Christian Leaders Are Forging an Alliance

Church leaders from 30 denominations agreed Wednesday on a proposal to create a broad alliance of Christian denominations.

The steering committee of the budding effort, tentatively called Christian Churches Together in the U.S.A., will invite a wide range of national church bodies and agencies over the next several weeks to join them.

The loosely knit alliance would represent five segments of U.S. Christianity, listed in the plan as “Evangelical/Pentecostal, Historic Protestant, Orthodox, Racial/Ethnic and Roman Catholic.”

The National Council of Churches is the nation’s largest ecumenical group, but the Catholic church and most evangelicals and Pentecostals do not belong to it.

If the new alliance emerges, it could supplant the National Council or alter its role.

Orange County Bishop Tod Brown and Baltimore’s Cardinal William Keeler were among the 55 participants who met at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena to discuss the plan. Both are members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ ecumenical committee.

“I don’t think there has ever been anything like this attempted before in this country,” Brown said.

The Rev. Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, steering committee chairman and chief executive of the Reformed Church in America, called the meeting “a remarkable breakthrough. We gathered a wide representation of the Christian churches in the U.S.A. and were able to inspire them into making a deep commitment together.”

Brown said the U.S. Catholic hierarchy could decide on the proposal within two years. Granberg-Michaelson said that’s the likely timetable to go from the planning stage to formal launch of the organization.

One sticking point: The nation’s largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention, may be reluctant to join, though it had an observer at the meeting.

The proposal being sent to churches says that, in the early stages, the alliance will focus on common worship and fellowship.