The United Church of Christ came into being in 1957 with the union of
two Protestant denominations: the Evangelical and Reformed Church
and 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 Colony (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 settlers in Pennsylvania founded from 1725 on. The Reformed
people can look back in their heritage to the Swiss-German reforms
of the 16th Century.
      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 beginnings to an association of German Evangelical
pastors in Missouri. This association, founded in 1840, 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.