Founded as a separate denomination of Reformed churches in 1924, the Protestant Reformed Churches stand in the tradition of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. Their origin as a denomination was the doctrinal controversy over common grace within the Christian Reformed Church in the early 1920s, occasioned by that church\'s adoption of the doctrine of common grace as official church dogma. The result of the controversy was that three ministers and their consistories were, in effect, put out of the Christian Reformed Church. Many of the members of their congregations followed them, and in 1926 the three new congregations formed the Protestant Reformed Churches in America.
The denomination grew rapidly in the years that followed, but in the early 1950s the churches in it endured a severe, internal, doctrinal controversy in defense of the unconditionality of the covenant of grace. As a result of this struggle, the denomination was reduced in size by about one half. Most of those who departed returned eventually to the Christian Reformed Church.
Since that time the Protestant Reformed Churches have again enjoyed steady growth and lively activity. They number at present 27 churches with a total membership of some 7,000 souls. They maintain their own seminary, have established many Christian schools, and have sent missionaries to diverse cultures such as Jamaica, Singapore, Northern Ireland, Ghana, and the Philippines. The Protestant Reformed Churches believe themselves called, as a denomination of Reformed churches, stoutly to defend and enthusiastically to proclaim the historic, creedal, and distinctive doctrines of Calvinism.
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