The Evangelical Free Church of America has voted to drop the term "premillennialism" from the denomination’s statement of faith.

In an effort to "major on the majors and minor on the minors" the denomination no longer considers that doctrine essential to the gospel, reports Christianity Today.

Premillennialism is one of three major outlooks on end times theology. The CARM Dictionary of Theology explains that the view holds that there is a future millennium (1,000 years) where Christ will rule and reign over the earth. At the beginning of the millennium, Satan and his angels will be bound and peace will exist on the entire earth. At the end of the 1,000 years, Satan will be released in order to raise an army against Jesus. Jesus will destroy them, and then the final judgment will take place with the new heavens and the new earth being made.

The EFCA says many of its 350,000 members still believe Jesus will return to earth to reign as king for 1,000 years, but now the revised statement says, “We believe in the personal, bodily and glorious return of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is now up to each church member's personal discretion whether or not Jesus will set up a literal kingdom on earth for a millennium.

The denominations prefers to not be known for what is against, but rather what it is for and does not take a stance on several issues like the Reformed versus Arminian view of conversion, the age of the earth, infant versus adult baptism, and whether the gifts of the spirit had ceased or were still active.

The EFCA states, “We believe there is a significant inconsistency in continuing to include premillennialism as a required theological position when it is clear that the nature of the millennium is one of those doctrines over which theologians, equally knowledgeable, equally committed to the Bible, and equally Evangelical, have disagreed through the history of the church.”

Bill Taylor, the executive director of the Evangelical Free Church of Canada, says the decision came a lot easier for them. The EFCC dropped premillennialism in 2008. “There’s a stronger dispensationalist history in the US than we have in Canada."

Taylor says the change was good for the Canadian evangelicals and, “We’ve had no slippery slope to an allegorical approach to the Word.

“There’s no pull toward liberalism, so there’s no negative impact in that way.”