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Date Posted: 10:37:37 01/07/04 Wed
From the Worldwide Faith News archives www.wfn.org
Howard Dean one of many UCC members
From powellb@ucc.org
Date Tue, 6 Jan 2004 15:09:18 -0500
United Church of Christ
Robert Chase, press contact
216-736-2173
E-mail
On the web:
For immediate release
Dec. 6, 2004
Howard Dean is one of many United Church of Christ members: Presidential candidate's church is rich with heritage, diversity
A feature news release by J. Bennett Guess
Editor, United Church News
Like Bill Clinton and Al Gore, presidential candidate Richard
Gephardt wears the Southern Baptist tag, while George Bush and John Edwards
are United Methodists. John Kerry and Dennis Kucinich are life-long Roman
Catholics.
Carol Moseley Braun, no longer Catholic, worships as an Episcopalian.
Joseph Lieberman is an Orthodox Jew, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, a
Pentecostal minister, spends his Sunday mornings in the pulpit.
But Howard Dean, the former five-term Vermont Governor who has
emerged as the Democratic Party's presidential front runner, is piquing
interest with word that he's a "Congregationalist" ? a faith label much
less recognizable to those living outside the Congregationalist-laden
Northeast.
Not since a war-time Richard Nixon cried Quaker have so many
expressed interest in learning about a presidential aspirant's faith
tradition.
To be technically accurate, Dean is a member of the United Church of
Christ, a 1.3-million-member denomination of nearly 6,000 congregations
formed in 1957 by the union of the Congregational Christian Churches and
the Evangelical and Reformed Church. But in New England, Congregationalists
are as common as clam chowder, so it's no wonder that so many UCC members
in the New England area cling to their original, regionally-recognizable
"Congregationalist" identity.
Born to a Catholic mother and an Episcopal father, Dean was raised in
the Episcopal Church. But in 1982, the same year Dean entered public life
as a member of Vermont's House of Representatives, he became a member of
First Congregational UCC in Burlington, Vt., a prominent congregation of
1,000 members in the state's capital city. Dean, a doctor, was first
introduced to the congregation by his then-landlord, while Dean was
completing his medical residency in Vermont.
Dean's wife, Judith Steinberg Dean, who also is a doctor, is Jewish.
Their two children have been raised with exposure to both traditions by
observing Jewish and Christian holidays.
The Rev. Robert A. Lee ? Dean's pastor ? describes Dean as a
"supportive and faithful member of the congregation."
"Howard Dean is known in this community and in the church as a person
with strong principled views who speaks his mind and stands up for what he
believes in," Lee told United Church News, the UCC's denominational
newspaper, in September.
To illustrate, Lee said that when the congregation's board of
trustees suggested that members donate part of their 2002 tax rebate checks
to the church to fund ministries for the poor, "One of the first letters I
received in response to that appeal was from the Governor of Vermont's
office, with a check for [Dean's] entire tax rebate."
To be sure, the UCC's New England roots are deep. In Massachusetts
and Connecticut, the UCC is the largest Protestant denomination.
But New England is not the only place where the UCC can be found.
Located in all 50 states and Puerto Rico, the UCC also is formidable in New
York and Pennsylvania, the industrial Midwest, Missouri, the West Coast,
Florida and Hawaii.
The UCC's membership includes six U.S. Senators, representing a broad
political spectrum: Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), Jim
Jeffords (I-Vt.), Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) and former
presidential hopeful Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who was the first candidate to
withdraw from the 2004 contest.
Andrew Young (D-Ga.), the former civil rights leader, member of
Congress, U.N. ambassador and Atlanta mayor, also is an ordained UCC
minister.
On Dec. 30, conservative syndicated columnist Cal Thomas, disparaged
the UCC as "a liberal denomination that does not believe in ministerial
authority or church hierarchy." Thomas further claimed that "each
Congregationalist believes he is in direct contact with God and is entitled
to sort out truth for himself." Meanwhile, The New Republic, in its Dec. 29
cover story on Dean's religious life, called his church "a denomination
famous for its informality and liberal stances."
More accurately, the UCC's Congregationalist roots trace back to the
early 1600s, when the Pilgrims and Puritans first landed on the continent.
These "Congregationalists," as they were later called, sought religious
independence from persecuting political authorities in Europe. They
believed firmly in local church autonomy, church-state separation, personal
piety and the priesthood of all believers.
Today, the UCC holds firmly to these early religious tenets. Yet,
while often recognized for its historical and contemporary social justice
commitments, its approach to worship might be considered traditional by
most standards. Although each congregation's liturgical style is influenced
by its heritage and members' preferences, as is true in most mainline
denominations, the UCC, as one pastor aptly put it, is an "exasperating and
heady mix."
Interestingly, "A Field Guide to U.S. Congregations," a 2002
publication based on a comprehensive survey of U.S. Christians, found that
UCC members, slightly more than others, listed traditional hymns and
biblically-sound preaching as being essential to good worship. Surprising
to some, the same study also found that slightly more UCC members
self-identified as conservative rather than liberal ? a tidbit that
President Calvin Coolidge, a conservative Republican and the nation's last
Congregationalist president (1923-1929), might have found interesting.
As one of the nation's oldest faith traditions, the UCC includes some
of the country's oldest congregations and structures, including many
organized and built nearly four centuries ago. As a blend of four distinct
Christian traditions ? Congregational, Christian, Evangelical and Reformed
? each strain of the UCC has left its mark on U.S. religious and political
history.
Increasingly, the UCC is becoming home to churches outside the
original mix. Since 2001, more than 80 churches have joined the UCC,
including many once-Southern Baptist congregations that have been
"disfellowshiped" by state or national conventions for ordaining women or
welcoming gay and lesbian members.
The UCC has historical ties to hundreds of educational institutions,
including the likes of Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth, which it helped to
found. After the Civil War, the church was instrumental in starting many
now-prominent schools for freed slaves, including Howard, Fisk, Talladega
and Tougaloo. Today, it maintains direct ties to 48 institutions of higher
learning and 345 health and human service agencies in 37 states.
Known widely for its leadership on social, racial and economic
justice issues, UCC history includes an impressive list of firsts. It
launched the first attempt at congregational democracy (1630), led the
movement to abolish slavery (1700), was a leading force in the spiritual
revival known as the Great Awakening (1730), staged the nation's first act
of civil disobedience that inspired the "Boston Tea Party" (1773), hid the
Liberty Bell when the British occupied Philadelphia (1777), was the first
mainline denomination to ordain an African-American pastor (1785) and
formed the nation's first foreign missionary society (1810).
The UCC came to the aid of the illegally-enslaved Amistad captives in
1839, an event that led to the U.S. Supreme Court's first civil rights
ruling. It was the first church to ordain a woman in 1853 and the first to
ordain an openly gay man in 1972.
The Cleveland-based United Church of Christ has been a consistent
leader in the global ecumenical, interfaith movement and maintains full
communion partnerships with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the
Presbyterian Church (USA), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and
the Reformed Church in America.
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