While Methodist congregations shrink in the U.S., they’re booming in Africa and Asia — 30 percent of the 11.5 million-member church now lives outside the U.S. Liberia has 168,000 Methodists; earlier that week, delegates formally received its West African neighbor, Cote d’Ivoire, into the church. With 700,000 members, it’s now the church’s largest regional conference.
More than 275 of the nearly 1,000 delegates were from Africa, an increase of 100 from the last General Conference in 2004.
Still, Methodists have yet to decide how to fully reflect their diversity in church governance. On April 28, delegates scuttled a plan that might have given more influence to churches in Africa, Asia and Europe, instead deciding to study the matter further and report back in four years.
The meeting here also reflects a wider struggle for the soul of America’s mainline churches, as conservatives and liberals increasingly cross national and hemispheric lines in search of allies.
Liberal Methodists here said a conservative coalition crossed ethical lines the week before the conference when they handed out more than 200 free cell phones to delegates from Africa and the Philippines.
Conservative activist Mark Tooley of UMAction called the cell phone brouhaha “very silly” and said that other church groups traditionally hand out items at the General Conference.
But Troy Plummer of the gay-friendly Reconciling Ministries Network noted that the fliers advertising the giveaway called on delegates to elect a slate of conservative candidates to the Methodist Judicial Council — the church’s supreme court.
On April 28, those candidates lost. Delegates elected church moderates and liberals instead.
