UCC history

I am concerned that a grandiose and prideful history of the United Church of Christ is being paraded around which only tells the part of our story we want to tell...the victors tell their version of history?

We post all over the place that we ordained the first woman minister in the US in 1857. The Congregational churches allowed her some privileges to preach, but would not ordain her. Antoinette Brown went on to do ministry in the Unitarian Church.

Puritan/Congregationalists in New England in the 1600's established a state church with taxation that if you didn't attend or pay, you went to jail e.g. Roger Williams.

In the first half of the 1900's up into the time of the merger of the UCC in 1957 southern Congregational Christian conferences were segregated.

We forget the many local church pastors especially who in the 30's. 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's provided deep prophetic leadership at a far higher cost than many face today, but we live off today of their legacy and try to reap an institutional/denominational reward off of their sacrifice with our advertising.

We are forgetting good Reformed theology that has shaped who we are especially in the tradition of the social change work and political leadership and theology that grew out of daily life of John Calvin and his community/church in Geneva.

Many claim UCC identity but want to waffle on the lordship of Jesus Christ...when 50 years ago in the merger of this denomination "Christ" was intentionally put into our identifying name at sacrifice of breaking with the historic names of Evangelical & Reformed and Congregational Christian.

Barbara Brown Zikmund some years ago gifted us with the "Hidden Histories of the UCC". Today, what was the core history of the UCC back then, is now ignored or forgotten or revised to fit with the image folks want the rest of the world to believe who we are. In Alcoholics Anonymous this is called "terminal uniquness" and "image management" both of which lead to dying from our addictions.