United and uniting churches are churches formed from the merger or other form of union of two or more different Protestant denominations.
Perhaps the oldest example of a united church is found in Germany, where the Evangelical Church in Germany is a federation of Lutheran, United and Reformed churches, a union dating back to 1817 in some parts of Germany (see Prussian Union). The first union was at a synod in Idstein to form the Protestant Church in Nassau in August 1817, commemorated in naming the church of Idstein Unionskirche 100 years later.
Around the world, each united or uniting church comprises a different mix of predecessor denominations. Trends are visible, however, as most united and uniting churches have one or more predecessors with heritage in the Reformed tradition (either Presbyterian, Congregationalist, or both) and many are members of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches.
Read more about United And Uniting Churches: Conciliar Movement, United and Uniting Churches Around The World
Famous quotes containing the words united, uniting and/or churches:
“There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.... The United States does not concede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union.”
—Gerald R. Ford (b. 1913)
“If the Union is now dissolved it does not prove that the experiment of popular government is a failure.... But the experiment of uniting free states and slaveholding states in one nation is, perhaps, a failure.... There probably is an “irrepressible conflict” between freedom and slavery. It may as well be admitted, and our new relations may as be formed with that as an admitted fact.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“A few years ago, the liberal churches complained that the Calvinistic church denied to them the name of Christian. I think the complaint was confession; a religious church would not complain.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)