The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination in the United States and Canada. The denomination started with the Restoration Movement during the Second Great Awakening, first existing during the 19th century as a loose association of churches working towards Christian unity, then slowly forming quasi-denominational structures through missionary societies, regional associations, and an international convention. In 1968, the Disciples of Christ officially adopted a denominational structure at which time a group of churches left to remain nondenominational.
The World Council of Churches (WCC) is a worldwide Christian inter-church organization founded in 1948 to work for the cause of ecumenism. Its full members today include the Assyrian Church of the East, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, most jurisdictions of the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Union of Utrecht, the Lutheran World Federation, the Anglican Communion, the Mennonite churches, the World Methodist Council, the Baptist World Alliance, the World Communion of Reformed Churches, the Pentecostal churches, the Moravian Church and the Malankara Mar Thoma Syrian Church. Notably, the Catholic Church is not a full member, although it sends delegates to meetings who have observer status.
Ecumenism – also called interdenominationalism, or ecumenicalism – is the concept and principle that Christians who belong to different Christian denominations should work together to develop closer relationships among their churches and promote Christian unity. The adjective ecumenical is thus applied to any non-denominational initiative that encourages greater cooperation and union among Christian denominations and churches.
The United Church of Canada is a mainline Protestant denomination that is the largest Protestant Christian denomination in Canada and the second largest Canadian Christian denomination after the Catholic Church in Canada.
The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, usually identified as the National Council of Churches (NCC), is the largest ecumenical body in the United States. NCC is an ecumenical partnership of 38 Christian faith groups in the United States. Its member communions include mainline Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, African-American, evangelical, and historic peace churches. Together, it encompasses more than 100,000 local congregations and 40 million adherents. It began as the Federal Council of Churches in 1908, and expanded through merger with several other ecumenical organizations to become the National Council of Churches in 1950. Its Interim President and General Secretary is Bishop Vashti Murphy McKenzie.
The American Council of Christian Churches(ACCC) is a fundamentalist organization set up in opposition to the Federal Council of Churches.
The infallibility of the Church is the belief that the Holy Spirit preserves the Christian Church from errors that would contradict its essential doctrines. It is related to, but not the same as, indefectibility, that is, "she remains and will remain the Institution of Salvation, founded by Christ, until the end of the world." The doctrine of infallibility is premised on the authority Jesus granted to the apostles to "bind and loose" and in particular the promises to Peter in regard to papal infallibility.
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 Calvinist 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.”
The World Methodist Council (WMC), founded in 1881, is a consultative body and association of churches in the Methodist tradition. It comprises 80 member denominations in 138 countries which together represent an estimated 80 million people; this includes approximately 60 million committed members and a further 20 million adherents. But there is also another, contradictory, number of members of the member churches on the WMC's website: about 40 million. It is the fifth-largest Christian communion after the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox Church, Anglican Communion, and World Communion of Reformed Churches.
The Church of Uganda is a member province of the Anglican Communion. Currently there are 37 dioceses which make up the Church of Uganda, each headed by a bishop.
The Anglican Church in North America (ACNA) is a Christian denomination in the Anglican tradition in the United States and Canada. It also includes ten congregations in Mexico, two mission churches in Guatemala, and a missionary diocese in Cuba. Headquartered in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, the church reported 977 congregations and 124,999 members in 2022. The first archbishop of the ACNA was Robert Duncan, who was succeeded by Foley Beach in 2014.
All Africa Conference of Churches is an ecumenical fellowship that represents more than 200 million African Christians in 210 national churches and regional Christian councils in 43 African Countries. AACC's head office is in Nairobi, Kenya, and there is a regional office in Lomé, Togo. AACC also has an office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia which serves as its Liaison Office to the African Union. Its current General Secretary is the Rev. Dr. Fidon Mwombeki, Minister of the Lutheran Church in Tanzania. The Desmond Tutu Conference Centre in Nairobi is an affiliate of the AACC.
The American Association of Christian Colleges and Seminaries, Inc. (AACCS) is an organization of Bible colleges and Christian universities and seminaries in the continental United States and Puerto Rico. According to AACCS, all of its member institutions are "clearly identified with the historic Christian fundamentalist tradition."
The Protestant Church in Sabah or PCS is one of the four Lutheran World Federation member churches in Malaysia. It currently has 322 congregations nationwide in 21 parishes with a total of 32,000 baptised members, making the PCS the second largest of the four Lutheran bodies in the country. Its membership is primarily made up of the indigenous peoples of Sabah, with the largest majority being from the Rungus tribe of the native ethnic Kadazan-Dusun population. The current president cum bishop of the Protestant Church in Sabah is Bishop Justin Sansalu.
The National Council of Churches in the Philippines is a fellowship of ten Protestant and non Roman Catholic Churches in the Philippines denominations, and ten service-oriented organizations in the Philippines. A member of the World Council of Churches and the Christian Conference of Asia, the NCCP represents close to twelve million Protestant adherents. Advocacy for environmental protection and against large-scale mining are part of its core mission. Christian organizations other than churches may be received as associate members.
The National Council of Churches in India is an ecumenical forum for Protestant and Orthodox churches in India. It provides a platform for member churches and organizations to act on common issues relating to Christianity in India.
After the Second Vatican Council, Pope Paul VI contributed in two ways to the continued growth of ecumenism and inter-Christian dialogue. The separated brothers and sisters, as he called them, were not able to contribute to the Second Vatican Council as invited observers. After the Council, many of them took initiative to seek out their Catholic counterparts and the Pope in Rome, who welcomed such visits.
The North American Lutheran Church (NALC) is a Lutheran denomination with over 420 congregations in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, counting more than 142,000 baptized members. The NALC believes all doctrines should and must be judged by the teaching of the Christian Scriptures, in keeping with the historic Lutheran Confessions. It was established on August 27, 2010. The group describes itself as embodying the "theological center of Lutheranism in North America," noting that it stands between the more liberal Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and the more conservative Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS) and other Lutheran church bodies in North America, "firmly within the global Lutheran mainstream".
Emmanuel Mbona Kolini is a Congolese-Rwandan Anglican bishop. He was the second Primate of the Episcopal Church of Rwanda, named Anglican Church of Rwanda in 2007, from 1998 to 2011. He is married and a father of eight children. Kolini currently serves as the rector of the Anglican Mission in the Americas College of Consultors.
The Fellowship of Christian Councils and Churches in the Great Lakes and Horn of Africa is an ecumenical Christian organization in Africa. It was founded in 1999 and is a member of the World Council of Churches. Its membership includes:
