The top court of the United Methodist Church has struck down a practice in Mississippi that was allowing churches to leave the denomination with property.

The United Methodist Judicial Court backed up its previous ruling last year that closing a church cannot be used as a back door for allowing a congregation to leave the denomination and take its property with it.

The Mississippi Conference of the United Methodist Church had adopted a process for closing churches that wanted to leave.

The Judicial Council ordered them to stop.

The court ruled that the Mississippi Conference’s board of trustees violated the denomination’s church closure provision in Paragraph 2549 of the Book of Discipline, the United Methodist rule book.

“In addition, the ‘Mississippi Process’ was enacted without disciplinary authority,” the decision said. “Therefore, it is null and void and has no force or effect.”

The court delivered its decision on June 3, before the Mississippi Annual Conference meets June 4-7. The conference had planned to vote on a dozen church closures.

Cane Ridge, Canton, Drew, Fountainhead, Hopewell, Jones Chapel, L.L. Roberts, Lebanon, Lovely Lane, Shrock, St. James and Wesley United Methodist Churches were all on the docket to be closed.

The Mississippi Conference’s trustees adopted a policy on Oct. 20, 2022, which was extended in 2024 and 2025, allowing trustees to enter into agreements with churches allowing them to withdraw in a manner similar to the disaffiliation process that expired at the end of 2023.

Under the disaffiliation rules before they expired, 386 United Methodist churches in Mississippi had disaffiliated.

Mississippi had been able to use Paragraph 2549, which allows the conference to enter into a contract with a congregation “to sell the same property back to a new church formed by the members of your church.”

The Judicial Council ruled that the Mississippi Process violated the intent of Paragraph 2549.

“Annual conferences, trustees, and local churches cannot rewrite any part of the Discipline to force the terms of Paragraph 2553 (the disaffiliation clause) into Paragraph 2549 (for church closures) or any other paragraph of the Discipline,” the church court said.

“Annual conferences cannot modify the terms of the Discipline to suit their desires or what they wished, or thought would have happened if the General Conference had adopted certain language,” the decision continued. “Furthermore, they cannot interpret a paragraph of the Discipline to extend the provisions of another paragraph that has expired.”

Paragraph 2553 offered a temporary release from the denomination’s trust clause, which says the denomination holds all church properties in trust.

In Alabama, numerous congregations seeking to keep their property and leave the denomination have taken their cases to state courts, which have allowed hearings as a property issue.

Since May 15, two more judges in Conecuh and Houston counties have ruled against motions by the United Methodist denomination to dismiss lawsuits by breakaway Alabama churches that want to keep their property.

In May, there were seven rulings by six different circuit court judges dismissing motions by the Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church, which asked the court to dismiss lawsuits by those seven churches seeking clear title to their property.