Ethiopian Anabaptist leaders have decided not to host the 2028 Mennonite World Conference assembly after conflict blew up on social media over links to North American churches that accept same-sex marriage, said César Garcia, Mennonite World Conference general secretary, on Nov. 26.

“Due to the internal conflict, the church of Ethiopia doesn’t consider it a blessing to host the assembly in 2028,” Garcia told AW in an interview. “We are sad for that, but we understand the conflict the church is experiencing now, and we want to be a blessing for the church. . . .

“The size of the crisis is so big and so concerning that it demanded these quick decisions.”

In a Nov. 23 statement, the executive committee of the Meserete Kristos Church — the Ethiopian Anabaptist church, with more than 514,000 baptized members, the world’s largest Mennonite conference — said that “associating with a conference that includes churches supporting homosexuality contradicts the core beliefs of our church.”

This quote is from an English translation that is not yet official.

An Ethiopian with knowledge of the situation, who asked not to be identified, told AW by email: “The internet people started saying that ‘the gay people are coming in 2028 to spread homosexuality through MWC,’ and they pressured the MKC to stop its connection with MWC, too.”

Garcia said Desalegn Abebe, MKC president, confirmed the decision to withdraw the invitation to host the assembly on Nov. 25. Desalegn Abebe told AW by email on Nov. 26 that he was not yet able to comment.

The MKC has also ended its joint master’s degree program with Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary. MKC leaders announced this decision in their Nov. 23 release, and AMBS confirmed it in a Nov. 24 statement.

“In the last two months, a wave of misinformation has spread through social media in Ethiopia, targeting the partnership between MKC/S [MK Seminary] and AMBS and creating a volatile and challenging environment for students and church leaders,” said David Boshart,  AMBS president, in the statement. “. . . With deep lament, [MKC leaders] informed us that MKC has permanently suspended the program — not due to any loss of goodwill between MKC and AMBS, but because the spread of misinformation has created risks for their leaders and students and threatened the unity of the church.”

Garcia said “rumors, accusations, falsehoods and misunderstandings” spread on social media after a fundraising tour by MKC leaders in North America this fall. The tour included contacts with Mennonite Church USA, which includes congregations that accept same-sex marriage and whose national delegates in 2022 approved an LGBTQ-affirming resolution.

“When the leaders got back to Ethiopia, they found a huge problem going on,” Garcia said.

“In Ethiopia, same-sex relationships are considered not only a sin by all the religions in the country, but also illegal. You can imagine the risks of being seen as supporting illegal conduct. . . . The church is at risk of going into division internally.”

MWC got drawn into the controversy because “if you google MWC, you find Mennonite Church USA belongs to MWC, and MWC was immediately associated as one of the entities that is promoting same-sex marriage,” Garcia said.

MWC takes no position on same-sex marriage. Garcia said only four of MWC’s 110 national churches — MC USA, Mennonite Church Canada, and conferences in the Netherlands and Germany — are “on the more progressive side” on same-sex marriage, though not everyone within these churches agrees, and congregations are free to do what they believe is right.

Garcia said he told Ethiopian leaders that MWC’s most important priority is preserving unity and that hosting an assembly should bless the host church. If it does not, he advised that they should “feel free to remove the invitation.”

“They said this has been very painful, and we are very sorry about the implications for MWC, but we cannot do it [host the assembly],” Garcia said.

The assembly, the 18^th in MWC’s 100-year history, had been scheduled for Jan. 11-15, 2028.

Garcia said MWC “needs to move fast, because we are two years or two-and-a-half years before the assembly. We could postpone it a few months or a year” if needed to find a new host country.

He said MKC’s membership in MWC was not currently in doubt, but he expects discernment is needed.

“This is something that every conference needs to ask itself,” he said. “Are we going to keep the unity of the body of Christ? How are we going to respond to the prayer of Jesus that we may be one, in spite of our deep convictions that are different?”

The MKC decision comes less than two weeks after MWC decided not to appoint Stanley Green, conference minister of MC USA’s Pacific Southwest Conference, as MWC regional representative for North America because three U.S. Anabaptist denominations raised concerns about having an MC USA member in that role.

Garcia told AW that MWC staff made this decision because theological diversity was needed. MWC’s two North American executive committee members come from MC Canada and MC USA, which both accept LGBTQ-affirming churches, and so it would be better to fill the regional representative position with someone from one of MWC’s eight other member denominations in North America.