The Supreme Court declined to hear McRaney v. North American Mission Board, leaving the Fifth Circuit’s ruling intact. The result – despite the claims by the North American Mission Board (NAMB) – may signal the death of the Southern Baptist Convention’s primary funding mechanism – the Cooperative Program – with even more churches ceasing cooperation or further designating their giving.
The Court’s refusal to intervene leaves standing a legal framework that fundamentally alters how Baptist churches are treated under civil law whenever they cooperate with denominational entities.
And contrary to celebratory messaging coming from denominational leadership, this outcome represents a victory purchased at the expense of the very churches the Southern Baptist Convention claims to serve.
Note: to catch up on the particulars, read The McRaney Case is a Disaster for Baptists and Many Still Don’t See It.
What the Supreme Court Actually Did
The Supreme Court did not affirm NAMB’s arguments. It simply declined review. But legally, the effect is the same: the Fifth Circuit’s reasoning now stands as controlling precedent within its jurisdiction and persuasive authority elsewhere.
That reasoning establishes something profoundly new in Baptist life:
Courts may treat disputes between a local church pastor and a cooperating SBC entity as an internal ecclesiastical matter, even when the entities are legally separate organizations.
This is the crucial shift many Baptists still do not grasp.
Historically, Baptist polity depended on a clear distinction:
- Local churches are autonomous.
- Convention entities are separate ministries.
- Cooperation does not equal control.
The Fifth Circuit effectively blurred that distinction.
The New Legal Reality: Cooperation Equals Entanglement
Under the logic left intact by the Supreme Court’s refusal, cooperation through SBC structures such as the Cooperative Program can functionally merge ministries for purposes of judicial abstention. In plain English, if a dispute arises, courts may refuse to hear the case because they now view the conflict as an internal ministry disagreement, even when:
- the church is independent,
- the pastor is not employed by the SBC,
- and the entities are legally distinct nonprofits.
The result is startling. A local church can lose access to ordinary legal remedies simply by partnering with denominational ministries. That means cooperation now carries unspoken legal consequences.
Pastors and churches were never told this. They never voted on this. Yet it may now govern their legal rights.
NAMB “Won.” But Who Lost?
NAMB’s public statement celebrates the ruling as a victory for religious liberty and ministry autonomy. But notice what had to be sacrificed to achieve that outcome. To secure dismissal, NAMB argued successfully that courts could not adjudicate the dispute without intruding into ecclesiastical decision-making.
The problem is obvious: Baptists have historically insisted that SBC entities possess no ecclesiastical authority over local churches. Yet the legal defense required courts to treat the relationship as sufficiently ecclesiastical to bar judicial review.
In other words, the SBC claims autonomy theologically but relies on ecclesiastical interdependence legally. That contradiction now sits embedded in federal precedent.
And it is churches rather than denominational agencies that bear the long-term risk (although, ironically, a local church can apparently defame any SBC leader it wants, and the worst result would be the SBC refusing to cash its check).
The Cooperative Program Just Became Legally Complicated
For generations, the Cooperative Program has been presented as simple voluntary cooperation: Churches give. Entities serve. No hierarchy exists.
But after McRaney, cooperation may carry legal implications that pastors must now consider carefully. If a partnership with a convention entity can transform disputes into protected internal religious matters, then churches must ask:
- Does cooperation limit our legal recourse?
- Does partnership expose pastors to reputational harm without remedy?
- Does denominational alignment create legal entanglement we cannot escape?
These are not theoretical concerns anymore. They are now grounded in federal appellate precedent left untouched by the Supreme Court.
Why This Should Alarm Baptist Pastors
The practical incentive structure has changed. A risk-averse pastor charged with protecting his congregation must now weigh two realities:
- Cooperation increases denominational influence and access.
- Cooperation may simultaneously reduce the church’s ability to defend itself legally.
That creates a chilling question: Why would a shepherd voluntarily place his church in a position where ordinary legal protections may disappear? The very system designed to encourage voluntary cooperation may now discourage it. Ironically, the ruling celebrated as protecting Baptist ministry could accelerate distrust in denominational structures.
Dissecting NAMB’s “Victory” Statement
NAMB’s statement frames the outcome as protecting religious freedom from government intrusion. But this framing depends on a category shift.
Religious liberty protections exist to shield church governance from state interference, not to insulate parachurch organizations from accountability in disputes with legally independent parties.
The statement repeatedly emphasizes ministry autonomy while avoiding the central implication: The ruling expands ecclesiastical immunity beyond churches themselves into cooperative networks.
That is not traditional Baptist doctrine. It is a legal innovation born from a litigation strategy. And once created, it cannot easily be confined.
Courts now possess precedent allowing them to treat cooperative Baptist relationships as ecclesiastical structures, whether Baptists themselves agree with that characterization or not.
The Long-Term Consequence
The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case freezes this tension in place. No clarification. No narrowing. No correction. Just precedent.
Southern Baptists now face a paradox:
The more closely churches cooperate with denominational ministries, the more courts may treat them as part of a single religious enterprise, even as Baptist polity and SBC policy insist no such hierarchy exists.
That contradiction will not remain theoretical. It will shape future litigation, insurance risk assessments, pastoral decisions, and denominational trust.
The Real Disaster
The tragedy of McRaney is not merely that one brother lost his case. It is that Baptist polity itself was implicitly redefined in federal court, and denominational leaders are celebrating the outcome.
