
CV NEWS FEED // The United Methodist Church has officially lost over 1 million members in one day over its latest move to back down from its previous stance towards premarital sex and homosexuality.
The United Methodist Church in the Ivory Coast in West Africa has announced its decision to leave the denomination in the wake of the General Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina on May 3.
During the unprecedented gathering, delegates at the Charlotte General Conference voted to lift the denomination’s former ban on LGBT clergy and motioned to approve measures allowing clergy members to officiate same-sex weddings.
The denomination had already lost one-fourth of its churches prior to the Charlotte Conference.
Delegates also voted to nullify the denomination’s previous teaching that sex is reserved for marriage between husband and wife and to remove adultery, extramarital sex, and homosexuality as chargeable offenses for its clergy.
In response, the former Ivory Coast jurisdiction issued a statement on May 28, following its own extraordinary session, declaring that “the new United Methodist Church which distances itself from the Holy Scriptures is no longer suitable for the Annual Conference of Côte d’Ivoire.”
“The new United Methodist Church has preferred to sacrifice its honorability and integrity to honor the LGBT,” the statement also said, adding that the General Conference was “not based on any biblical and disciplinary values.”
“For reasons of conscience,” the statement concluded, “before God and before his word, supreme authority in matters of faith and life [the Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church-Côte d’Ivoire] decides to leave the United Methodist denomination.”
Boasting over 1.2 million members, the Ivory Coast had been the denomination’s largest jurisdiction overseas, according to reports.
