International Fellowship of Evangelical Students
international Christian organization
The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) is an interdenominational association of 180 evangelical Christian student movements worldwide, encouraging evangelism, discipleship and mission among students. The headquarters is in Oxford, England.
History
In United Kingdom, the Oxford Inter-Collegiate Christian Union, founded in 1879, was a founding member of the Student Christian Movement of Great Britain (SCM) in 1892. Then in 1928, CICCU students left the SCM because of its ecumenical beliefs and its approval of new methods of biblical exegesis, and founded the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship. This movement was established in Canada in 1928, Australia in 1930, and in the United States in 1941.
In 1947, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students was founded. Representatives from Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, China, Netherlands, Norway, France, New Zealand, Switzerland, and the United States came together in Boston (USA) to strengthen evangelism, discipleship and world mission among students all over the world.
It was present in 180 countries in 2023.
Programs
Group meetings are held each week to discuss the Bible in universities. These groups are Evangelical, but not attached to any particular confession.
“International Fellowship of Evangelical Students” enters the record as international Christian organization. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what International, Fellowship and Evangelical can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“International Fellowship of Evangelical Students” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, International, Fellowship and Evangelical provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1208213. VIAF identifies the subject as 140146141. The Library of Congress control number is n81126896. 3 of 6 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1879, 1892, 1928 and 1930.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “International Fellowship of Evangelical Students”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow International Fellowship of Evangelical Students primary sources, International Fellowship of Evangelical Students archive and International research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “International Fellowship of Evangelical Students”?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
- What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “International Fellowship of Evangelical Students” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.