Côte d’Ivoire votes to leave denomination
Côte d’Ivoire votes to leave denomination
Only few days before the 2024 General Conference of the United Methodist Church was held in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bishop Thomas Bickerton of New York told his fellow bishops that they should be prepared for big changes – utilizing phrases such as “seismic shift” and “next expression of United Methodism.”
“Needless to say, this is a moment in time when we will not only see some of the dust settle, but we’ll also see new dust storms arise,” Bickerton predicted.
One month after the closing of the 2024 General Conference in Charlotte, “Members of the Côte d’Ivoire Conference, meeting in special session on May 28, voted to leave The United Methodist Church” reported UM News. What follows is the full news brief.
ABIDJAN, Côte d’Ivoire (UM News) — Members of the Côte d’Ivoire Conference, meeting in special session on May 28, voted to leave The United Methodist Church. The decision comes after the denomination’s General Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina, where delegates voted on several changes, including the wording of the church’s definition of marriage and the removal of restrictive language regarding LGBTQ people, as well as approved a regional structure that now will go to the annual conferences for a vote. The Côte d’Ivoire Conference was provisionally received into the denomination at the 2004 General Conference and fully received in 2008. It automatically became one of the denomination’s largest conferences and last reported more than 1 million professing members. (links added)
According to news reports, the annual conference passed a resolution stating — among other things — that the “new” United Methodism “stands on its own socio-cultural context and has compromised its doctrinal and disciplinary integrity,” and that it “has walked away from the Holy Scriptures, is no longer compatible with the Ivory Coast Annual Conference.”
In 2019, Good News magazine utilized Heather Hahn’s fantastic UM News reporting for a cover story Where Methodism Flourishes, for further background, please read Tim Tanton’s UM News piece A brief history of Methodism in Côte d’Ivoire from 2009.