196 congregations, including 66 in Puerto Rico, have left UCC
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, July 27, 2006
With no property trust clause – today’s tie that binds congregations to other mainline Protestant denominations – the United Church of Christ has had a flurry of departures since August of 2005: 196 churches, including all of its 66 congregations in Puerto Rico.
The 1.1-million-member UCC (2.1 million in 1965) is currently losing members even faster than the Presbyterian Church (USA). Since August of 2005, the departing churches in the UCC represent 3.4 percent of the 5,725 congregations in the UCC.
By a majority congregational vote, a United Church of Christ congregation can break its ties with the denomination with no repercussions. In the Presbyterian Church (USA), a congregation votes to leave the denomination at great risk.
Like the United Methodist Church and the Episcopal Church (USA), the PCUSA has a property trust clause that leashes its congregations to the denomination, even when they are strongly opposed to its policies and direction.
Those that have successfully negotiated their way out of the denomination in recent years have managed to keep their property only by meeting their presbyteries’ demands for compensation. Five congregations agreed to settlements ranging from $75,000 to more than $1 million.
In one non-negotiated case, the presbytery confiscated property valued at $6 million. Several PCUSA property disputes are in litigation now as a result of civil lawsuits filed by the denomination and its presbyteries that are claiming ownership of the property paid for by members who asked to be dismissed from the PCUSA.
Through its presbyteries, the PCUSA vigorously enforces the property trust clause in the Book of Order, which says:
- All property held by or for a particular church, a presbytery, a synod, the General Assembly, or the Presbyterian Church (USA), whether title is lodged in a corporation, a trustee or trustees, or an unincorporated association, and whether the property is used in programs of a particular church or of a more inclusive governing body or retained for the production of income, is held in trust nevertheless for the use and benefit of the Presbyterian Church (USA).
In the property section of its Legal Resource Manual, the PCUSA refers to the trust clause in terms normally reserved for important theological statements: “This clause is central to … in many respects, the life of the Presbyterian Church (USA).”
The issue that prompted the exodus from the UCC was the 2005 General Convention vote in favor of granting marriage rights to same-gender couples. In spite of its large losses and the decisions by state courts opposing homosexual marriages, the leadership of the UCC has continued to promote them at the risk of losing even more congregations.
On July 26, the high court in the state of Washington voted to affirm traditional marriage by rejecting an appeal to overturn a statewide vote opposing homosexual marriages. That case involved 19 couples, including a UCC clergy couple.
UCC President John H. Thomas called the Washington court’s decision “profoundly disappointing.”
At the end of 2005, the UCC published its annual report, indicating that the exodus was relatively small. “From July until year’s end, about 49 churches – less than one percent of the UCC’s 5,725 churches – voted to disaffiliate, according to the denomination’s research office,” the annual report said. Since then, however, the number of withdrawals has quadrupled.
The Puerto Rico Conference of the UCC voted 168-50 to pull its congregations out of the UCC. Mainline Christians in Puerto Rico – both those who were in the UCC and those who are members of the PCUSA – are more conservative than their stateside counterparts.
In three national referendums on the “fidelity/chastity” ordination clause in the Book of Order, the three PCUSA presbyteries in Puerto Rico have voted overwhelmingly in favor of the standard. Most of the votes were unanimous.
A new book by Reformation Press, a publishing arm of the Presbyterian Lay Committee, analyzes court rulings on church property and describes how congregations can take steps to protect their property. Lloyd Lunceford, an attorney and an elder at First Presbyterian Church in Baton Rouge, is the general editor of A Guide To Church Property Law.