One of the largest and wealthiest United Methodist congregations in America voted overwhelmingly on Monday to leave the denomination. It was a blow to the United Methodists, who have seen an exodus of thousands of congregations in recent years.
“This was not an easy decision, and we know it has not been made lightly,” the leaders of the congregation, Highland Park United Methodist Church in Dallas, said in a letter to members on Monday. “For many of us, it is a painful, difficult and emotional decision.”
They added, “For others, the decision was straightforward.”
The regional leadership of the denomination said in a statement that exiting was not that simple, setting up a prolonged showdown with the congregation.
Highland Park, where former President George W. Bush is a longtime member, occupies a tree-lined block next to Southern Methodist University and attracts many of Dallas’s most affluent families. It is the country’s largest United Methodist congregation as measured by membership. (The highest by in-person attendance is Church of the Resurrection in Kansas, a multisite church founded and led by that state’s Democratic nominee for Senate, Adam Hamilton.) The United Methodist Church is one of the country’s largest Protestant denominations.
In recent months, Highland Park has been locked in an increasingly contentious legal and ecclesiastical battle with the United Methodist denomination, to which it has belonged since its founding in 1916. The United Methodist bishop in charge of Highland Park sued it in August, and since then the congregation’s leadership has waged an unusually public campaign against the denomination’s demands for control. Among the issues in dispute is whether the Texas church should have the final say in decisions about hiring clergy, a matter typically controlled by the denomination.
“When we face the reality we’re in, we don’t see a partner anymore for peace and collaboration,” the church’s minister in residence and its former longtime leader, the Rev. Paul Rasmussen, said in a recent video filmed in the church’s pews in which he and two other clergymen urged members to vote. Voting took place in person at the church on Sunday and Monday and was overseen by a third-party administrator, Election Trust.
Of the 4,775 votes cast, just over 90 percent voted to depart, the church said.
The statement from the denomination’s regional leadership, the Horizon Texas Annual Conference, said that while “individuals are free to make their own decisions about their religious affiliation, a congregational vote does not, by itself, sever a local church’s relationship with the United Methodist Church.”
The denomination’s “trust clause” means that it retains ownership of a church’s property if its pastors and congregants vote to leave. If Highland Park’s secession is successful, it could have far-reaching implications for the denomination’s control of thousands of other properties.
The turmoil at Highland Park arose from a schism that divided the denomination primarily over L.G.B.T.Q. issues. The rift led thousands of conservative congregations to leave the United Methodist Church between 2019 and 2023, including at least 40 percent of Methodist congregations in Texas. Highland Park did not depart, but it charted an unusual middle way on sexuality questions, forbidding same-sex weddings to take place on its property but allowing its clergy to officiate them elsewhere.
The church also quietly revised its bylaws in 2022, before it was clear which side would ultimately control the denomination. The new bylaws gave the church more decision-making power over its own hiring and other matters and removed all mentions of the United Methodist Church and the Book of Discipline, its governing text.
A suit that the Horizon Texas Annual Conference filed in August in a Dallas civil court said those bylaw changes went too far. The conference is a regional body that oversees United Methodist congregations in North Texas and the state’s panhandle.
It amended its lawsuit this month, accusing Highland Park of breach of contract and asking for monetary damages.
The church’s leadership council unanimously recommended leaving the denomination, writing, “The conference and its bishop have irrevocably broken the bond of trust that once existed between our church and the United Methodist Church.”
Bishop Ruben Saenz Jr., the head of the conference, said on a video call with conference leaders this weekend that the denomination’s governing text “does not authorize a local church to unilaterally sever its covenantal relationship.”
Highland Park has said that it has paid more than $12 million in apportionments to the conference and other Methodist organizations since 2022. It has also said it remains committed to its Methodist identity and theology, even as it moves to sever its long relationship with the United Methodists.
Its leaders said in a statement that the congregation would begin worshiping this Sunday as Highland Park Methodist Church, dropping the “United.”
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