About the United Church of Christ (UCC)

The United Church of Christ is considered by some to be the greatest achievement of the twentieth century ecumenical movement, a movement to bring visible unity to various Christian denominations.

The UCC joined two contrasting predecessor bodies, each of which had merged two other denominations. The motto of the United Church of Christ, "That They All May Be One, "reflects its distinctiveness as a united and uniting church.

The UCC itself is a river fed by four denominational streams:

The German Reformed Church -
out of which Corinth came - with ties to the Swiss/German Protestant reformation led by the followers of sixteenth century reformers Ulrich Zwingli and John Calvin. A wave of German immigration to the new world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries flowed mostly through New York to Pennsylvania before some settlers sought new land in the fertile river valleys of North Carolina.

The German Evangelical Church -
which merged in Germany the Reformed and Lutheran traditions in 1817. Immigrants from Germany in the nineteenth century were known as "Evangelical" instead of "Reformed" or "Lutheran," and settled mostly in the Midwest.

The Congregational Churches -
descendants of the Mayflower Pilgrims who sought religious freedom and settled in New England before branching out across the United States.

The Christian Churches -
part of the "restoration" movement c. 1800 which sought to restore the simplicity of the New Testament church and disavowed any denominational label (Presbyterian, Methodist, etc.) except just "Christian."

The Congregational and Christian churches merged in 1931, and the Evangelical and Reformed synods joined in 1934.  Almost immediately, negotiations began that resulted in the UCC merger in 1957.

Today the UCC includes 1.2 million members across the country, divided into thirty-eight "conferences." National headquarters are in Cleveland, Ohio. The Southern Conference includes all of North Carolina and southeastern Virginia, with offices in Graham, North Carolina.

The Southern Conference includes three associations – Eastern Virginia, Eastern North Carolina, and Western North Carolina. The latter has offices in Salisbury, North Carolina.

The UCC tries to balance the concerns of a "congregational polity" (church government system which gives freedom and authority to the local church) and a "connectional polity" (church government system which recognizes the value of accountability to the wider church). Ministers are ordained by the association, but hold membership in the local church. Ministers are called by the local church and remain in that congregation as long as both pastor and church wish to continue the relationship.

Because of its diverse background, the UCC includes churches of many different races, worship styles, theological emphases, and distinctives. Each local church is unique, and one needs to get to know a particular local church in order to find out of it can be a place of mutual ministry for you and your family.

Corinth is a member congregation of Faithful and Welcoming Churches (FWC) of the United Church of Christ (www.faithfulandwelcoming.org), a coalition of UCC pastors and churches who consider themselves Evangelical, Conservative, Orthodox, or Traditional (ECOT).

Faithful and Welcoming Churches strive to be:

• Faithful... to God our Father and Creator, to Jesus Christ, our Lord and only Savior, and to the Holy Spirit
• Faithful... to the Bible as our ultimate authority for faith and practice
• Faithful... to the apostolic faith declared by the Church across the years and around the world and reaffirmed in our historic traditions
• Faithful... to the preservation of the family, and to the practice and proclamation of human sexuality as God's gift for marriage between a man and a woman
• Welcoming... to all, as we seek through repentance and faith to do the will of God
• Welcoming... to fresh insight from the Scriptures that is consistent with our commitment to biblical authority
• Welcoming... to new ideas of how our congregations may experience health and growth to transform our world through the gospel of Jesus Christ