Churches of Christ Uniting was a proposed name for a body growing out of the Consultation on Church Union which began in 1962 among ten predominantly "mainline" U.S. Protestant denominations. The consolidation proposed in the original scheme was overwhelmingly rejected when put to a vote of the constituent denominations in 1969, so the leaders, unwilling to abandon totally this effort, adopted more of a "go slow" approach. Groups within the Consultation began closer contacts, and in some instances full communion, with each other, and the idea to call the group that was hoped to be formed in the long term Church of Christ United was proposed, with the interim name while the process was ongoing to be Church of Christ Uniting. (These names had the additional advantage of having the same initials as the original Consultation on Church Union.)
Opposition within the component denominations, particularly the United Presbyterian Church, caused any plan for full merger to be put on hold, and a new name, seemingly implying that "uniting" is a presently-ongoing but perhaps long-term goal, was adopted, Churches Uniting in Christ. (This name also had the advantage of not sounding as much like one of the existing constituent groups, the United Church of Christ, nor like a totally unrelated one, the Church of Christ.)
Famous quotes containing the words churches, christ and/or uniting:
“I fancy it must be the quantity of animal food eaten by the English which renders their character insusceptible of civilisation. I suspect it is in their kitchens and not in their churches that their reformation must be worked, and that Missionaries of that description from [France] would avail more than those who should endeavor to tame them by precepts of religion or philosophy.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.”
—Bible: New Testament, Galatians 2:15-16.
“If the Union is now dissolved it does not prove that the experiment of popular government is a failure.... But the experiment of uniting free states and slaveholding states in one nation is, perhaps, a failure.... There probably is an “irrepressible conflict” between freedom and slavery. It may as well be admitted, and our new relations may as be formed with that as an admitted fact.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)