Ecumenical, union and community churches

Heritage

A family of pattern rather than descent. New England towns began federating dwindling parishes across denominational lines in the early 1900s — two memberships, one congregation, one budget. The community-church movement organized nationally in the International Council of Community Churches, formed in 1950 by the merger of a Black council and a white one — an integrated body before Brown v. Board. And the Metropolitan Community Churches, founded by Troy Perry in 1968, organized ministry among LGBTQ people whom the era's churches excluded.

Theological family

Intentionally broad: statements of faith kept minimal so that two or more traditions can share one congregation; the family runs from evangelical community churches to progressive federated parishes.

Who decides what

Congregational almost by definition: federated churches maintain dual denominational memberships under one roof; councils and fellowships serve their member congregations and command none.

What a first-time visitor would find

A recognizably Protestant service in most cases, with the blend negotiated locally: a federated parish may fold two liturgical inheritances into one order; communion is commonly open, since the table is the point.

What it has always cared about

Unity practiced locally rather than negotiated nationally; hospitality; the survival wisdom of small towns, where two half-empty buildings become one full one; and, in the MCC stream, ministry to people other churches had turned away.

Its gift to the wider church

A century of proof that the walls between traditions are lower on the ground than on paper — the ecumenical movement's ideas, tested weekly in ordinary congregations that simply went ahead and shared a roof.

Commonly confused with

With nondenominational churches — a federated or community church may be deeply denominationally connected, twice over; "community church" as a fashionable name with the actual movement; and the MCC with Methodist bodies whose abbreviations look similar in data.

Range of views inside it

By design: the family exists to hold range, from evangelical to progressive, and a single federated congregation may span it internally.

Where Ecumenical, union and community churches churches are on the map

373 Ecumenical, union and community churches congregations appear on The Church Map, across 44 states.

• Texas — 28
• California — 21
• Florida — 21
• New York — 18
• Tennessee — 18
• Wisconsin — 18
• Michigan — 17
• Georgia — 16
• North Carolina — 15
• Pennsylvania — 15

Bodies and networks in this family

• Metropolitan Community Churches — congregational — 114 US congregations (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020)
• International Council of Community Churches — congregational — 57 US congregations (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020)
• Federated or union congregation — mixed
• Interdenominational congregation — congregational

Moments that formed this family

• 1908 — The Federal Council of Churches

  Thirty-three denominations — Methodist, Baptist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Reformed, and the Black Methodist and Baptist churches among them — formed the Federal Council of Churches in Philadelphia in 1908, adopting a Social Creed on labor conditions in its first act. It was the first standing body through which American denominations spoke together.

  For the first time since the colonies, the divided churches built themselves a common table — imperfect, argumentative, and permanent.

• 1950 — The National Council of Churches

  Twenty-nine denominations — mainline Protestant, Orthodox, and the historic Black churches — merged the Federal Council and seven other cooperative agencies into the National Council of Churches at Cleveland in 1950. Its education division produced the Revised Standard Version and later the NRSV, the Bibles of half of American Protestantism.