A short history of the Alliance

For Reformed Christians, the past is always less important than the future into which God is calling us. If, however, we are to grasp what God in our day is calling us to be and to do, we need some understanding of where we have come from. Like human beings everywhere, we live out of our past into the future. Hence this thumbnail sketch.

"The Alliance of the Reformed Churches throughout the World holding the Presbyterian System" was founded in 1875. The International Congregational Council first met in 1891. These two bodies merged in 1970 to form the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (Presbyterian and Congregational).

The Presbyterian Alliance (1875-1970)

Proposals to organize Presbyterian churches as a world confessional family began to circulate in 1868. The aims were to give to the various churches more real fellowship in each other's gifts and grace; to exchange the results of experience in practical work; to strengthen weak and struggling churches; to coordinate activity in mission and evangelism; and to offer opportunities for united prayer. The Alliance was founded by 64 delegates from 21 churches in London in 1875. The first general council met in 1877. By that time the Alliance had 49 member churches, mainly in the English-speaking world, but also including some churches from continental Europe. For the first time, Presbyterian churches had an instrument at the international level through which they could speak and act together.

From the beginning the Alliance was strongly interested in the unity of the Christian churches. Unification attempts in particular countries and in the mission fields were welcomed. Contact was sought with the International Congregational Council. The first beginnings of the Faith and Order movement (from 1910) were welcomed. In 1923 a message was sent to the Lutheran World Congress in Eisenach. Already at the end of the 19th century the Alliance gave attention to the spread of the Pentecostal churches.

The first general council sought to define the principles of Presbyterianism, but the attempt to construct a common confession of faith had later to be abandoned. Questions of ordination and oversight, catholicity in the Reformed tradition, the office of elder, mixed marriages and church renewal were discussed. Reformed worship was not disregarded. Before the first world war, the questions of evangelization and national mission stood in the foreground.

In 1893, the Alliance convened a conference of the mission boards of its churches to address the disunity in foreign missions. It was concerned with helping the younger churches towards independence. It was agreed that no missionary work should be undertaken in Europe in countries where an indigenous Reformed church already existed.

Time and again the position of women in the Alliance was discussed. Women's conferences were held on the fringes of the general councils. At the 17th general council (Princeton, USA, 1954), women were for the first time among the delegates, and some of them were elected to the executive committee. A department of women was created, which was later integrated into the department for cooperation and witness.

Youth conferences took place in Liverpool in 1933, in Montpellier in 1949 and in Woudschoten in 1954. Later the Alliance decided against creating its own youth department, as it believed that, for the most part, youth work should be done ecumenically.

The pioneers of the Alliance were driven by a strong ecumenical awareness. The Alliance refused to promote a narrow Presbyterianism, but on the other hand it took the view that the ecumenical movement needs strong confessional families. The Alliance defined this relationship in the Basel declaration of 1951, after the founding of the World Council of Churches.

In its activity, the Alliance devoted attention to religious freedom and gave support to religious minorities (not all of them Reformed) in several countries.

Social questions and the consequences of industrialization were often on the agenda. Unjust social systems were criticized and a cooperative society was urged. A conference on the race question was held in Johannesburg in 1924. A manifesto against slavery and racism was issued in 1933. From the 1950s on, the Alliance confronted the problem of apartheid in South Africa.

The Alliance often dealt with public issues such as colonial politics in Africa (imperialism), slavery in the New Hebrides, the massacres of the Armenians, support for the League of Nations, the situation in Germany after 1933, or the position of the churches in central and eastern Europe after 1945.

Two world wars and the existence of weapons of mass destruction made the preservation of peace and the peace question an important priority.

The problem of interchurch aid was already on the agenda of the first general council in 1877. There it was was a question of support for the stipends of Waldensian pastors in Italy. Later, churches in the west were time and again concerned about the smaller struggling churches on the European continent.

The International Congregational Council (1891-1970)

As early as 1874, an ecumenical council of Congregational churches was proposed. Arrangements were made by the Congregational Union of England and Wales, in consultation with the National Council of the United States, for an assembly of 300 delegates, equally divided between England, America and the rest of the world.

The first International Congregational Council (ICC) met in London in 1891. It helped delegates from smaller unions, in particular, to realize that they belonged to a worldwide fellowship. This was followed by a second council in 1899, a third in 1908, a fourth in 1920 (following the Great War), and a fifth in 1930; but the ICC remained for many years a very loosely structured organization.

After the second world war, a sixth council was held in 1948 and a permanent international office was established for the organization in London. From now on the ICC became a well-organized world confessional family. This was very important in the subsequent development of relations with the Presbyterian alliance, which led eventually to the merger of the two bodies.

The road to Nairobi

In 1954, when the 17th general council changed the name of the Presbyterian alliance to "the Alliance of Reformed Churches throughout the World holding the Presbyterian Order", it also agreed two shorter forms: the World Presbyterian Alliance, and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches. Behind this lay a cultural and linguistic difference - the churches of the Anglo-Saxon world almost exclusively used the term "Presbyterian", whereas churches in the continental European tradition preferred "Reformed". But behind it also lay a significant question about the self-understanding of the Alliance: which was more important, the term "Presbyterian", which referred only to the form of church government or polity, or the term "Reformed", which indicated the substance of the faith of its member churches?

This question was already in the air when the initiative to approach the ICC was taken by Marcel Pradervand, then general secretary of the Presbyterian alliance. In his report to the 1956 executive committee, he observed that more and more churches of the two confessional families were engaged in discussions with a view to union. "It is imperative for us to ask ourselves," he said, "if we should not undertake conversations on the world level to examine the future relations of our Alliance to the ICC".

In 1958, the eighth assembly of the ICC accepted with pleasure an invitation from the Alliance "to discuss the theological agreements and community of outlook between the member churches of the two confessional bodies". In 1960, it was agreed to appoint a joint committee to work on the Reformed doctrine of the church "in the light of the common history of Congregationalists and Presbyterians, their differences both real and supposed, and their common ecumenical experience and responsibility". Twelve years of careful conversation and of shared practical and theological work led eventually to union.

The World Alliance of Reformed Churches

The uniting general council (Nairobi, Kenya, 1970) agreed to establish the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (Presbyterian and Congregational). Delegates covenanted together in these terms:

Nairobi was to be followed by a centennial consultation in St Andrews, Scotland (to mark the centenary of the first Presbyterian general council in 1977), and by three general councils (Ottawa, Canada, 1982; Seoul, Korea, 1989; and Debrecen, Hungary, 1997). With their doctrinal condemnation of apartheid, their call for communion of women and men, and their cry for global economic justice and an end to ecological destruction, these meetings, together with the work which went into preparing them and following up their results, have largely shaped the Alliance as we know it today.