Congregationalists: The Story 

I recently visited one of those old beautiful buildings. My parents and I quoted scripture in our discussion, but she didn’t recite a single verse. Just sad.

I am from a small church called the RLDS church. We were decimated as well by the same kind of goofiness.

The witch hunt episode is something even conservative Congregationalists were not proud of, BTW. By the 18th century, Congregationalists had mostly abandoned that type of thinking as superstition.

I went to visit John Adams's grave with my uncle. He's buried in the crypt of his family church, which is now Unitarian Universalist. My uncle (an Episcopalian) asked the tour guide why there were no crosses and it got slightly awkward from there. 😂

@@CountArtha I'm not sure Unitarians ever had crosses. However, after Transcendentalism's rise in the mid 19th century, Unitarianism took on an increasingly non-Christian character, certainly.

@@Magnulus76 It was still a Congregationalist church at the time John, Abigail, and John Quincy were buried there. The Unitarians took over just like the liberal Mainliners are taking over downtown churches today.

Wow, your town dump has a shopping area?

"town landfill shopping area"?

wait hol up a book at the what?

Seventh Day Baptists are not the same as more modern Adventists. My ancestor William Witter was convinced of the need for Adult Baptism (rather than infant) by Baptist visitors (from Roger Williams group I think) and was charged by Puritans with heresy. His family was part of the founding of Stonington. The sect- many of my ancestors at least- moved to northern New York (Nile/Brookfield) and continued their Seventh Day worship. Have you done a video on them? We're they later included as Baptists or Congregational? My spiritual genealogy is fascinating- Quaker on the other side!

Being in Westerly, Rhode Island, it's most likely Seventh Day Baptists, not Adventists. Big difference.

"The last time the name of Jesus Christ was spoken in a Unitarian Church was when the janitor fell off a ladder." (Old joke.)

@NikoR96 You sound like you touch yourself while asking God for forgiveness at the same time.

@@thelasthandbook6704 , it's so tragic!

What are you doing, brother? Jesus loves you!

Thank you for those notes, though I must advise you to abscond from the spiritually skint UCC as soon as possible. While I am not aware as to the specific congregation you yourself are attached to etc, it is known that these Congregationalists have drifted some distance from the Bible: no more gendered language in the Bible, gay ‘weddings’, callous casualness toward abortion and so on. The UCC has no interest in saving souls, only in politicising and polluting them. One must be Born Again in order to make Heaven, and your current denomination is no place for that to happen. You really ought to try a good Baptist or Pentecostal assembly

@@seansweeney8911 Friend, as soon as I read "distanced from the Bible" I sense that you are part of a denomination that believes they have the one Truth of the Bible. This is not a part of my belief system (and I probably read the Bible less literally than you may read it). I wish you well.

@@Inhumantics Amities. Well, enjoy the whites only country club advocating black nationalism

I am a Unitarian Universalist, as the video above correctly points out we are at least I'll get a cherry and side of our heritage is from your denomination the current gation list as Christian denominations go I am actually offended United Church of Christ as I am your Canadian brother in the United Church of Canada, personally I do not describe myself as Christian because that has a specific meaning that I don't think I feel feel I love Jesus and believe his teachings word divine other than that I am skeptical as to Miracles Etc

​@@bobbystclaire It is contradictory to say you believe Jesus' teachings and then deny his miracles.

Given how membership has declined they're hardly "filled to the brim," though.

@@thelasthandbook6704 True. But still, of the people that fill the average church, large or small, how many are actually born again? Far fewer than we'd like to think, I'm sure. Even for churches that don't cater to the world, there are often many unsaved in the mix.

They have origins from the Church if England but they certainly aren't Anglican

The UMC bears some similarities to Anglicanism, but the UCC is about as different as it gets.

@@Cjinglaterra , just heretical. Lol

​@@wesmorgan7729I mean, the last one mentioned by definition is Anglican as it's the only church in the Anglican communion

I grew up in UCC and when I was young there were still church services in German once a month and on Christmas and the music was Bach organ music. It was not Anglican, because it was German Evangelical before it was UCC. And the theology was certainly much more in the German traditions as well.

They are Methodist, Episcopal is their form of church polity (Governed by Bishops) The founder of Methodism was part of the Church of England until he died though, so there is a connection there. Many Methodists have episcopal polity. I will make a video about AME eventually.

