INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHRISTIAN CHURCHES

The International Council of Christian Churches (ICCC) is a worldwide ecumenical body serving conservative fundamentalist Protestant churches. Fundamentalism arose in American Protestantism as a protest against Modernism, which many considered to be a departure from essential Christian beliefs. One group of Fundamentalists demanded complete separation from the modernists who controlled the major denominations. This group retained the name Fundamentalist. Those who continued their fellowship with conservative Christians who remained in the larger denominations came to be known as Evangelicals.

In 1941, the separatist Fundamentalists founded the American Council of Christian Churches (ACCC), as an alternative to the Federal Council of Churches, then controlled by the modernists.Immediately after World War II, when most large American denominations joined with their European counterparts to create the World Council of Churches (WCC), ACCC leaders called Fundamentalist churches from around the world to found an alternative. The first gathering of the ICCC was held in Amsterdam in 1948 within days of the opening assembly of the WCC.

The ICCC has continued to affirm the infallibility and inerrancy of the Bible and the need for a complete separation from heresy and apostasy, as represented by the World Council of Churches and the World Evangelical Alliance.

The ICCC faced a significant crisis in 1970. A year earlier, the ACCC had removed Carl Mclntire (1906-2003), an American Presbyterian minister who had dominated the ICCC from the beginning, as its leader. The ICCC chose to continue its support of Mclntire, and the ICCC and the ACCC parted company. Subsequently, Mclntire led in the creation of the ICCC in America, and the ACCC led in the formation of the World Council of Bible Believing Churches.

At its 1998 meeting, the ICCC reported 700 denominations from more than 100 countries represented in its membership. Headquarters are located in Collingswood, New Jersey.

See alsoEcumenical movement.

■ Margaret C. Harden, comp.,A Brief History of the Bible Presbyterian Church and Its Agencies(privately published, 1968).