Consultation On Church Union - Origin

Origin

According to a May 13, 1962 Time magazine article, the COCU was proposed as a giant Protestant "superchurch" by Presbyterian Stated Clerk Rev. Eugene Carson Blake on December 4th, 1960 in an Grace Cathedral, an Episcopal congregation, in San Francisco. The United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. approved an overture at its General Assembly meeting to work together with the Protestant Episcopal Church in order to invite the Methodist Church and the United Church of Christ to explore the concept of union. The Episcopal church accepted the invitation. Representatives from the four churches met in Washington, D.C. in 1961 and proposed a first official meeting of the churches for the following year at the College of Preachers and Wesley Theological Seminary. It was at that 1962 meeting that the group first called itself the "Consultation on Church Union." The first churches to be invited to join COCU beyond the first four were the International Convention of Christian Churches (Disciples), the Polish National Catholic Church, and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, which later merged with the Methodist Church to form the United Methodist Church. All North American churches were invited to send observers. At the next meeting, in 1963, the Disciples of Christ joined, and it was decided to stop sending individual invitations and instead simply accept applications. 16 other churches attended the 1963 meeting as observers.

Time reports that a meeting in Dallas in May 1966 produced a timetable for merger that called for "creation and ratification of a union plan within 13 years, followed by some 30 years of federation during which a constitution will be prepared." Among delegates from the eight churches then involved were Methodist theologian Albert Outler, Episcopal bishop Robert Gibson of Virginia, and United Church of Christ minister David Colwell. By 1967, ten churches (including two pairs, Presbyterian and Methodist, which later merged) were members of the Consultation:

• African Methodist Episcopal Church
• African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
• Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
• Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
• Episcopal Church
• Evangelical United Brethren Church
• Methodist Church
• Presbyterian Church in the U.S.
• United Church of Christ
• United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A.