Walker's Chapel directors fire, then sue pastor Jeremiah Pent

Former Orange Town Council member Jeremiah Pent has been sued by three directors of Walker’s Chapel of Madison County, which hired him as pastor in 2023 and fired him in April. These are the key issues: (1) the church’s new constitution and bylaws, (2) the way that Pent and the other defendants became leaders of the church, and (3) Pent’s efforts via the constitution and bylaws to put the church under the auspices of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC).

The lawsuit filed in Madison County Circuit Court seeks to void the new constitution and bylaws and return leadership to the directors whose membership Pent revoked after they terminated him. If the judge rules in the plaintiffs’ favor, that will effectively end the connection between Walker’s Chapel and CREC, a group of very conservative churches associated with Christian Nationalist views.

The defendants are pastor and church elder Pent, Walker’s Chapel elders Scott Magnino of Madison and Jody Simmons of Lynchburg, and Roger Rutt of Orange, who is identified in the lawsuit as an elder but on the Walker’s Chapel website as a deacon. All four men are listed as officers of Walker’s Chapel of Madison County, a non-stock corporation, on the State Corporation Commission site. The church itself also is listed as a defendant in the lawsuit.

In addition to being a Walker’s Chapel elder, Simmons is an associate pastor of Providence Church, a CREC church in Lynchburg.

The civil suit was filed in Madison County Circuit Court in April by counsel representing Debra Byrd of Orange, and Carolyn Byram and Joyce Garrison, both of Madison County. The three women were on the board of directors that hired and then fired Pent, and the lawsuit asserts that their leadership of the church was wrongfully taken away from them.

In addition to seeking a declaratory judgment voiding the new constitution and bylaws that align Walker’s Chapel with CREC, the plaintiffs are asking for a temporary injunction that would return leadership of the church to the board of directors until the judge makes a final order in the case. To support their request for the temporary injunction, the complaint states that Pent and the other defendants have “seized control of the church real estate and are in the process of demanding access and sole control over the bank accounts” of the church.

Further making the case for the temporary injunction, the complaint argues, “Mr. Pent, who appears most involved in these actions, has previously been sued for conversion in Tennessee in 2012.” (Editor’s note: For information on the Tennessee case, click here.) The complaint continues, “Plaintiffs have already terminated Mr. Pent and as a result he took several acts to consolidate control that violated his own church constitution that he seeks to enforce. Generally, terminated employees are considered a risk for irreparable harm by corporations. Finally, Mr. Pent has said that he follows no law but the law of God.”

In response, Pent and the other defendants are seeking the case’s dismissal because they say the matter is an “internal religious governance dispute” outside the purview of the courts. They also claim via their legal counsel that the First Amendment and the Virginia Constitution “prohibit civil courts from adjudicating ecclesiastical disputes or becoming entangled in matters of church governance, doctrine, discipline, polity, and spiritual leadership.”

The plaintiffs and defendants agree that Pent’s efforts to affiliate the church with CREC are central to the dispute. One source close to the plaintiffs told Byrd Street, “That’s the main issue.”

The board members’ lawsuit states that Pent was hired to “be a pastor and preach the Sunday sermon together with other administrative tasks. As Mr. Pent continued his employment at Walkers Chapel he took on more tasks and encouraged the Board to join the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC) which is a national organization. The Board reviewed the basic tenets and organizational structure of the CREC and rejected the idea.”

Control by men is a key CREC tenet. A May article in The Atlantic reports that pastor Douglas Wilson, a CREC cofounder, has said he’s in favor of repealing the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote. CREC churches do not allow women to hold leadership positions, and in congregation-wide votes, “household voting” is enforced—that is, the husband/father votes for his family.

CREC also takes a hardline stand on LGBTQ identity. According to the CREC webpage titled “On Sexuality,” “The CREC believes that Christians who struggle with various sexual temptations should receive ongoing pastoral care, including those who are tempted to engage in sexual perversions. At the same time, we believe that any teaching that combines LGBTQ identity with identity in Christ is completely unbiblical.”

The CREC statement continues, “We believe that encouraging Christians who face certain sexual temptations to identify as lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders, whether in sexually active relationships or not, is unbiblical, and further, that this teaching will have destructive effects in the long term, both for individuals who follow it and for any Christian bodies that accommodate it.”

Let’s back up a few years. The country church on Orange Road used to be Walkers United Methodist Church. Its trustees, as United Methodists call a congregation’s directors, decided to break away from the overall United Methodist Church reportedly because they decided that the denomination was too “woke” in its affirmation of LGBTQ people and same-sex marriage. The costly and time-consuming process of disaffiliating from the United Methodist Church left the Madison congregation in limbo in 2023.

Enter Jeremiah Pent, who began what was supposed to be a four-year term on Orange Town Council in January of that year. At the time, he and his family were running a wedding venue business at Arcadia at Edgewood, a Madison County farm near Walkers Chapel. Pent, now 54, also worked in property management for his father, Arnold Pent III.

When Walkers Chapel hired Pent as pastor that year, he brought a little cloud of controversy with him. As many Byrd Street readers know by now, a number of town citizens angrily insisted that Pent made his home at the family farm in Madison County, not in the locality he was elected to serve, as state law requires. Pent’s council-related mail was delivered to an apartment his father owns on Main Street in Orange, but neighbors said they rarely saw him there.