John Wesley started the Methodist church. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wesley

The origins of the movement date back to the Second Great Awakening; the idea being that there should be NO denominations (yeah, that went over well...), but that by a literal reading of the New Testament the pattern of worship and church government for the Christian age could be discerned. The whole thing started with Thomas Campbell, Alexander's father. Thomas had been ordained in Scotland by a Presbyterian synod. That said, the Scottish Presbyterians had suffered a number of schisms, with each group shunning the others. Thomas came to Pennsylvania to minister and tried to do his part to heal the schisms by encouraging families to join together to take the Lord's Supper. For this "heretical act", he was brought to trial by his presbytery and synod and rebuked soundly. Thomas decided to go independent. Meanwhile, his son Alexander back in a Scottish seminary was having his own reservations about functionally having to pass a theology exam before being allowed to take Communion. The whole thing upset him so much that he dropped out of seminary and joined his father in the colonies. The two began preaching their new understanding of the Bible and the Church and by 1811 had formed a congregation at Brush Run in Pennsylvania. They were later joined by Barton Stone, who had begun a parallel movement without awareness of what the Campbells were doing. Fast forward to postbellum America, and one of the problems with strict literalism reared its head. One congregation installed an organ in their church, finding nothing in the New Testament forbidding it. This question of an argument from silence divided the movement in two: one side felt silence was permission, the other that silence on a point of New Testament worship was to forbid anything not explicitly stated. The latter made a capella singing the hill that the unity movement would die on, and formally split off in 1906 forming the Churches of Christ. Now for the "we're not a denomination..." part. Their claim is that since they are a fellowship of self-governing congregations, they have no centralized authority that would mark them as a denomination.

Hey what do you mean by pluralism? I mean I'm both a Unitarian and a Universalist but want nothing to do with the UU because they are a progressive country club. I,don't believe everyone necessarily WILL be saved per re only that if they aren't it will sorely be there choice, not God's. God will never give up on anyone. But free will is a thing.

@@56pjr what about Cyrus God's servant who was a Zoroastrianist where does he fit in.

@@paulpalmer6364 GOD is Sovereign and can do as he chooses. Cyrus was chosen by God three hundred years before his birth. This was for him to straighten out Gods people who has drifted away from him and become disobedient. Our GOD is amazing. Able to decree & ordain things for HIS HONOR & GLORY. Amen.

@Johnny Rep Who would not. One can believe or not believe anything. You can join and be Agnostic, Atheist, Hindi, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian? or any other group. Jesus said this will not work, as HE is the only way back to God. I would steer clear of this group.

A Universalist whether conservative or not does not believe there is a hell. Otherwise they would not be a universalist. Universalism means nobody goes to hell. If no one goes to hell, it doesn’t exist.

Indeed!

That would exclude the majority of the first 300 years of Christians so your measure makes little sense. I grew up Trinitarian though.

"Congregational polity" means that each church's congregation chooses it's pastor. There are no bishops to lay hands on other pastors. And splitting over doctrinal disagreements means that the existing clergy surely won't lay hands on the new church's pastor.

@@RonJohn63 Or, as in our CCC church, the minister I grew up with was originally ordained in the Methodist Church before converting. Although he usually stuck to preaching within the bounds of the CCC faith, he did sneak in some lessons about the creeds to the teens who were about to join the church so we would have some idea of the wider world Christian of thought.

The names of the two denominations that merged are the American Unitarian Association and the Universalist Church of America.

Nope, quite the opposite. The Christian Connexion was far more influenced by John Wesley's Arminianism than Calvinism.

It is actually the opposite of what you say. Whitefield's name is spelled with the e and pronounced as I do in the video, whit-field. www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/evangelical-history/history-misspelling-george-whitefields-name/

How great?

​@@ronlanter6906 My ninth-great-grandfather. He's mentioned at 1:42 in this video. The incident of Obadiah Holmes being whipped is familiar to those knowledgeable about early New England church history. There's a Wikipedia article about him. He was also Abraham Lincoln's fifth-great-grandfather. That makes Abe four generations removed from me, being my sixth cousin four times removed.

@Johnny Rep Be that as it may, I can't escape the fact that I'm related to him. I'm related to William Tecumseh Sherman, too.

@Johnny Rep yeah but the people who he was fighting were enslaving black men just cause they were different than them (plus the Geneva convention didn't exist back then and if you are just going to say ohh but that doesn't matter well then do we consider Washington a war criminal too)

They are theologically liberal, if you don't know what that means it means that they do know take everything in the Bible literally, after all it was on the end of the day man made, and man make mistakes. He made a great video on the difference between liberal and conservative denomination.

