Southern Methodist University is being sued over a recent move to sever control of the school from the United Methodist Church.
The move is part of the latest fallout from the denomination’s long-running battles over sexuality.
Some United Methodist delegates gather to pray before a key vote on church policies about homosexuality on 26th February, during the special session of the UMC General Conference in St Louis. PICTURE: Kit Doyle/RNS
Earlier this year, its global decision-making body strengthened its ban on the ordination and marriage of its LGBTQ members.
Afterward, SMU President R Gerald Turner issued a statement saying the school appreciated its Methodist roots but that its day-to-day operations were not under church control.
And more recently, the Dallas-based university changed its articles of incorporation to “make it clear that SMU is solely maintained and controlled by its board of trustees as the ultimate authority for the university,” according to a written statement the university provided to Religion News Service.
The school delated a phrase saying the school was “forever owned, maintained and controlled by the South Central Jurisdictional Conference of The United Methodist Church,” according to a report by the United Methodist News Service.
The regional conference responded earlier this week with a Dallas County civil lawsuit. The suit describes the school as “the founder, owner, controller and manager of SMU,” according UMNS.
SMU was notified of the suit late last Wednesday, according to the statement from the school.
“SMU cherishes our history with the Church, and we are committed to maintaining close connections with the Church and its successors,” the statement said.
“With Methodist in our name, the Perkins School of Theology as a resource and assurance of Methodist representation on the Board of Trustees, the Church will continue to have important influence in the governance of SMU.”
In recent months, several plans have been floated to divvy up the United Methodist Church’s churches and agencies amid decades-long disagreement within the denomination over LGBTQ inclusion. Those plans likely will be considered at the next regular meeting of the General Conference in May in Minneapolis.
SMU’s change to its articles of incorporation came “in response to the debate regarding the future organizational structure of the Church,” according to its statement.
In February, a special session of the United Methodist General Conference, the denomination’s global decision-making body, approved the conservative Traditional Plan. That plan bars bishops from consecrating, ordaining or commissioning “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” and strengthens current complaint procedures and penalties for clergy who perform same-sex weddings.
Centrists and progressives in the church have rejected and resisted the plan, which takes effect on 1st January.
SMU is a private, nonsectarian university of about 6,500 undergraduate students that houses the George W Bush Presidential Library. Though it was founded by predecessors to the United Methodist Church, only about 14 per cent of its students now identify as Methodist, according to its website.
