Agreed. But the law in Texas isn’t settled - a local Episcopal church paid about $1.2 million to leave (and affirmation of sole responsibility for debt of $6.8 million) in 2006 with the facts substantially similar, except the Episcopal church property wasn’t nearly as valuable as the Highland Park property. (Annual giving at the Episcopal church was about $3.8 million at the time, Highland Park is about $8 million a year.)
The biggest problem, as I saw it, for Highland Park is that they did have a vote on pulling out with their property during a window when that was allowed, and a majority of about 43% carried the day to stay with the denomination. So it isn’t like they stumbled into the situation.
Interesting. Although I don’t see how a church congregation would have to owe them anything to stop being members.
No that is not quite correct. We actually we attended HPPC at that time of the vote and split. A majority voted to leave PCUSA, but it needed a supermajority (something like 66% or 75%, don’t remember exactly) to actually leave. So it was really unfortunate in that even though a majority wanted to leave PCUSA, we couldn’t because didn’t have quite enough.