Evangelical Alliance, an association of evangelical Christians belonging to various churches and countries, which, in the words of the circular issued by members of different churches in Scotland, 5th August 1845, and originating the movement for its formation, seeks 'to associate and concentrate the strength of an enlightened Protestantism against the encroachments of Popery and Puseyism, and to promote the interests of a scriptural Christianity.' At a meeting held at Liverpool, October 1-3 of that year, the scope of the association was extended to the means to be used for counteracting religious indifference. In 1846 (19th August-2d September) the first general conference was held in London under the presidency of Sir Culling Eardley, and was attended by 921 members from all parts of the world, representing as many as fifty different denominations. The association was instituted a free union, not of churches or sects, but of individual Christians, and the membership was confined to those holding 'the views commonly called evangelical' on the following nine points of doctrine—(1) the divine inspiration, authority, and sufficiency of Holy Scripture; (2) the right and duty of individual believers to exercise their judgment in the interpretation of Scripture; (3) one God and three Persons in the same; (4) human nature utterly corrupted by the fall; (5) the Son of God made man, His work of reconciliation for men's sins, and His mediatorial intercession and reign; (6) the justification of the sinner by faith alone; (7) the work of the Holy Spirit in the sinner's conversion and sanctification; (8) the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the body, the judgment of the human race by Jesus Christ, together with the eternal felicity of the righteous and punishment of the wicked; (9) the divine institution of the Christian ministry, and the obligatory and perpetual ordinance of baptism and the Lord's Supper. General conferences of the association have since been held at London (1851), Paris (1855), Berlin (1857), Geneva (1861), Amsterdam (1867), New York (1873), Basel (1879), and Copenhagen (1885). The Evangelical Alliance has done much to cultivate a spirit of unity among Protestants by the diffusion of exact knowledge of the condition and circumstances of their different churches, and has raised its voice effectively against slavery, profanity, and persecution. Its organ, Evangelical Christendom, its State and Prospects, is published in London monthly.
See the Reports of the Proceedings of the different conferences, especially of the preliminary meetings at Liverpool, October 1845 (Lond. 1845), and of the Constitutional Assembly in 1846 (508 pp. Lond. 1847); Massie, The Evangelical Alliance, its Origin and Development (Lond. 1847); and L. Bonnet, L'Unité de l'Esprit par le Lien de la Paix: Lettres sur l'Alliance évangélique (Paris, 1847).