The other monumental event was the proposed split of the United Methodist Church (UMC), the third largest congregation in the United States, over differences between traditionalists and liberals on gay marriage and the ordination of LGBTQ people. It was scheduled to be decided with a vote in the UMC General Conference in May 2020, before the pandemic upended the plan and postponed everything.

We make it abundantly clear that since time immemorial, the Church in Zimbabwe has spoken against injustice and has been consistent in that regard. Any view or postulation to the contrary would be an attempt to re-write that narrative in order to promote a negative picture of what the Church stands for. The Church has the Biblical mandate to speak without fear or favour, particularly to a government which

Mr President, this is not only stealing. It is annihilating the very lives of the poorest, it is almost genocidal in effect. Corrupt big-wigs who have joined your party, not to serve the common good but to enrich themselves, act with impunity -- their attitudes are debilitating, life-drenching. "Ha bana letswalo, Mr President, ba feteletse." They are, like the scribes and Pharisees Jesus called out in Matthew's Gospel, hypocrites.

As Stephen Parsons says in 'Surviving Church': "Incompetence whether caused by ignorance, conceit or malevolence, is a particularly important matter when the individual refuses to admit to it and own up to it".