As a landmark United Methodist gathering approaches, African American churches consider their future

Africa is home to the overwhelming majority of United Methodists outside the United States

The United Methodist Church lost a quarter of its U.S. churches within the recent schism, and conservatives have withdrawn over disagreements over sexuality and theology.

Now, as the primary major legislative gathering in several years approaches, the query is whether or not the church can prevent similar results elsewhere on the planet where about half of its members live.

This query is very acute in Africa, where the overwhelming majority of United Methodists live outside the United States. Most bishops favor remaining, but other voices are calling for regional conferences to withdraw.

At the upcoming General Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, delegates will address a big selection of proposals – from repealing the church’s ban on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ ordination, to giving regional conferences more autonomy in setting such policies, to creating it easier for international churches to depart. confession.

Delegate Jerry Kulah of Liberia said he believed it was time for African churches to depart the country.

He said that when he first attended General Conference in 2008, he was shocked by proposals to liberalize church regulations. He has since helped mobilize African delegates to vote with American conservatives to create increasingly stringent religious laws banning same-sex marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ people.

However, progressive American churches are increasingly opposing such policies and now appear to have enough votes to overturn them.

“We know we’re not going to the General Conference to necessarily get votes,” said Kulah, general coordinator of the UMC Africa Initiative support group. “Therefore, our goal is to state our position and let the world know why it has become very necessary to separate from the United Methodist Church because we cannot afford to preach other gospels.”

However, Jefferson Knight, also a delegate from Liberia, opposes splitting from the party. He said a schism would mean abandoning the UMC’s wealthy spiritual heritage in Africa and sever its beneficial international ties.

“Liberia was the birthplace of the United Methodist Church on the African continent in the 19th century,” said Knight, of the United Methodist Africa Forum advocacy group. The church has produced leaders in education, health care and evangelism across the continent, said Knight, who also works for the church as a human rights observer.

Knight said a schism was not needed.

He shares widespread opposition in Africa to the liberalization of marriage and ordination policies, but favors a proposal that will allow each region of the Church – from the Americas to Africa, Europe to the Philippines – to adapt the principles to their local context.

“The best solution is to regionalize and see how we can serve in a peaceful way and in our context, in our culture,” Knight said.

The United Methodist Church has its roots within the 18th-century John Wesleyan revival and has long emphasized Christian piety, evangelism, and social service. Historically, it has had a presence in almost every U.S. county.

But additionally it is probably the most international of the main American Protestant denominations.

Generations of missionary efforts brought Methodism throughout the world. Local churches took root and grew dramatically, especially in Africa.

Today, members from 4 continents vote in legislative assemblies, serve together on boards, go on missions to their countries, and are largely governed by the identical principles. Churches within the U.S. help fund international ministries akin to the African University of Zimbabwe.

According to UM News, greater than 7,600 U.S. congregations left the community during a temporary period between 2019 and 2023 that allowed congregations to maintain property held in trust for the denomination under relatively favorable legal terms.

This provision applied only to American churches. Some argue that the General Conference – which runs from April 23 to May 3 – should approve such a resolution for other countries.

“Our primary goal is to provide African Americans and other United Methodists outside the U.S. with the same opportunities that United Methodists in the U.S. have had,” said the Rev. Thomas Lambrecht, vice chairman of the conservative advocacy group Good News.

Opponents say churches abroad can already withdraw under church regulations, and a few conferences in Eastern Europe have taken such steps. But supporters say the method is simply too burdensome.

The matter is further complicated by the incontrovertible fact that churches operate under different legal frameworks. Some African countries criminalize same-sex activity, while within the US same-sex marriage is legal.

Most of the departing U.S. congregations are conservative churches concerned in regards to the denomination’s failure to implement bans on same-sex unions and the ordination of LGBTQ people. Some joined denominations akin to the brand new Global Methodist Church, while others became independent.

The departures accelerated the lack of membership in what was until recently the third-largest American faith. In 2022, the United Methodist Church reported 5.4 million members within the U.S., a number that is for certain to say no sharply when the 2023 disfellowshipment cases are taken under consideration.

An in depth study by the UMC’s General Council for Finance and Administration found that there are 4.6 million members in other countries – lower than previous estimates but still approaching U.S. numbers.

The United Methodist Church has been debating homosexuality because the early Seventies, steadily tightening its LGBTQ bans through the last legislative assembly in 2019.

This yr, “the traditionalists won the vote but lost the church,” said the Rev. Mark Holland, executive director of Mainstream UMC, who favors ending church-wide bans and a “regionalization” proposal that permits each region to come to a decision such rules.

He noted that quite a few regional church conferences within the United States responded to the 2019 vote by electing more progressive delegates to the upcoming General Conference.

Progressives imagine they’ve enough votes to repeal language within the ruling Book of Discipline that prohibits the ordination of “declared practicing homosexuals” and punishes pastors who perform same-sex marriages.

The fate of regionalization, which might increase regional autonomy, is less certain. Regionalization involves constitutional amendments requiring a two-thirds majority of the General Conference and approval by two-thirds of local conferences around the globe.

Proponents say regionalization would also ensure equality amongst different regions, arguing that the present system is a U.S.-centric relic of an earlier missionary era. A regionalization scenario could also allow churches in some regions to take care of LGBTQ bans while others remove them.

Church regions outside the United States have already got some flexibility to adapt rules to their environment, but regionalization would define that flexibility more precisely and extend it to churches within the United States.

The UMC-affiliated church within the Philippines – the just one in Asia with about 280,000 members – will proceed to oppose same-sex marriage, which isn’t legally recognized there, a church official said. It can even not allow open ordination of LGBTQ people.

Most African bishops oppose renunciation, whilst they oppose the ordination and marriage of LGBTQ people.

“Despite differences within our UMC on the issue of human sexuality, especially regarding our position on the traditional and biblical view of marriage, we categorically state that we have no plans to leave the United Methodist Church and will continue to shepherd God’s flock in this global denomination,” the statement said signed by 11 African bishops during their September meeting.

Among those refusing to sign was Bishop John Wesley Yohanna of the Nigeria Area.

Nigerian Methodists celebrated the a centesimal anniversary of the denomination in their country in December, but its future stays uncertain. Deeply conservative views on sexuality are widespread in Nigeria. The spokesman said the bishop’s position on expulsion from the Church can be determined by what happens at General Conference.

Same-sex marriage “is unbiblical and inconsistent with Christian teachings according to our Book of Discipline,” Yohanna said at a January press conference, during which she also said “no to regionalization.”

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