UCC HistoryWhile it's not easy being first, the UCC has led in applying compassionate action.

Our roots go back 2,000 years, to a compassionate and welcoming Jesus who changed the world through parables, metaphor and new ways of thinking; his personal courage inspired others to act. In the UCC, we take that same stance, taking the lead in applying a compassionate and welcoming perspective to each era’s unique needs for social justice.

Roots of the UCC

The UCC Church was formed in 1957 from the union of two churches: the Congregational Christian Church and the Evangelical and Reformed Church. Between them, they share this history of courage and compassionate faith:

• In 1620, seeking spiritual freedom, forebears of the United Church of Christ left Europe for the New World-later generations know them as the Pilgrims. Their pastor, John Robinson, urges them as they depart to keep their minds open to new ways. God, he says, “has yet more light and truth to break forth out of his holy Word.”
• In 1620, the Pilgrims published the first book on the North American continent, The Bay Psalms Book.
• The Congregational churches founded by the Pilgrims and other spiritual reformers spread rapidly through New England. In an early experiment in democracy, each congregation is self-governing and elects its own ministers. The Congregationalists aim to create a model for a just society lived in the presence of God. Their leader, John Winthrop, prays that “we shall be as a city upon a hill ... the eyes of all people upon us.”
• The UCC values education for all people. Active in establishing the first public schools, congregational churches also founded Harvard (1636), Yale (1701), and Dartmouth (1769) as well as many more colleges, including historically black colleges, six of which remain affiliated with the UCC to this day.
• In 1700, forebears of the UCC were the first mainline church to take a stand against slavery. On June 24, Samuel Sewall, a Puritan, speaks out against slavery and writes the first anti-slavery pamphlet in America.
• No tax on tea! That was the decision on December 16, 1773, when 5,000 angry colonists gathered at the Old South Meeting House to protest a tax and started a revolution with the Boston Tea Party. The Old South Meeting House (Congregational church) was the largest building in colonial Boston. African-American poet Phillis Wheatley and statesman Benjamin Franklin were members of Old South’s congregation. As a meeting place and a haven for free speech and assembly, Old South Meeting House has been in continuous use for over 250 years.
• In 1777, American patriots smuggled the Liberty Bell up from Philadelphia, just ahead of the British Army. They hid the Liberty Bell under the floor of the Second Zion Reformed Church in Allentown, PA to keep the British from melting it down to make cannons.
• In 1785 Lemuel Haynes became the first African American person to be ordained to preach in a mainline Protestant denomination and the first to receive an honorary Master of Arts degree.
• On September 15, 1853, Antoinette Brown, was the first woman ordained to ministry in the modern era.
• Congregational Christian and Evangelical and Reformed Church leaders already had begun private conversations about union when German Evangelical Church pastor, Martin Niemoeller was incarcerated in Nazi Germany for preaching the Christian gospel from his prominent Berlin pulpit. He boldly opposed the persecution of Jews. On Christmas Eve, 1938, United States Catholics and Protestants, including Congregational Christian and Evangelical and Reformed leaders, sent a message to the German people. A subtle shift in emphasis had gradually crept among the churches from a desire to evangelize the world to a concern for the needs of human society.
• In 1943, theologian Reinhold Niebuhr preached a sermon that introduces to the world to the now famous Serenity Prayer, which the Alcoholics Anonymous has widely adopted: “God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”

The Modern-Day UCC

Today, the mission of giving hope and a voice to those marginalized by society continues. Without the self-correcting filter of history, some of the issues are still controversial today, but that is no reason to avoid them. Instead, controversy is cause to take a thoughtful, compassionate stand, as these issues show:

• In 1959, southern television stations imposed a news blackout on the growing civil rights movement, and Martin Luther King Jr. asked the United Church of Christ to intervene. Everett Parker of the UCC’s Office of Communication organized churches and won a Federal court ruling that the airwaves are public, not private property. The decision led to more awareness of the Montgomery bus boycott against racial double standards, and a national focus on equal rights.
• In 1972, the UCC ordains the Rev. William R. Johnson in June of 1972—the first openly gay person in history to become a Christian minister. Six years later, the first openly lesbian minister, the Rev. Anne Holmes, is ordained. From the 1970s on, the UCC General Synod supports equal rights for homosexual citizens, and calls on congregations to welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered members.
• In 1973 the UCC General Synod flies delegates to Coachella Valley as a public witness to the plight of farm workers after being notified by Cesar Chavez that the Teamsters Union had unleashed a campaign of violence against the strikers, which almost claimed the life of one of the workers who was nearly beaten to death.
• In 1985, the UCC recognized the dual potential role of genetic engineering, creating dramatic advances in the alteration of the human condition, while opening new avenues in corruptibility of power. The General Synod voted to monitor, but also support, this new technology.

Recently passed resolutions of the UCC General Synod include a 2001 vote for more humane direction for economic globalization, and 2005 votes to increase environmental education and action, support “fair trade products,” be an “accessible to all” church, and save Social Security from privatization (a particularly insightful view now that an economic crisis has made people rethink the Government’s oversight role).

Some of these issues will remain controversial for years. The UCC church itself has even been in the news recently through the more controversial speeches of a Chicago UCC pastor, and ex-pastor to Barack Obama. But through it all, the focus of the UCC remains-to open our minds in new ways, to act with courageous compassion, because God has more truth and light to break forth.

"Never place a period where God has placed a comma"

Sources of Information

• UCC Firsts
• Extended history of the UCC
• Resolutions of the UCC