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The German Reformed Church was founded by Huldrych (variously, Ulric) Zwingli, of Switzerland. Initially, Zwingli's audience was referred to as the Swiss Reformed Church. He started preaching in the 1520s in Zurich. But he wasn't alone. In 1528 Berchtold Haller began preaching the Reformed message in Bern, and in the next year John Oekolampad began preaching in Basel. Zwingli, being more of a theologian than perhaps the others, contributed his thoughts to the Reformation in Switzerland and the others helped to spread it. It wasn't just in Switzerland that Zwingli's sermons were heard. The message traveled northward along the Rhine River and into Germany. The degree to which the German people embraced Zwingli's teachings was exemplified in the fact that his followers eventually became known as German Reformed.
The message put forward by Ulric Zwingli was based in the statement that "The Bible is above all human authority, and to it alone must every appeal be made." At first, the tenets of the Reformed Church differed from those of the Lutherans only in regard to the Lord's Supper. Zwingli argued that, in regard to the Eucharist, the words "This is My body" and "This is My blood" were a trope, i.e. a figurative or metaphorical concept. Luther argued that the phrases must be accepted as literal Truth, that when the wafer and the wine are consecrated by the officiant, they literally transmute into Jesus' material body and blood.
The German Reformed Church in the United States was organized as early as 1720 in the eastern region of Pennsylvania. As settlers moved westward into the central frontier, members of the congregation moved also, taking their beliefs with them. The Reformed Church embraced the Calvinist theology with a plain liturgy. A constitution was adopted by the Reformed Church in 1793. The denomination spread from eastern and central Pennsylvania westward into the Ohio Valley and southward into Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Because of those migrations, many Reformed congregations settled beside congregations of Lutherans, Schwarzenau Brethren (or German Baptists) and Mennonites. Of those groups, because the German Reformed and Lutheran were so close in theology, the German Reformed often joined the Lutheran congregations in building and sharing church edifices.
One group of Reformed and Lutheran congregants joined together in union in the mid-1800s. The Evangelical Synod of North America was found on 15 October 1840 by immigrant Germans who had formed the St. Johns German Evangelical church at the Gravois Settlement in Missouri two years earlier.
In 1934, the Reformed Church in the United States merged with the Evangelical Synod of North America to form the Evangelical and Reformed Church. The new union was basically Presbyterian in organization and embraced a variety of creeds including the Reformed Heidelberg and Martin Luther's Catechisms and the Lutheran Augsburg Confession. The various belief systems were combined into an Evangelical Catechism.
Following the American Revolutionary War, during the 1790s, a Virginian Methodist preacher, James O'Kelly objected to the Methodist leanings toward episcopacy. He and a group of his followers separated from the Methodist Church and formed a congregation that was initially known as the Republican Methodist Church. O'Kelly, not satisfied with that name instead chose to use the simple name of 'Christian.' Coincidently, around the same time a Vermont Baptist preacher, Abner Jones, was preaching a similar refutation of Calvinist dogma. At the same time, between 1790 and 1840, the American Restoration Movement was occurring, one branch in Kentucky and a second in western Pennsylvania and Virginia. Reverend Barton W. Stone was leading the Kentucky branch, known simply as 'Christian' and Thomas Campbell and his son, Alexander were leading the Pennsylvania / Virginia branch, known as 'Disciples of Christ.'
In 1832 Reverends Stone and Campbell merged their congregations after realizing that they were both aimed at the same end: to restore the Christian church to New Testament teachings. The merger eventually spawned a number of groups loosely connected under the outlook of restorationism. Still in existence at the present time are the Christian Church (variously, Disciples of Christ), the Church of Christ and the Churches of Christ.
The various 'Christian' denominations came to be associated with the tradition known as 'congregationalist' which had historical links to Puritanism. Various of the 'Christian' churches became affiliated with the National Council of Congregational Churches.
Puritanism was a movement, more so than a denomination, that grew out of the Reformation of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Strongly influenced by the teachings of John Calvin, the Puritan movement sought to purify the Church of England, which they believed still maintained too many 'Catholic' practices. In America, Puritanism in New England evolved into the tradition known as Congregationalism. That is the belief that each individual congregation should run its affairs in an autonomous manner rather than being just one of many similar congregations governed by a central body. As Presbyterianism was also heavily influenced by John Calvin, in order to differentiate between the two entities, Congregationalists were variously known by the name of Separatists.
Congregationalism spread southward and many of them aligned themselves with the National Council of Congregational Churches. And so, when, in 1931 that Council merged with the General Convention of the Christian Church, the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches was formed.
In 1943, the Evangelical and Reformed Church and the General Council of Congregational Christian Churches adopted a 'Basis of Union' as a statement of general unity. Then on 25 June 1957, the two denominations merged to form the United Church of Christ. The UCC adopted a 'Statement of Faith' in 1959 and in 1961 a constitution and by-laws were adopted.
[See Union Church also.]
