Côte d’Ivoire Conference Votes to Leave Denomination

by

June 5, 2024 | UM News

Key Points:

  • Citing actions taken by the recent General Conference, the Côte d’Ivoire Conference has voted to leave The United Methodist Church.
  • But the conference has not left yet and is working on next steps.
  • The Côte d’Ivoire Conference officially joined The United Methodist Church 16 years ago.

Côte d’Ivoire Conference members, meeting in a May 28 special session in Abidjan, unanimously voted for the conference to leave The United Methodist Church.

Two days later in a briefing to local press, conference leaders in this West African country explained the reasons for the exit — namely because of changes that the recent international General Conference made to the Book of Discipline, the denomination’s governing document.

Côte d’Ivoire members especially objected to the removal of the Discipline’s longtime stance against homosexuality and the broadened definition of marriage to include a man and a woman or two consenting adults.

“The change of language related to sanctions in the 2016 Book of Discipline is a serious departure from the Wesleyan principle that bases the Methodist Church on two key pillars: doctrine on the one hand and discipline on the other,” said the Rev. Isaac Bodjé, Côte d’Ivoire Conference secretary, reading a statement in French on behalf of the conference. French is Côte d’Ivoire’s official language, with another 60 indigenous languages also spoken in the country.

Even with the vote, the Côte d’Ivoire Conference has not yet left The United Methodist Church — which it officially joined 16 years ago. It’s also not yet clear if any Ivorians or church members in Côte d’Ivoire’s mission areas in Senegal, Cameroon, Mali and Guinea-Bissau plan to remain United Methodist.

Slideshow

Photographer Mike DuBose gives a visual retrospective of the shared ministry and mission between The United Methodist Church and the Côte d’Ivoire Conference in West Africa.

See photos

The United Methodist Council of Bishops announced June 5 that it is working with the conference’s leadership on next steps. Bishop Benjamin Boni oversees the conference. But due to illness, he has not been able to respond to United Methodist News inquiries, and he did not speak at the briefing.

"While we grieve Côte d'Ivoire Conference’s decision to separate from The United Methodist Church, we commit to work with them through the process of becoming an Autonomous Methodist Church," Council of Bishops President Tracy S. Malone said on behalf of the bishops. She also leads the East Ohio Conference. 

"While we are not all of one mind in all things, the strength of our connection is love, respect, compassion and a shared commitment to faith in Jesus Christ."

The bishops' statement also noted that General Conference's removal of the Discipline's restrictive language related to LGBTQ people does not force force pastors or churches to act contrary to their conscience. Conferences also can make decisions in their missional contexts.

The United Methodist Church stretches across four continents and operates in multiple legal, linguistic and cultural contexts. The Côte d’Ivoire Conference is one of 133 United Methodist annual conferences — organizational bodies — spread across Africa, Europe, the Philippines and the United States. Among other things, annual conferences, including Côte d’Ivoire, elect the delegates who serve at General Conference.

United Methodists also long have held varying interpretations of the Bible on matters of marriage and homosexuality.

Recognizing these differences and others, General Conference moved forward a plan for what United Methodists call regionalization. Under the legislation, the U.S. and each central conference — church regions in Africa, Europe and the Philippines consisting of multiple annual conferences — would become a regional conference with the same authority to adapt the Book of Discipline for missional effectiveness. But for regionalization to take effect, it needs to be ratified by at least two-thirds of the total annual conference voters around the globe.

Bodjé — in the statement on behalf of the Côte d’Ivoire Conference — cited regionalization as one of the reasons the conference voted to leave.

“Regionalization would have been a good model of geographical division, welcomed by all, if it had not been filled with derogatory, incongruous and scandalous content,” he said in French. He was referring to varied policies related to same-sex marriage and gay ordination that would be allowed under regionalization.

Bodjé also said the conference took issue with the apology read at General Conference for sexual misconduct within the church. However, this appears to be based on a misunderstanding. Ivorian General Conference delegates heard the statement as an apology to LGBTQ people. However, the apology — submitted by the denomination’s Commission on the Status and Role of Women — was to victims and survivors of sexual violence and harassment.

