Understanding Methodists and the ‘trust clause’

The following article is republished here through BNG’s partnership with UMInsight, where it originally appeared.

 

The “trust clause” became a familiar, if sometimes confusing, concept for many during the period when disaffiliation was possible for United Methodist churches for reasons of conscience related to human sexuality policies. When that period ended on Dec. 31, 2023, one might have thought talk of the “trust clause” would have receded from the news.

However, a current incident is bringing this issue and others related to polity and governance back to the forefront, and news of these concerns suggests it would be helpful to examine them further.

The Horizon Texas Conference and Highland Park

Many were surprised when they learned the Horizon Texas Conference (made up of the former North Texas, Central Texas and Northwest Texas Conferences) had filed a lawsuit against Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas, the largest church in the conference. The conference is challenging changes made to the church’s governing documents in 2022.

The new policies, in addition to omitting “United Methodist” in the church name, give authority to a church council that goes beyond that allowed by church law and, therefore, excludes from decision-making others prescribed by church law. The changes apparently were made without the knowledge of the congregation. While the issue of property and the trust clause are only one aspect of these actions, the changes are relevant to church property and facilities.

Hence, such actions should raise questions and concerns for every United Methodist congregation that attempts to be true to United Methodist church law as established in The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church.

What is the trust clause?

In United Methodist tradition, people leave a church or the denomination the same way they join: one person at a time. They do not take property with them.

Rather than owning property, local churches hold and keep church property “in trust” for those who wish to worship as United Methodists. People of many generations have provided and sustained this property with no individual or group having private rights apart from the tradition that it represents.

When congregations close or are no longer functioning as United Methodist churches, it is the responsibility of the respective annual conferences to ensure that the property continues to be used, or its value secured, for the mission of the United Methodist witness.

The United Methodist trust clause is a statement included in legal documents related to property. Such language provided in the Book of Discipline begins with “In trust, that said premises shall be used, kept and maintained as a place of divine worship of the United Methodist ministry and members of The United Methodist Church.”

Since a local church holds its property in trust, it has a legal obligation to maintain and protect that property so it can continue to be used as a United Methodist church in the future.

A denominational explanation of the trust clause includes this section: “United Methodists today join the generations of our forebears who built and sustained the church so United Methodist ministry will continue into the future. The trust clause protects the property and assets that they have purchased, built, and improved over time so they will always be available for ministries offered by future generations of United Methodists.

History of the trust clause

The birth of the trust clause goes back to John Wesley, who by 1750 had three properties that served as meeting places and ministry sites for the Methodist societies. Since the Methodist renewal movement was based on a connection of local societies, Wesley came to feel their efforts would be undercut by what he saw happening in other religious societies: Local groups would “set up shop for themselves” apart from the renewal movement as a whole.

Wesley asked several lawyers to craft deeds for the Methodist preaching houses in England at the time. Their language was modified over the years. For American Methodism, a version of the trust clause was approved by the General Conference in 1796.

The trust clause as we know it today first appeared in the 1797 Book of Discipline. As Thomas Starnes notes, “The key language provided that the local trustees would hold the church’s property ‘forever in trust … for the use of members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America.’”

Starnes also traces the legal history of the trust clause in the United States. When the trust clause was originally challenged, the United States Supreme Court in 1871 held that trust provisions of the sort included in the Discipline are adequate to prevent church property from being diverted away from its original purpose, even if that is the will of the majority of the local church members.

More than a century later, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that conclusion, holding that a connectional denomination’s governing documents “can be made to recite an express trust in favor of the denominational church” and that “civil courts will be bound to give effect to the result indicated by the parties, provided it is embodied in some legally cognizable form.”

The presence of the trust clause in our church law is one reason there have been only limited, although notable, historical examples of large numbers of congregations leaving the United Methodist Church. These notable historical examples took place when an agreement was reached to put in abeyance the trust clause.

1844 abeyance of the trust clause over slavery

In 1844, the Methodist Episcopal Church divided between North and South over the issue of slavery, the first of multiple denominations to take such action in that era. A Plan of Separation was approved that permitted churches that left to retain their property.

Delegates from 16 Southern and border states gathered in Louisville to form the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1845. It is not a surprise to learn that those 16 conferences no longer support slavery. However, it took almost 100 years for reunification to take place. In 1939, the two branches came back together, along with the Methodist Protestant Church created from an earlier church division, to form The Methodist Church.

While the division over slavery no longer dominated any of the groups, race was still an unresolved issue. So much so that a segregated Central Jurisdiction made up of Black Methodist congregations was the high price extracted by advocates of segregation to allow for the reunification of the Northern and Southern branches of the church. Not a jurisdiction based on geography, like the others, but on race, the Central Jurisdiction existed until its dissolution as a condition of the formation of The United Methodist Church from the union of the Methodist and Evangelical United Brethren denominations in 1968. Full implementation came as late as 1972 in a few conferences. Again, the conferences that demanded segregation in the church structure in 1939, and resisted conference integration even in 1968, no longer support segregation.

2019 abeyance of the trust clause over sexuality

One of the first public debates on homosexuality came at the 1972 General Conference when a set of social principles was presented, having been developed by former Evangelical United Brethren and Methodist representatives for the new United Methodist Church. There was a proposal to include in the Social Principles these words: “Homosexuals no less than heterosexuals are persons of sacred worth.”

