Congregationalism
Congregationalism
Conservative Congregational Christian Conference
International Council of Community Churches
Korean Christian Missions of Hawaii
Midwest Congregational Christian Fellowship
National Association of Congregational Christian Churches
Reformed Congregational Fellowship
Conservative Congregational Christian Conference
8941 Highway 5, Lake Elmo, MN 55042
The Conservative Congregational Christian Conference can be dated to 1935 when Rev. Hilmer B. Sandine, then pastor of First Congregational Church of Hancock, Minnesota, began the publication of the Congregational Beacon. Beginning as a monthly parish publication, the Beacon became the organ for communication among theologically conservative Congregationalists. Emphasis was placed on biblical evangelism and evangelical Christianity. Growing concern about liberal theology and social activism within the Congregational and Christian Churches led in 1945 to the formation of the Conservative Congregational Christian Fellowship at Minneapolis. During the previous year a plan of union with the Evangelical and Reformed Church had been published. In 1948, during the lengthy process of the formation of the United Church of Christ, the Conservative Congregational Christian Fellowship became the conference, a separate body from the congregational and Christian churches.
Among Congregationalists, the conference represents the most theologically conservative group. The conference is committed to the five fundamentals: the infallibility of the scriptures, the virgin birth of Christ, the substitutionary atonement, Christ’s bodily resurrection, and Christ’s miracles. The conference also emphasizes the historical Puritan beliefs in the sovereignty of God, the sinfulness of man, redemption through Christ, the indwelling Holy Spirit, the sacraments, the life of love and service, and the future life. They restrict membership to those who profess regeneration. The Conservative Congregational Christian Conference is a member of the National Association of Evangelicals and the World Evangelical Congregational Fellowship.
In polity, the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference accepts the interpretation that true Congregationalism is to be identified with the independent or separated Puritan tradition. The local church is the seat of power. In recent years, a number of formerly Evangelical and Reformed churches have joined the conference. It joins in fellowship with other churches for cooperative endeavors. Ecclesiastical bodies or officers have no right to interfere in local church affairs. There is an annual meeting of the conference.
The Conservative Congregational Christian Conference has affiliated work in Pohnpei Micronesia.
Membership
In 2007 the conference reported 41,772 members, 284 congregations, and 847 ministers.
Educational Facilities
The Conference has endorsed Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, Fuller Seminary, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and Bethel Seminary for its ministerial students.
Periodicals
Foresee.
Sources
Conservative Congregational Christian Conference. www.ccccusa.com.
Kohl, Manfred Waldemar. Congregationalism in America. Oak Creek, WI: Congregational Press, 1987.
Rouner, Arthur A. The Congregational Way of Life. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1960.
International Council of Community Churches
21116 Washington Pky., Frankfort, IL 60423-3112
The International Council of Community Churches was formally organized in 1950, but its history dates from the early nineteenth century, when nonsectarian community churches began to appear as an alternative to denominationally affiliated congregations. These churches were especially welcomed in communities too small to support more than one viable congregation, and over the years many have retained a fiercely independent stance. Added to their number were other independent congregations that had separated from denominational structures and adopted a nonsectarian stance.
In the wake of the ecumenical movement in the early twentieth century, the most visible symbol of which was the 1908 formation of the Federal Council of Churches of Christ, many congregations merged across denominational lines, some forming independent federated or union churches and dropping all denominational affiliation. During this period, some community churches began to see, in light of their years of existence apart from denominational boundaries, that they had a particular role tto play in Christian unity.
A first attempt to build a network of community churches was known as the Community Church Workers of the United States. In Chicago in 1923, at a national conference of individuals serving community churches, a committee was formed to organize a second conference and outline plans for a national association. In the next year the group organized and the Rev. Orvis F. Jordan of the Park Ridge (Illinois) Community Church was named as secretary. He later became the first president of the group. The organization continued for more than a decade, but folded in the 1930s due to lack of support.
A second organization of community churches was begun in 1923 among predominantly black congregations. Representatives of five congregations gathered in Chicago, Illinois, in fall 1923 to form the National Council of the People’s Community Churches (incorporated in 1933 as the Biennial Council of the People’s Church of Christ and Community Centers of the United States and Elsewhere). The Rev. William D. Cook, pastor of Metropolitan Community Church in Chicago, served as the first president.
Unable to gain recognition from the Federal Council of Churches, the independent community churches began a second attempt at organization in the last days of World War II. The Rev. Roy A. Burkhart, pastor of First Community Church of Columbus, Ohio, led in the formation of the Ohio Association for Community Churches in 1945. The next year, representatives from 19 states and Canada met and formed the National Council of Community Churches.
