Efforts to reach the two factions in Nigeria have been unsuccessful, but the conflict in Nigeria is said to have erupted over control of church property and resources, including foreign donations, after the split with the U.S church.
In April of this year, after decades of internal debate over the status of LGBTQ members of the UMC, its General Conference, meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, removed language from the Book of Discipline banning LGBTQ clergy and restricting same-sex marriages, and at the same time voted to restructure the worldwide denomination into four regions — Africa, Europe, the Philippines and the United States — each of which could customize the Book of Discipline according to local needs and beliefs.
Members of the United Methodist Church in Zimbabwe hold placards while protesting at the church premises in Harare, May 30, 2024. The protests, which denounced homosexuality and the departure of the church from the Scriptures and doctrine, came barely a month after the United Methodist Church worldwide General Conference, held in North Carolina, repealed the church’s long-standing ban on LGBTQ clergy, removing a rule forbidding “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from being ordained or appointed as ministers. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)
Two years earlier, conservative United Methodists had begun to break from the denomination to form the Global Methodist Church, which rejects the changes to the Book of Discipline. Since then, more than a quarter of the churches in the United States have either joined the GMC or formed their own local networks or become independent.
On May 28, Bishop Benjamin Boni, presiding bishop of the Annual Conference of the UMC in Ivory Coast, announced the church’s departure from the UMC. With 1.2 million members, the Ivorian church represented one of the largest bodies of United Methodists outside the U.S.
In Liberia, disputes have been growing in the 150,000-member church, with some clergy and lay members pushing for a special session of the country’s annual conference to make a decision on the U.S. church decision.
But Bishop Samuel Jerome Quire, the resident bishop of the Liberia area, has refused, stressing the importance of maintaining unity in the church. The bishop has responded by suspending some clerics and church elders.
In July, the Nigerian church opted for a split, with Bishop John Wesley Yohanna leaving the UMC to join the Global Methodist Church, taking with him his large church of some 600,000 members, though some reports put the membership at 1 million.
This article originally appeared here.
