World Conference on Faith and Order

Robert H. Gardiner was a lawyer and an active member of the Episcopal Church. He was appointed as the first secretary of the Episcopal Church's Commission on a World Conference on Faith and Order. After August, 1920, he served as General Secretary of the world-wide and interdenominational Continuation Committee appointed by the Preliminary Conference at Geneva. Ralph W. Brown was a graduate of Harvard College and a member of the Episcopal Church. He began preliminary work for the Conference in 1913 as office secretary. He became a competent assistant to Gardiner. Following Gardiner's death from pneumonia on June 15, 1924, Brown took charge of the Faith and Order office at the request of the Bishop. He made arrangements for the first World Conference in Lausanne in 1925. At the conference, the Continuation Committee elected him to be its General Secretary. Due to the world-wide economic depression, Faith and Order could no longer afford a full-time General Secretary. In 1933, Brown resigned after 20 years of service.

A World Conference on Faith and Order was first proposed by the Episcopal Church in 1910 to build ecumenical consensus and Christian unity. The conference took years to plan, delayed by World War I as well as the inherent organizational challenges of such an event. Finally, in 1927, 394 delegates representing 108 churches attended the first World Conference on Faith and Order in Lausanne, Switzerland. The event launched the ecumenical Faith and Order Movement, advocated by the Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches. Conferences have since been held in Europe and Canada.