Almost immediately, the black and white groups began to work toward a merger. The merger, accomplished in 1950, created the International Council of Community Churches with a charter membership of 160 churches. By 1957 the several foreign congregations had ceased their affiliation with the council and the word international was dropped. In 1969 the name was changed to National Council of Community Churches. In 1983, however, foreign congregations in Canada and Nigeria affiliated, and in 1984 the organization resumed the use of its original name.
There is no doctrinal statement shared by the council and its member churches, though most churches share a liberal, ecumenical-minded, Protestant perspective. The council describes itself as committed to Christian unity and working “toward a fellowship as comprehensive as the spirit and teachings of Christ and as inclusive as the love of God.”
The council is a loosely organized fellowship of free and autonomous congregations. The national and regional officers facilitate communication between congregations and serve member congregations in various functions, such as representing them at the Churches Uniting in Christ and the National Council of Churches and coordinating the securing of chaplains in the armed services.
Membership
In 2008 the Council reported 155 member churches and centers in the United States with a communicant membership of between 60,000 and 75,000. There were also 58 international congregations and centers in 17 countries with membership in the Council.
Educational Facilities
As a matter of policy, the Council has no educational institutions or mission projects of its own. It endorses and encourages member churches to support schools and missions that meet a its standards of being “postdenominational” and promoting Christian unity while meeting human needs.
Periodicals
The Christian Community. • The Pastor’s Journal. • The Inclusive Pulpit.
Sources
International Council of Community Churches. www.icccusa.com.
National Council of Community Churches, Directory. Homewood, IL: National Council of Community Churches, 1982.
Shotwell, J. Ralph. Unity without Uniformity. Homewood, IL: Community Church Press, 1984.
Smith, J. Philip. Faith and Fellowship in the Community Church Movement: A Theological Perspective. Homewood, IL: Community Church Press, 1986.
Korean Christian Missions of Hawaii
1832 Liliha St., Honolulu, HI 96817
The Korean Christian Missions of Hawaii arose early in the twentieth century when Korean immigrants to Hawaii found themselves trapped by a peculiarity of church history. They had been Presbyterians in their home country and wished to organize a Presbyterian judicatory on the island. However, they ran into a long-standing agreement by which Presbyterians and Congregationalists had divided the world and agreed not to organize in areas over which the other had hegemony. Rather than affiliate with the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches (now part of the United Church of Christ), they dropped the word Presbyterian and in 1918 formed Korean Christian churches. Over a period of time they gave up their presbyterianism and moved toward a congregational polity. Thus in recent decades they have emerged as a group that has doctrinal agreement and friendly relationships with both the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and the United Church of Christ.
The church is trinitarian in faith and accepts the Apostles’Creed as its confession of faith. It baptizes by sprinkling.
Membership
In 1980 three congregations were reported, with approximately 500 members.
Sources
Piepkorn, Arthur C. Profiles in Belief: The Religious Bodies of the United States and Canada. Vol. 3. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1979.
Midwest Congregational Christian Fellowship
8009 N CR 500 West, Muncie, IN 47304
The Midwest Congregational Christian Fellowship was formed in 1958 by former members of the Congregational and Christian Churches. During the years of negotiating the forming of the United Church of Christ, one center of dissatisfaction was in the Eastern Indiana Association. Theologically conservative members of the association were opposed to the church’s theologically liberal leadership. They felt there was too much emphasis on social action. The first meetings were held in 1957 in which attempts were made to withdraw the entire association. Having failed, laymen devised a plan by which individual congregations could withdraw. Thirty churches, primarily small, rural congregations, removed themselves from the rolls in 1958. These quickly organized as the Midwest Congregational Christian Fellowship (now Church).
The doctrinal statement of the church reflects the Puritan heritage, the Christian noncreedal bias, and the evangelical perspective of the members. The statement affirms belief in the Trinity, salvation, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, the resurrection, and the unity of believers. The polity is a loose congregationalism with emphasis on local ownership of property. The church meets quarterly, with one meeting designated the annual meeting. There is an eight-man committee that includes the moderator and officers who oversee the work of the church.
Membership
In 2000 the church reported 1,705 members and 29 congregations.
Sources
Association of Religion Data Archives. www.thearda.com/mapsReports/reports/US_2000.asp.
NAE Evangelism Commission. www.naeevangelism.com/members.html.
National Association of Congregational Christian Churches
PO Box 288, Oak Creek, WI 53154-0288
The National Association of Congregational Christian Churches was formed in 1955 in Detroit, Michigan, by a group of churches and individuals desiring to remain congregational in the face of merger forces that resulted in the formation of the United Church of Christ. The founders came to Detroit in response to a call sent out by the League to Uphold Congregationalist Principles and the Committee for the Continuation of Congregational Christian Churches.
