to disaffiliate.’”

Bigger Stakes?

Courtroom filings present the church and the college locked in nitty-gritty arguments about Texas company legislation. However Haun, whose agency filed an amicus transient siding with the church, believes the lawsuit has broader implications for non secular establishments than these back-and-forth arguments would counsel. From his perspective, the lawsuit is basically about church autonomy doctrine, a authorized precept defending the suitable of spiritual establishments to control themselves, together with their inside operations.

The United Methodist Church based SMU, he mentioned, “to primarily be an arm of its personal non secular establishment to offer academic instruction, theological instruction, in line with how the Methodist Church is organized.” And so far as he’s involved, the court docket doesn’t get to weigh in on the church’s structural choices, together with what to do with that arm.

If the Texas Supreme Courtroom guidelines in favor of the college, he worries that different entities based by non secular establishments might be emboldened to separate themselves in the identical manner.

“Think about telling each non secular establishment that after they type a hospital, after they type a college, after they type a homeless shelter, all of these different arms of their non secular ministry can merely unilaterally break off from them and go to the federal government and get safety for that,” Haun mentioned, although he’s assured the Texas Supreme Courtroom will see the case in the identical manner he does.

The Reverend Derrek Belase, chairperson of the South Central Jurisdiction Mission Council, additionally wrote to Inside Greater Ed that he believes chopping ties would negatively have an effect on each the church and the college.

SMU “advantages considerably” from its affiliation with the United Methodist Church, Belase mentioned, and in flip, the college has educated most of the church’s leaders. Their relationship “has underscored the college’s dedication to its founding values, together with religion, service, and group engagement” and “permits SMU to uphold its historic Methodist heritage, which can be essential to the Convention.”

The college nonetheless describes itself on its web site as “enriched by its United Methodist heritage.” Turner, SMU’s president, advised The Dallas Morning Information in a 2019 interview that the college needed to shift its relationship with the church, not finish it.

“Hopefully their issues grow to be resolved as a result of now we have ‘Methodist’ in our identify,” Turner advised The Dallas Morning Information. “And we intend to remain Southern Methodist College.”

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