The largest overseas group of United Methodists has left the church after its international body voted to allow practising homosexual men and women to become ministers.
The United Methodist Church of the Ivory Coast (Eglise Méthodiste Unie Côte d’Ivoire), which reportedly has over one million members, voted to separate from the wider denomination at the West African country’s annual conference.
Since 2019, over 7,600 US congregations have left the United Methodist Church (UMC) over biblical sexual ethics.
Despite church law at the time forbidding it, the denomination appointed its first bishop in a same-sex marriage in 2016 followed by another in 2022.