There is little difference between members of the United Church of Christ and those of the National Association. In contrast to the more presbyterial form of the United Church of Christ, the polity of the NACCC emphasizes local autonomy and the fellowship of the local churches in state and national associations. It meets annually in different regions of the country. They gather for fellowship, education, and edification. Although the National Association does not make pronouncements for the member churches, it does undertake mutually cooperative programs, projects, and missions.
The association supports programs for the welfare and career development of ministers and theological students; Christian education and spiritual resources for youths of high school and college age; financial support and building and loan assistance for church development, as well as investment advisory; communications; men’s and women’s work; and missionary work in the United States and 12 countries worldwide.
Membership
The association reports 430 member churches and 70,000 members in the United States, in fellowship with a number of “free” or congregationally governed associations, including the International Congregational Fellowship.
Educational Facilities
Olivet College, Olivet, Michigan.
Piedmont College, Demorest, Georgia.
Periodicals
The Congregationalist. • News from the NACCC. • News and Needs; International Congregational Journal (published by Congregational Press).
Sources
National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. www.naccc.org/.
Butman, Harry R. The Lord’s Free People. Wauwatosa, WI: Swannet Press, 1968.
Hall, Lloyd M., and Steven A. Peay, eds. Congregationalism: The Church Local and Universal: The 1954 Polity and Unity Report. Oak Creek, WI: Congregational Press, 2001.
Kohl, Manfred Waldemar. Congregationalism in America. Oak Creek, WI: Congregational Press, 1977.
Peay, Steven A., ed. A Past with a Future. Oak Creek, WI: Congregational Press, 1998.
Reformed Congregational Fellowship
David Green, Moderator, 14 McKinley Ave., Beverly, MA 01915-3430
The Reformed Congregational Fellowship (RCF) is the product of many meetings that occurred through the mid-1990s by a group of congregational ministers who were searching for a way to publicly affirm their unity based upon adherence to confessional Reformed theology. Over ten years ago, they adopted the Savoy Declaration of 1658 as expressing the system of doctrine taught in the Bible and the Cambridge Platform of 1648 as their understanding of biblical church order.
The Savoy Declaration was the confession of faith for many English and New England congregational churches for over two centuries. It was produced in less than a month by a group of Puritan Congregational ministers who gathered to adapt the Westminster Confession to congregational distinctives. Their work occurred during the time of the fluid religious environment of the Cromwellian Commonwealth in England. It had been Cromwell’s hope—himself a Congregationalist—that the three major branches of the church, Baptist, Congregational, and Presbyterian, that were uncomfortable with episcopacy and opposed to deviant theology could find a way of uniting and thus provide a united standard for the religious life of the nation. The meeting at the Savoy Palace, however, did not achieve this result. The congregational leaders, while strongly affirming Reformed theological roots in common with their Presbyterian and Baptist brethren, solidified their case for Congregational church order. As their views allowed for a closer connection between church and state, they were also distinguished at that point from the Baptists.
The Reformed Congregational Fellowship consists of a number of individuals—mostly congregational pastors—scattered across the United States and in congregations that have adopted the Savoy and the Cambridge as part of their constitutional structure. Such churches are welcome to be listed on the RCF web-site as member churches. Individual membership is by subscription to the RCF constitution, a one page document affirming the final authority of the Bible for all matters of faith and practice and affirming the secondary standards of the Savoy and Cambridge. As such, therefore, it is not a denomination but, as its title suggests, a fellowship of those who are either independent or members of other congregational denominations. Within this larger world of congregationalism, these men see themselves as an important witness to a historic and confessionally reformed theological perspective.
An example among their congregations is the 200-year-old Westminster Congregational Church of Canterbury, Connecticut, which allied itself to the Fellowship in its formative stages. In 1995 its members went through a renewal process that included acknowledgment of the Bible as their supreme authority, the Westminster Confession (apart from its ecclesiology) as a faithful expression of biblical faith, and the Cambridge Platform as a faithful summary of biblical ecclesiology.
