Since the founding of the Evangelical Alliance at London in 1846, global evangelicals have endorsed a kind of “small-e” ecumenism. What began initially as a united response to the threat posed by a militantly-expansionist Roman Catholicism (termed at the time, the ‘Papal Aggression’) and early Protestant liberalism eventually led to conferences in major cities and international missionary conferences held at New York (1900) and Edinburgh (1910). While evangelical mission societies were well-represented in 1910, not as many evangelical agencies collaborated in efforts to perpetuate the momentum of Edinburgh (1910) through the work of the International Missionary Council (which met in 1921, 1928, 1938, 1947, 1952, 1957and 1961). But the eventual merger of the IMC with the World Council of Churches in 1961 served to undermine the trust of global evangelicals. Long before that merger of 1961, the IMC was giving out very mixed signals about the relation of Christianity to other religions of the world.
In the founding of the WCC in 1948, fault lines were on display between mainstream, doctrinally-comprehensive denominations (which supported the WCC’s formation just as they had been promoting the federation of denominations in their home countries) and branches of evangelical Christianity which had parted ways with mainstream denominations during the modernist-fundamentalist controversy. The evangelicals who stood apart in 1948 had already been opposing efforts to federate homeland denominations because of disrespect for purity of doctrine. This had been the agenda of the American Federal Council of Churches (after 1950, the National Council of Churches), as well as the British Council of Churches (formed 1942). Broadly evangelical Christians already had a small-e ecumenical frameworks through the Evangelical Alliance (UK, founded 1846) and the National Association of Evangelicals (USA, founded 1943). They deemed these ecumenical relationships to be sufficient. But since evangelicalism was not then and is not now confined to self-identified evangelical churches, the developments of 1948 introduced strained relationships where these had not existed before.
Establishment broad evangelicals such as Stephen Neill and Leslie Newbiggin as well as conservative evangelicals John Stott and Philip E. Hughes lent support to the World Council concept. In America, Harold J. Ockenga and Billy Graham did the same and were present at the WCC founding at Amsterdam in 1948; each faced criticism from their constituencies for doing so. The Amsterdam 1948 developments stirred counter-efforts from evangelical leaders– on both sides of the Atlantic. American Fundamentalist leader, Carl McIntire launched a rival organization, the International Council of Christian Churches and sent Francis Schaeffer to Amsterdam to promote it. Martyn Lloyd-Jones cautioned against the new ecumenical emphasis in _Maintaining the Evangelical Faith Today_ (1952). He helped to found the alternative British Evangelical Council. Norwegian author, David Hedegard, a NT scholar, echoed these concerns with _Ecumenism and the Bible_ (1954, reprinted 1964). The conservative American Presbyterian (and associate editor of Christianity Today magazine) J. Marcellus Kik, authored _Ecumenism and the Evangelical_ (1958). As a conservative in a mainline denomination, he wrote in opposition to the idea that the WCC was a panacea. Yet conservative evangelical Anglican missionary bishop, A.T. Houghton (1894-72) authored _Evangelicals and the World Council_ (1962), a gentle argument in favor.
In sum, the emergence of the ecumenical movement as represented by the World Council of Churches in 1948 was a disruptive development for global evangelicals. Having long prized collaboration among evangelicals, they remained deeply distrustful of all schemes involving those who failed to affirm essential doctrines of the Christian faith. Intra-evangelical debates about ecumenical participation served as a solvent that weakened evangelical unity in the post-War world.