United Methodists to lose 12% of global membership as African churches exit over LGBTQ-friendly move

The United Methodist Church is on track to shed roughly 12% of its membership this week when the Eglise Méthodiste Unie Côte d’Ivoire (EMUCI) voted Tuesday to leave the 9.9-million-member denomination.

The century-old West African branch, which only formally affiliated with the UMC in 2008, is reported to have cited the denomination’s new policies on LGBTQ clergy and members adopted May 1 at a business session in Charlotte, North Carolina, ending a 40-year ban on gay clergy. Various sources put professing EMUCI membership at 1.2 million and say the bulk of overseas UMC membership — roughly 4 million or so — is on the African continent.

In a statement released by Bishop Benjamin Boni, EMUCI president, Ivorian Methodists said the gay-affirming votes were “not based on any Biblical and disciplinary values” but rather is now aligned with “socio-cultural and contextual values which have consumed its doctrinal and disciplinary integrity.”

The UMC, its Ivorian leaders said, “has preferred to sacrifice its honorability and integrity to honor the LGBT” and thus “is no longer suitable” for the local church and has voted to leave the denomination.

While same-sex relationships have never been illegal in the Ivory Coast, a former French colony whose 2023 population was estimated at 30.9 million, African churches have been united in their opposition to gay marriage. Commenting on the May delegates’ vote to permit such marriages, African bishops attending the session said, “In Africa, we do not believe we know better than Jesus. We do not believe we know better than God. We do not believe we know better than the Bible.”

The Ivorian departure came despite another May vote by the UMC business session that allowed overseas regions — “annual conferences” in UMC terminology — to decide for themselves the qualifications of those ordained to the clergy and whether or not to permit same-sex marriage ceremonies.

The exit of an entire African conference — the equivalent of a diocese — is the latest body blow to a United Methodist Church reeling from years of division over how the church should view homosexuals who wish to serve as ordained clergy or be married in a church ceremony.

In 1984, the UMC codified its ban on gay clergy and reaffirmed the rules in 2019 at a special legislative session, where conservative U.S. delegates were joined by their African counterparts to approve the so-called “Traditional Plan” ratifying the prohibitions.

That 2019 session also approved an exit plan for U.S. congregations and conferences that would allow departures until the end of 2023. By that time, 7,673 of the denomination’s American congregations, or 25%, comprising one-quarter of its membership, hit the exits. 

Denominational budgets suffered a precipitous drop following the disaffiliations. The proposed 2025-2028 budget was $346.7 million, down 43% from the previous quadrennial spending plan of $604 million.