In July 1961, the union of the Congregational Christian Churches of the United States with the Evangelical and Reformed Church of the United States was completed, and they officially became the United Church of Christ.
Located mainly in the Northeast and Midwest, the churches' total membership exceeded two million persons in approximately 6,800 churches. The two parties to this union were themselves results of earlier consolidations. The Congregational Christian Churches had until 1931 been the Congregational Church and the Christian Church. The Evangelical and Reformed Church resulted from a 1934 merger of the (German) Reformed Church in the United States and the Evangelical (Lutheran) Synod of North America.
It is the Congregational Church which first did work in Wisconsin. As early as 1832, a pastor was sent by the American Home Missionary Society into Wisconsin's southwestern lead mining region. The Society continued to send missionaries and then lent financial support to local branch societies: the Wisconsin Home Missionary Society, which was organized in 1872 and became independent in 1883, and the Northern Wisconsin Home Missionary Society, organized in 1892. The two branches united in 1899 and assumed complete responsibility from the American Society for the Propagation of Congregationalism in Wisconsin.
Meanwhile an organizational structure for the state's Congregational churches had emerged. On October 8, 1840, ministers and church delegates meeting at Troy, Wisconsin, adopted a constitution establishing The Presbyterian and Congregational Convention of Wisconsin. At first, an equal number of Presbyterian and Congregational churches were members, but in the 1850s another Presbyterian organization was formed. Soon Congregational churches far out-numbered Presbyterian churches in the Convention, whose name correspondingly dropped the word Presbyterian. In 1842, the Convention set up three regional church groups and designated them the Milwaukee, Beloit, and Mineral Point District Conventions. Growth and expansion gradually prompted the formation of additional district conventions--the Madison, Winnebago, Lemonweir, Welsh, and Eau Claire conventions, for instance. In 1907, the state convention became the Wisconsin Congregational Association. In 1917, this was changed to Wisconsin Congregational Conference and the district groups became Associations.
For the first 70 years, the state and district organizations' duties were confined to licensing and installing pastors, admitting churches to membership, and taking stands upon religious and moral questions. However, major organizational reforms adopted in 1907 resulted in a more active central body. The administrative office of General Superintendent was created, and the state body took over the responsibilities of the Wisconsin Home Missionary Society, the Board of Trust for Ministerial Relief, and all groups involved in missionary and educational work. Frank M. Sheldon served as first superintendent, 1909-1912, followed by Lewis H. Keller, 1913-1919, L. Curtis Talmadge, 1919-1922, Theodore R. Faville, 1922-1947, and Jess L. Norenberg, 1947-1962.
Administratively separate from the church organization described previously was a similar hierarchy solely for the Church's women's groups. The Wisconsin branch of the Woman's Board of Missions of the Interior, organized in 1875, and of the Woman's Home Missionary Union, organized in 1883, merged in 1926 to form the World Fellowship Council of Wisconsin Women. In 1948, this name was changed to Wisconsin Fellowship of Congregational Christian Women. The women's units were grouped by geographic regions into their own Associations and they elected their own state leader who, as a means of uniting the two hierarchies, sat on the Board of Directors of the Wisconsin Congregational Conference.
The Conference maintained a steady interest in several areas throughout its existence: evangelism, temperance, ministerial welfare, and benevolences, but the most primary of their interests was education, both religious and secular. Churches and church members established many academies, the most noteworthy being Christian Endeavor Academy, Endeavor, Wisconsin, which lasted until 1925. The state Convention helped establish Beloit College and gave support to Northland College, Ripon College, and Milwaukee-Downer College. In the 20th century, summer Young People's Conferences were held at Northland College and at Green Lake Bible Institute; and the state Conference employed a full-time educational director to oversee these and other youth activities.
The other partner in forming the United Church of Christ, the Evangelical and Reformed Church, came later to Wisconsin and its activities here are less well-documented than those of the Congregational Church. The German Reformed Church, one of the two elements which formed the Evangelical and Reformed Church in 1934, traced its origins to Germany, France, and Switzerland. It was especially active in Pennsylvania where its adherents settled in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the 19th century, a Reformed Church synod was established in Ohio and there were scattered congregations in other states. The second source of the Evangelical and Reformed Church, the Evangelical Synod of North America, dates from 1840 when missionaries in Missouri and Illinois formed the German Evangelical Church Association of the West. By the time of the 1934 merger several amalgamations with other church groups brought total membership to 350,000. As early as 1875 there existed a Wisconsin District of the Evangelical Synod of North America. After the 1934 merger, Wisconsin was divided administratively into Northern and Southern Synods. Regional bodies and women's groups also existed, apparently in an organizational pattern similar to that of the Congregationalists. Official depositories of Evangelical and Reformed Church archives are the Fackenthal Library at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and Eden Theological Seminary, Webster Groves, Missouri.
