is that you?

Carson Reed has a nice post on the recent decision by the United Church of Christ to affirm same-sex marriages. My wife had a similar experience to his: one of her uncles, a devout Baptist who has only the vaguest knowledge of our religious affiliation, thought that we belonged to the UCC and called in shocked amazement that we belonged to such a group. She cleared up his confusion with a simple, "No, that's not us."

Historically speaking, though, the matter is not quite so simple. There is a connection, albeit a very distant one. As most people familiar with the history of the Stone-Campbell Movement know, Barton Stone and John T. Johnson (representing Alexander Campbell) met in Lexington, Kentucky, on 1 January 1832, and with a handshake brought together Stone's "Christians" and Campbell's "Reformers" in unity. In actuality, the process was much more gradual, but that's another post.

Anyway, not all of Stone's followers went along with the merger, considering their disagreements with the teachings of Alexander Campbell to be too severe to set aside. Geographically, these Stoneite churches were located in Ohio and into New England. As the UCC website puts it:

"The majority of Stone's followers did not join Campbell and instead reaffirmed their ties with the original Christian Connection founded by [James] O'Kelley, [Abner] Jones and [Elias] Smith."

After a period of decline in the late 19th century brought on by sectionalism and other matters, in 1931 the remnants of the Christian Connection joined with the Congregational Churches. In 1957, the group then known as the "Congregational Christian Churches" became one of the founding organizations of the UCC.

So, there you have it. Churches of Christ have distant (yea, very distant) cousins in the UCC.