Since 2021, David Platt’s McLean Bible Church has been the focal point of multiple lawsuits and scandals. The lawsuits surround the church violating its constitution and purging the voter rolls in order to rig a vote for a slate of elders that leadership wanted to install. After the initial victory in 2022, an appellate ruling in 2023 revived Gaskin et al. vs MBC in part, allowing the lawsuit to continue. Now, the Virginia Court of Appeals has reopened discovery until McLean Bible Church can prove that the religious abstention doctrine is applicable.
According to the ruling, the previous appeal led to the inability of the “dissenters” to meaningfully prove their claims.
MBC objected to most of these requests, citing the religion clauses of the U.S. and Virginia Constitutions, this Court’s ruling in Gaskins I, and Virginia’s civil discovery rules. MBC did, however, agree to produce documents pertaining to the five specific dissenters.
After some discussion between the parties about narrowing the scope of discovery, the dissenters moved to compel discovery. The circuit court-confronted with several novel issues ordered supplemental briefing and held a hearing on the matter. During this hearing, the dissenters conceded that without the requested information about how many people were reclassified as inactive, their “case goes away.” Ultimately, the court denied the dissenters’ motion to compel, holding that the court “lack[ed] authority to compel Defendants to produce their membership lists, minutes of internal deliberations or internal procedures applied to [anyone] other than the specific Plaintiffs in this cause.” In reaching this conclusion, the court relied mainly on precedent concerning the First Amendment’s protections for freedom of religion and freedom of association.”
After another round of supplemental briefing and another hearing, the circuit court granted MBC’s motion for summary judgment, denied the dissenters’ motion for partial summary judgment, and dismissed the case with prejudice. In its final order, the court explained that any further adjudication of the dissenters’ claims would violate MBC’s First Amendment rights. This appeal followed.
Thus, the court determined that discovery is allowed to determine whether the court has jurisdiction over the constitutional matters of the church.
We disagree with MBC and find nothing objectionable about allowing limited discovery to determine whether the ecclesiastical abstention doctrine applies.
Therefore, as long as the discovery does not become a battle over doctrine and remains about bylaws and procedure, the court will allow the suit to move forward in full.
Background
The elders of McLean Bible Church deceived longtime senior pastor Lon Solomon in hiring David Platt to be his successor. In the process, the church immediately took action to join the Southern Baptist Convention, against the constitution of the church which forbids joining a denomination. Additionally, David Platt immediately went woke after taking over MBC, and would eventually install Mike Kelsey, famous for saying torch all White people, as senior pastor.
In July of 2021, there was a viote for a slate of elders which failed on the first attempt. The elders of McLean Bible Church held a do-over vote in the middle of a worship service and purged active members from being able to vote citing inactivity. MBC counts members as inactive, therefore ineligible to vote, if they’ve missed 8 consecutive Sundays. But since MBC was notorious for radically closing during Covid and was a multicampus megachurch, they had no real way of confirming that the members they purged were inactive.
This resulted in lawsuits in 2021, one of which led to enough discovery to produce a documentary about, titled, The Real David Platt.
Conclusion
After becoming famous for his Poverty Gospel, David Platt led the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention and was ultimately part of a conspiracy to deceive members of MBC with regard to their participation in the Southern Baptist Convention. Ultimately, the more light that has been shed on David Platt, the more evident it is that he is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Perhaps this discovery will lead to another installment in the documentaries exposing his corrupt church dealings.
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