The primary work of the RCF at this time is its Confessional Conference held each spring during the second full week after Easter in Sharon, Massachusetts. Anyone is welcome for this event that begins with Tuesday supper and ends with Thursday lunch. Baptists and Presbyterians also regularly attend as the emphasis is not on polity but theology. Papers are presented on themes from one or more chapters of the Savoy Declaration. Engagement with the Westminster Confession and 1689 Baptist Confession is encouraged, as well as other more ancient or reformational confessions. The Conference is held in part from the belief that only by a return to clear theological witness and preaching and by relying entirely on the expounded Bible and the Holy Spirit’s work in the soul, may the tide of ignorance, practical atheism, and lawlessness that envelops the United States be confronted and altered. The Conference also features the singing of hymns, lively discussion, and the opportunity for deep fellowship in the things of God.
The RCF website is a blog and responses are encouraged.
Membership
Not reported.
Sources
Reformed Congregational Fellowship. www.reformedcongregational.org.
United Church of Canada
The United Church House, 3250 Bloor St. W, Ste. 300, Toronto, ON, Canada M8X 2Y4
The United Church of Canada (UCC) was formed in 1925 by the union of the Methodist Church, Canada, the Congregational Union of Canada, the Council of Local Union Churches, and the majority of the Presbyterian Church in Canada. In 1968 the Canada Conference of the Evangelical United Brethren joined the UCC. This church is the most successful result of the various Christian church union attempts in North America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; more than 40 church bodies from two major church families (Reformed and Methodist) were united.
French Huguenots escaping persecution following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes brought the Reformed Faith to Canada. But even in the New World their growth and development were restricted. After the ceding of Nova Scotia to England in 1713, and particularly after the ceding of all of Canada in 1763 by the Treaty of Paris, the influx of Presbyterians from Scotland and Ireland completely overwhelmed the small French contingent. The first ministers from Scotland were Daniel Cook, David Smith, and Hugh Graham, who organized the Presbytery of Truro in 1786. In 1795 this presbytery was joined by a second, the Presbytery of Pictou, which represented another faction of Scottish Presbyterianism. In 1817 these two groups, joined by a few ministers from the Established Church of Scotland, came together and formed the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Nova Scotia.
Concurrently with the events that led to the formation of the Synod of Nova Scotia, Presbyterians were moving into central and western Canada. As in eastern Canada, they brought the many divisions of the Scottish church with them, establishing several presbyteries and then synods, the first being the Presbytery of the Canadas in 1818. The establishment of new synodical structures continued through the first half of the nineteenth century, in part due to the importing of schisms within the church in Scotland, the arrival of non–English-speaking (Dutch Reformed) immigrants, and the opening of new territories in the West. By mid-century the trend began to reverse, and in 1875 a series of mergers led to the union of most Presbyterians into the Presbyterian Church in Canada.
Methodism in Canada is traced to Lawrence Coughlan, an Irish Methodist preacher who came to Newfoundland in 1765. At the time of his arrival, he had left John Wesley’s connection and applied for work with the Anglican Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. Though a Methodist in practice, he became an Anglican minister. Upon his return to England, many of the people he organized openly declared themselves Methodists. Meanwhile, Methodists were migrating from England to Nova Scotia; among them was William Black Sr. In 1779 a revival among them led to the conversion of William Black, Jr., who was then only 19 years old. He began to preach, visiting several nearby settlements, and in 1781 travelled the whole of Nova Scotia to organize Methodist classes. His work expanded greatly two years later as immigrants loyal to Great Britain flowed into Nova Scotia after the American Revolution. In 1784 Black journeyed to Baltimore, Maryland, for the meeting that organized the new Methodist Episcopal Church. The Canadian work that Black had developed was taken under their care. The Canadian work grew and developed as an integral part of the Methodist Episcopal Church until 1828, when it became separate and independent. Meanwhile, Methodists from Great Britain migrated into Canada, and like the Presbyterians from Scotland, brought with them the several divisions of British Methodism. Mergers in 1874 and 1884 resulted in the formation of the Methodist Church, Canada.
Congregationalism in Canada originated with the acceptance of the British government’s offer of free land to New Englanders who would relocate in Nova Scotia. In 1759 several hundred immigrants founded new towns and gathered churches; the first was at Chester, and in 1761 the church at Liverpool was formed. In 1760 a colony began at Mungerville, New Brunswick; the first church was organized six years later. The first church in Newfoundland dates to 1777. From these and additional congregations a Congregational Union of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick was organized in 1846. In 1801 the British Congregationalists sent a missionary to organize a church in Quebec. That led to the formation of the Congregational Union of Ontario and Quebec, which merged with the older group in 1906. The newly formed Congregational Union of Canada received the Ontario Conference of the American-based United Brethren in Christ (now part of the United Methodist Church) in 1907.
