Our Lord prayed that His followers “may be one” (John 17:21–23), and accordingly His church through the centuries has confessed, “I believe a holy catholic church.” What is overlooked by many who in our time advocate a variety of efforts to draw the churches together (the “ecumenical movement”) is that His prayer was that they would be united in and through the truth of the gospel (vv. 16–20). It is that qualification which has kept us out of the World Council of Churches and led the Reformed Ecumenical Synod to take a stand against its members uniting with that body. Although some years ago there were proposals within our churches that we join it, there seems to be no move recently that we do so. The World Council has disgraced itself by its political activities, even channeling vast sums of church money into supporting Communist guerilla movements which persecute and destroy Christian churches and missions. Therefore members have been leaving it and it has been getting a very bad press. Although Dr. Harry Boer (as we saw in a previous article) has been promoting it and the Banner has been giving it some favorable publicity through the articles of a contributor, Mr. Marlin Van Elderen, Eerdrnans editor, who is now working for the WCC in Geneva, we are under no present pressure to join it. Matters are otherwise regarding our proposed membership in another body of which we have heard very little, the World Alliance ofReformed Churches. Mr. A. James Heynen, Executive Director of the Christian Reformed Board of Publications, writing in the December 27, 1982 Banner, informed us that “the Interchurch Relations Committee may propose that the CRC join the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.” Rev. William Haverkamp Wachter editor, stated in the December 21 issue of his paper that it would not surprise him if our representatives at the meeting of that Alliance would bring a recommendation that we join it, and he expresses his misgivings about such a move.

What is the World Alliance of Reformed Churches?

Regarding this question the Acts of our (CRC) Synods give us a considerable amount of information. Especially the Acts of 1902 and 1959 devoted a lot of attention to it. The report in the 1959 Acts (pp. 266–272) tracing the history of the organization stated that “The WPA (World Presbyterian Alliance, as it was then called) has the distinction of being the first confessional ecumenical body,” having begun in London, England, in 1875 and holding its first Assembly in 1877. On January 1, 1949 its headquarters were transferred from London to Geneva, Switzerland, to one of the World Council of Churches buildings. Whereas in its first fou r decades the organization “seems to have been more of a fellowship,” thereafter it was characterized by “a new emphasis . . . on common service in a turbulent and distracted world, collaborating closely with the WCC.

1902

Our Synod’s Acts of 1902 (pp. 08–110, cf. p. 64) contains a letter sent by the synod’s correspondence committee to the American Secretary of the Alliance of the Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian System (as it was then called) answering a 1898 invitation for us to join the alliance. Although the letter signed by F.M. Ten Hoor and Henry Beets, courteously expressed appreciation for what the alliance had done for the cause of these Reformed churches and wished it “Godspeed” in its “efforts for our Zion’s welfare,” it stated that “Our Synod does not as yet see its way clear to officially join you because we do not approve of it that the main requirement for admission to the alliance seems to be the Presbyterian System of Church Polity and not the strictly Calvinistic Confession . . . . This we consider too broad a basis. On account of this the Alliance cannot be what we would heartily desire, viz. an official Ecumenical Council of Calvinistic Churches to reaffirm our confessional standpoint. It seems to us that labor apart from this confessional basis cannot produce the desired fruit.” It gave as an additional reason for turning down the invitation the inability of our small denomination to afford the high costs of sending delegates.

   

1924

The 1959 Acts report already mentioned recalled a 1924 committee report to our Synod dealing with the question of membership in the alliance. The 1924 “Critical Survey” observed that (1) “the Alliance was particularly weak as an instrument to help the churches keep the Reformed faith.” (2) “Emphasis was upon practical matters rather than on holding to the Reformed truth.” (3) The Alliance placed upon the applying church the responsibility of determining what constituted a creed in harmony with the consensus of the Reformed faith.” Accordingly, “Delegates of churches holding liberal views could hold key positions and would have to be recognized as having a voice in the · meetings.” “This to the mind of your committee (1922–24) makes our affiliation with the Alliance undesirable.” In view of a coming revision of the alliance constitution which made its future course uncertain, the 1924 synod decided not to affiliate with it at that time. It insisted that the aim of the alliance should be ‘“helping each other maintain the historical Reformed faith” (Acts 1924, pp. 160f.).

1959

The 1959 committee raised the question whether the Alliance, unacceptably weak in 1924, had “become more specifically Reformed.” It noted the fact that the Free Church of Scotland which had taken an active part in the Alliance from its very beginning in 1875 in 1954 withdrew from it (1) because “it had been primarily advocating the claims and aims” of the World Council of Churches, and (2) “because of modernism leadership” in the Alliance. (This is the same denomination which, although so long a leader in Reformed ecumenical activity, recently withdrew from the Reformed Ecumenical Synod because of that body’s compromising policy in tolerating the liberal Reformed Churches of the Netherlands.)

