African Power

http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=21-09-043-r

[Touchstone Archives] 6 Nov 2008--One United Methodist observer described it as “The Empire Strikes Back.” Realizing that time is not their ally, liberals in the 11-million-member United Methodist Church maximized their campaign at the church’s 2008 General Conference, held from April 22 through May 2, 2008, in Fort Worth, Texas. They succeeded in ousting the conservative majority on the church’s top court, which often rules on crucial cases involving the church’s official disapproval of homosexual behavior.

But liberals fell short of pushing through “compromise” language that would have diluted the church’s stance on marriage. And the delegates finalized induction of the roughly 700,000-member Methodist Church of the Ivory Coast into the U.S.-based denomination, helping to ensure that theologically conservative Africans will comprise at least 30 percent of the delegates at the next General Conference in 2012.