(RNS) The new head of the United Church of Christ said Friday (July 17) that the UCC’s Pilgrim forbears probably wouldn’t recognize the modern church but would “in time and after much dialogue, be able to identify with us.”
The Rev. Geoffrey Black, who was elected in June as the UCC’s next general minister and president, said the church’s liberalism might shock its Puritan founders, but so would much of modern life.
“They would be astonished at not only the church but the world,” Black told reporters. “You can just imagine the Pilgrims would be utterly astonished and have a hard time just understanding what they see initially.
“It would be a fascinating experience to sit down … and talk with them about how our experience of the Christian faith and the expression of that faith has developed since that time.”
The UCC, with an estimated 1.5 million members, grew out of New England’s Congregational churches founded by Puritans and Pilgrims, and merged with the Evangelical and Reformed Churches in 1957.
For several years, the UCC has wrestled with its core identity, torn between its Puritan roots and its reputation as the proud left pole of American Protestantism. Its small conservative remnant has pushed, unsuccessfully, for measures that would declare the UCC “a decidedly Christian denomination.”
Black has said decades of membership loss appear to have stabilized, and said those who rejected the UCC’s 2005 decision to endorse same-sex marriage have left the denomination. He hopes his church’s message of “radical inclusivity” will attract new members, but insisted that the UCC is not just another progressive organization.
“Anyone who really encounters the UCC and gets beyond the caricature that some might have of us, when they worship with us and work with us, they will see a heartfelt compassionate Christian church at work,” he said.
Even the Pilgrims, he said, would see traces of themselves in the modern UCC.
” I think they wouldn’t be readily able to say, `This is us,’ but it would be something that they would, in time and after much dialogue, be able to identify with us,” he said. ” … I think the Pilgrims would be delighted to relate to us, to see themselves as the progenitors of what has become the UCC.”
