Religion: The Uniting Church

At Oberlin College in Ohio, a new denomination of U.S. Protestantism was being born. The United Church of Christ began to come into being two years ago in Cleveland (TIME, July 1, 1957), when the General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches (membership: 1,401,565) agreed to merge with the Evangelical and Reformed Church (membership: 807,280). Working out an organic union between the two bodies is no simple matter; in Congregationalism each local church is entirely autonomous, whereas the Evangelical and Reformed Church is set up in the European tradition of pyramidal administrative authority....

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