After 17 months of silence, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled 2-1 against Will McRaney and in favor of the Southern Baptist Convention North American Mission Board.
The Sept. 9 ruling is the result of oral arguments heard in a New Orleans courtroom April 4, 2024. No explanation was given for the lengthy delay in issuing a ruling.
Joined by his wife, Sandy, Will McRaney updates progress on his lawsuit against the SBC North American Mission Board on Facebook live in 2019.
The eight-year-old case centers on McRaney’s claim that NAMB leaders forced the Baptist Convention of Maryland and Delaware to fire McRaney as executive director to satisfy the demands of NAMB President Kevin Ezell. McRaney had refused to follow Ezell’s plan for NAMB to claw back more than a million dollars in annual support for the two-state convention. McRaney also claims Ezell and NAMB leaders defamed him.
NAMB contends secular courts have no jurisdiction in the matter because of the ecclesial abstention doctrine, which prevents courts from interfering in matters of religious governance or doctrine. McRaney — and a host of Baptist leaders behind him — claimed this case had nothing to do with doctrine and was purely secular in nature.
Only one of the three judges hearing the case agreed with McRaney, while two agreed with NAMB.
The majority ruling begins by stating: “Pastor Will McRaney brought employment-related claims against the North American Mission Board. But the church autonomy doctrine prohibits any court from adjudicating McRaney’s claims. Therefore, the district court was correct to enter summary judgment for (NAMB).”
In reacting to the ruling, McRaney told BNG: “The lies of the North American Mission Board have won out. They fooled the courts.”
That is evident even in the language of the majority ruling, which called him a “pastor,” he said. “The SBC is not a church. Nobody is a pastor of the SBC. Those kinds of things they cannot get out of their heads.”
Kevin Ezell
Baptist polity is different from the Roman Catholic Church or even most Mainline Protestant churches, which operate in hierarchies of authority. Among Baptists, all churches and all entities operate with autonomy. Therefore, NAMB had no authority over the BCMD other than the threat of withholding money. McRaney has emphasized that he was not an employee of NAMB; therefore, NAMB’s effort to get him fired was not a matter of internal church doctrine or governance.
“You don’t have to take my side, just tell the truth,” he told BNG. “They’ve not told the truth.”
The two judges siding with NAMB are Priscilla Richman and Andrew Oldham. Their joint opinion painted McRaney as a villain seeking to harm NAMB: “NAMB has endured protracted discovery, two rounds of summary judgment, a previous appeal, and a close en banc rehearing poll. Regrettably, this litigation has caused NAMB’s and BCMD’s ‘church personnel and records’ to ‘become subject to … the full panoply of legal process designed to probe the mind of the church in the selection of its ministers.’ This unconstitutional violation of church autonomy ends today.”
Judge Ramirez, however, said her judicial colleagues got it all wrong: “Because they do not implicate matters of faith and doctrine, McRaney is entitled to continue pursuing his secular claims regarding NAMB’s pre- and post-termination conduct.
“William McRaney sued a board of an organization for which he did not work, alleging interference with contract, interference with prospective business relations, defamation, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Because his secular claims against a third-party organization do not implicate matters of church government or of faith and doctrine, I respectfully dissent.”
McRaney told BNG he intends to petition the court for an en banc hearing.
McRaney told BNG he is likely to petition the court for an en banc hearing, meaning all the judges of the appellate court would hear the case together. Such a move typically is granted only when in cases of extreme importance and with far-reaching implications.
McRaney contends his case is just such a thing because of the precedent of allowing a Southern Baptist mission board to hide behind ecclesial immunity while mandating personnel decisions be made by other autonomous entities.
The two-judge majority dismissed an amicus brief filed in support of McRaney by 100 current and former Baptist leaders.
“That brief adamantly insists that there is no singular ‘Baptist Church’ and that, therefore, ‘McRaney, BCMD and NAMB are (not) inside that single institution.’ We wholeheartedly agree. Baptists — no less than Presbyterians, Episcopalians or Catholics — are free to organize themselves in whatever way they choose. They can form General Assemblies or not. They can form ecclesiastical courts or not. They can choose ecclesiastical hierarchies or not. All of those decisions, for people of all faiths, are entirely beyond judicial competence or review.”
The two judges explained: “It does not follow that courts do have competence to review ecclesiastical disputes so long as they arise in non-hierarchical Baptist congregations. The church autonomy doctrine is triggered by the subject matter of the dispute, not the organizational structure of the disputants. The subject matter of this dispute is an evangelism project. Its stakes are eternal not judicial. And it matters not one bit that the particular evangelicals before us happen to be Baptists from different non-hierarchical congregations instead of soul-saving Presbyterians from a singular hierarchical one.”
They conclude: “On the merits, the church autonomy doctrine bars all of McRaney’s claims against NAMB. Although his claims are facially secular, their resolution would require secular courts to opine on ‘matters of faith and doctrine’ and intrude on NAMB’s ‘internal management decisions that are essential to (its) central mission.’ That we cannot do.”
The two-judge majority took specific interest in disputing McRaney’s evidence of Ezell’s defamation of him, posting a photo of McRaney at the Atlanta-based organization’s front desk with instructions not to admit McRaney to the building.
“McRaney cannot use the vehicle of a defamation or emotional distress claim to collaterally attack the outcome of a church discipline proceeding,” they said. “The decision to exclude someone from participation in a religious organization is itself a religious decision that secular courts cannot pierce.”
NAMB has not yet issued any statement about the court ruling.
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