United Church in Papua New Guinea and The Solomon Islands - Local and Overseas Affiliations

Local and Overseas Affiliations

The United Church is a member of the Papua New Guinea Council of Churches, Melanesian Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. In matters of social policy it tends as with its sister denominations in other Commonwealth countries to be largely in accord with the Anglican and Lutheran churches.

Traditionally many of the United Church's personnel were recruited from earlier-established Methodist and Congregationalist churches in Fiji, Samoa and Tonga and the United Church continues to have close relations with sister churches in these neighbouring island countries. Its theology and social policy tends to be somewhat more akin to these theologically conservative neighbouring countries' long-established evangelical Protestant churches than to those in Australia. On the other hand the Church is considerably more broad-minded in such matters than more recently arrived fundamentalist groups and it maintains the historic Methodist and Congregational strong emphasis on education and literacy in the broadest sense. As with the Anglican and Lutheran churches, the United Church has suffered some attrition in recent decades as a result of aggressive proselytising among its constituents by fundamentalist and pentecostalist groups originating in the United States of America and to a lesser extent Australia.

Many of Papua New Guinea's leaders have had a United Church background.