United Reformed Churches in North America
federation of churches
The United Reformed Churches in North America (URCNA) is a theologically conservative federation of Reformed churches founded in 1996. Many churches joined the URCNA after splitting from the Christian Reformed Church in North America denomination.
Origin
The URCNA has grown from the earlier Protestant movements in Europe of the 16th and 17th century, and also from Reformed churches in Belgium and the Netherlands. Like other churches in the Reformed tradition, it traces its interpretation of Scripture back to the sixteenth-century reformer, John Calvin. Although Reformed theology took root in many countries in Europe, it took especial hold in the Netherlands. Dutch immigrants to North America carried their beliefs with them over the subsequent centuries. Rather than joining existing churches of other denominations in North America, these Dutch immigrants started their own churches, churches that became known as the Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA). Over the twentieth century, the CRCNA grew progressively more liberal. Conservative Reformed believers were generally concerned that the CRCNA was departing from Scriptural teaching to accommodate modern social trends. Specific disagreements arose on issues like women's ordination, evolution cases, and biblical inerrancy.
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This entry incorporates text from “United Reformed Churches in North America” 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.