Pray for me in this regard. I find myself at war, internal. I was raised Baptist, and I continue to attend a Baptist assembly, by personal election. However, there is dogma and tradition within the Baptist Church that I don't necessarily agree with. This causes a rift, within myself, as I think to a few scriptures; "do not rely on private interpretations", "do not forsake the assembly of yourselves", and "they heap to themselves teachers, because they have itching ears." On one hand, I truly love my church family and our services. On another, I feel a certain weight, because I know that I disagree with some of their doctrines. It is, very, difficult to voice opposition to these particular doctrines and dogma, as the rhetoric is hard to cut through -- and some of these are staples of Baptist worship, and the ministers have spent centuries preparing the dogma to resist opposing views. Overall, I give thanks to God for a church body that seeks to serve the LORD above all things, I also pray He reveal to us the proper understanding of the scriptures (free from dogma) to worship Him to the fullest extent.

@@WilliamMcAdamsI pray daily that everyone will leave their denominations and find their way into a group of people earnestly trying to restore the church of Christ by studying the scriptures alone. They should have the final authority as to how people become Christians and how they are to live in the church that Jesus Himself built. I urge everyone to visit a church of Christ near you, and see what they are doing. As a matter of fact, visit a few of them and you may find some are doing a better job than others. You won't find a perfect congregation, but you will find people earnestly seeking God's Will. There is a great deal of confusion in 'the religious world,' as these denominations are man made and each one is a testimony that they know better than God. Let God be in charge of salvation and His church. If God was just make believe there would be nothing wrong with all these denominations, and going to 'the church of your own choice,' but God has put His beloved Son Jesus Christ as head of His church, and God is real. He is not the author of confusion. There remains great resentment on behalf of the various baptist denominations and the churches of Christ, because in the end of the 1800's there were many debates on New Testament teachings, and many people left the baptist churches to work in churches of Christ to restore New Testament ways. About a year ago, a baptrist lady came forward at the close of our Sunday worship service and requested to be baptized. The sermon had mentioned baptism and the spiritual explanation of it given by Paul in Romans 6. She said she had been trying to get discussion going on New Testament baptism in her bible study classes but that no one wanted to discuss it. She knew that the 'new creature' came out of the water and it didn't make any sense to her that the new man would go INTO the water, as they were telling her. They told her you were already saved when you went in the water, in other words, you were already 'the new man.' As soon as she understood that the old man went in the water and his sins were washed away by the blood of Christ so that he would rise up as a 'new creature,' she wanted to be baptized. That was more than a year ago, and she has been filled with joy and faithful ever since. She is a widow and lives with two baptists, one of whom, she told me is not sure he is saved. How sad that so many people, particularly in the baptist church but also in many other denominations, suspect this is so as they sit in their bible studies week after week, not daring to mention their concerns! I pray for such folks, that they will put their faith in Christ Himself, who said when He was tempted that we don't live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. You have that Word to read, now all you need is to find a group of people who are earnest in obeying it.

@@sdthyng Trying to restore the church of Christ, sounds like what Joseph Smith was trying to do back in the 1820's.

@@tonyu5985 Joseph Smith knew Alexander Campbell, a fellow who was very instrumental in the effort to restore the original church of Christ in the USA in the 1800's. Joseph Smith was also a Freemason. The church he eventually developed is quite different than the one you read about in the New Testament. There have been various attempts to restore the New Testament church in various countries throughout the ages, most of which have been lost from the pages of history. You can be sure that as long as people have common sense and access to the New Testament writings such efforts will continue, and some will be worthwhile and some will not be. Personally, I would rather devote my life to the most ignorant attempt to restore the church that Jesus built than to propping up some man made denomination that has no authority whatsoever from God to even exist.

@@tonyu5985 As an additional note, consider that Joseph Smith was a total nut case.

May I ask exactly how?

based Anabaptists

But, this is not new. Justin Martyr said Socrates demonstrated the Logos through his reason and that was in the 2nd century. And as far as individualism in the US churches it was always coupled with the social gospel ideas and “good works” James theology. Only the individual in relationship with Jesus, can develop real moral discernment an institution never can. And yes here too I see it broadly, Justin Martyr claimed Socrates, Heraclitus and the writer of the Psalms “Christians before Christ” because they had accessed the Logos which is the eternal Christ. If Christ is the Logos abject ignorance and irrationality is never the WAY. We should revere reason as part of the Logos, but not the only aspects of the Logos.

You north American woke types aren't loving.i come from England. You usa woke ppl are anti white and crazy.

The UCC arent Christians tho

The Putitans were extremely progressive for their time.

UCC will never be real Christians. You’re just larpers that no one takes seriously, which is why you’re the fastest declining church in America.

@@curlyemperor9288 Sorry, just saw your reply. I'm sorry you feel that I'm not a real Christian! I guess in your view I just don't despise gay people as much as Jesus would have wanted.

What do you expect him to do, take a lunch break halfway through?

@@cthrugrl lol. I said take a breather. He needed to slow down, put pauses, add segments something. I've heard of fast course but this non stop fast talking is ridiculous.