Reformed Church Rejects Affiliation

For the second time in two years, the Reformed Church in America has voted against bringing the denomination into full membership in the Consultation on Church Union, the nine-denomination organization that began its efforts toward church unity 24 years ago.

By a vote of 154 to 101 after two hours of debate, delegates to the church’s General Synod meeting in New York City rejected a recommendation to upgrade the church’s “observer” status to one of full membership. The proposal failed by two votes last year.

The Consultation on Church Union, once designed to merge churches into one body, is in the midst of formalizing its new “covenant communion” document by which denominations draw into closer relationships but remain separate bodies. Church union representatives will vote on it Dec. 5-9, after the policy-making bodies of each member church approves it (as, for instance, the United Methodist and Presbyterian conventions have this year).

Meanwhile, the Reformed Church elected its first-ever black president, the Rev. Wilbur Washington, pastor of the First Reformed Church in the Queens, N.Y., neighborhood of Jamaica. The denomination has a membership of about 353,000 with more than 900 churches concentrated in New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Iowa and California.