LGBTQ differences have made the Shona United Methodist Church (UMC), in South Africa split into two factions
The Johannesburg Shona UMC was launched around 2008 by some Zimbabwean professionals who emigrated to work and live in South Africa.
It has since grown over the years and has over 1 000 members in the Gauteng province only.
The Shona assembly had made significant progress and has acquired properties that are valued at over R10 million.
There are now two groups in South Africa — the long-standing Johannesburg United Methodist Church (JNUMC) and the newly-formed Johannesburg North Methodist Church (JNMC).
The same issues have also led to problems emerging in the UMC in Zimbabwe.
The UMC has been against the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy for over a century.
However, this changed at the church’s highest decision-making body (the General Conference — GC) in Charlotte, North Carolina, in May this year.
It is now permissible for gays and lesbians to be ordained as bishops or pastors and it is also now allowed to solemnise same-s3x marriages in the UMC in the United States.
Reports say there was massive resistance at the General Conference by conservative African delegates leading to the meeting advocating for “regionalisation” where each continent can determine its set of rules of worship and choose whatever suits the region culturally.
This has been vehemently resisted by the parties who have since broken away citing that the UMC is a “connectional church.”
“We cannot continue being part of a church that sanctions such evils that go against the Bible.
“This is why Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed,” a member of the faction was qouted as saying.
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