NAMB won dismissal. But the price may be a generation of pastors quietly reconsidering whether denominational partnership is worth the legal uncertainty it now carries. And if cooperation begins to erode because churches no longer feel legally safe participating, the institution most threatened will not be a mission board. It will be the Cooperative Program and eventually the SBC itself.
5 responses to “The Cooperative Program After McRaney: Give Money, Surrender Rights”
I hope someone will be able to answer my question here: does this ruling effect the way churches partner with other parachurch organizations (FCA, God News Clubs, etc.) should they be entangled in lawsuits or attemp to exercise authority over a church?
All this focus on structure, technicalities, secular legal ramifications, and so on, has a tendency to take away and divert attention from God’s most basic standards of right and wrong. I’m a lot more interested in what was actually done and said that was allegedly defamatory and why it was done and said. That’s what matters. Was it justified or was it not. And I don’t have a clue, because the focus is all on secular law, with the far too much emphasis on the notion that Christians are to evaluate what we do based on what we think the possible outcomes could be, rather than trusting the Lord to deal with the outcomes.
Look here, our Lord Himself has already warned us in His word that the possible outcomes of serving Him include just about every form of possible harm imaginable, up to and including being put to death, as He was, and as all but one Apostle were.
Is it about us, or is it about Him?
In the particular case in question, what actual wrongs were done, and to whom? I don’t have a clue. Where are the two witnesses and diligent inquiry? Well, I don’t know that either. Apparently there hasn’t been any diligent inquiry at all. Apparently he was fired. Why? I don’t know. Apparently some wrong things were said about him. What things? I don’t have a clue.
According to reports at Baptist News … “McRaney claimed NAMB “secured their right to do what God forbids, to defame and interfere with Baptist ministers, partners and financial supporters. Over time, their victory will be seen as a historic loss in multiple ways.”
Nowhere in scripture does God forbid any such thing. It’s not in there. In fact, scripture tells us the opposite: Jesus entire ministry was pretty much a matter of defaming the scribes and pharisees, clergy of the time, as well as the church.
In a very real sense, scripture teaches us all, as truly born again Christians in the one and only one Body of Christ, to hold one another accountable, and that none are above or beyond reproach.
What scripture forbids is NOT harming someone’s reputation. What scripture forbids is bearing false witness. And there’s a difference. Secular civil law just considers whether or not there was “harm” of some sort in the here and now. But the commandments of God consider what’s harmful to Him, harmful to His ONE church, and what is and is not harmful at eternal scope.
Lost in all of this is the basic right and wrong. Who actually did wrong and who didn’t? Were both wrong? I don’t have a clue, because I don’t know anything about the case, haven’t followed it, and don’t spend every waking hour of my life reading reports about all the baptist intrigue, because all the reporting has nearly tossed right and wrong out the blasted window.
I don’t care whether or not it might’ve been defamatory or financially harmful. Neither are a matter of God’s standards. By His standards, and warnings, if you do wrong, then “defamation” and financial harm are consequences of sin. So the question is did he do wrong. Where the defamatory statements truthful, or were they not? This should be the very first question we ask. But instead, we don’t even have a clue what was actually said.
Let God worry about all the “what ifs” … that’s His domain.
And it would be great if someone could report, or point me to a report, outlining exactly what was supposedly done wrong by God’s standards, not by the standards of secular law. If we’re all expected to weigh in on matters, to evaluate and judge matters, then it might be a good idea to tell us the facts. Right. I don’t care about all the paranoid “what ifs”, betraying distrust in the Lord, or even worse and effort to take His place. I care about what’s right and wrong – what He says is right and wrong, and whether or not by His standards there has been injustice done and to whom.
Scripture does not forbid “harm”, by the world’s definition of “harm”, or by temporal notions of “harm”. What scripture forbids is wrongful harm, by God’s standards of what is wrongful and what is harmful.
Some of the arguments appear to be reaching the point of Pharisaical hypocrisy. And the next thing you know, if all the focus is on whether or not there was harm, as opposed to WHY there was harm and WHAT was the harm, it will all be turned against the church, and it will back itself into a corner, by it’s own hypocritical standards, to refer to men as women, women as men, or otherwise justify wickedness, condemn righteousness, and pervert the grace of God into a license to sin.
You will fall away from the absolute standards of Almighty God, into the relativist standards of the world, tossing what’s right and wrong out the window, and yourselves then evaluating what is harmful and what isn’t, by your own baseless standards.
1 John 5, etc. The commandments of God are NOT harmful. What’s harmful is to stray from them. Always. Sin is what causes real harm. Righteousness is what brings real benefit and good.
That’s the first and foremost problem with running to Caesar with lawsuits every time there is a problem. The world’s definitions of what’s wrongful and harmful are NOT the same as God’s definitions.
And unless we know and understand that WHY and WHAT, then we can’t say whether or not SCOTUS did the right or wrong thing. But if that one quote from McRaney, disaligned from scripture, essentially claiming that it should be illegal to say or do anything that might be considered harmful to somebody’s reputation and financial outlook, then based on that one quote, then I’d say, just based on that one falsehood, that SCOTUS did the right thing to kick this mess out of the court.
We must stand and fight for what God says is just and right, but we also must recognize there there will never be perfect justice in this fallen world. Remaining sober, reserved, and focused on what matters, not getting too carried away. Especially not trying to create heaven on earth. There will be perfect justice one day, on the day of judgment. And the one and only perfect one will judge on that day.
For we know the one who said “revenge is mine, I will repay” AND “the Lord will judge His people” (Heb. 10)
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