An Augusta church won a preliminary legal battle in its efforts to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church.
Trinity on the Hill United Methodist Church obtained a preliminary injunction Wednesday in a Columbia County court that requires church officials to call a conference in which Trinity can present its request to disaffiliate.
Defendants in the dispute including Greg Porterfield, the senior pastor at Wesley United Methodist Church who serves as the district Methodist superintendent, filed notice Thursday of their intent to appeal the decisions.
The split centers on the church’s growing acceptance of LGBTQ+ individuals and its clergy’s ability to marry same-sex couples and ordain gay ministers.
The church organization in 2019 added a paragraph to its “Book of Discipline” which governs conduct allowing member churches to disaffiliate over matters related to sexuality, if two-thirds of a congregation agreed. However, all such splits had to be accomplished by the end of 2023 and handled at a district conference.
Trinity claimed in a March lawsuit its congregation was misled by Porterfield and the other leaders in the North Georgia Conference about the status of its disaffiliation in an effort to “run out the clock” on Trinity, only to have the defendant Bishop Sue Haupert-Johnson place all disaffiliations on “pause” in December.
The suit claims the defendants breached their fiduciary duty and committed acts of fraud, conspiracy and racketeering in an effort to deprive Trinity of its right to disaffiliate. Under church rules the United Methodist Church owns all Methodist property, such as Trinity’s six-acre Monte Sano Avenue campus.
Trinity also has joined more than 180 other Georgia Methodist churches in a Cobb County lawsuit seeking to disaffiliate from the North Georgia Conference including Burns Memorial, St. Mark, Martinez, Cokesbury and Mosaic united Methodist churches in the Augusta area.
It said the defendants “assured local churches that there was no hurry to request disaffiliation” then refused to “activate” Trinity’s request last year for a conference. Porterfield told the congregation if any church spreads “misinformation” about the process it would not be allowed to continue.
Imposing the pause, Haupert-Johnson said “many local churches have been misled” about the process and were presented incorrect or defamatory information. One example was a slide showing United Methodists having a broad umbrella of wide-ranging beliefs.
In response to the lawsuit, the defendants denied wrongdoing and said Trinity was attempting to get the court to rule on church laws, which should be decided within the organization. Efforts to enjoin the defendants violates the Constitution as a violation of the establishment clause, they said.
Columbia County Superior Court Judge Sheryl Jolly granted plaintiffs a preliminary injunction Wednesday. Her order stated denying the injunction could cause Trinity irreparable injury due to the Dec. 31, 2023 disaffiliation deadline. It said that harm outweighed any harm to the defendants. It also states Trinity had shown it could likely prove it was misled about the possibility of disaffiliation by the deadline.
Jolly also denied the defendants’ motion to dismiss the case, stating the court has jurisdiction over the matter based on Georgia case law and that other causes for dismissal would have to wait for the development of evidence in the case.
