One of the oldest churches in the United States, the RCA was founded by Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam (later New York) in 1628. Until 1867, it was known as the Reformed Protestant Dutch Church.

"It's good to be back in the United States again," says Warc general secretary, Setri Nyomi, "and it's good to be hosted by the Reformed Church in America, a church that has a history with us that goes back to our earliest days." (In 1875, the RCA was one of the founding members of the World Presbyterian Alliance. In 1970, this body merged with the International Congregational Council to form the present-day World Alliance of Reformed Churches.)

The annual meeting of the committee will take place in Western Theological Seminary and Hope College in Holland, Michigan, from July 26 to August 4.

Alliance executive committee meetings have been held in the United States before - the most recent was in Pittsburgh in 1994 - but there is, Alliance leaders feel, a particular appropriateness about being in the US this year.

"Many of the decisions that affect how people all over the planet live and how they die, and determine whether the planet itself will have a future, are taken in the US," Setri Nyomi says. "The richest and most powerful nation in the world, with its own problems of overdevelopment coupled with real internal poverty and inequality - it's a good place to think about where the human race is going, and where God would like us to go."

Life in fullness

At the top of the committee's agenda will be preparations for the upcoming 24th general council of the Alliance, which is slated for July 2004 in Accra, Ghana. (The general council is the chief policy-making body in the Alliance, with roughly 500 delegates from its 214 member churches.)

The theme for the 23rd general council (Debrecen, Hungary, 1997) drew on Isaiah 58.6 and called on Alliance member churches to "break the chains of injustice". The theme for the Accra council, "That all may have life in fullness", is drawn from John 10.10.

For Doug Chial of the Presbyterian Church (USA), one of the general council coordinators, there is almost a liturgical relationship between the two themes. "You can see them as a call and response in worship," he says. "Break the chains of injustice... that all may have life in fullness."

The chains the Alliance and its churches are thinking of are, in particular, those of global economic injustice and environmental destruction.

Covenanting for justice

In the run-up to Accra, the Alliance is calling on member churches to covenant together for justice in the economy and the earth.

"Reformed churches in the US have not been inactive on questions of justice," says Setri Nymoi. "Many of them have taken part in the "Jubilee' movement for the cancellation of debt, for example."

"What we are asking them to do is to join with sister churches around the world in addressing the whole problem of worldwide economic injustice and ecological destruction, and in helping their membership to reflect and act on these matters in the light of Christian faith."

Other items on the agenda of the Holland, Michigan meeting are mission and gender.

Reformed in mission

Up for discussion is a study project on mission which will invite member churches to reflect on the theme in the light of today's economic, social and environmental realities.

The executive committee will also review progress in the "Mission in Unity" project (1999-2002) sponsored by the Alliance together with the Geneva-based John Knox International Reformed Centre.

"No Christian tradition divides as often or as easily as we do," says project secretary Jet den Hollander (Reformed Churches in the Netherlands). "It doesn't do to shrug our shoulders and say, "So what?'"

"Our disunity might not matter much in itself, but it prevents us from living out the gospel as well as we should. In the end, it is the integrity of our mission as churches that is at stake."

Women are citizens of the kingdom

Gender justice is a particular focus of the Alliance's department of partnership of women and men. "We are intentional in talking about partnership," says department secretary Patricia Sheerattan-Bisnauth (Guyana Presbyterian Church). "What we are looking for is full partnership between women and men in our churches and the full participation of women in church life."

"In many of our churches, women are still not eligible for ordination as pastors or elders, and these are just the most obvious ways in which they are treated as second-class citizens of the kingdom of God. The gender approach is important because the discussion changes when women's perspectives are included and women's voices are heard."

Human rights are one and indivisible

Human rights are a headline concern of the Alliance's department of cooperation and witness. Many countries play off civil and political rights against economic, social and cultural rights, to the detriment of one or the other. For department secretary Seong-Won Park (Presbyterian Church of Korea), human rights are indivisible.

Park attaches a special importance to the Alliance's "in principle" rejection of the death penalty. "China and the United States are in many respects polar opposites," he says. "It is ironic, then, that the US should come second only to China in the number of its citizens that it executes."