Loading ...Minister with law degree sues his bishop
flockwoodBy HEATHER HAHN
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Two Little Rock ministers have sued their bishop in Pulaski Circuit Court, saying he assigned them to new congregations without giving them sufficient notice.
The Rev. Rickey H. Hicks, longtime pastor of Rufus K. Young African Methodist Episcopal Church, and the Rev. Randolph Martin of Union AME Church say Bishop Richard Allen Chappelle Sr. violated the denomination’s Ministers’ Bill of Rights by transferring them without 90 days of warning.
Chappelle, who is retiring in July, hopes to place Hicks at Union AME and Martin at Rufus K. Young AME.
But the ministers obtained a temporary restraining order Friday from Circuit Judge (and Presbyterian minister) Marion Humphrey to prevent Chappelle from removing them from their current posts.
In court papers, Hicks and Martin said they, their congregations and the entire 2.5 million-member denomination would “suffer irreparable harm” if Chappelle is allowed to “interfere” with their pastoral duties.
The lawsuit also suggests the transfer would be a demotion for Martin, resulting “in a loss of compensation of as much as 50 percent of that received from Union AME Church.”
The preachers asked Humphrey to maintain the status quo until the dispute is settled by the denomination’s hierarchy.
Humphrey’s court order prevents Chappelle from reassigning either preacher. It also bars the official boards of both churches from ousting the pastors. The order further prohibits Chappelle from giving interim ministers access to church property, “including cash or negotiable instruments.”
“We want to avoid having the officers and members of these churches have to unscramble an egg if the transfer is later overturned,” Troy Price, the ministers’ attorney, said Tuesday. “If that challenge were successful and [we] had them move back to their churches, that kind of back-and-forth would certainly be disruptive.”
Price said courts typically don’t address matters of church law. What makes this case different, he said, is that the lawsuit isn’t asking the civil court to resolve the dispute but to preserve the ministers’ contractual agreements pending a decision by church authorities.
Martin lives in a parsonage through an arrangement with his congregation, and it would be difficult for Martin to move while he appeals his reassignment, Price said.
Hicks, also a Little Rock lawyer, has been pastor of Rufus K. Young AME Church for 21 years, and Martin has been at Union AME Church for nine years.
The men say they were given year-long extensions in December 2007 and so are entitled under church law to keep their current assignments until December 2008 — long after Chappelle has retired.
Chappelle, who announced the pulpit changes during the AME’s midyear district meeting April 10-12, said Tuesday he believes the case shouldn’t even be in civil court.
“It’s subterfuge … for the church to ask the courts to deal with religious matters,” he said. “Our [church] law specifically says that before a minister or layperson goes to civil court, he’s to try and resolve matters within the church.”
Chappelle, who oversees about 200 ministers across Arkansas and Oklahoma, said Hicks was given notice of his reassignment before the meeting.
“We discussed this for almost three months before it happened,” the bishop said. “He promised to go where he was sent.”
Chappelle said he reassigned 30 to 40 ministers, including Hicks and Martin, during that same meeting.
“We are an itinerant ministry,” he said. “The pastors are committed to move. That’s part of the vows of ordination — to go where they’re sent to be at a church where there’s a need for their expertise.”
In the eight years he has been bishop in the 12th Episcopal District, Chappelle said these are the only two ministers “who refused to abide by the laws of the church and move where they have been assigned.”
