Ivory Coast representation tops Judicial Council docket

A UMNS Report By Neill Caldwell

The United Methodist Church’s top court will examine the impact of the new Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) Annual (regional) Conference upon the denomination’s representation system during its fall session.

The Judicial Council has 20 items on the docket of cases to be heard during its Oct. 25-28 meeting in Cincinnati.

The Cote d’Ivoire Annual Conference was accepted into full membership of the United Methodist Church at the 2004 General Conference, the denomination’s top legislative body, in Pittsburgh. The legislation approving that addition included a provision that Cote d’Ivoire have just two voting members at the next General Conference, which will be held in 2008 in Fort Worth, Texas.

The General Commission on the General Conference is asking the Judicial Council whether or not that runs contrary to the church’s Constitution and Paragraph 502 of the 2004 Book of Discipline, which sets out a formula for representation according to the number of clergy and lay members of an annual conference.

If the disciplinary determination is used, the Cote d’Ivoire Annual Conference – with more than a million members – would be entitled to as many as 70 delegates, making it the largest delegation at General Conference. And if the General Conference sticks to its ceiling of 1,000 delegates, that would mean that the size of other delegations would have to be reduced.

More than half of the 20 docket items are bishop’s decisions of law, which must automatically be reviewed by United Methodism’s “supreme court” according to the Book of Discipline.

Two of the cases being heard this fall are directly related to the Council’s Decision 1032, which was handed down in the fall of 2005 and upheld on appeal in April of this year. Decision 1032 ruled that the pastor-in-charge of a local church has the power to determine who may be taken into membership of that congregation, which stemmed from a case in South Hill, Va., where the pastor refused to admit an openly homosexual man into church membership.

Kansas Area Bishop Scott J. Jones was asked to rule on the legality of a non-discrimination petition passed by the Kansas East Annual Conference which prohibits the denial of membership solely based on a person being a self-avowed, practicing homosexual.

In the Baltimore-Washington Annual Conference, Bishop John R. Schol was asked to rule whether or not a resolution adopted by the conference to “prohibit discrimination in receiving members into United Methodist congregations” was contrary to the Book of Discipline. The resolution reads in part that the conference “believes that Judicial Council Decision 1032 is inconsistent with Christian teachings, and contrary to The United Methodist Church Constitution.”

Other issues raised by bishop’s decisions of law range from whether local pastors are eligible to vote on clergy delegates to General and Jurisdictional Conferences, to whether a bishop can “insist” that a full-time pastor live in a parsonage.

In addition, the Judicial Council will examine:
the General Council on Finance and Administration’s recommendation of a merger of the National United Methodist Native American Center and the Native American Comprehensive Plan during the 2005-2008 Quadrennium;
a review of the sexual misconduct policy of the Minnesota Annual Conference;
a request from the Minnesota Annual Conference related to a person’s ability to review their own supervisory record;
a request from Minnesota Annual Conference on the meaning of the term “Urban Center” in ¶ 2548.7 of the 2004 Book of Discipline;
a request from the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference on “Just Resolution in Judicial Proceedings.”

Briefs for any of the items on the docket must be filed with the Rev. Keith Boyette, Judicial Council secretary, by Aug. 28.

*Neill Caldwell is editor of the Virginia Advocate, the newspaper of the Virginia Annual Conference.