(RNS) — Current and former members of New York City’s Abyssinian Baptist Church have filed an appeal in state Supreme Court arguing that a 2025 court ruling was in error when it dismissed their case challenging the election of the congregation’s current senior pastor.

The four plaintiffs filed a brief July 9 with the New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, 1st Department, requesting that the election of the Rev. Kevin R. Johnson be set aside so a new election can be held. The plaintiffs argue that the court “misread” the church’s bylaws when it denied their petition, according to the filing. 

Johnson’s election as the Harlem church’s new senior pastor was announced in June 2024, and he was installed in September of that year. He succeeded the Rev. Calvin O. Butts III, who served as a minister at the historically Black church for 50 years and died in 2022.

However, the plaintiffs say the church bylaws require a pastoral election by a majority of all members who are eligible to vote and are in good standing, rather than a majority of just the members who vote at a meeting. In total, 44% of registered church members voted in Johnson’s election. 

“Nobody disputes that the term ‘majority’ means more than half,” the plaintiffs note. “The question is a majority of what.”

The Rev. Kevin R. Johnson at Abyssinian Baptist Church, Sunday, July 12, 2026, in Harlem, New York. (Photo courtesy of Abyssinian Baptist Church)

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In a statement announcing the appeal, the petitioners said their case “has never been about the court or the petitioners dictating congregational choice of a pastor” but rather about whether the church abided by the governance procedures stated in its bylaws.

Abyssinian responded to the development with confidence that a new pastoral election would be determined not necessary.

“As the church has continued to heal, grow and thrive under the leadership of Rev. Dr. Kevin R. Johnson over the past two years, it’s clear the congregation is pleased with their properly and duly elected pastor and have moved on from this chapter,” said LaToya Evans, the church’s spokesperson. “We’re confident the appellate court will reach the same conclusion as the trial court and find the lawsuit to be without merit.”

Three of the plaintiffs are church members, including Kevin McGruder, an associate professor at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, who told Religion News Service he watches Abyssinian’s worship services virtually but attends annual meetings in person. The fourth plaintiff, the Rev. C. Vernon Mason, is now a member and minister in residence at another Harlem church.

FILE – Members of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church attend a court hearing in lower Manhattan, Thursday, July 17, 2025, in New York City. (RNS photo/Fiona André)

They note that the bylaws use language such as “who are present in a Meeting duly assembled” when determining who would vote for changing the church’s location, and a “majority vote at any duly called Meeting” is required for the expulsion of members. But the lack of such modifiers about the election of the pastor is an intentional omission, the plaintiffs say.

The plaintiffs cite a past New York Court of Appeals case related to an interpretation of a corporation’s shareholders during a vote. The 2012 ruling found that a dissolution vote required passage by a “supermajority” of the shareholders rather than a mere two-thirds of voters present at a shareholder meeting.

“Consistent with its status as a congregational church and with its Baptist tradition, Abyssinian requires a candidate for pastor to earn the support of a majority of members in good standing who are eligible to vote,” the July 9 brief reads.

The plaintiffs also state that the vice chair of the pastoral search committee told the congregation on two separate occasions that the vote required a majority of the membership and stressed that standard was higher than the church’s voting standard for other matters.

“As a result, a significant portion of members could have sat out because they believed that Dr. Johnson could prevail only with enough affirmative votes for him,” they argued. “The only fair outcome here is to set aside the election to ensure that the church has a full opportunity to reach a new, clear, and adequate expression of the will of the congregation.”

Abyssinian was the subject of other litigation about the selection of its newest pastor.

The Rev. Eboni Marshall Turman, a former assistant minister at the church and a candidate for the senior pastor position, filed a gender discrimination lawsuit in 2023 after she did not get the job. The church asked a judge to dismiss the case on the grounds of the “ministerial exception,” under which religious institutions are given more latitude in personnel and other matters. In March 2025, a federal district judge sided with the church, and records show that a federal appeals court granted Marshall Turman’s request to voluntarily dismiss her appeal months later.

Johnson first came to Abyssinian in the 1990s, serving as an assistant pastor to Butts. In 2014, he resigned from his position as senior pastor of Bright Hope Baptist Church in North Philadelphia after the congregation disapproved of his handling of the church’s financial affairs and his plan to run for mayor of Philadelphia, which he eventually abandoned. He subsequently founded Dare to Imagine Church in Philadelphia, an interdenominational church affiliated with the American Baptist Churches USA.

Johnson and Butts were preceded by other prominent Abyssinian ministers, including the Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Sr., Rep. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and the Rev. Samuel DeWitt Proctor. And the plaintiffs’ brief cited the Rev. Raphael Warnock, now a Georgia senator and the pastor of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, who served for a decade as a youth pastor and assistant minister under Butts’ leadership at Abyssinian.

“Baptist pastors are recommended by a search committee of the church’s members and elected by a vote of the full congregation, unlike denominations where a presiding bishop appoints the head of the church,” the senator wrote in his 2022 book “A Way Out of No Way.”

Warnock preached at Abyssinian on Sunday (July 12) at the worship service that marked Johnson’s second pastoral anniversary there, during his tour for his newest book “The Crooked Places Made Straight: Reflections on the Moral Meaning of America.”

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