The final partner in the 1925 merger, the General Council of Union Churches of Western Canada, was the product of the early proposed Plan of Union that led to the founding of the United Church of Canada. A draft proposal of a plan of union was issued in 1908. In November of that year, a new congregation that appeared in Saskatchewan accepted as the basis of its local organization the proposed plan. Others soon followed, and the Congregational, Methodist, and Presbyterian judica-tories allowed ministers to participate in the ecumenical experiment. In 1912 the several local congregations formed the General Council to handle practical matters and press forward in implementing the Plan of Union.
The merger in 1925 had a major dissenting voice. Approximately 30 percent of the Presbyterians refused to enter the merger, and continued as the Presbyterian Church in Canada. In 1926 a number of the Canadian congregations of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) affiliated with the new church. In 1968 the Canadian Conference of the Evangelical United Brethren, following a favorable vote and anticipating the merger of its parent body into the United Methodist Church, became part of the United Church of Canada. In 1943 a two-decade process of negotiation with the Anglican Church of Canada was initiated. It was joined by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The Plan of Union was adopted by the general commission representing the three churches in 1972, but three years later was rejected by the Anglican Church of Canada. The three bodies remain separate entities, though the UCC and the Anglican Church have several joint enterprises.
The union effected in 1925 originated with merger talks between Methodists and Presbyterians in 1899, joined three years later by the Congregationalists. In the proposed Basis of Union, written between 1904 and 1910, a new doctrinal statement was written, based in large part upon the statements of the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. It assumes a common affirmation of the Protestant faith and assumes a position between the classical Calvinistic and Arminian positions, leaving considerable latitude for disagreement on issues such as predestination, election, and God’s free grace to all persons.
The church is governed by a General Council that meets triennially. The national church is further divided into conferences and presbyteries. Local churches are administered by an official board. The UCC has retained membership in the Alliance of Reformed Churches (Presbyterian and Congregational), the World Methodist Council, the Canadian Council of Churches, and the World Council of Churches.
Membership
On December 31, 2006, the United Church of Canada reported 3,405 churches, approximately 1,500,000 members and adherents, 3,820 ordained clergy, and 4,500 ordered and lay ministry personnel. They have affiliated work in 39 countries.
Educational Facilities
Theological Colleges (for clergy education):
Atlantic School of Theology, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Centre for Christian Studies, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Dr. Jessie Saulteaux Resource Centre, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Emmanuel College, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Francis Sandy Theological Centre, Paris, Ontario, Canada.
Queen’s Theological College, Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
St. Andrew’s College, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
St. Stephen’s College, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
United Theological College, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
University of Winnipeg, Faculty of Theology, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Vancouver School of Theology, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Colleges and Universities
Huntington University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
Iona College, Windsor, Ontario, Canada.
St. Paul’s United College, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Victoria University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Westminster College, London, Ontario, Canada.
Periodicals
United Church Observer. • Mandate Magazine.
Sources
United Church of Canada. www.united-church.ca.
Grant, John Webster. The Canadian Experience of Church Union. Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1967.
Silcox, Claris Edwin. Church Union in Canada. New York: Institute of Social and Religious Research, 1933.
White, Peter Gordon, ed. Voices and Visions: 65 Years of The United Church of Canada. Toronto: United Church Publishing House, 1990.
United Church of Christ
700 Prospect Ave., Cleveland, OH 44115-1100
The United Church of Christ (UCC) was formed in 1957 by the merger of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church. The two uniting bodies were themselves products of mergers in the early twentieth century, and any account of the modern UCC must begin with a consideration of the four bodies which are now constituent parts of it: The Congregational Churches, the Christian Church, the Reformed Church in the United States, and the Evangelical Synod of North America.
THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES
Through the Congregational Churches, the United Church of Christ reaches back to the first decades of the British presence in North America. They were the fourth church to arrive in the colonies (behind the French Reformed Church, Roman Catholic Church, and the Church of England). Coming from England by way of Holland, the Pilgrims first arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1620. The Pilgrims were Separatists, Reformed in theology but believing strongly in the autonomous local congregation. The Puritans arrived a decade later, and for the next century they directed the New England settlement. The Puritans were congregationalists in that they placed most of the ecclesiastical power in the hands of the congregation, but also aligned those congregations to the colonial governments. They hoped to create a theocratic system and were intolerant of competing churches and religious groups. The single Pilgrim congregation at Plymouth was tolerated and eventually was absorbed into the larger body of Congregationalists, though the congregation itself eventually was lost to Unitarianism. Congregationalism was the established church of the New England colonies (except Rhode Island) until the Revolution, and remained established in Connecticut until 1818 and in Massachusetts until 1833.
