NAIROBI, Kenya (RNS) — The United Methodist Church in Liberia has been roiled in recent days over its position on marriage for same-sex couples after the global denomination, based in the United States, voted to strike a 40-year-old condemnation of homosexuality from its governing document.
Clergy and lay members of the 150,000-member Liberian church have been calling for a special session of the annual conference to take a vote on the U.S. church’s decision, but Bishop Samuel Jerome Quire, the resident bishop of the Liberia Area, has refused, citing the importance of maintaining unity in the Liberian church.
Last week, Quire suspended a number of pastors and elders who have persistently asked for the special assembly.
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The tensions escalated Sunday (Oct.13), when protests broke out at the New Georgia United Methodist Church in Monrovia over the suspension of the Rev. Leo Mason, the church’s senior pastor and an outspoken critic of same-sex marriages. The protests spread to other churches in the capital, prompting riot police to intervene.
Quire later explained the protests were triggered by rumors that he was to go to New Georgia to preside at a wedding between two men. He was due there to install a new pastor.
At a news conference on Monday, the bishop said that the United Methodist Church in Liberia firmly upheld the definition of marriage as a sacred union between one man and one woman. “This belief is deeply rooted in the interpretation of biblical teachings, our cultural values and our shared commitment in upholding marriage as a union between man and a woman,” he said, urging the church members to stay out of the streets.
Liberia, red, in western Africa. (Map courtesy of Wikimedia/Creative Commons)
He tried to reassure opponents of marriage for LGBTQ couples, saying, “I want to say here … that our church … is not a gay church nor will it ever adopt such an identity.”
The bishop said the issue of same-sex marriage has been lingering since the General Conference of the United Methodist Church, meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, April 23-May 3, removed language banning LGBTQ clergy and restrictions on same-sex marriage from the church’s Book of Discipline.
