Fifty-two current and former Southern Baptist leaders signed an amicus brief sent to the U.S. Supreme Court Feb. 9 arguing in favor of Will McRaney’s case against the Southern Baptist Convention North American Mission Board.
The signatories represent at least two distinct groups in Southern Baptist life — conservative Calvinists and conservative non-Calvinists who believe the SBC is lacking in transparency.
The group came together to oppose NAMB’s argument that it should be exempt from accountability for demanding McRaney’s ouster as executive director of the Baptist Convention of Maryland and Delaware even though McRaney was not an employee of NAMB.
Will McRaney
McRaney’s argument all along has been that NAMB and its president, Kevin Ezell, defamed him by threatening to withhold partnership funding for the BCMD if its executive board did not follow Ezell’s edict to fire McRaney, who was challenging Ezell’s plan to divert millions of dollars away from state Baptist conventions.
NAMB has argued the “ecclesial abstention doctrine” shields it from secular courts intervening in ecclesial affairs of the church. McRaney contends there was nothing doctrinal, theological or ecclesial about the demand to fire him or about Ezell’s attempt to blackball him from future employment.
The case has bounced around federal courts for seven years, and McRaney has filed a last-ditch appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court to counter the latest appeals court ruling in favor of NAMB. He contends the appeals court ruling, if left standing, will open the door to many more lawsuits because it will mean the SBC is viewed by the court as a hierarchical organization with ascending and descending liability.
“The church autonomy doctrine applies only to matters of faith, doctrine or internal governance committed to religious authorities,”
The new amicus brief picks up this theme: “Because Baptists lack an ecclesiastical forum empowered to adjudicate disputes between autonomous Baptist bodies, Baptist leaders, past and present, have relied on secular courts to resolve disputes when adjudication does not require answering questions of faith, doctrine or internal governance.”
McRaney’s case, the group says, is not about the ecclesial abstention doctrine, also known as the church autonomy doctrine. Baptist churches and organizations are fully autonomous — unlike Methodists or Presbyterians or Catholics — with no bishops or popes.
“The church autonomy doctrine applies only to matters of faith, doctrine or internal governance committed to religious authorities,” the brief states. “It does not confer a general immunity from secular law or impose a rule of categorical non-adjudication whenever a religiously affiliated entity is involved in a dispute.
“A narrow component of that doctrine — the ministerial exception — safeguards a religious body’s authority to select, supervise and remove its own ministers without secular interference. The exception presupposes an ecclesiastical relationship in which the defendant exercises authority over ministers and thus should not apply to legally and ecclesiastically autonomous entities merely because they voluntarily associate with each other.”
In its latest ruling, the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals “discarded that limiting principle,” they charge. “It extended the ministerial exception beyond ecclesiastical authority and anchored it instead in voluntary association among religious entities. That functional rule bars claims whenever adjudication implicates a religious entity’s employment-based decision, even if it neither employed the minister nor possessed authority over the employing body. In essence, it converts a shield for church governance into a rule of non-adjudication for secular claims.”
McRaney’s case “presents a consequential question: Whether the church-autonomy doctrine — and particularly the ministerial exception — is confined to a religious body’s own exercise of ecclesiastical authority over its ministers, or whether it may be extended to autonomous entities based solely on voluntary association,” the brief says.
Notable signers of the brief include Randy Adams, former executive director of the Northwest Baptist Convention; Tom Buck, pastor of First Baptist Church of Lindale, Texas, and a social media influencer; Rod D. Martin, former member of the SBC Executive Committee; Tom Melzoni, former senior executive pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas; Timothy Pigg, director of the Conservative Baptist Network; Mike Stone, former chairman of the SBC Executive Committee; and William Wolf, executive director of the Center for Baptist Leadership.
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