ICRC: GKV Membership Terminated
The 2022 International Conference of Reformed Churches is being held at the moment in Namibia. At the last ICRC meeting in 2017, the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands (GKV) were suspended from membership because of their decision to open all the offices of the church to women. Since the GKV hasn’t changed direction on this, it was expected that the 2022 meeting would terminate their membership. And yesterday, sadly, it did. It was one of the first items on the agenda.
The GKV was one of the founding members of the ICRC in 1982. Similarly, the Christian Reformed Church in North America was one of the founding members of the North American and Presbyterian Reformed Council (NAPARC) in 1975. In the late 90s, the CRCNA was pushed out of NAPARC when it too opened all the offices of the church to women. One of the major forces behind both departures has been the Orthodox Presbyterian Church.
This is just the latest in a series of ecumenical break-ups for the GKV. They’ve lost sister-church relationships with the Free Reformed Churches of Australia, the Canadian Reformed Churches, the Reformed Church in the United States, and others. The decision to contradict Scripture’s clear teaching has been a costly one for the GKV. In the world of confessionally Reformed churches, they’ve made themselves a pariah denomination.