The General Conference added these additional words: “We do not condone the practice of homosexuality and consider it incompatible with Christian teaching.” That unfortunate debate around homosexuality set an adversarial tone for the next 50 years.

Subsequent General Conference actions included rejecting same-sex marriage and banning the use of church funds “to promote the acceptance of homosexuality” (1976), forbidding “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” as clergy (1984) and forbidding clergy from celebrating homosexual unions and congregations from hosting them (1996).

In 2016, the General Conference asked the Council of Bishops to appoint a commission to bring a proposal to a special General Conference in 2019. The Commission on a Way Forward brought to the Special Session three plans, but the Traditional Plan option passed 438 to 384. This plan kept the current restrictive language concerning human sexuality, increased punishment for violations and provided a process for those who disagreed to leave.

The Special Session also approved a provision to make it possible for a church to disaffiliate for reasons of conscience around issues of human sexuality and keep its property after fulfilling certain steps, including meeting financial obligations.

Opposition to this outcome was muted by the COVID pandemic, which caused several future meetings to be canceled. But when United Methodists gathered again in May 2024, the General Conference overwhelmingly removed the ban on ordaining gay clergy and the ban on UMC clergy officiating same-sex weddings. That set off an exodus of more conservative churches.

Between the Special Session and the end of the designated disaffiliation period on Dec. 31, 2023, about a quarter of UMC churches disaffiliated.

A disaster the trust clause prevented

Because of the trust clause, congregations have been less likely to leave the denomination over various conflicts. Often, controversies of the moment look very different if given time for congregations to work through them. And it was, in part, the abeyance of the trust clause that led to the two tragedies of major divisions.

The positive power of the trust clause is illustrated from my earliest years in ministry in Mississippi. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, The United Methodist Church was in its early days following its formation in 1968. The new denomination abolished the Central Jurisdiction, despite continued opposition from many white Southern leaders, particularly in my annual conference. This also was a time of much racial change and conflict within Mississippi that has been documented well. Tension and resentment ran high.

“Were it not for the property trust clause, virtually every white United Methodist church in Mississippi would have left the denomination in those years.”

Were it not for the property trust clause, virtually every white United Methodist church in Mississippi would have left the denomination in those years. This is not hyperbole. It is reality. I was there. But they did not leave. Those churches were among more than 1,000 churches led by an African American bishop who contributed significantly to the rich diversity of United Methodism.

It is significant to consider all those laity who would have left with their congregations if their churches could have taken their property. Most of them would look back on those days with different feelings today as time has given them a better perspective than they had amid painful changes. They stayed with those with whom they differed long enough to figure out the issues together.

Some individuals left those churches, but most did not. They stayed and remained family despite a major family conflict. They could tolerate the fighting but did not want to break up the family.

That is where most United Methodists were before the disaffiliation option, in my experience. Almost every congregation has within it people with major differences not only on sexuality issues but on a range of other topics. Vital congregations have learned to navigate these differences, in most cases, with sensitivity and integrity. The last thing they needed was to be forced into decisions to disrupt their congregational life because denominational leaders, sometimes including their pastors, could not show the same generosity of spirit in facing their disagreements.

The option of leaving with property is what made 2019 through 2023 different in Mississippi, when many churches disaffiliated, compared to the 1964 to 1972 era in Mississippi, an era of maintaining family in the face of conflict.

The trust clause is the wrong target today

What’s the future of the trust clause? It is hard to say. In many ways, the theology and ecclesiology behind Wesley’s development of a connectional system and the trust clause are out of step with the thinking of many people today. Private interests seem to override public interests. Local prerogatives seem more important than the common good.

People legitimately want more influence over decisions that affect them. But the restructuring of bylaws and policies among some larger churches today has nothing to do with expanding the influence and power of church members. You can see this happening in places where you never would have expected it.

“United Methodist polity can seem more removed from a local church because no church is seen as complete by itself.”

Baptist churches, for example, pride themselves on their congregational polity. Every member gets a vote on important matters such as calling a new pastor or approving an annual budget. Not so in many cases today.

The story of Second Baptist Church in Houston is but one example where bylaws were passed with little knowledge of the congregation. These bylaws took financial oversight, property management and pastor selection away from the congregation and gave it to a relatively small, self-perpetuating group of people that includes the pastor. This is the model used in many large nondenominational churches. It lodges control in a few people, often those selected by the pastor.

United Methodist polity can seem more removed from a local church because no church is seen as complete by itself. It is always in connection with other churches and ministries without which the full witness of the gospel is not possible. As some of the current controversies illustrate, it helps to have a “method,” refined over a few hundred years, that provides for distributed leadership and decision-making. Such structure makes for healthy checks and balances at all levels of the church.

United Methodist pastor Eric Folkerth, writing about the Highland Park situation on Substack, quotes Stephen Long, Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics at Southern Methodist University, about the trust clause: “For me, this is what matters theologically and it is one reason I remain a United Methodist. The question is will we build our own towers and make a name for ourselves, or will we receive our property as a gift to be held in common with the body of Christ, trusting in Christ to preserve it rather than our own powers.”

 

Lovett H. Weems Jr. is distinguished professor of church leadership emeritus at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., and author, most recently, of An Aura of Hope: United Methodism’s Next Chapter in the United States. His Substack newsletter is United Methodist Focus.