The United Church of Christ came into being in 1957, with the union of two Protestant denominations:

The Congregational Christian churches, and
The Evangelical & Reformed Church.

Each of these was, in turn, the result of a union of two earlier denominations.

The Congregational Churches
Were organized when the Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation (1620) and the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (1629) acknowledged their essential unity in the Cambridge Platform of 1648.

The Christian Churches
Dominate the Eastern Virginia Association, and sprang up in the late 1700s and early 1800s in reaction to the theological and organizational rigidity of the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Baptist churches of the time.

The Evangelical Synod of North America
Traces its beginning to an association of German Evangelical pastors in Missouri.  This association, founded in 1840, reflected the 1817 union of Lutheran and Reformed churches in Germany.

The Reformed Church in the United States Traces its beginnings to congregations of German settlers in Pennsylvania founded from 1725 on, and later, its ranks were swelled by Reformed folk from Switzerland and other countries.

Through the years, members of other ethnic and racial groups, such as Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Volga Germans, Armenians, Hungarians, and Hispanic Americans have joined with the four earlier groups. Thus, the United Church of Christ celebrates and continues a wide variety of traditions in its common life.