NY Times: SMU Wants To Separate From The Church But Keep ‘Methodist’ In Its Name

New York Times, Southern Methodist University Wants to Sever Ties to Its Church. Can the Church Stop It?:

The Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in a battle over whether Southern Methodist University can separate from the United Methodist Church. The university, founded in Dallas by Methodists in the early 20th century, has been trying to extricate itself since 2019 amid turmoil in the denomination over gay clergy and gay marriage.

At stake is the question of who ultimately controls the university: its own board, or the church that founded it more than a century ago and wrote its ownership into the school bylaws. The case will determine whether one of the flagship institutions of Methodism will remain connected to the church, the country’s second-largest Protestant denomination. …

In 2019, the private university abruptly changed its articles of incorporation and named its own board as its “ultimate authority.” That displaced a regional governing body of the church that oversees congregations in Texas and seven other states.

The university’s articles of incorporation previously stated that the school would be “forever owned, maintained and controlled” by the conference.

In response, the conference sued Southern Methodist, arguing that the university did not have the authority to declare independence without the church’s approval. A Texas district judge ruled in favor of the university in 2021, but an appeals court reversed the decision. …

[T]he university has suggested that the separation was a response to conflicts in the United Methodist Church over issues related to sexuality.

The university’s president, R. Gerald Turner, said in 2019 that the school needed a formal separation from the church because of turmoil over its stance on gay rights — which the university argued impeded its ability to attract students from all denominations.

At the time, the denomination approved a plan strengthening bans on same-sex marriages and gay and lesbian clergy. That plan put the church out of step with the university’s nondiscrimination statement, which includes “sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.” Dr. Turner told The Dallas Morning News that year that the school wanted to sever formal ties before the church splintered.

In the years since then, the dynamics in the church have changed. In 2024, the church overturned its longstanding ban on “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” serving as clergy members, and it officially allowed same-sex marriage. …

Many prominent American universities were founded with distinctly religious missions, but later shed their formal ties and Christian identities [New York Times, Yale Ending Its Affiliation With a Church (Apr. 12, 2005)].

Vanderbilt University, another school founded by Southern Methodists, declared itself independent of the church before Southern Methodist University was founded, and that severance was eventually supported by the Tennessee Supreme Court. Church leaders enshrined the church’s connection to Southern Methodist in the school’s bylaws in response to the Tennessee decision.

Inside Higher Ed, SMU Wants to Separate From the Church but Keep the ‘Methodist’:

Will Haun, senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a Washington, D.C., law firm focused on religious freedom issues, said the “key difference” between SMU and other institutions that disaffiliated is the explicit language in its governing documents that the university can’t revise its relationship with the church without church approval.

“The issue here is, can SMU go to the Texas secretary of state and file new corporate articles that eliminate that language without ever going through the church’s channels,” Haun said. “It’s a ‘who decides’ question, as opposed to ‘can you disaffiliate.’”

Court filings show the church and the university locked in nitty-gritty arguments about Texas corporate law. But Haun, whose firm filed an amicus brief siding with the church, believes the lawsuit has broader implications for religious institutions than these back-and-forth arguments would suggest. From his perspective, the lawsuit is really about church autonomy doctrine, a legal principle protecting the right of religious institutions to govern themselves, including their internal operations.

The United Methodist Church founded SMU, he said, “to essentially be an arm of its own religious institution to provide educational instruction, theological instruction, consistent with how the Methodist Church is organized.” And as far as he’s concerned, the court doesn’t get to weigh in on the church’s structural decisions, including what to do with that arm.

If the Texas Supreme Court rules in favor of the university, he worries that other entities founded by religious institutions will be emboldened to separate themselves in the same way.

“Imagine telling every religious institution that when they form a hospital, when they form a school, when they form a homeless shelter, all of those other arms of their religious ministry can simply unilaterally break off from them and go to the government and get protection for that,” Haun said, though he’s confident the Texas Supreme Court will see the case in the same way he does.

The Reverend Derrek Belase, chairperson of the South Central Jurisdiction Mission Council, also wrote to Inside Higher Ed that he believes cutting ties would negatively affect both the church and the university.

SMU “benefits significantly” from its affiliation with the United Methodist Church, Belase said, and in turn, the university has educated many of the church’s leaders. Their relationship “has underscored the university’s commitment to its founding values, including faith, service, and community engagement” and “allows SMU to uphold its historical Methodist heritage, which is also very important to the Conference.”

The university still describes itself on its website as “enriched by its United Methodist heritage.” Turner, SMU’s president, told The Dallas Morning News in a 2019 interview that the university wanted to shift its relationship with the church, not end it.

“Hopefully their problems become resolved because we have ‘Methodist’ in our name,” Turner told The Dallas Morning News. “And we intend to stay Southern Methodist University.”