As UMC Liberia Bishop Returns Home From United States
PHOTO: (L-R) Liberia Methodist Church Bishop Samuel J. Quire
By Frank Sainworla, Jr. fsainworla@yahoo.com
Monrovia- The United Methodist Church in Liberia is widely expected to officially break silence on the he controversial decision reached last month (May 2024) by UMC General Conference in the United States to embrace homosexuality/LGBTQ, as the UMC Bishop Samuel J. Quire is slated to hold a press conference in Monrovia tomorrow, Friday, June 7, 2024.
Bishop Quire, who led a delegation of the Church in Liberia to the recent where the US conference made the decision, returned home to Liberia in the past few days.
At the meeting in the US early this month, United Methodist General Conference, the church’s global legislative body, voted to overturn every ban on LGBTQ people. The historic changes include a new definition of marriage as a lifelong covenant between “two people of faith,” rather than solely between a man and a woman, and a repeal of its ban on LGBTQ clergy, although Reverend Jerry Kulah, a delegate from Liberia, was quoted as saying,, “We do not believe we know better than the Bible.”
The Conference also gave a new definition of marriage that it is a lifelong covenant between “two people of faith”, meaning between male and male, female and female or the opposite sex. Creeping Signs Some Liberia United Methodist Church Members Want Public Stance On Decision Embracing Homosexuality – News Public Trust
This news outlet got word of Friday’s press conference from the Bishop who responded to a text message from www.newspublictrust.com, requesting reaction to the decision reached by the conference in America in early May this year.
Liberia UMC press conference is expected to be held at the S. Trowen United Methodist Church on 13th Street in Sinkor at 2PM GMT.
Bishop Quire did not say what the position of the Methodist Church in Liberia is but said: “I’ll be making a statement and members of the press are invited.”
Recently, a banner surfaced calling for Liberian Methodist to assembly and demand a position on t LGBTQ position taken by the conference in the US.
Inscription on the banner, which was swiftly deleted from one of the Methodist members chatrooms, read: “Special session or no session,” says the banner which was later removed from the chatroom, adding—“no to Biblical contradictions”.
It is not known which way the UMC in Liberia will go as it makes its statement on the decision to embrace homosexuality and redefines what the Bible says marriage is. But the Methodist Church in neighbouring Ivory Coast has taken a definitive position to reject the US Conference’s position and break away.
Last week, the United Methodist Church in the Ivory Coast took a firm position on the move regarding homosexuality in the Church.
“The Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church Cote d’Ivoire gathered in its extraordinary session on Tuesday, May 28, 2024 at the Jubilee Temple Cocody, for reasons of conscience, before God and before the word, supreme authority in matters of faith and life. Decide to leave the United Methodist Church denomination,” says the Ivory Coast UMC’s Annual Conference. Creeping Signs Some Liberia United Methodist Church Members Want Public Stance On Decision Embracing Homosexuality – News Public Trust