The 1959 report further noted that the Alliance’s constitution, weak in its Reformed commitment from the beginning, had been further weakened by later revisions. It observed that admitting the United Church, a product of a broad union, had further weakened its Reformed constituency. It noted that the Alliance “stands committed as a body to cooperate with the WCC,” that its loose doctrinal definitions “open the door wide to an uncontrollable subjectivism.” “It raises the question already faced by the 1922–24 committee; can an indistinct dogmatic basis produce a clearcut Reformed development and common service?” Although it recognized some value in certain of the alliance‘s activities, it presses its member churches to join the WCC, its activity “has been geared more toward the ecumenical than toward the distinctively Reformed,” and in it “the babel of theology still continues.” The committee recommended that our churches not join the organization because of:

a . Indistinct basis of the Constitution. b . Its relation to the World Council of Churches. Its theologically mixed constituency, a situation intensified by all types of membership on both sides of the iron curtain.

Earlier the report had noted that “an alliance should have a united front, a united witness and our wholehearted support. If such is not the case we should not enter until the time arrives that it is.” In 1960 (Acts pp. 106–7) the synod decided on the basis of this committee report not to apply for membership in the alliance.

The Alliance Today

What has happened in this century-old alliance in the last 20 years that suggests that we should now enter it? Has there been a significant change from its doctrinal looseness, promotion of the “World Council,” and accommodation of liberalism that suggests we ought now to join it? No one to my knowledge has made any such claim

In August 17–27, 1982 the meeting of the alliance was held in Ottawa, Canada. From the opening service and Lord’s Supper to the concluding ceremonies the meeting of the 400 delegates was dominated by condemnation of the “apartheid” policy of South Africa. Some dozen African delegates refused to participate in the Lord’s Supper because of the presence of white delegates from South African churches which practice racial segregation. The body voted to suspend two of the South African Reformed denominations from membership in the alliance and voted in as its new president Dr. Allan Boesak who in the past has distinguished himself as an angry South African black militant.*

Why Should We Join?

What reasons could now be offered for our joining this alliance? The two delegates sent to the Ottawa meeting by our Interchurch Relations Committee were Mr. Keith Knight, editor of Calvinist Contact and Rev. Tymen Hofman. Mr Knight writing in the Sept. 10, 1982 Calvinist Contact was exuberant in his enthusiasm about the experience of attending the assembly. What excited him was not sitting “in on the tedious meetings from breakfast until bed” but the “fellowship with fellow Christians from around the world.” The Calvinist Contact report stated flatly “The Christian Reformed Church should belong to the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.” In his address to the general council, Rev. Hofman likened the Christian Reformed Church’s relationship to WARC to a courtship; “it is a lot of fun but you must get to a point when you must make a commitment.”

While it is exciting to meet Christians from around the world, and no one disputes the Christian commitment of many of them, are these adequate reasons why we should join such a motley alliance which increasingly in its hundred-year history has followed a policy of compromising the gospel by opening the door towards its liberal deniers. Who has been pursuing the “courtship” referred to by Hofman? No doubt a few committee members have enjoyed attending some assemblies, but are these reasons for taking on an unequal yoke with unbelievers (II Cor. 6:14ff)? The Calvinist Contact report stated that what impressed our two delegates was not “the structure of the World Alliance, but . . . the men and women and the denominations which they represent.” But what we are asked to join is not just a rare meeting of people (that has been held once in 12 years and is to meet every 5) , but the structure, the alliance, the bureaucracy dominated by liberals, determined to work with and promote the WCC.

Rev. W. Haverkamp was especially disturbed because this proposed alliance is with the big denominations which do not maintain the Reformed confessions-and he had in mind especially the large United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. When we think of the recent record of that body, as well as the relatively large southern church which is being absorbed by it, the recent admission of a minister who denied the deity of Christ, the avowed policy of barring from the ministry any who would maintain the Bible’s restrictions against the ordination of women, the policy of stealing (by law or sometimes otherwise) the property of churches which are finally breaking away from its bureaucracy, the fixed policy of promoting abortions-what conceivable reason can there be for our churches now allying ourselves with those who are so plainly serving the devil’s cause in today’s world?

Our Lord’s prayer for His church was “Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth . . . . that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us . . .” (John 17:17–21).

*Outlook, July 1981, pp. 5, 6; cf. A . De Graff article in Aug . 1980, Trowel and Sword.