Southern Methodist University Wants to Sever Ties to Its Church. Can the Church Stop It?

The Texas Supreme Court heard oral arguments on Wednesday in a battle over whether Southern Methodist University can separate from the United Methodist Church. The university, founded in Dallas by Methodists in the early 20th century, has been trying to extricate itself since 2019 amid turmoil in the denomination over gay clergy and gay marriage.

At stake is the question of who ultimately controls the university: its own board, or the church that founded it more than a century ago and wrote its ownership into the school bylaws. The case will determine whether one of the flagship institutions of Methodism will remain connected to the church, the country’s second-largest Protestant denomination.

In Austin on Wednesday morning, the justices sounded wary of allowing the school to sever the relationship.

The court’s new chief justice, Jimmy Blacklock, concluded the hearing by saying the court should be “very, very hesitant to undermine what seems to be over 100 years of settled expectations.” He called the school’s case “clever lawyering.”

“I have difficulty imagining, just in equity, that it would be proper for the courts to vindicate that kind of a maneuver,” he said.

In 2019, the private university abruptly changed its articles of incorporation and named its own board as its “ultimate authority.” That displaced a regional governing body of the church that oversees congregations in Texas and seven other states.

The university’s articles of incorporation previously stated that the school would be “forever owned, maintained and controlled” by the conference.

In response, the conference sued Southern Methodist, arguing that the university did not have the authority to declare independence without the church’s approval. A Texas district judge ruled in favor of the university in 2021, but an appeals court reversed the decision.

A lawyer for the university, Allyson N. Ho, argued on Wednesday that the case was an “extraordinarily clear case” under Texas corporate law; the school had simply acted to bring its bylaws into compliance with state law around nonprofit structures.

But publicly, the university has suggested that the separation was a response to conflicts in the United Methodist Church over issues related to sexuality.

The university’s president, R. Gerald Turner, said in 2019 that the school needed a formal separation from the church because of turmoil over its stance on gay rights — which the university argued impeded its ability to attract students from all denominations.

At the time, the denomination approved a plan strengthening bans on same-sex marriages and gay and lesbian clergy. That plan put the church out of step with the university’s nondiscrimination statement, which includes “sexual orientation and gender identity and expression.” Dr. Turner told The Dallas Morning News that year that the school wanted to sever formal ties before the church splintered.

In the years since then, the dynamics in the church have changed. In 2024, the church overturned its longstanding ban on “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” serving as clergy members, and it officially allowed same-sex marriage.

By that time, more than a quarter of the denomination’s churches had already departed over their disagreements with those moves. Some of those churches have remained independent, and others have joined the new Global Methodist Church, a rival denomination that says it will not ordain or marry gay people.

One justice, Debra Lehrmann, suggested from the bench on Wednesday that since the dispute over sexuality between the university and the church conference had been resolved, the litigation might not need to proceed.

A lawyer for the conference, Sawnie McEntire, replied that the school had “shut the door” on the church, regardless. “We disagree very much with their attempt to mask their justification in some kind of doctrinal dispute,” Mr. McEntire said.

A spokeswoman for the university, Megan Jacob, said the school does not comment on pending litigation.

Southern Methodist University was founded in the early 20th century by Southern Methodists who wanted to establish a flagship institution west of the Mississippi River. Today, the university and the church’s conference have relatively few practical entanglements.

But the relationship is important to the church, and its dissolution risks “diminishing the distinct Methodist character that has shaped the university’s identity,” the Rev. Dr. Derrek Belase, chairman of the South Central Jurisdiction Mission Council, said in a statement.

In a brief filed on behalf of the church, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty argued that if the court were to allow the university to unilaterally separate itself from the church, it would violate the legal principle of church autonomy, overriding church-written bylaws and essentially letting the government interfere in ecclesiastical affairs.

Many prominent American universities were founded with distinctly religious missions, but later shed their formal ties and Christian identities.

Vanderbilt University, another school founded by Southern Methodists, declared itself independent of the church before Southern Methodist University was founded, and that severance was eventually supported by the Tennessee Supreme Court. Church leaders enshrined the church’s connection to Southern Methodist in the school’s bylaws in response to the Tennessee decision.

In the century that followed its founding, Southern Methodist grew in the direction its founders imagined. It now has 12,000 students and an endowment of more than $2 billion. Dr. Turner, who became president in 1995, landed George W. Bush’s presidential library for the campus in 2008. The school joined the Atlantic Coast Conference last year, and its football team made the playoffs.

The board announced last week that Jay Hartzell, currently president of the much larger University of Texas at Austin, will be Southern Methodist’s next president.