The Westminster Assembly of divines (men who studied and taught "divinity" or theology) was summoned in 1643 by an act of Parliament to unite England, Scotland, and Ireland through the composition and adoption of a single creed. This Assembly (which consisted of more than 140 Puritan, Calvinist theologians) and its multi-year consultation produced several documents, including the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), and the Larger (1648) and Shorter (1648) Catechisms. Together these documents are referred to as the Westminster Standards. The Standards are still today the adopted standards of conservative Presbyterian churches as well as a number of other Reformed churches throughout the world. They are widely recognized as one of the finest systematic summaries of Holy Scripture ever produced in creedal form. They are, in the words of B. B. Warfield:

The final crystallization of the elements of evangelical religion, after the conflicts of sixteen hundred years...They are the richest and most precise and best guarded statement ever penned of all that enters into evangelical religion and of all that must be safeguarded if evangelical religion is to persist in the world.