A Christian Reformed Church split from either a Reformed Church in America in a theological dispute that originated in the Netherlands. Occasionally churches merged using a CRC, virtually all notably a True Protestant Dutch Reformed Church in 1890. More churches in a future split from either a CRC, including the Protestant Reformed Church (1924) and a United Reformed Churches in North America (1990s).

In a closing decades of the twentieth century, the CRC exhibited growing many characteristics that were troubling to the conservative members of its constituency, especially its 1995 guide to ordain women to ministerial positions. Following of this guide, a Presbyterian Church in America and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church broke fraternal relations with a CRC around 1997. A membership of the CRC in the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council, the lone big gathering of conservative Reformed denominations around the United States, was suspended within 1999 & terminated in 2001. This gradual doctrinal shift has spurred further conservative congregations to leave, & a important total one keep around ended higher within either a PCA, OPC, or even the United Reformed Church mentioned above.

A Christian Reformed Church belongs to the Reformed Ecumenical Council and the National Association of Evangelicals.

A denomination has close ties to Calvin College and runs Calvin Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the denomination's Northward Our contries headquarters come placed. More colleges associated by having a denomination come Trinity Christian College, Dordt College, Reformed Bible College, Redeemer University College, King's University College, and the post-graduate Institute for Christian Studies.