This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
On the morning of 5 July 2017, delegates to the World Communion of Reformed Churches' General Council, meeting in Wittenberg, Germany, gathered at the Stadtkirche Sankt Marien, the town church where Martin Luther once preached, to sign the Communion's own Association with the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification.
The Joint Declaration itself was the 1999 statement on justification, originally agreed between the Lutheran World Federation and the Roman Catholic Church's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
General Secretary Chris Ferguson signed on the Reformed communion's behalf, adding a Reformed statement to the Association that emphasized the connection between justification and justice. The Reverend Anna Case-Winters of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was among the WCRC members who had worked on the declaration's drafting.
The same service also saw the World Communion of Reformed Churches and the Lutheran World Federation sign the Wittenberg Witness, a joint statement on their own bilateral relationship, at a General Council convened, as it meets every seven years, to coincide with the five hundredth anniversary of the Reformation.
What the July 2017 Wittenberg signing changed for the Reformed communion's standing was adding it as a signatory to the 1999 declaration, with its own Reformed statement attached, at the same session where it separately signed a bilateral statement with the Lutheran World Federation.