National Association of Congregational

Christian Churches
The National Association of Congregational Christian
Churches (NACCC) is an association of about 400 churches National Association of
providing fellowship for and services to churches from the Congregational Christian
Congregational tradition. The Association maintains its national Churches
office in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. The body Abbreviation NACCC
was founded in 1955 by former clergy and laypeople of the Classification Protestant
Congregational Christian Churches in response to that
denomination's pending merger with the Evangelical and Orientation Mainline
Reformed Church to form the United Church of Christ in 1957. Polity Congregational

The NACCC has congregations in 39 states, with concentrations Headquarters Oak Creek,
in California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Wisconsin
Michigan, and Wisconsin.[2] Origin 1955
Branched from General Council
History of
Congregational
The NACCC belongs to the American Congregationalist tradition, Christian
which originated as part of the English Puritan movement, which Churches
was strongly influenced by Calvinism. By the early 20th century,
Congregations 400
Congregational churches affiliated with the National Council of
Congregational Churches and participated in that body's 1931 Members 35,000 (2020)[1]
merger with the General Convention of the Christian Church, Official website NACC (http://ww
which created the General Council of Congregational Christian
w.naccc.org)
Churches. The churches that eventually formed the NACCC
opposed subsequent initiatives to merge the Congregational
Christian Churches with the Evangelical and Reformed Church to form
the United Church of Christ.[3]

Central to their opposition was the belief that the merger would create
unwieldy bureaucracies that might impinge upon the historic freedom of
the local congregation, one of the few ideas that have united this otherwise
theologically diverse fellowship. These concerns drove activists, beginning
after World War II when talks between the national entities of the two
merging denominations reached the point of preliminary organization
planning, to persuade local Congregational Christian churches to refuse
their support to this movement. These clergy and laypeople first organized First Congregational Church,
at a meeting in Evanston, Illinois, in 1947 to express their concerns about an NACCC church in Ceredo,
not only the possible loss of autonomy on behalf of individual churches, West Virginia.
but also their contentions that the General Council of the CC Churches
possessed no authority to enter its churches into any legal union with
another denomination. Other related issues were control over missionary funds and a possible diversion of
some of them into ministerial pension annuities; fears of imposition of creeds, confessions, and neo-
orthodox theology onto their ministers (who generally favored a 19th-century liberal, tolerant outlook); and
ownership of church property in cases of congregations withdrawing from the proposed UCC.
When the CC national General Council adopted a "Basis of Union" with the E&R Church in 1948, the
dissenters organized into two groups: the Committee for the Continuation of Congregational Christian
Churches, formed by the pastor of Los Angeles' Congregational Church of the Messiah, Harry R. Butman;
and the League to Uphold Congregational Principles, led by a Hartford, Connecticut pastor, Henry Gray.
These two groups conducted an extensive pamphlet and church-meeting campaign to forestall the merger
process, despite the General Council's and the E&R General Synod's revision of the Basis in favor of
explicit congregational autonomy. Their counterpart on the pro-UCC side of the denominational merger
debate was the then-current CC general minister and president, Douglas Horton.

When these efforts only produced a small minority of sympathizers, some "continuing" clergy and
laypeople in a Brooklyn congregation decided to take legal action, suing CC moderator Helen Kenyon in
1949, in order to place a legal restraint on the process. Some years later, after appellate courts reversed the
lower court's finding in favor of the merger opponents, the activists turned instead to forming a new
fellowship, with no legal claims to any portion of the assets of the majority.

Representatives from 102 U.S. Congregational Christian churches met at a Detroit hotel in 1955 to
organize the NACCC as an alternative to joining the UCC. Because the existing denominational
organization was being transferred to the UCC, the NACCC started out without any funds, staff, or
organizational structure. Dr. Harry Johnson of Idaho, who previously been superintendent of the
Intermountain Conference of the Congregational Christian Churches, became its first Executive Secretary
in 1956. He was succeeded in 1959 by the Rev. Neil Swanson, minister of a church in Wauwatosa,
Wisconsin. Under Swanson's leadership, the first denominational office was established in Milwaukee. The
NACCC moved into its own newly-built headquarters building in Oak Creek in 1973.[4]

All Congregational-heritage colleges except for Piedmont College in Georgia approved the UCC merger,
which finally took place in 1957. Piedmont joined the UCC in the early 2000s while keeping its NACCC
affiliation.

Current ethos and practices

During the 1960s through the 1990s, the NACCC slowly built a network of, or formed alliances with,
voluntarily-supported missions and agencies to replace those lost in the UCC merger. One distinction
between the NACCC and UCC is the former body's refusal to engage in political activity on behalf of its
constituent churches. By its governing ethos, the NACCC refrains from taking political positions of any
kind.

The NACCC's commitment to local church autonomy is so pronounced, that it has adopted a highly
unusual measure in its national legislative process. Congregations taking exception to measures passed by
the NACCC's annual meeting may seek a referendum vote in order to have the legislation vetoed. This
appears to be a unique practice not found in any other American Protestant denomination.

In terms of the ministry, the NACCC, again, respects local autonomy to the point of refusing to keep a
membership list for those clergy serving its churches, although the denomination's annual yearbook
provides a list of known pastors for convenient reference. Ordination by a local church is sufficient for
recognition by this tradition; clergy from other congregations may participate in the ordination service at
their discretion, but their presence conveys no special authority over the procedure, as is the case with an
association and/or conference in the UCC.

