North America

North America is the least profiled of all the WCC regions. It is only comprised of two countries, the United States of America and Canada. Some churches have branches in both countries and several others have close relations because they belong to the same confessionnal family or have entered agreements of full communion. But the churches in the USA and Canada have found it neither necessary nor desirable to set up structures that bring all of them together. There is no regional ecumenical organization in North America. In the annual meetings of the general secretaries of the WCC and the Regional Ecumenical Organizations (REOs) the region is therefore represented by the general secretaries of the two national councils of churches.

Historically North America has been one of the major regions along with the United Kingdom and continental Europe in the early ecumenical movement and the formation of the WCC. Initially the WCC had two offices in Geneva and New York. A US Office of the WCC still exists as well as a US Conference of WCC member churches. The Canadian member churches of the WCC have a committee that deals with common concerns of membership. The churches in the USA and Canada and their national councils  continue to be major partners for the WCC and for churches and councils in other regions. The number of WCC member churches in the two countries is 31 and they represent over 50 million Christians. There are important evangelical bodies at the national level in the two countries and the World Evangelical Alliance has a North American Council.  In Canada the Catholic Church is a full member of the Canadian Council of Churches and good relationships exist between the CCC and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada. In the USA a new organization has come into being, Christian Churches Together, that includes the Catholic Church and several Evangelical and Pentecostal churches as well as most of the member churches of the national council of churches.