NEW VIDEO: Local church and denomination state their cases before Supreme Court
MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WDHN) — Before a full courtroom and nine Alabama Supreme Court Justices Harvest Church out of Dothan argued against the United Methodist Church and the Alabama-West Florida Conference.
Harvest is trying to prevent the denomination from seizing their property if they were to leave the denomination.
The denomination is accusing the church and not wanting to follow church law or the Book of Discipline and instead wants the court to allow it to disaffiliate on its own.
“The discipline is only relevant if there is some evidence that we explicitly consented to it in writing,” Attorney for Harvest, Ryan French said before the court. “What we are arguing about is real estate. We are arguing about $10 million worth of real estate in Dothan.”
The denomination claims it has a stake in Harvest and they are owed money from the church. Harvest denied that claim, saying a $25,000 contribution to constructing its church was a grant.
“We do not believe that is appropriate for a church to ignore what it agreed to when it joined the denomination and just run to a circuit court and not follow the church law,” Attorney Robert Northcutt said.
If the Harvest was to officially leave the denomination they would join over 240 other United Methodist Churches, who have done the same across the state.
This is due to some congregations being concerned the denomination is not always enforcing the bans on same-sex marriage and ordaining openly LGBTQ+ persons.
However, the other churches paid a fee to the conference to keep their property and disaffiliate from the denomination.
Attorneys for the conference say that Harvest has gone in a different direction than the other churches.
“Harvest is trying to create a separate pathway to disaffiliate, that’s what they want to do,” Attorney for the Alabama West-Florida Conference, Alan Livingston said.
The full video of the oral arguments between the two sides can be found here.
The case was taken under advisement it could take about 6 to 7 more weeks for the judges to reach a decision.
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