The United Church of Christ came into being in 1957 with the union of two
Protestant denominations: the Evangelical and Reformed Church an the
Congregational Christian Churches. Each of these was, in turn, the
result of a union of two earlier denominations.
The Congregational
Churches were organized when the Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation (1620) and
the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1629) acknowledged their
essential unity in the Cambridge Platform of 1648. The Reformed Church
in the United States traced its beginnings to congregations of German
settles in Pennsylvania founded from 1725 on. Later, its ranks were
swelled by Reformed folk from Switzerland and other countries.
The Christian Churches sprang up in the late 1700s and early 1800s in
reaction to the theological and organizational rigidity of the Methodist,
Presbyterian, and Baptist churches of the time.
The Evangelical Synod of North America traced its beginning to an
association of German Evangelical pastors in Missouri. This
association, founded in 18409, reflected the 1817 union of Lutheran and
Reformed churches in Germany.
Through the years, members of other groups such as Native Americans,
African Americans, Asian Americans, Volga Germans, Armenians, Hungarians,
and Hispanic Americans have joined with the four earlier groups. Thus
the United Church of Christ celebrates and continues a wide variety of
traditions in its common life.