The early Congregationalists were committed to education. They established Harvard University (1636) soon after their arrival, and several generations later as they spread through New England, they founded Yale (1701). These were but the first of a system of institutions of higher education that have made the Congregational Church a major intellectual force in American culture. In 1810 Congregationalists founded the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, which is not only looked upon as the parent of the nineteenth-century missionary thrust in American Protestantism, but which succeeded in taking Congregationalism around the world—to the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), China, India, Africa, and the Middle East.
During the early years of the nineteenth century, Congregationalists, just beginning to slip from their position as the largest church in the new land, led the crusade to build a Christian land. They initiated organizations and took leadership roles in various movements on behalf of the causes of peace, women, children, immigrants, and the poor, as well as the abolition of slavery. They created a number of social service centers, especially in the Northeast, where most of their strength was concentrated.
Through the early nineteenth century, Congregationalists had only formed statewide associations of churches, but the rapid spread of the church in the nineteenth century brought the call for a national organization. In 1852 a national council met for the first time and was soon meeting regularly every three years. In 1913, at a meeting of the triennial council in Kansas City, a new Congregational “platform” was adopted that included a preamble, a confession of faith, a form of polity, and a stand on wider fellowships.
Congregationalists have been tied together by a series of doctrinal statements beginning with the Cambridge Platform in 1648, which affirmed the Reformed theological heritage. The Confession of 1913 adopted at Kansas City declared the “steadfast allegiance of the churches composing this council to the faith which our fathers confessed.” But at the same time, the statement as a whole reflected the nineteenth-century theological trend usually called modernism. Some Congregational ministers and theological professors had become the major intellectual pioneers of modernist thought, which placed a great emphasis upon individualism and progress, while stressing God’s presence in the world over and against his transcendence, Christ’s humanity over and against his divinity, and social activism (the social gospel).
In 1931 the National Council of the Congregational Churches united with the Christian Church to form the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches.
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
The Christian Church that was to become part of the United Church of Christ (there were other groups with the same name that stemmed from similar influences) was the product of the revivals of the post-Revolutionary War period and of the new wave of democratic thinking. In 1792 James O’Kelly withdrew from the Methodist Episcopal Church and formed the Republican Methodist Church, rejecting the strict episcopal authority exercised by Bishop Francis Asbury. Methodist bishops have the power to appoint Methodist ministers to their congregations, and O’Kelly continually objected to Asbury’s appointments of him. Two years after leaving the Methodists, O’Kelly and his followers also moved against sectarian labels and resolved to be known as “Christians” only. A similar movement arose among Baptists in New England, where Abner Jones had decided that sectarian names and human creeds should be abandoned and that piety alone should be the test of Christian fellowship. He organized such a “Christian” fellowship in 1800 and was soon joined by others.
In 1819 various churches calling themselves “Christian” held a general conference in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. In 1833 a general convention was organized that in effect formed the Christian Church. The following year the church established a Christian Book Association. Concern for education led to the founding of Elon College in North Carolina. From 1854 to 1890, as a result of the forces that led to the Civil War, and occasioned by the adoption of an antislavery resolution by the general convention, the southern branch of the church separated itself from the general convention.
The general convention adopted no doctrinal statement but followed the central affirmations of Reformed Protestantism, stressing the authority of the Bible and salvation by grace through faith. Considerable variation was allowed on doctrinal matters, even on the sacraments. The Southern branch of the church tended to favor adult believers baptism (reflecting their Baptist heritage).
REFORMED CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES
German-speaking adherents of the Reformed Church came into the United States soon after the founding of Pennsylvania. By 1730 there were more than 15,000 people at least nominally members of the Reformed Church in Pennsylvania. By 1800 the number had grown to 40,000. They had come originally at William Penn’s invitation, but were spurred by various negative conditions in their homeland.
Soon after their arrival, these German believers took steps to organize churches. Short of ministers, they often appointed the local schoolteacher to hold services. One such, John Philip Boehm, eventually sought ordination in 1725 and financial support from the Dutch Reformed Church (which had a strong following in New York). That church sent Michael Schlatter to consolidate the scattered congregations into a denominational mold. In 1747 the clergy of these congregations formed the Coetus of the Reformed Ministerium of the Congregations of Pennsylvania. In 1793 the German Reformed Church in Pennsylvania and adjacent states reorganized as a Synod, independent of the Reformed Church in Holland.
