We were born out of a desire for visible unity and peace

The United States office of the World Council of Churches was actually born before its parent.

The parent body, the WCC, was formally launched in 1948 in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Fifteen years earlier, in May 1933, two US churchmen were among 10 persons who gathered in the home of William Temple, the Archbishop of York, to discuss the formation of a worldwide ecumenical organization. The meeting was held at the suggestion of William Adams Brown of New York's Union Seminary and US Presbyterian Samuel McCrea Cavert suggested the evolving body be named "World Council of Churches," and so it became.

In Utrecht five years later, a provisional committee for the "World Council of Churches in process of formation" was held, and Henry Smith Leiper was named to carry out the work of the emerging organization in the US - the first executive director of the United States office.

It was the intention of the founding parents that the World Council of Churches would be born in 1938. By then international tensions were already paralyzing ecumenical impulses and when the second world war erupted in Europe in September 1939, the birth was indefinitely postponed. In the meantime, many documents of the WCC in process of formation were safely deposited in the US office in New York until peace was declared in August 1945. By the time the Council was birthed in 1948, its US office was already a decade old.

In the early years, the United States office was regarded as an essential component of the WCC for several reasons, including:
- The 5,000 mile-distance between the WCC offices in Geneva and the USA was daunting in 1948 and only rarely traversed by airplane. Long-distance calls were expensive.

- The US churches were among the largest and richest churches in the world in 1948 and they were seen as an essential source of financial support. The US office was in a good position to be in regular contact with the US churches to interpret WCC programs.

- New York was still the virtual hub of US Protestantism and Christian activity in 1948 and a place of contact for extensive missionary and ecumenical interests. The US office was a convenient location for scheduling travel and meetings for Geneva staff and other persons visiting the US.

In the early stages of the modem ecumenical movement, the United States office was also in a strategic position to help organize US churches to work more closely together. A Joint Executive Committee representing the American churches that planned to join the WCC was renamed the American Committee for the WCC in 1944. It became the WCC Conference of USA Member Churches in 1948, and five years later, it was dubbed the US Conference of the WCC.

Meanwhile the International Missionary Council (IMC) was headquartered in New York with an office in London. The IMC merged with the WCC at the third assembly in New Delhi in 1961 to become the Division of World Mission and Evangelism (DWME), and its headquarters was moved to Geneva. The London office was closed and the two former IMC executives remained briefly in New York as US members of the DWME staff. In 1964 they joined the staff of the US office.

In 1952, WCC general secretary W.A. Visser 't Hooft asked Samuel McCrea Cavert to head the US office. Cavert agreed on the condition that he have direct authority from Geneva to operate the office. Thus in 1954, Cavert assumed two titles: executive secretary of the World Council of Churches in New York and executive secretary of the US Conference.

Charles Taft - son of President William Howard Taft - and Dr Cavert (right) were two of many prominent Americans who supported the ecumenical movement in the years after the founding of the WCC. Other prominent GOP supporters of the WCC included Presbyterian John Foster Dulles and American Baptist Harold E. Stassen.

In 1954, when the Second Assembly of the World Council of Churches was held in Evanston, Ill., it was clear that the WCC and the USA held each other in high regard - or, perhaps, were mutually impressed by one another's potential influence. Visser 't Hooft decided then that it was essential to invite the US chief of state, Dwight Eisenhower, to the Assembly, and President Eisenhower decided it was essential to come.

Other directors of the US office have included Roswell P. Barnes (1957-1964), Eugene L. Smith (1965-1973), Charles H. Long (1973-1977), Keith Bridston (1978-1982), Joan Brown Campbell (1983-1991) and Donald Black (interim, 1991-1992), Jean Stromberg (1992-2003). The current programme executive is Deborah DeWinter.

WCC assembly in Evanston, 1954: Ike and then-WCC general secretary W.A. Visser't Hooft(Wim)