CCCC Heritage: Evangelical & Reformed Church

Alwyn York, Conference Historian

The presence of churches with an Evangelical and Reformed background in the CCCC is a fairly recent development. The Conference was formed in 1948, and it was not until the early 1990’s that a number of E & R churches began to join. Since then there has been a steady influx of churches from this background into the Conference. There are now forty-four churches whose roots are in the Evangelical & Reformed Church who belong to the CCCC. (I am indebted to Scott Meyer-Kukan, President of the Evangelical and Reformed Historical Society, for this information. He has done extensive research on the movement of churches with an E & R background from the United Church of Christ into other denominations.)

In the early years of the CCCC most churches with an Evangelical & Reformed background would not have felt an affinity for the Conference. The 4C’s, for the most part, was originally made up of Congregational churches, and these churches were largely from a Yankee background. (The German Congregational churches, the subject of my last article, were a small minority within the national denomination.) The roots of the Congregational churches went back to the early English settlement of New England. Many of their churches west of New England were founded by transplanted New Englanders. English was their native language from the beginning.

In contrast, the Evangelical and Reformed Church was united by the bond of German identity. The E & R church was an ethnic immigrant denomination, and like all immigrant churches, its people sometimes struggled with assimilation into American culture. There would be division within churches between those who were eager to adopt American ways and those who were concerned to maintain their ethnic identity. The question of how long to retain German as the language of worship and teaching was an issue for each congregation. Even after the transition to English, many church members remained concerned to uphold their German heritage.

The form of church government was another issue that separated the E & R churches from the CCCC. The autonomy of each local congregation was a defining point of identity for Congregationalists. The congregational from of church government was unfamiliar to the E & R churches.  Their denominational structure was similar to the Presbyterian system.

The entrance of E & R churches into the 4C’s was largely an unintended consequence of the merger that formed the United Church of Christ. After the Evangelical and Reformed Church joined with the Congregational Churches in 1957 to form the new denomination, E & R people began to become accustomed to associating with Congregationalists and seeing them as brethren.

The emergence of the Biblical Witness movement in the United Church of Christ and the growing frustration of Biblical Witness pastors and churches as they sought reform in that denomination has been an especially significant factor in the entry of E & R churches into the 4C’s. As it became clear that a significant return to biblical standards was not likely to happen at a denominational level in the UCC, many Biblical Witness pastors and churches started looking for alternatives. Congregationalism was not part of the heritage of those in the Biblical Witness Fellowship from the E & R tradition, but the presence of friends they had known from this movement helped them feel at home in the CCCC. Since they see our Conference as standing strongly for the biblical principles their denomination seems to be abandoning, the CCCC continues to be an attractive alternative for those from an E & R background.