Musings on UCC History and Identity
At a recent Race + Equity meeting we discussed the role of identity in helping to ground and sustain us on the long path towards an anti-racist beloved kindom. One realm of shared identity is that of our UCC denomination. Nancy Donny, one of our members and a former pastor, offered this to the wider community to help us learn/remember/ take comfort in the history of our denomination.
There are two things to keep in mind when making generalizations about our UCC history:
We are a “new” denomination, created in 1957. We were formed by a uniting of two older denominations, the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches, which were formed from even earlier denominations. This makes it hard for us to say what we, the UCC, did in the distant past, since “we” were actually four different groups.
In the UCC, no ruling body or person (such as a bishop) can dictate any doctrine onto individual congregations. Each church is free to worship in its own way, although it is supposed to hold guidance from the General Synod, other congregations, and other covenanted ministries in high regard. This means, again, that it is difficult to say what “the UCC” has done, because some congregations may have worked hard for racial justice, while others may have left that issue on a very back burner.
That said, we, both as the United Church of Christ and as its four predecessor denominations, do have a long history of working towards eradicating systemic and institutional racism.
Congregationalists were among the first Americans to take a stand against slavery. In 1700, the Rev. Samuel Sewall wrote the first anti-slavery pamphlet in America, "The Selling of Joseph.” This laid a foundation for the abolitionist movement a century later.
In 1785, Lemuel Haynes was the first Black American ordained by a Protestant denomination, New England Congregationalists. For decades, he served mostly-white congregations while writing in favor of freedom for all and for an integrated United States.
In 1839, a group of enslaved Africans broke free while being taken around Cuba aboard the schooner Amistad. They tried to sail the ship back to Africa, but were captured by a US Navy ship off the coast of Long Island, charged with mutiny, and threatened with a return to slavery. Connecticut Congregationalists formed the Amistad Committee, which funded their legal defense and eventual return to Africa (after winning a favorable decision from the US Supreme Court).
The Amistad Committee led to more abolitionist organizations: in 1846, Lewis Tappan, an Amistad Committee leader, founded the American Missionary Association, the first abolitionist organization with integrated leadership. After the Civil War, the AMA went on to found schools, churches, libraries and universities for the newly freed African Americans of the South.
Many congregations and individuals from our predecessor denominations worked for the abolitionist movement, helped to staff the Underground Railroad, and worked hard for full enfranchisement for all during the late 19th and 20th centuries.
Following the creation of the UCC in 1957, many of its clergy and laity marched, organized, preached, and worked in hundreds of ways to support the Civil Rights Movement. In 1959, e.g., Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., asked Everett Parker of the UCC Office of Communication for help in preventing television news blackouts about the Civil Rights Movement in the South. Parker organized UCC churches and brought a lawsuit against the stations. This resulted in a federal court decision that the broadcast air waves are public, not private, property, which led to more inclusive hiring and reporting in television and radio.
In 1993, The Nineteenth General Synod called upon UCC congregations in all its settings to be a true multiracial and multicultural church. In 2003 General Synod 24 adopted a resolution calling for the UCC to be an anti-racist church, affirming that "racism is rooted in a belief of the superiority of whiteness and bestows benefits, unearned rights, rewards, opportunities, advantages, access, and privilege on Europeans and European descendants."
In 2018 Sacred Conversations to End Racism (SC2ER), a Restorative Racial Justice Journey curriculum, was created to address and dismantle racism within the Christian Church and society. There is much, much more to tell about our UCC history regarding anti-racism work, stories to fill libraries. These struggles and accomplishments are worth remembering and celebrating, as we journey forth to continue the work in the present and future.
Sources:
Theology and Identity: Traditions, Movements, and Polity in the United Church of Christ (Charles Hambrick-Stowe and Daniel L. Johnson)
http://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/unitedchurchofchrist/legacy_url/1175/shortcourse.pdf?1418424619;