A Few Stray Thoughts on West Virginia's Supreme Court's Blocking of Church Property Suit

 

By Robin G Jordan, Monday, November 9, 2026

As I see it, the only way the West Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church will benefit from preventing the 33 disaffected congregations from disaffiliating from the UMC and the conference is from the sale of the buildings and properties which these congregations presently occupy.

One can suspect the conference’s leadership of cynically anticipating that the 33 congregations will suffer low attendance to point that these churches can be closed and the buildings and the properties put on the real estate market. If the churches in question are located in conservative communities, the conference’s leadership must realize a progressive replant at these locations will have negligible likelihood of flourishing and will fail.

The conference’s treatment of the former occupants of the buildings and properties at such locations will further damage the public image of the UMC in conservative communities, a public image already damaged by the ascendancy of the progressive wing of the United Methodist Church in the United States and further reduce the prospect of a successful replant.

The alternative explanation is that the conference’s leadership has lost touch with reality. The sixteen proposals of the recent Leadership Gathering suggest that this may be the case at the General Conference level.

To my way of thinking if the conference’s leadership was genuinely committed to our Lord’s teaching of loving one’s neighbor as oneself, of treating others as one would wish to be treated by them, and doing good to one’s enemies and to John Wesley’s principles of doing no harm, avoiding all types of evil, and doing good to others, it would not be keeping these churches from disaffiliating from the UMC and the conference but would be facilitating their disaffiliation.  

True unity comes from a common faith and a shared vision. It comes from within, from the heart. It cannot be imposed from the top down. When our Lord prayed for all believers, he prayed for those who will believe in him through the message of the apostles, that all of them might be one as he and the Father are one. The Father and the Son do not differ on what is important but are of one mind. God is not a divided God. This is the unity for which our Lord prayed for all believers. It is a work of the Holy Spirit and not that of human authorities, of those occupying positions of power and influence.

Forcing these 33 congregations to remain in the UMC and the conference is not going to bring their members around to the point of view of the conference’s leadership. It is more likely to cause further dissatisfaction with the UMC and the conference. It is also likely to cause more defections from the UMC.

What I have observed in United Methodist churches in my region is a willingness to remain United Methodist as long as they are left alone, not forced to embrace the progressive wing’s agenda. For the moment, loyalty to a particular church and a lifetime of being a United Methodist is what is keeping individual United Methodists from migrating to another church. However, if the progressive wing becomes more aggressive in pushing its agenda, which it gives every appearance of doing, they are likely to change churches or stop attending church altogether.

As for the churches that disaffiliated, the larger ones appearing to be holding their own. The smaller ones, however, are not doing as well as they hoped.

Despite the optimistic attitude of the UMC’s leadership, the issues that prompted the temporary disaffiliation measure and the departure of approximately 25% (about 1 in 4) of UMC congregations between 2019 and 2023 continue to have a negative effect upon the denomination, particularly in conservative rural areas. The official position the United Methodist Church in the United States took on these issues shows every indication of causing problems for the denomination for years to come.