Nonetheless, it sounds like Pent got off to a good start at Walkers Chapel. One of Byrd Street’s confidential sources said the new pastor gave Bible-based sermons and emphasized music in worship services. He led a Christmas music service that this source described as beautiful.

With Pent in the pulpit, the congregation grew larger, with homeschooling families arriving from outside the area to attend his Sunday services. On a good day, there were reportedly as many as 75 people in the pews—an impressive number in this era of diminishing attendance at many rural churches.

During Sunday announcements, Pent allegedly said that he and the board of directors were working on the new constitution and ironing out various matters. The confidential source said the pastor didn’t hint at any strife. However, this source later learned from individual board members that they were completely at odds with Pent on a variety of fronts, most significantly his insistence that the church join CREC. According to the board members’ letter terminating him, financial matters were also a concern: “[T]he negative cash flow or income to expense ratio for the first year under your management is unsustainable.”

In November 2025, Pent abruptly quit Orange Town Council, with about a year left in his four-year term. In his resignation letter to his colleagues, he wrote, “Since I was elected to the council, my work situation has changed dramatically, and its demands have made my continued involvement with the council an impossibility.”

Perhaps the timing of his resignation was coincidental, but the board members’ lawsuit states, “Unstated in the reasons for termination, but nevertheless a basis for such action, was the discovery by the BOD [board of directors] in the Fall of 2025, of various prior allegations of acts of moral turpitude by Mr. Pent.”

In April of this year, members of the church’s board of directors had had enough. With their attorney present, they met with Pent in order to fire him. Their letter of termination to him begins, “After much deliberation and after trying to align goals between you and the Board, there appear to be irreconcilable differences in vision for the future of this church.”

Dated April 20, 2026, the letter goes on to say that CREC “has rigid mandates that do not align with this Board and Congregation’s core operational values.” It states that “under the CREC the congregation is not given a vote or role in decision making. Likewise, women are excluded from leadership in the CREC. Our church has never agreed to join CREC or operate according to their procedures.”

Via their attorney, the directors offered to discuss a severance package with Pent and provide him with seed money “to continue your ministry in the area, albeit outside of this church.” Pent refused the offer and did not relinquish his position as pastor. Within a day or so of the contentious meeting, he informed the directors that their church membership was revoked. One of Byrd Street’s confidential sources said Pent also had the locks changed so the directors couldn’t enter the church building.

Another confidential source offered this comment about the three women who filed the suit: “Having generations of family members and friends buried in the church cemetery and after attending and maintaining the church for decades, they just want their church back.”

Pent has continued to hold worship services at Walker’s Chapel. The church’s homepage states that it is “a mission church of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches.”

Pent and his fellow defendants are represented by Steven R. Standish, a Locust Grove attorney associated with the National Center for Life and Liberty in Clearwater, Fla. The plaintiffs are represented by Matthew Anderson of Cornerstone Law Group in Fredericksburg. As of today (July 7), no date for a court appearance has been set.

Below: Here is the termination letter from the church directors to Jeremiah Pent. This letter is a public document available in the case filings at the Madison County Courthouse.

Jeremiah Pent quits Orange Town Council (Nov. 14, 2025)

Do they or don’t they? Orange Town Council members Pent and Cashell say they live in town, but there are signs pointing elsewhere (Jan. 20, 2025)

We’ve had a little rain in recent days, but not nearly enough to lift us out of the drought. As for the heat, the Northern Piedmont Center recorded a scary high of 105 degrees on the Fourth of July, plus four days in a row of highs above 100 degrees. Here are the details.

In the midst of this very dry spell, we thankfully still have lots of bright flowers, including these gorgeous crocosmias at the home of John and Betsy Amos in Orange. John wrote me that these tall flowers with marvelous red blossoms, which are in the iris family, have had a banner year. I think I’ll plant some in my yard next spring and send a memo to the deer to keep their distance.

Mary Louise Carter, 90, Gordonsville; Mary Roberta King, 86, Unionville.

VMFA Time Garden & Dances for Wormwood Lectures, The Arts Center in Orange, 5-6 p.m., Thursday, July 9

Free showing of animated movie “Lilo & Stitch” at Taylor Park in Orange, hosted by the Orange Police Department, with free snacks and water, 8:45 p.m., Friday, July 10

Pulled pork BBQ dinner, hosted by Rapidan Volunteer Fire Department, 9729 Locust Dale Road, Rapidan; $15 adults; $6 children ages 7-12; free for children 6 and under; 1-4 p.m., Sunday, July 19

Groundbreaking ceremony, Orange County High School Career and Technical Education Facility, Orange County High School grounds, 9 a.m., July 20

“A challenging day”: Huge mass of sanitary wipes clogs Orange’s wastewater treatment plant (July 2)

ICE and FBI raid car in Orange Friday morning; take man into custody (June 28)

Juneteenth: Bruce Monroe of Orange to share recollections of Jim Crow era (June 18)

Wanted: Write-in candidate(s) for Orange Town Council (June 18)