In the mid-1880s the German Reformed Church in the United States was torn by a major controversy between the Mercersburg and the Old Reformed movements. The former, stimulated by the leadership of John Williamson Nevin (1803–1886), Philip Schaff (1819–1893), and their associates at the Reformed seminary that had been established at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, sought to oppose the inroads being made by revivalism (especially that of Charles G. Finney) and sectarianism. The Mercersburg theologians favored an altar-centered liturgy with responses and chants, ritual forms for the traditional church year, read prayers, and more formal garb for the ministers and choirs. They also stressed the authority of the synod over that of regional and congregational powers, and the minister’s authority in matters of local church order. The opponents of the Mercersburg perspective stood for pulpit-centered worship, congregational autonomy, and the control of the churches’order of worship in the hands of lay consistories.
The educational emphasis in the church first emerged in the formation of the seminary at Mercersburg (later moved to Lancaster, Pennsylvania) and the formation of a number of colleges—Heidelberg, Catawba, Hood, Franklin and Marshall, Ursinus, and Cedar Crest. Following the movement of German immigration communities, the church spread from Pennsylvania into twenty-one states and three Canadian provinces.
Mission work began in 1838 with the formation of the Board of Foreign Missions. For twenty-eight years this board united with the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions and then began to send its own missionaries to China, India, Japan, and the Middle East.
THE EVANGELICAL SYNOD OF NORTH AMERICA
In 1817 King Frederick William II (1797–1840) united the congregations in his realm, some of which had Lutheran and some of which had Reformed leanings, into a single Evangelical Church, the Church of the Prussian Union. He enforced one form of worship and one church government. Pietism and a more conciliatory spirit were encouraged, and a united front against the inroads of rationalism was created through the development of interconfessional Bible, missionary, and tract societies.
One of these societies, the Basel Missionary Society, sent 288 missionaries as pastors for America, beginning in 1833, in response to appeals from German-American immigrants in the Midwest. The first to arrive were Joseph A. Rieger (1811–1869) and George Wendelin Wall (1811–1867). In 1840 a group of German Evangelical ministers in the St. Louis, Missouri area met and formed Der Deutsche Evangelische Kirchenverein des Westens (the German Evangelical Church Society of the West). In 1866 the word “Kirchenverein” was changed to “Synod.” The society/synod made every effort to avoid rigid institutional organization and to eliminate the bureaucratic features usually associated with synodical bodies. Membership was to consist of ordained pastors, lay delegates, and advisory members. No effort was made at this time to enlist individual churches to the society, and it was explicitly stated that “neither the external nor the internal affairs of local congregations could be made the business of the society.”
Reflecting their dual Lutheran and Reformed heritage, catechetical instruction in these Evangelical churches typically used one of several catechisms that were being used in Germany, usually uniting elements of Luther’s Smaller Catechism with parts of the Heidelberg Catechism of the Reformed Church.
Contemporaneously with the formation of the Synod of the West, two other like synods were being formed. The United Synod of the Northwest served churches in northern Illinois and southern Michigan. The United Synod of the East stretched from New York to Ohio. As early as 1851, union talks were held between the three bodies. In 1872 they merged to form the German Evangelical Synod of North America (dropping “German” in 1927).
Like the Reformed Church in the United States and the Congregationalist Churches, the Evangelical Synod placed a strong emphasis upon education, particularly demanding an educated ministry. Eden Seminary was begun in 1850 and Elmhurst College in 1872. Parochial schools were attached to most congregations. The synod was also deeply involved in the revival of the deaconness movement in the last half of the nineteenth century. A deaconess hospital in St. Louis in 1853 spurred other healing efforts in the church, and hospitals were established in Cleveland, Ohio; Evansville, Indiana; Detroit, Michigan; and Chicago, Illinois.
No other German church body, save the Moravians, developed as extensive a missionary effort as did the Evangelical Synod. It formed missions to the American Indian and sent foreign missionaries to India and Honduras. Domestic missions included the Seaman’s Mission in Baltimore, Maryland; Caroline Mission in St. Louis; Back Bay Mission in Biloxi, Mississippi; and others in the Ozarks and on Madeline Island, Wisconsin.
The talks leading toward the 1934 merger of the Evangelical Synod and the Reformed Church began in 1929. The new Evangelical and Reformed Church (E&R Church) was in place only a short time before talks began with the newly formed General Council of the Congregational-Christian Churches.
THE UNITED CHURCH OF CHRIST
As early as 1941, the Committee on Church Relations of the E&R Church held informal conversations with the corresponding committee of the Congregational-Christian Churches. By 1944 a common procedure was agreed upon for dealing with a formal basis of union and a uniting General Synod was planned for 1950. This, however, was postponed for nearly a decade due to legal challenges within the Congregational-Christian Churches. The formal beginning of the United Church of Christ was the Uniting General Synod in Cleveland in June 1957.
