By Stephen Smoot
After the United Methodist Church became less so following schisms over religious practice and positions on social issues, debates over property and asset ownership soon followed.
Over the past few months, both the West Virginia State Legislature and West Virginia State Supreme Court of Appeals have examined the issue and the law surrounding it. It would almost serve the cause of appropriateness for West Virginia to address this issue. Bishop Francis Asbury, who led the split from the British Methodist Church in 1784, labored for many years among many other “circuit rider” preachers in the then-western Virginia mountains to establish Methodism in remote areas.
At one point in his journal, he bemoaned the fact that his converts in eastern Virginia kept moving west into the mountains, keeping the church from growing in the eastern counties.
By the 1840s, however, a dispute emerged over a Georgia bishop owning slaves. He had inherited and received by marriage two slaves that he did not wish to own. He desired to emancipate them once they could support themselves, according to Wofford College Archivist Phillip Stone in an article, but both requested to stay with him for humanitarian reasons. State law made it difficult to emancipate a slave as well.
Over this dispute over the slave owning bishop’s worthiness to serve, which tapped into the general conflict over slavery itself, the Church separated into separate northern and southern organizations.
Nine years afterward, a dispute arose over a church operated institution in Cincinnati called “The Book Concern.” The founders of Methodism, Charles and John Wesley, promoted the ideal that Christians should be avid consumers of books. By 1787 when American Methodists had charted their own path, the first “Book Concern” was started in Philadelphia with $600.
The publishing house would print materials for sale to Methodists in rural, remote, or frontier areas. It also published popular magazines which were among the most circulated of such works in America at the time.
Profits from those sales would go to support the needs of often impoverished circuit riding preachers who traveled from church to church in such regions to preach the Gospel. At some point well before the Church split, a “Book Concern” opened operations in Cincinnati, Ohio. In 1853, a dispute emerged over which of the two organizations had rights to the proceeds of it. This case went to the United States Supreme Court as Smith v. Swormstedt (1853).
The case syllabus shared that the “property, known as the Book Concern” had come from “the result of the labors and accumulation of all the ministers.” It added that “The Methodist Church was divided. It was not a case of the secession of a part from the main body. Neither division lost its interest in the common property.”
The Book Concern was administered by Leroy Swormstedt and others who were all citizens of either the states of Ohio or New York. Representatives of Methodist Episcopal Church South demanded the appropriate share of proceeds to distribute amongst circuit riders adhering to the southern Church.
The nature of how the Church divided, according to the Southern plaintiffs was that its organization “was entitled to its proportion of the common property real and personal of the (original American) Methodist Episcopal Church . . . to which the members of the church south had contributed more than their share.” Representatives from Methodist Episcopal Church North did not dispute the facts presented so much as their interpretation.
Southern Methodists claim that the conference created two distinct and legitimate Methodist Churches. Northern Methodists saw the action as “an unauthorized separation” that meant “they have hereby renounced and forfeited all claim, either in law or equity, to any portion of the property in question.”
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Nelson, who also served as Chief Justice of the New York State Supreme Court, delivered the opinion of the court. He relied heavily on the veteran Justice Joseph Story who served as Chief Justice John Marshall’s right hand during much of his tenure. Justice Story is still regarded as one of the great American legal minds.
The defendants made an objection to the suit itself, attacking the notion that a small handful of Southern Methodists could represent the diverse needs of all. Justice Story articulated three foundational points on how they could do so, which also serves as underpinning for what would become known as “class action” suits in the future. Each refers to the “common interest or a common right” connecting the plaintiffs.
Justice Nelson alleged that the defendants argued their case a little too well. He interpreted their arguments to lead to the legal conclusion that neither northern nor southern Methodists retained rights to the assets, and “are deprived of any right to a distribution.”
The Court ordered a tallying of the Book Concern’s finances with an aim towards the equitable distribution thereof between the two Methodist organizations.
In West Virginia, one of the heartlands of the original Methodist Church in America, both legislative and judicial bodies are looking at similar issues almost 170 years later. Once again, disagreements over social issues and doctrine led to the creation of competing Methodist organizations, but many others chose to abandon the concept of denominationalism altogether and create independent churches and congregations.
As West Virginia Metro News reported, the position of the United Methodist Church is that “all local church property is held in an irrevocable trust for the benefit of the entire denomination.” Local churches, again according to Metro News, have asserted that the Methodist Conference has no rights to individual churches because they paid for, maintained, and insured those properties.
Metro News also shared that one objection from the UMC is that a secular court has no authority to judge Church issues, based upon the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and similar language in that of the State of West Virginia. Smith v Swormstedt (1853) would seem to negate that argument on its very face.
The West Virginia State Legislature also considered the matter in HB 4515, but elected to not pass legislation this year due to potential Constitutional issues.
Effective language in HB 4515, intentionally or unintentionally, generally follows the outline of the 1853 case. It establishes a process to determine rights in church property for both the former UMC and the current church and would have ordered either reimbursement to the UMC or individual church depending on which side was determined to have the greater interest.
Case law in the United States rests on the principle of stare decisis. This means that courts follow the previous precedent established unless conditions have changed significantly