Regional associations in the NACCC are strictly for the purpose of fellowship and mutual edification; like
the national entity, they have no authority whatsoever over their member congregations. Also, unlike the
UCC, there is no necessary relationship between a regional association and the NACCC. In fact, a
congregation can belong to the NACCC without simultaneously belonging to a regional group. By
contrast, in the UCC, a church must hold membership in the association covering its geographic territory
before participating in the affairs of its conference and the General Synod. Further, unlike the UCC where
congregations have no direct representation in the General Synod, each NACCC congregation may send its
clergy and delegate to the national annual meeting.

Congregations have the authority to determine their own criteria for ordination and to ordain clergy and are
autonomous on congregational positions.[5][6] Congregations may determine their own teaching on
marriage and human sexuality; some congregations choose to perform same-sex marriages while others
define marriage as heterosexual.[7][8][9][10]

The NACCC does not have organizational affiliations with interdenominational organizations such as the
National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches. It did not participate in the Consultation
on Church Union.[4]

Relationships with other Congregational bodies

Another Congregational denomination whose member churches mostly stayed out of the UCC, the
Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, came into being not primarily because of church
governance disputes, but because of decades-long opposition to the dominant liberal theological orientation
in the main part of American Congregationalism. Founded in 1948, the CCCC (or "4C's", colloquially) had
no relation to the "continuing" movement per se, although some congregations may belong to both bodies
simultaneously. The body requires its member churches to subscribe to, as its name implies, a standard
evangelical statement of faith; neither the NACCC nor the UCC requires its congregations to adhere to any
specific doctrinal position.

In fact, some NACCC congregations have actually retained nominal ties to the UCC, via the latter's listing
of special "schedule" categories of membership. Resulting from the submission of the UCC Constitution
and Bylaws to each individual Congregational Christian church for approval (a condition of membership to
all UCC associations and conferences), those congregations who did not vote at all or voted disapproval
but who did not take action to withdraw from their associations (or conferences, in the absence of
associations) remained listed in that denomination's yearbook. As of 2011, 95 churches continue to hold this
status in the UCC, although not all of them are NACCC members. Some NACCC churches, though, are
simultaneously full members of the UCC.

See also
Congregational Library
Congregationalist polity
Congregationalism in the United States

Notes
1. 2021 Yearbook (https://www.naccc.org/yearbook.html) National Association of
Congregational Christian Churches
2. "2000 Religious Congregations and Membership Study" (http://www.thearda.com/mapsRep
orts/maps/map.asp?variable=299&state=101&variable2=). Glenmary Research Center.
Retrieved 2009-12-17.
3. "About us: Congregational Way" (https://web.archive.org/web/20130121001415/http://www.n
accc.org/AboutUs/CongregationalWay.aspx). National Association of Congregational
 Christian Churches. Archived from the original (http://www.naccc.org/AboutUs/Congregation
alWay.aspx) on January 21, 2013. Retrieved February 6, 2013.
4. Erwin A. Britton (1981). "A Brief Sketch of the National Association of Congregational
Christian Churches" (https://web.archive.org/web/20130406152925/http://www.naccc.org/C
MSUploads/468_A_BRIEF_SKETCH_OF_THE_NACCC.pdf) (PDF). National Association
of Congregational Christian Churches. Archived from the original (http://www.naccc.org/CMS
Uploads/468_A_BRIEF_SKETCH_OF_THE_NACCC.pdf) (PDF) on 2013-04-06.
5. "About the NACCC" (https://www.naccc.org/about-us/about-the-naccc/). Retrieved
2021-12-20.
6. "Bylaws of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, Inc" (https://ww
w.naccc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/bylaws_june_2017-from_judy.pdf) (PDF). National
Association of Congregational Christian Churches, Inc. 2017. Retrieved December 20,
2021.
7. "Plymouth Congregational Christian Church - Who We Are" (http://plymouthchurch-lansing.o
rg/new/who-we-are). plymouthchurch-lansing.org. Retrieved 2021-12-20.
8. "Beliefs" (https://www.rocklandcongregationalchurch.org/beliefs-1). Rockland
Congregational Church. Retrieved 2021-12-20.
9. "History" (http://www.1stcongregational.org/history.html). www.1stcongregational.org.
Retrieved 2021-12-20.
10. "Connecticut Church Splits From UCC Over Non-Biblical Stances" (https://www.christianhea
dlines.com/articles/connecticut-church-splits-from-ucc-over-non-biblical-stances-1338365.ht
ml). ChristianHeadlines.com. Retrieved 2021-12-20.

References
Living Theological Heritage of the United Church of Christ, Volume Six: Growing Toward
Unity, Elsabeth Slaughter Hilke, ed., Barbara Brown Zikmund, series ed., Cleveland: Pilgrim
Press, 2001, pp. 615–658.
Yearbooks of the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches and the United
Church of Christ. Online at http://nasecure.org/membership/findchurch.php# under
"Churches—NA Yearbook."

External links
Official Website (http://www.naccc.org)
Profile of the NACCC on the Association of Religion Data Archives website (http://www.thear
da.com/Denoms/D_1462.asp)

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