The Rev. Arie R. Brouwer, 58, of Teaneck, New Jersey, an Inwood native, former
official of both the National and World Council of Churches, died Thursday,
October 7, at his residence in Teaneck, due to cancer.
Services were at 2 P.M., Monday, October 11, at Christ Chapel, Northwestern College, Orange City, with the Rev. Nancy Van Wyk-Phillips and the Rev. Harold Brown officiating. Burial was in Memory Gardens, Sioux Center.
The Rev. Dr. Brouwer was born July 14, 1935, in Inwood. He married Harriet Korver, August 16, 1955, at Orange City.
He began and ended his ministry in local churches in Michigan and New Jersey. He was best known as general secretary of the Reformed Church in America, 1977-1983, and the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA from 1985-1989. He served as deputy general secretary of the World Council of Churches, 1983-1984. In 1992-1993 he served as interim pastor for the Community Church of Glen Rock, New Jersey.
Survivors include his wife; four children, Milton of Ann Arbor, Michigan; Charla of Lynchburg, Virginia; Patricia of Bogota, New Jersey, and Steven and his wife Margaret of Ann Arbor; five brothers, Jasper of Demotte, Indiana; Gerrit and Bert, both of Edgerton, Minnesota; Louis of Tyler, Minnesota, and Merle of Grosse Point Woods, Michigan; a sister Jeanette Dethmers of Holland, Minnesota and a granddaughter.
He was preceded in death by his parents and a brother, Edward.
Memorial donations may be directed to the World Council of Churches, Unit One, Worship Formation Dept., Box 2100 CH-1211, Geneva 2, Switzerland.
(Source: Sioux Center News)
The Rev. Arie R. Brouwer, a leader in world ecumenism who resigned in 1989 as head of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA when he fell out with other council leaders over the direction of the 49-million-member body, died Thursday at his home in Teaneck, N.J.
A council spokesman in New York City said Brouwer, who also was a top executive of the Reformed Church in America from 1977 to 1983 and deputy general secretary of the World Council of Churches in Geneva from 1983 to 1984, was 58 and had been ill with cancer.
In 1987, two years after being elected to head the NCC, Brouwer led the first church delegation to North and South Korea since the country was divided at the end of World War II. Earlier, he had participated in the "Choose Life" conference in Geneva in which U.S. and Soviet church leaders formulated a call for disarmament.
He was a frequent visitor to the Soviet Union and was one of a handful of church leaders asked to address the 1,000th anniversary gathering of the Russian Orthodox Church in 1988. He also became one of the first church leaders to publicly disavow the apartheid policies of South Africa.
(Source: Los Angeles Times)