June 1, 2022
The United Methodist Church’s top court has set Jan. 1, 2023, as the date when U.S. bishops facing mandatory retirement must step down and their newly elected successors take office.
That means new bishops will be able to begin their assignments in the usual timespan of nearly two months after U.S. jurisdictional conferences. The Council of Bishops has scheduled the regional meetings that elect bishops for Nov. 2-5 this year.
The Judicial Council spelled out its reasons for setting Jan. 1 as the changeover date in Memorandum 1446, which modifies an earlier decision that allows U.S. jurisdictional conferences to go forward this year.
In the memorandum released June 1, the church court reiterated its ruling that the Council of Bishops has the authority to call the regional meetings “for the limited purpose” of continuing “episcopacy in The United Methodist Church” as required by the denomination’s constitution.
However, the new memorandum revisits the church court’s earlier stance in Decision 1445 that the new U.S. bishops officially must assume office on Sept. 1.
The Book of Discipline, the denomination’s policy book, says U.S. bishops are to retire Aug. 31 after regular jurisdictional conferences and new bishops begin their assignments Sept. 1.
But Memorandum 1446 says the denomination’s current unprecedented situation puts those disciplinary provisions on a collision course with the denomination’s constitution.
In this case, the church court said, the dates in the Discipline “cannot be applied without disrupting the constitutionally mandated episcopal supervision for the Church.”
To harmonize constitutional and disciplinary requirements and meet the denomination’s needs, the church court held: “January 1, 2023 shall be the effective date of: (1) assignment for all bishops, newly elected bishops and active bishops already serving in the jurisdictions, and (2) mandatory retirement for bishops whose sixty-eighth birthday has been reached on or before July 1, 2020.”
That means the ruling affects only bishops who planned to retire in 2020, not those who turned 68 afterward and expected to serve until 2024.
Memorandum 1446 goes on to say that jurisdictional conferences may proceed with their usual business of the election, consecration, assignment and retirement of bishops, as dictated by the Discipline.
