News Staff Report
The Alabama-West Florida Conference of the United Methodist Church voted last week to close 27 churches, 26 in south Alabama — including McRae Street UMC in Atmore, Flomaton UMC and Guy’s Chapel in Bay Minette — and one in the Florida Panhandle.
Combined with the closing of 20 churches in North Alabama on May 30, a total of 46 United Methodist churches, many that have been inactive for some time, have been closed in Alabama in less than two weeks.
The latest vote took place June 10 during the annual conference meeting at Pensacola First United Methodist Church.
The congregation of Atmore First Presbyterian Church (FPC), which was destroyed by fire in March, has leased the McRae Street UMC building for its services while FPC is being rebuilt. FPC’s Adult Sunday School classes are held at 9 a.m. each Sunday, with worship services at 10:30 a.m.
Most of the latest string of churches that closed were shut down because of declining membership, while some had been the subject of property disputes.
Among those is 115-year-old Guy’s Chapel in Bay Minette, which had filed a lawsuit last year against the conference.
The 100-member congregation argued in its lawsuit that it never agreed to the “trust clause” that binds the property of congregations to the United Methodist denomination.
Some of the closings reflect efforts by the conference to keep the property of congregations that no longer wanted to be part of the conference. (There are reportedly dozens of churches in the conference that are trying to find ways to leave.)
Conference attorney Elizabeth Couey Smithart said in a press release that some Alabama churches were “steeple-jacking” by changing their deeds to drop “United” from their names. There have been similar disputes with some Panhandle congregations, she pointed out.
From 2020 to 2024, about 7,600 congregations across the nation, including 5,600 in 2023, left the United Methodist denomination. In Alabama, more than half of United Methodist congregations, more than 550, disaffiliated. United Methodists lost several million members from 1968 through the 2020 pandemic before debates over whether to embrace LGBTQ rights finally split the church in 2022-23.
In 2024, the United Methodist Church General Conference, the church’s worldwide governing body, repealed its longstanding ban on same-sex marriage and on ordaining openly gay and lesbian clergy.
The other United Methodist churches in Alabama that were closed by Conference vote:
*Irvington in Mobile County
*Mt. Herman, Mt. Carmel, Ramsey’s Chapel, Liberty, Pleasant Valley and China Grove, all in Hale County
*Pleasant Hill and Butler First, in Choctaw County.
*Morris Chapel of Opelika and Loachapoka, in Lee County
*Aldersgate and Whitfield Memorial, in Montgomery County
*Minerva, in Washington County
*Center Ridge and Sardis, in Geneva County
*Trinity Weoka, in Elmore County
*Epworth, in Barbour County
*Greenville First, in Butler County
*Trinity, in Russell County
*Williams Chapel, in Pike County
*Memorial, in Covington County
*Fitzpatrick, in Bullock County
The Florida UMC church that was closed is Friendship, in Punta Gorda (Jackson County)