Reformed Ecumenical Council

The Reformed Ecumenical Council (REC) was an international organization of Calvinist Churches. It had 39 member denominations from 25 countries in its membership, and those churches have about 12 million people together. It was founded August 14, 1946 in Grand Rapids, Michigan as the Reformed Ecumenical Synod. The Reformed Ecumenical Council was the second largest international Reformed alliance and the more conservative of the two largest. In 1953, The Reformed Ecumenical Synod meeting in Edinburgh decided to advise its member churches not to join the World Council of Churches as currently constituted because it “permits essentially different interpretations of its doctrinal basis, and thus the nature of the Christian faith” and “represents itself as a Community of faith, but is actually not this” due to member churches holding “basically divergent positions.”[1] About two-thirds of REC member churches also belonged to the larger World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC). The seat of the Reformed Ecumenical Council was Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States.

After a two-day meeting ending on 1 February 2006, Douwe Visser, president of the REC and Clifton Kirkpatrick, president of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, said in a joint letter to their constituencies, "We rejoice in the work of the Holy Spirit which we believe has led us to recommend that the time has come to bring together the work of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches and the Reformed Ecumenical Council into one body that will strengthen the unity and witness of Reformed Christians." The new body would be called the World Communion of Reformed Churches.

Australia

Botswana

Dominican Republic

France
  • Evangelical Reformed Church of France (UNEPREF, formerly EREI)

Greece

India

Indonesia

Japan

Kenya
  • The Reformed Church of East Africa

Korea
  • The Presbyterian General Assembly (Reformed Church of Korea)

Malawi

Mexico

Mozambique

Myanmar

Netherlands

Nigeria

Philippines

South Africa

Sri Lanka

Swaziland

Uganda

United States and Canada

Notes
  1. De Klerk, Peter, and Richard De Ridder, eds. (1983). Perspectives on the Christian Reformed Church. Baker. p. 329.CS1 maint: extra text: authors list (link)
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