Who Owns Southern Methodist University?

How much is an authentic religious identity worth? For Southern Methodist University, a private institution in Dallas with over 12,000 students and a $2.2-billion endowment, the answer appears to be “not enough.”

In 2019, SMU’s board voted 34-1 to declare itself both the “ultimate authority for the university” and free from church oversight after a United Methodist Church General Conference saw the denomination’s traditional contingent defeat a bid for broader LGBTQ+ inclusion. The UMC’s South Central Jurisdictional Conference responded to the SMU board’s decision with a lawsuit. After a district court backed SMU and an appellate court reversed the decision in 2023, the case reached the Texas Supreme Court in January 2025. A judgment is forthcoming.

The fact that this specific case will have these outsized effects is ironic on many levels. This legal battle demonstrates how universities function as what legal scholar Adam MacLeod calls “hidden constitutional lawmakers,” institutions whose decisions about property and religious freedom establish norms that extend beyond themselves. Consequently, when the Texas court announces its decision later this year, it will not be creating new constitutional law but rather discovering and declaring the norms already embedded in the conduct of SMU’s board as a law-making institution. The fact that this specific case will have these outsized effects is ironic on many levels.

SMU wouldn’t exist without the Methodist church. The first irony is existential. SMU wouldn’t exist without the Methodist church. When the denomination founded the university in 1911 with a land grant explicitly for “educational purposes according to the Discipline and usages of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South,” the MECS established more than SMU’s name. It established its purpose, as well as an official institution for the training of Methodist clergy—Perkins Theological Seminary—along with it. In 1996, SMU adopted Restated Articles of Incorporation, declaring that the university was “to be forever owned, maintained and controlled by the South Central Jurisdictional Conference of The United Methodist Church.”

However, this was before the February 2019 UMC vote, when the Traditional Plan regarding same-sex weddings and clergy ordination defeated, 443 to 384, a bid to change the UMC Book of Discipline. Despite previously honoring the SCJC’s authority, even seeking permission in 2008 to lease land to build the George W. Bush Presidential Center, SMU’s board voted to file revised articles of incorporation and eliminate the SCJC’s rights. When the SCJC’s Mission Council sued the following month, SMU president R. Gerald Turner quickly gave interviews in which he expressed thanks for the school’s Methodist ties while emphasizing that “SMU is distinct from the Church” and that its anti-discrimination policy protected LGBTQ+ students, faculty, and staff. Turner insisted that SMU wasn’t severing its relationship with the church, just redefining it: “We intend to stay Southern Methodist University.” Yet SMU’s actions functionally eliminated any accountability to the denomination.

A more profound irony is that the doctrinal dispute in the UMC is now moot. Last year, the UMC changed its Book of Discipline and its official stance on ordination and marriage ceremonies. In January, Justice Debra Lehrmann even asked the SCJC if the resolved doctrinal issue made the case unnecessary. The SCJC’s attorney, Sawnie McEntire, responded, “The fact that the dispute has been resolved about same-sex marriages and things of that nature, that’s not going to let us back in the door. [SMU] shut the door on us. We need relief.” Indeed, much more is at stake than doctrine. The UMC is hemorrhaging members and money; nearly 7,600 conservative congregations have left the denomination since 2019.

During oral arguments in January, SMU attorney Allyson Ho conspicuously left out the religious-freedom argument in order to maintain that SMU has always operated independently. As a non-member, nonprofit corporation under Texas law, she insisted, SMU has always operated without church ownership or control, which meant that the court should apply neutral principles of state law since the dispute concerns corporate governance rather than a church matter. Without a binding contract requiring church approval for amendments, the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine doesn’t apply. SMU’s 2019 amendments merely align SMU’s documents with reality.

Conversely, McEntire insisted that the UMC has had a hand in running SMU for over a century, and SMU’s amendments to its incorporation articles disrupted this relationship and interfered with the church’s mission. Contending that the original articles granted the UMC amendment-approval rights, McEntire argued that SMU used LGBTQ+ policy differences merely as a pretext for severing ties.

On a 27-point scale of Christian identity markers, SMU received a score of 0. But what exactly is the university’s mission? The 2024 book Christian Higher Education: An Empirical Guide uses SMU as a case study of institutions founded by denominations that “do not demonstrate any sign of a Christian identity beyond names and historical association.” On their 27-point scale of Christian identity markers, SMU received a score of 0. Yet SMU fights to keep “Methodist” in its name.

There is more than one path for denominationally affiliated universities. Compare SMU’s position with those of other religious institutions that wanted to split from their founding church denomination. SMU doesn’t want to have to follow Belmont University’s path; in 2007, the Tennessee school paid $11 million to secure independence from the Tennessee Baptist Convention. And what about the 2019 departure of two other UMC-affiliated schools, Baldwin Wallace University and the University of Mount Union, both of which ended their denominational ties over inclusivity concerns? Baldwin Wallace explicitly referenced diversity when ending its 174-year-old denominational tie. Neither university merited a suit from the UMC, but neither university had the explicitly Methodist name, reputation, or assets of SMU. What does it say about the UMC that it continues to fight for control over SMU, an institution that has effectively abandoned its religious mission?

There is more than one path for denominationally affiliated universities. While SMU, Belmont, and other mainline Protestant institutions took the one more traveled by, there is an alternative. In 2018, four Oklahoma universities associated with different denominations—including Southern Nazarene University, Oklahoma Baptist University, and Oklahoma Wesleyan University—sued the federal government over the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate. For these institutions, denominational ties provided theological grounding and legal cover, proof that abiding by the HHS mandate would compromise their religious identity.

In his article on universities as “hidden actors” in defining property law and religious liberty, MacLeod explains how universities are not merely educational institutions but influential creators of private, civic, and political order. They help put flesh and bone on constitutional principles, establishing rights and obligations that can serve as crucial legal precedents. The foundation of this constitutional power lies in property rights. The right to exclude others from one’s property empowers universities “to choose and to act for their own purposes, to make their own commitments, and to free them from having to justify their choices and commitments to others.”

The SMU dispute represents competing constitutional claims in their purest form: SMU’s property rights and institutional autonomy against SCJC’s rights of religious association and contractual authority. SMU’s position seeks autonomy from Methodist oversight but the right to keep “Methodist” in its name, a state of affairs that would allow the university to benefit from brand recognition and the historical legitimacy of the tradition it’s rejecting. The SMU case suggests such a middle path may be unsustainable. An institution can either embrace its denominational identity fully or become religious in name only.

The final ironic question is this: Can religious identity represent something fundamental about an institution’s character and commitments or simply be reduced to branding? SMU and the UMC aren’t fighting over a religious mission; they’re fighting over a private institution with an enormous endowment and valuable property. The case is ostensibly about the connection of property and religious affiliation, but it’s more about power and money.

Yet, the decision the Texas Supreme Court makes will have religious ramifications, not just for other universities but for society in general. Unfortunately, the university and church have turned that final decision over to a public court, and universities with more serious religious commitments will have to bear that decision’s weight.

Jonathan Sircy is Professor of English at Southern Wesleyan University, where he serves as chair of the School of Religion and Humanities.