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The Congregational Christian Churches were a Protestant Christian denomination that operated in the U.S. from 1931 through 1957. On the latter date, most of its churches joined the Evangelical and Reformed Church in a merger to become the United Church of Christ. Others created the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches. During the forementioned period, its churches were organized nationally into a General Council, with parallel state conferences, sectional associations, and missionary instrumentalities. Congregations, however, retained their local autonomy and these groups were separate from the congregations. The body came into being in Seattle, Washington in 1931 by the merger of two American bodies that practiced congregational church governance, the General Council of Congregational Churches and the General Convention of the Christian Church. Initially using the word "and" between the words "Congregational" and "Christian," the new denomination decided to combine the predecessor churches' identities into one nationally, while its constituent churches remained free to either retain their original names or adopt the new usage. Established by settlers in present-day New England fleeing religious persecution in their native England, the Congregational churches were identified with the Puritan theological and political perspective within Anglo-Saxon Protestantism during the 17th century. Many American historians have viewed their semi-democratic practices as laying the foundation for the representative nature of the U.S. political tradition. Although the dominant Calvinism of the 18th century often created aristocratic attitudes and hostility toward other religious groups on the part of many clergy and lay leaders, eventually, by the 19th century, Congregationalists had accepted their peculiar vocation in U.S. religious life, maintaining a broadly orthodox faith while cultivating a passion for freedom, equality, and justice. These ethical convictions would propel the Congregational churches into the forefront of social reform movements during the next 150 years or so. Most notable of these was strong support for the abolition of slavery among African-Americans in the Southern U.S. In the aftermath of the American Civil War, numerous pastors and female schoolteacher missionaries, working under the auspices of the American Missionary Association, established academies, colleges, and churches for the freedpeople; six of the colleges are still in existence as of 2009. Yet later generations became involved in causes such as temperance, women's suffrage, and the Social Gospel.
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