A brief history of Thompson and WARC

Re William P. Thompson, July/August issue.
The movement towards the organization of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches began in 1875, the year in which The Presbyterian Church in Canada came into being. It was also the Centenary of the American Declaration of Independence, so that Americans did not attend a meeting in London, England. It was postponed until the following year, although delegates from Australia and New Zealand made the trip, so they sat around for 12 months until others from Canada, the United States and Reformed Churches in Western Europe could attend. So the founding General Council was in 1876.
William Thompson was the Stated Clerk of the Presbyterian Church (USA), the northern church, but when the churches reunited in 1983, James Andrews of the southern church was elected as Stated Clerk. The dislike that resulted came out at the General Council of 1989 in Seoul, when Dr. Thompson opposed the election of Andrews to the Executive Committee of the Alliance, on the grounds that he was an employee of the Alliance since he was secretary of CANAAC. Rather than argue the point, Andrews resigned as secretary and, since there were sufficient delegates present from CANAAC to form a quorum, his resignation was accepted and Dr. Margaethe Brown was elected in his stead.
Thompson was president of the Alliance in the 1970s, from the Nairobi General Council in 1970 until the Scotland General Council in 1977, when he was succeeded by Dr. James McCord. Dr. Allan Boesak was elected president at the Ottawa General Council in 1982, re-elected in Seoul in 1989, but resigned the following year, and his place was taken by Dr. Jane Dempsey Douglass, one of the vice-presidents.
Thompson was on General MacArthur's staff during the war in the Pacific, and was with him on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay when Macarthur accepted the Japanese surrender.