World Evangelical Alliance

World Evangelical Alliance (WEA), international fellowship of organizations that hold biblically conservative interpretations of the Christian faith. From 1846 until the mid-1900s, the World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) was primarily the venture of its founding member, the British Evangelical Alliance. The group had uneven support in Europe and North America until 1951, when 21 countries joined and renamed it the World Evangelical Fellowship. In 2001 the group returned to its original name. It later featured around 130 national alliances of churches and has partnered with more than 100 international organizations. With its six commissions established in 1974, the WEA serves to defend religious liberty and evangelical theology while coordinating evangelical missions and Christian humanitarian actions, especially those involving women and children.