History

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southeast_Conference,_United_Church_of_Christ

Although the Southeast Conference as a legal entity dates back only to 1966, it had several predecessors whose separate histories had to be reconciled in the new body. This work coincided almost precisely with the social ferment and upheavals of the Civil Rights Movement, which several clergy and churches fervently supported and/or played an active role in.

The different heritages were these:

• The American Missionary Association planted numerous academies and colleges for those African-Americans freed from slavery by virtue of the South's defeat in the Civil War. In some cases, former Union officers returned to territories they had conquered to aid the emancipated new citizens. Among those institutions still existing today are Fisk University (Tennessee), Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University, Georgia), Talladega College (Alabama), and Tougaloo College (Mississippi).

  Alongside their activities in educating, many of the teachers, who were often Congregationalist pastors, founded churches for the freed people. Again, a large number of them were founded in the beginning, but only about 20 still remain in the Conference today. AMA congregations in the southeast and south-central states joined with "Afro-Christian" churches in North Carolina and Virginia to form the Convention of the South in 1950; that body was dismantled to distribute the congregations into their proper UCC geographical jurisdictions, ending segregation.

  Recently, the Conference undertook a program to commemorate the legacy of those congregations and the AMA, titled "Rekindle the Gift." The Rev. Joyce Hollyday, Associate Conference Minister and former associate editor of Sojourners magazine, wrote a book in 2005 examining the AMA's past and the existing congregations' recollections and hopes, titled "On the Heels of Freedom: The American Missionary Association's Bold Campaign to Educate Minds, Open Hearts, and Heal the Soul of a Divided Nation", released by Crossroad Publishing.

  The AMA also undertook educational and social work in the mountains of Tennessee and Kentucky during that period, operating several schools for Appalachian youngsters, with some churches alongside them as well.

• An evangelist from the "Christian Connection" came from North Carolina to the Chattahoochee River valley of western Georgia and eastern Alabama in the mid-19th century and conducted revivals that began a number of congregations espousing the "five points" of Christian unity. This group later founded Southern Union College in Wadley, Ala., now a part of the Alabama state junior/community college system. Most of their congregations were located in the open country and reflected the population's general preferences for Wesleyan theology and revivalism, typical of the rural South generally. Two institutions related to the Christian tradition, Elon College (now University) and Elon Homes for Children, both in North Carolina, received considerable financial support over the years from these churches.

  Although a number of the churches in this group initially supported the UCC and the Conference in the 1960s and 1970s, most later reconsidered those commitments, in large measure due to increasing theological and political disagreements (instigated in part by pastors who came to those churches from other traditions) with those congregations in the metropolitan areas, especially over the issue of homosexuality. As of June 2006, only three congregations from this tradition are known to remain affiliated with the UCC.

• Among Euro-American residents of Alabama and Georgia in the late 19th-century, some members of the Methodist faith began opposing the rise in power of the superintendents who began calling themselves "bishops." They desired local control, particularly the ability to call their own pastors, rather than have them appointed, without their consent. When some of these individuals and churches left the main Methodist body, a few of them joined the Congregational fellowship in the 1890s, recruited by agents of the American Home Missionary Society seeking a presence for Congregationalism in the South. Pockets of strength for this movement included northwestern, central, and southeastern Alabama, and west central, south central, and northeastern Georgia.

  According to a book self-published by UCC pastor and amateur historian Richard Taylor, the Congregational Methodist-heritage churches usually espoused extremely individualistic views, frequently opposing missionary societies and Sunday schools, very much akin to the Primitive Baptists and the Churches of Christ, two other groups that developed in the rural South during that same time. Therefore, they never developed close relations with Congregationalists in other parts of the U.S., since these stances were almost entirely opposite those honored in Congregational churches in most other regions, where education and mission work were held in very high regard.

  Those churches not participating in this affiliation move (including some who recanted their earlier decisions to join the Congregationalists) constituted the Congregational Methodist Church, now headquartered in Florence, Miss. As with the Christians, nearly all of the Congregational Methodist-derived congregations eventually left the UCC over a period from the 1960s until the early 1990s, largely over the same theological and cultural disputes with denominational and Conference leadership. Only three of them or so remain in the UCC as of 2006, two in Alabama and one in Georgia.

• Probably the most active of the several groups that formed the Southeast Conference were those Congregational churches founded, mostly in the early 20th century, as theologically liberal, socially tolerant alternatives to the dominant expressions of Southern Protestantism, namely the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians. Migration of Northern Congregationalists to the South helped start several churches, often in close proximity to Euro-American colleges and universities (e.g., Vanderbilt, Piedmont College). In a few cases, however, parts of established congregations withdrew to form Congregational churches in protest over doctrinal rigidity and/or lifestyle restrictions. These churches were located in cities such as Atlanta and Nashville; subsequent UCC new church starts in the Conference (e.g., Huntsville, Ala. and suburban Atlanta) have generally modeled themselves after this group.

  By the mid-20th century, these became among the first Euro-American churches in the region to protest racial segregation and deeply involve themselves with advocating on African-Americans' behalf. And, since the 1990s especially, several of these have become ardent supporters of gay rights and have endorsed a stance to refrain from denying membership to those professing alternative sexual orientations, a move against the dominant social attitudes in the region.

  Generally speaking, congregations in this group are the most aware of, and loyal to, the larger UCC, and are usually the most generous givers to Conference and national work. One reason for this is a high number of them have a significant percentage of members who previously belonged to UCC congregations elsewhere in the U.S., members who tend to be not only more aware of the denomination's heritage and program, but translate that knowledge into active support.

• After the Civil War, a group of settlers from Germany came, via Cincinnati and Louisville to northern Alabama and founded the town of Cullman, starting a church of the unionist Evangelical tradition; some members later moved to Birmingham and established one there also. Meanwhile, some farmers from Switzerland, facing grave land shortages, responded to an advertisement offering farmland in Tennessee. Despite the fact that it was, of course, a scheme to populate mountainous, infertile areas, the farmers (many of them dairymen) persevered, and some established Reformed parishes along the lines of the Swiss Protestant faith, several (only one survives) in southern middle Tennessee, and one in Nashville. As of today, only the Tennessee congregations remain affiliated with the UCC; the Alabama churches withdrew, led out in both cases by fundamentalist pastors in the same manner as some Christian- and Congregational Methodist-heritage congregations have been.

Clearly as it entered the 21st century, the Southeast Conference of the United Church of Christ has been tested and pulled by many forces over the course of the 19th and 20th century. Race, labor issues, education, issues surrounding the inclusion of women in the leadership and ministry of congregations, the inclusion of same gender loving people in the lives of congregations, and other issues of social justice have tested the United Church of Christ in the South as it seeks to welcome and listen to all voices.

However, it is poised on the edge of renewal and vitality as it moves forward. With an emphasis on leadership development, congregational renewal, new church development and the affiliation of established congregations, the Conference has grown by 79% in between 2001 and 2006. Tim Downs, who has served as Conference Minister since 1996 has said, "the United Church of Christ provides an alternative theological voice and witness in this part of the Bible belt. This has been our legacy since the days of the earliest Congregational churches in the South, Circular Congregational Church, founded in Charleston, SC, in 1681, and Midway Congregational Church, in Midway GA, founded well before the Revolutionary War. That alternative witness continued in the worked noted above in the 100's of AMA churches and schools across the South, and continues today in many of the congregations of the Southeast Conference. We are deeply proud of the witness we bring to this place and time."