COLUMBIA, S.C. — Multiple South Carolina churches are taking their parent denomination to the S.C. Supreme Court to try to get out from under its jurisdiction and keep their church holdings intact.

The lawsuit was filed this week by the Methodist Church of Simpsonville, with its pastor and chair of the church council named as individual plaintiffs, joined by nine other Methodist congregations across South Carolina that seek to leave the United Methodist conference and retain their church property in the process.

South Carolina’s United Methodist conference holds individual church properties in trust for the United Methodist Church, and those churches revert to the denomination if the congregations decide to severe their ties to the national church. The plaintiffs claim the UMC is incapable of doing this because the denomination is not legally incorporated and instead operates as a “connection” between its various conferences.

The latest suits follow a long, drawn-out process that has led more than a hundred churches across South Carolina and thousands across the country to leave the United Methodist Church in recent years. That process came to a head in 2023, when the statewide United Methodist conference allowed 113 churches to disassociate from the church while keeping their church property, taking a 10% tithe from the exiting churches in the process.

That conscious separation was supposed to end a period of discontent within the denomination between those who want the denomination to move in a more accepting direction for LGBTQ+ members and more conservative congregations that are seeking to move away from the denomination for the same reason. But the church at the time made clear it was one-time offer, and that congregations that attempted to leave in the future would have to forfeit their church property.

The suit filed with the Supreme Court contends that the conference is motivated to retain the property of its remaining members, which it estimated to be worth $60 billion nationwide. At least 15 states have ongoing lawsuits related to the United Methodist disaffiliation process.

No legal response from the United Methodist conference had been filed as of Thursday afternoon, but in a statement, conference spokesman Dan O’Mara said it was planning further legal action.

“The South Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church is focused exclusively on making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,” O’Mara said. “To ensure that continued focus, and to protect its beneficial ownership rights in the property of all South Carolina United Methodist churches, the Conference has hired a legal team to respond to the issues raised in these legal filings.”

When two denominations merged in 1968 to form the United Methodist Church, the plaintiffs say the rules adopted at the time allowed existing churches to maintain control of their own property. The Simpsonville church leading the lawsuit dates back to 1916.

“(F)or over a century, they alone have bought, paid for, owned, improved, and maintained their gathering place,” the lawsuit says.

While the parcel that includes Simpsonville’s main sanctuary includes trust language related to the former Methodist Church denomination, the local congregation’s attorneys contend that language became void when the old denomination ceased to exist when it merged into the United Methodist Church. Other trust language was added to the church’s deeds around 2016 without the church council’s knowledge, the suit says.

“The Methodist Church of Simpsonville explored the process but, like many other churches, did not complete the process before it expired, and in any event, had hoped theological disputes between local congregations and the UMC could be resolved in a favorable way.”

United Methodists are not alone in dealing with such theological disagreements among the country’s mainline Protestant churches. In 2017, the S.C. Supreme Court had to settle a similar dispute after the Episcopal Diocese of South Carolina attempted to split from the national Episcopal Church and affiliate with the more conservative Anglican Church in North America. In that case, the justices ruled some churches would remain the property of the Episcopal Church while others could remain with the departing congregations, depending on the trust status of their individual properties.

Following further changes to the church’s policies on LGBTQ+ members at the 2024 United Methodist conference, South Carolina’s conference opened another way for member churches to leave, using a procedure meant to close existing churches. But the Simpsonville church was “wary of that process because of the Conference’s control and influence over it and, therefore, they did not participate in it,” per the lawsuit.

“These representations, made both in writing and through official communications and meetings, clearly stated that the local churches would be permitted to disaffiliate and retain their real and personal property, provided they complied with the requirements set forth by the denominational leaders.”

Nevertheless, the church took steps in mid-2024 to remove any affiliation with the United Methodist Church, while “The churches that had relied on the representations of the Conference and the UMC and had sought to use the denomination’s disaffiliation process had the rug ripped out from under them” when the national church ruled that the closure rule could not be used to allow any more churches to leave the denomination on favorable terms, the lawsuit adds.

The suit asks the Supreme Court to stop the United Methodist conference’s lawsuits in circuit court against some 40 local Methodist congregations, which it argues is barred by the First Amendment as it would require the courts to rule on the denomination’s internal rules and doctrine.

They seek to have the Supreme Court take up the case in its original jurisdiction — without waiting on an appeal form a lower court — rather than the United Methodists’ suggestion that one circuit court judge be assigned all suits between the state conference and individual churches.

The churches are represented by attorneys Miles Coleman, James Bannister and David Gibbs.

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