Congregational Christian Churches - UCC Merger Talks

UCC Merger Talks

The Rev. Dr. Truman Douglass, pastor of St. Louis' Pilgrim Congregational Church, met with the Rev. Dr. Samuel Press, president of Eden Theological Seminary in that city, a seminary of the Evangelical and Reformed Church, a denomination predominantly of German origin and itself a merger of two previously separated traditions, as part of an informal interchurch discussion group in 1937. Douglass' and Press' talks led to the involvement of both bodies in proposals to consider organic union, work that eventually culminated in the Basis of Union in 1943, which both national bodies approved after a five-year period of revising. The Rev. Dr. Douglas Horton, a former Harvard Divinity School president, had become the CC general minister and president by this point, and became the prime figure in the CC union efforts.