Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF), formerly known as the Inter-Varsity Fellowship (IVF), is a UK-based evangelical Christian charity that operates on university campuses.
UCCF is a network of Christian students, staff and supporters which largely operates in universities, colleges and schools. Its primary mission is evangelism in higher education through affiliated 'Christian Unions' (CUs) throughout the UK. There are around 300 Christian Unions in the UK at present, with a membership of approximately 10,000–15,000, providing opportunities for fellowship, bible study and evangelism.
UCCF employs a number of staff (many themselves graduates who were involved in the CU) who work to support the student Christian Unions with training, advice and materials.
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In the summer term of 1919 an evangelical student called Norman Grubb of Trinity College, Cambridge and a friend, met with ten representatives of the Student Christian Movement to discuss their concerns that SCM was promoting an overly liberal view of Christianity in the British universities. Grubb posed the direct question, "Does the Student Christian Movement put the atoning blood of Christ central in its teaching?" After a little deliberation the answer came, "Well, we acknowledge it, but not necessarily central."[1]
Grubb and his friends at Cambridge decided that they could no longer work in partnership with the SCM saying that it had divorced a biblically-based, cross-centred emphasis. The Cambridge Inter-Collegiate Christian Union (CICCU) had been disaffiliated from national SCM since 1910, but only after talks in 1919 floundered did a permanent split look probable.[2] Splits followed thoughout the British and Irish university system and two separate organisations emerged which went on to form the modern UCCF, earlier known as the IVF, and SCM.
Grubb developed a vision to see an 'evangelical witnessing community on every university campus'. At the time there were just 28 universities in the UK and Ireland. The Inter-Varsity Fellowship (IVF) was born in 1928, linking these early Christian Unions together. In Cambridge, Oxford, King's, University College London, Manchester, Durham, Cardiff, Bristol, Liverpool, Queen's, Dublin, Magee, Glasgow, Edinburgh, St Andrews and Aberdeen student groups were affiliated to IVF.
During the 1940s, CU work began in the Technical Colleges. This expanded so rapidly that by the early 1970s it represented half the ministry and led to the name change to the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship. Since then many colleges have themselves gained university status, and until 2007 UCCF continued to serve both the HE and FE sectors of tertiary education. In 2007 a new organisation was created, called FESTIVE, to specifically serve the FE sector and leave the UCCF free to concentrate on HE.
In 1947 UCCF became a founding member of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) and continues to play a role globally.
The parting of the ways between the CICCU and the SCM was due to the centrality of both biblical truth and the need for evangelism (as they were perceived by Grubb and his friends). Initially, the SCM had been aiming at "the evangelisation of the world in this generation," although the CICCU had felt that this aim was not being sufficiently emphasised by 1922.
According to the UCCF, the Doctrinal Basis sets out the "fundamental truths of Christianity, as revealed in Holy Scripture."[3] The Doctrinal Basis sets out the main beliefs of the UCCF which make clear that it is rooted in Evangelical Christianity. This is as follows:
1. There is one God in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
2. God is sovereign in creation, revelation, redemption and final judgement.
3. The Bible, as originally given, is the inspired and infallible Word of God. It is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behaviour.
4. Since the fall, the whole of humankind is sinful and guilty, so that everyone is subject to God's wrath and condemnation.
5. The Lord Jesus Christ, God's incarnate Son, is fully God; he was born of a virgin; his humanity is real and sinless; he died on the cross, was raised bodily from death and is now reigning over heaven and earth.
6. Sinful human beings are redeemed from the guilt, penalty and power of sin only through the sacrificial death once and for all time of their representative and substitute, Jesus Christ, the only mediator between them and God.
7. Those who believe in Christ are pardoned all their sins and accepted in God's sight only because of the righteousness of Christ credited to them; this justification is God's act of undeserved mercy, received solely by trust in him and not by their own efforts.
8. The Holy Spirit alone makes the work of Christ effective to individual sinners, enabling them to turn to God from their sin and to trust in Jesus Christ.
9. The Holy Spirit lives in all those he has regenerated. He makes them increasingly Christlike in character and behaviour and gives them power for their witness in the world.
10. The one holy universal church is the Body of Christ, to which all true believers belong.
11. The Lord Jesus Christ will return in person, to judge everyone, to execute God's just condemnation on those who have not repented and to receive the redeemed to eternal glory.
Some Christians (including, but not limited to, members of non-Protestant groups such as the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches) do not hold to certain points of the Doctrinal Basis. In particular the doctrines of Sola Scriptura[1] (of which part 3 is a strongly worded form) and Penal Substitution (part 6)[2] are contested by some Christian theologians, and nontrinitarians contest part 1 (which interestingly is listed before Sola Scriptura, implying a preference over any scriptural support for nontrinitarianism). In some cases, UCCF's evangelical theology has led to Christian Unions having difficult relationships with Chaplaincies and/or Student Unions.[4][5] It is also a substantial and persistent difference between UCCF and SCM (which is committed to ecumenism, including with CUs).[6]