AFRICA’S RESPONSE TO REGIONALIZATION OF THE UMC, 2025!

RESOLUTION CALLING FOR A “NO” VOTE ON REGIONALIZATION, 2025!

Presented by Rev. Dr. Kennedy Mukwindidza. President of Theological Voice of Africa.

WHEREAS The proposed plan to regionalize The United Methodist Church forwarded to the members of the annual conferences by the General Conference of 2020/24 is an echo of the colonial past of Africa with territorial boundaries and divisions imposed on the continent without regard for historic cultural and familial affinities, and

WHEREAS Such boundaries and divisions give the appearance of perpetuating a colonial mentality of conquering and ruling through separation, and

WHEREAS The proposed plan is presented at precisely the time in which the UMC in Africa is poised to become represented at future General Conferences by a majority of the delegates thereto with the power of decision that such a majority will afford, and

WHEREAS The proposed plan creates a single entity called a regional conference for the UMC in the United States of America which the plan’s supporters say will provide for the Church in the USA a long-needed forum for the discussion and resolution of matters related to the USA, And

WHEREAS The plan provides for no parallel structure for the Church in Africa, giving emphasis to the “divide and conquer” appearance of the plan, and

WHEREAS At the same moment in time when the Church in the United States has suffered its most precipitous decline in its history, continuing, and giving a new dimension to, a decline of 50 years, the current plan would add an entire new layer of structure with all its attendant expense and need for resources and commitments of time and effort, and

WHEREAS There is no similar additional layer of structure in the rest of the Church, and

WHEREAS It is a historical fact that the jurisdictional system of Church governance and polity in the USA was born out of the racism that led to the evil of slavery and slavery’s legacy of racial segregation and its false premise that the races could be separated in law but provided equal treatment and resources under the law, and

WHEREAS The proposed divisions that seem to be arbitrary are forceful reminders of the apartheid era Bantustan policy of South Africa wherein the ruling white minority government forced separation of black South Africans into designated homelands or Bantustans comprising only 13% of the land with the white minority retaining 87% of the land, and

WHEREAS There is no part of the plan that proposes to eliminate the jurisdictions in the USA, leading to a four-layer structure in the USA–annual conference, jurisdictional conference, regional conference, General Conference–and a three-layer structure in all the Church in the rest of the world–annual conference, regional conference, General Conference, and

WHEREAS The plan provides the proposed regional conferences with the power to make culturally appropriate adaptations of the Book of Discipline as long as such adaptations are consistent with the Constitution, a power that already accrues to Central Conferences; all such adaptations will be subject to review and approval by the Judicial Council, which up to now has rejected every Central Conference adaptation it has been asked to review, and

WHEREAS The plan does not include any provision that would regionalize the episcopacy of the Church, meaning that a bishop elected anywhere in the Church is a bishop of the whole Church and may be assigned to preside in any setting regardless of the theological and ideological match between the bishop and the region in which the bishop is to serve,

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT all members of the United Methodist Church on the continent of Africa urge and encourage their delegates to their annual conferences to oppose the ratification of the current plan for regionalization of our beloved denomination by voting “NO” when the opportunity to cast such a vote is presented.