The United Methodist Church in Liberia has been roiled in recent days over its position on marriage for same-sex couples after the global denomination, based in the United States, voted to strike a 40-year-old condemnation of homosexuality from its governing document.

Clergy and lay members of the 150,000-member Liberian church have been calling for a special session of the annual conference to take a vote on the U.S. church’s decision, but Bishop Samuel Jerome Quire, the resident bishop of the Liberia Area, has refused, citing the importance of maintaining unity in the Liberian church.

Last week, Quire suspended a number of pastors and elders who have persistently asked for the special assembly.

The tensions escalated Sunday, when protests broke out at the New Georgia United Methodist Church in Monrovia over the suspension of the Rev. Leo Mason, the church’s senior pastor and an outspoken critic of same-sex marriages. The protests spread to other churches in the capital, prompting riot police to intervene.

Quire later explained the protests were triggered by rumors that he was to go to New Georgia to preside at a wedding between two men. He was due there to install a new pastor.

At a news conference on Monday, the bishop said that the United Methodist Church in Liberia firmly upheld the definition of marriage as a sacred union between one man and one woman. “This belief is deeply rooted in the interpretation of biblical teachings, our cultural values and our shared commitment in upholding marriage as a union between man and a woman,” he said, urging the church members to stay out of the streets.

He tried to reassure opponents of marriage for LGBTQ couples, saying, “I want to say here … that our church … is not a gay church nor will it ever adopt such an identity.”

The bishop said the issue of same-sex marriage has been lingering since the General Conference of the United Methodist Church, meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina, April 23-May 3, removed language banning LGBTQ clergy and restrictions on same-sex marriage from the church’s Book of Discipline.

The General Conference also passed measures to restructure the denomination, giving each region greater equity in tailoring church life to its own customs and traditions, including an amendment that awards equal standing to its worldwide regions, including Africa, Europe, the Philippines and the United States. 

The conference’s measures followed years of dissent and debate on LGBTQ issues that have resulted in a painful schism that has split some 7,600 U.S.-based churches from the denomination — about 25% of all U.S. congregations.

Quire said he had explained the General Conference’s decisions to church leaders at the time and urged the denomination’s membership in Liberia to remain calm. But many members want a special session to determine the Liberian area’s relationship with the global denomination.

According to a senior leader in the Monrovia District Conference of the Liberia Annual Conference who did not want to be named, church members are opposed to regionalization that would pave the way for acceptance of homosexuality.

“We do not accept regionalization. The new policy comes with a package that includes LGBTQ issues and same-sex marriages,” a leader of the Elias D. McGill United Methodist Church in Monrovia said in a telephone interview. “How can he say the United Methodist Church in Liberia is not a gay church, while it maintains a relationship with a church that accepts this policy?

“We want him to call for the special session so we can decide for ourselves,” he added.

Quire has suspended Elias D. McGill’s pastor, the Rev. Elijah Dajue, for joining the calls for the session, but on Oct.7, the church wrote the presiding bishop, rejecting the suspension and the new pastor Quire sent to the church.

Dajue “has done nothing wrong except his persistent teaching and preaching of the true message of salvation to us which exposes the contradiction and deceptive nature of regionalization policy against biblical teaching, belief and practice,” said the leaders in the letter.

The bishop has not called a special session, he said, because it may lead to the dissolution of his conference, pointing to a special session held by the United Methodist Church in Ivory Coast in May, where the body voted to leave the United Methodist Church. Similar votes have occurred in Zambia and Nigeria, where the resident bishop resigned after calling the special session.

“I call for a special they leave the church?” he said. “I said, that is not the right thing to do. There are other forums where we will meet. We have begun talking and will continue to talk.”

Regarding churches that have threatened in writing to break away from the Liberian church, Quire said: “They have forgotten their identity. … No local church has the right to remove itself from the United Methodist Church. They have no authority.”

Fredrick Nzwili is a journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya, and contributor to Religion News Service.