The Côte d’Ivoire Conference’s decision to leave comes after the debate over the place of LGBTQ people in church life already has led about a quarter of U.S. congregations to depart The United Methodist Church under a provision added by a special General Conference in 2019. The recent General Conference ended that disaffiliation policy, instead leaving it up to individual annual conferences to determine how to handle a congregation’s exit.

Nevertheless, General Conference left untouched the multistep process laid out in the Discipline’s Paragraph 572 that enables conferences outside the United States to become autonomous — essentially to form a separate denomination.

Four Eurasian annual conferences — encompassing congregations in Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan — followed that process and got approval at the recent General Conference to leave and form the autonomous Christian Methodist Church. Eurasia’s departure will become official in April next year.

The Council of Bishops said conversations are underway with Côte d'Ivoire Conference leaders to begin the process outlined in the Discipline's Paragraph 572 so the conference might become an autonomous church. 

The Methodist Protestant Church of Côte d’Ivoire was already autonomous when it sought to join The United Methodist Church. It previously had been part of the British Methodist Church before it left and became autonomous in 1985.

The union with The United Methodist Church happened first provisionally in 2004 and then fully in 2008.

Boni, elected the Côte d’Ivoire church’s president in 1998, spearheaded the effort that led to Côte d’Ivoire becoming an annual conference within The United Methodist Church.

“The most important thing to me is to be part of a big family — the family of Christ Jesus — and the big mission that John Wesley started,” Boni told United Methodist News in 2018. Boni is set to retire as bishop at the end of this year.

From the moment it joined, the Côte d’Ivoire Conference was among the biggest in The United Methodist Church. But just how big has long been difficult to ascertain.

When it provisionally joined in 2004, the Methodist Protestant Church of Côte d’Ivoire said it had 1 million members. Subsequent surveys by the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries tallied 677,355 members.

The General Council on Finance and Administration, the United Methodist finance and data-collection agency, annually asks all of the denomination’s annual conferences to report their membership data.

In 2016, the Côte d’Ivoire Conference journal submitted to GCFA showed contradictory information. The journal said the conference had a total membership of 1.2 million, but numbers reported individually by districts — subdivisions of annual conferences — added up to about 198,000.

The conference has not submitted a journal to GCFA since then.

Based on the most recent data reported to GCFA as of 2022, The United Methodist Church has about 5.4 million members in the United States, and about 4.6 million in Africa, Europe and the Philippines. That total includes the 1.2 million reported by the Côte d’Ivoire Conference.

GCFA also collects conference apportionments — requested shares of giving — that support the denominational budget. United Methodist conferences in the U.S. pay the bulk of apportionments, which are distributed among seven funds that support denomination-wide ministries. Conferences in Africa, Europe and the Philippines contribute only to two apportioned funds — one that supports bishops and another that supports global administration, including General Conference itself.

In 2023, the Côte d’Ivoire Conference paid a total of $32,400 in apportionments — about 6.1% of the $528,404 requested. The average annual cost of a bishop who serves in Africa is about $210,000. That amount includes not only the bishop’s compensation but also travel expenses, housing allowance and support for the bishop’s office staff.  

But beyond the numbers, there is shared ministry. And over the past 16 years, the church in Côte d’Ivoire has partnered with United Methodists around the globe in developing ministries that support food distribution, education, malaria prevention, clean water access, economic development and evangelism.

The Côte d’Ivoire Conference, the Texas Conference, United Methodist Communications and the denomination’s Board of Higher Education and Ministry teamed up to finance and launch a Christian radio station in 2009. The Voice of Hope — called “La Voix de L’Espérance” in French — continues to broadcast a gospel message. It also has served as a model for United Methodist broadcasting around the globe.

Heather Hahn is assistant news editor for UM News. Chadrack Tambwe Londe, who transcribed the Côte d’Ivoire Conference video, is a communicator and UM News correspondent in Congo.