The United Church of Christ adopted a constitution in 1961 that provides for a General Synod as its chief policymaking body. The synod is composed of ministerial and lay delegates from the conferences. The delegates elect an executive council that acts between meetings of the synod. Under the General Synod are a variety of boards and agencies, the most important being the Board of Homeland Ministries, the Board of World Ministries, and the Pension Board of the United Church (all of which continue older organizations and are separately incorporated).
The polity of the church included elements of both congregational and presbyterial styles of government. Local churches are guaranteed the right to own their own property, call their own ministers, and withdraw unilaterally from the denomination. But the associations, in which clergy and denominations hold their denominational standing, can withdraw that standing on their own initiative. Conferences, the General Synod, and instrumentalities can advise local churches and individual members, but their statements and decisions are not binding.
Geographically, the church is divided into 38 conferences (with an additional conference serving Hungarian-American congregations), and each conference is further divided into associations, each related to the other and the General Synod in a covenantal fashion. Local councils or consistories, variously composed of the pastor, a moderator or president, and other officers, govern local churches.
The statement of faith, adopted by the General Synod of the United Church of Christ in 1959, and rephrased in doxological form in 1981, is open to a variety of interpretations, but the Reformed theological background of most ministerial leadership is still evident.
The United Church of Christ has a reputation as one of the most socially liberal and active of American church bodies. At the national level, it has identified with numerous concerns related to peace and justice issues. It is also theologically liberal, continuing its modernist heritage, and maintains a wide variety of theological perspectives. It is broadly ecumenical, yet has developed a variety of specific official partnership commitments to the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); the Evangelical Church Union (East and West Germany); the Pentecostal Church of Chile; the Presbyterian Church, Republic of Korea; and the United Church of Christ (Philippines). The UCC is a member of the National Council of Churches, the World Council of Churches, and the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (Presbyterian and Congregational).
Membership
The church in 2006 reported 1.2 million members, 5,700 congregations, and 10,270 clergy/ministers.
Educational Facilities
Colleges and Universities
Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin.
Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota.
Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina.
Cedar Crest College, Allentown, Pennsylvania.
Deaconess College of Nursing, St. Louis, Missouri.
Defiance College, Defiance, Ohio.
Dillard University, New Orleans, Louisiana.
Doane College, Crete, Nebraska.
Drury College, Springfield, Missouri.
Elmhurst College, Elmhurst, Illinois.
Elon University, Elon, North Carolina.
Fisk University, Nashville, Tennessee.
Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Grinnel College, Grinnell, Iowa.
Heidelberg College, Tiffin, Ohio.
Hood College, Frederick, Maryland.
Hawaii Loa College, Kenehoe, Hawaii.
Huston-Tillotson College, Austin, Texas.
Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois.
Lakeland College, Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
Lemoyne-Owen College, Memphis, Tennessee.
Northland College, Ashland, Wisconsin.
Olivet College, Olivet, Michigan.
Pacific University, Forest Grove, Oregon.
Ripon College, Ripon, Wisconsin.
Rocky Mountain College, Billings, Montana.
Talladega College, Talladega, Alabama.
Tougaloo College, Tougaloo, Mississippi.
Ursinus College, Collegeville, Pennsylvania.
Westminister College, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Seminaries:
Andover Newton Theological Seminary, Newton Center, Massachusetts.
Bangor Theological Seminary, Bangor, Maine.
Chicago Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois.
Eden Theological Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri.
Hartford Seminary, Hartford, Connecticut.
Harvard University School of Divinity, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Howard University School of Divinity, Washington, D.C.
Interdenominational Theological Center, Atlanta, Georgia.
Pacific School of Religion, Berkeley, California.
Lancaster Theological Seminary, Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Seminario Evangelico de Puerto Rico, Hato Rey, Puerto Rico.
United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, New Brighton, Minnesota.
Union Theological Seminary, New York, New York.
Vanderbilt University Divinity School, Nashville, Tennessee.
Yale Divinity School, New Haven, Connecticut.
Periodicals
United Church News • Prism
Sources
United Church of Christ. www.ucc.org.
Bailey, J. Martin, and W. Evan Golder, eds. The UCC @ 50: Our History, Our Future. Cleveland, OH: United Church of Christ, 2007.
Dunn, David, and Lowell H. Zuck. A History of the Evangelical and Reformed Church. New York: The Pilgrim Press, 1990.
Gunnemann, Louis H. The Shaping of the United Church of Christ. New York: Thomas Nelson, 1962.
Horton, Douglas. The United Church of Christ. New York: T. Nelson, 1962.
Starkey, Marion L. The Congregational Way. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1966.
Youngs, J. William T. The Congregationalist. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998.