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 Germany settlers 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 later 1700s and early 1800s in reaction to what they considered 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 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 group.  Thus, the United Church of Christ celebrates and continues a wide variety of traditions in its common life. 

The United Church of Christ embraces a theological heritage that affirms the Bible as the authoritative witness to the Word of God, the creeds of the ecumenical councils, and the confessions of the Reformation. The UCC has roots in the "covenantal" tradition—meaning there is no centralized authority or hierarchy that can impose any doctrine or form of worship on its members. Christ alone is Head of the church. We seek a balance between freedom of conscience and accountability to the apostolic faith. The UCC therefore receives the historic creeds and confessions of our ancestors as testimonies, but not tests of the faith. For links to some of those testimonies, please visit our denomination’s webpage at www.ucc.org