United Church of Christ

The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination, primarily in the Reformed and Congregational tradition, with historical confessional roots in the Reformed, Congregational and Lutheran traditions. The United Church of Christ is in historical continuation of the General Council of Congregational Christian churches founded under the influence of New England Puritanism. The Evangelical and Reformed Church and the General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches united in 1957 to form the UCC. These two denominations, which were themselves the result of earlier unions, had their roots in Congregational, Christian, Evangelical, and Reformed denominations. At the end of 2014, the UCC's 5,116 congregations claimed 979,239 members, primarily in the United States.

The UCC maintains full communion with other mainline Protestant denominations. Many of its congregations choose to practice open communion. The denomination places high emphasis on participation in worldwide interfaith and ecumenical efforts. The national settings of the UCC have historically favored liberal views on social issues, such as civil rights, LGBT rights, women's rights, and abortion rights. However, United Church of Christ congregations are independent in matters of doctrine and ministry and may not necessarily support the national body's theological or moral stances. It is self-described as "an extremely pluralistic and diverse denomination".

Church of Christ

Church of Christ may refer to:

United and uniting churches

United and uniting churches are churches formed from the merger or other form of union of two or more different Protestant denominations.

Historically, unions of Protestant churches were enforced by the state, usually in order to have a stricter control over the religious sphere of its people, but also other organizational reasons. As modern Christian ecumenism progresses, unions between various Protestant traditions are becoming more and more common, resulting in a growing number of united and uniting churches. Some of the recent major examples are the United Protestant Church of France (2013) and the Protestant Church in the Netherlands (2004). As mainline Protestantism shrinks in Europe and North America due to the rise of secularism, Reformed and Lutheran denominations merge, often creating large nationwide denominations. The phenomenon is much less common among evangelical, nondenominational and charismatic churches as new ones arise and plenty of them remain independent of each other.