MADISON, Wis. (CN) — A Wisconsin federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit from a local church challenging a nearly 100-year-old provision in state law it says will cost the congregation their land for voting to leave a conference of Methodist churches. The Hebron Community Methodist Church of Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, sued in Madison federal court in January in an attempt to get the court to say that the disputed Wisconsin statute is unconstitutional and prevent the Wisconsin Conference of the United Methodist Church from using the law to stake an ownership claim to the church’s lands after its members voted to leave the denomination. The 1923 amendment to the larger 1849 Wisconsin act incorporating the Methodist Episcopal Church essentially holds that if any local Methodist church or society becomes defunct or dissolved, rights, privileges and title to the church’s property is vested with the church’s conference. The provision is tied to the history of the founding of the Methodist denomination in England in the 1700s. Fearing further retaliation or imprisonment for British Methodists practicing their religion, their founder and leader John Wesley created the “model deed” or trust clause to establish places of worship without running afoul of […]
