Community Church Movement

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The Community Church Movement is a movement of American churches with the aim of uniting members of different Christian denominations under one church roof. It started in the middle of the 19th century and reached its peak after the First World War .

Beginnings

The first community churches in the USA emerged in the middle of the 19th century. Its aim was to replace the restrictiveness and mutual delimitation of the churches, which are separated according to faith, with self-determination and Christian unity . Further goals were to reduce the number of churches in some municipalities, which led to economic and personnel problems, and to shift the loyalty of the parishioners from a supraregional church to the municipality. By addressing specific local needs, it was hoped to make religion more relevant to people.

Spread

After the First World War, the spread of the movement accelerated. David R. Piper, a journalist who studied the movement, employed by The Community Churchman magazine, defined two basic characteristics of a community church:

  • The organizational base is the commune, not a specific denomination
  • The basis of unity is community life and worship, not dogmatic agreement.

A distinction is made between the following types of Community Church:

  • the denominational: the church of a particular denomination declares itself open to all others.
  • the federated: different denominations merge their administrative bodies, but lead the members separately; in order to become a real community church, one must be able to join the new church directly
  • The independent or union church: a new foundation or an association that allows the members to independently interpret Christianity.

In 1922, Piper had 713 community churches in the USA; Dr. E. de S. Brunner, a member of the Committee on Social and Religious Surveys, estimated between five and six hundred a year earlier. Regional focuses were in the states of Vermont and Massachusetts , in the Midwest ( Ohio , Great Lakes) and on the Pacific coast.

In 1934 the magazine "The Community Churchman" gave a number of 2000 churches active in the movement. The first national organization, Community Church Workers of the USA , was founded in 1923.

Faith and Church Life

Community churches do not define themselves through a particular creed. They organized, often as the only local community, the spiritual and often also social life for as many members of a community as possible. For this the congregation had to be built up democratically and leave the interpretation of the Christian message to the members without dogmatic restrictions. Each congregation decided for itself on questions of organization, activity and doctrine. Nobody was excluded from congregational life, all congregation members had the same rights of participation. The common Christian life should be decisive for belonging to the congregation.

Organizing local social cohesion was another important goal of the Community Church Movement. Individual communities also worked with the findings of modern psychology and other human sciences.

In 1951 the two largest supraregional community church organizations merged to form the International Council of Community Churches , which today is an independent church and a member of the WCC , the National Council of Churches and the Churches Uniting in Christ . This was the first time a white and an Afro-American church had merged on this scale.

literature

  • Erich Geldbach : What is a "Community Church" ?, in: Erich Geldbach: In God's own country. Religion and Power in the USA. Notes from a trip , Berlin 2008: WDL-Verlag, ISBN 978-3-86682-129-3 , 17-20

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Description of the International Council of Community Churches on the website of the World Council of Churches ( Memento of October 13, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ David Roy Piper, A Handbook of the Community Church movement in the United States, Missouri 1922, pp. 14-20
  3. ↑ Albert C.Zumbrunnen, The Community Church, Chicago 1922, pp 80-100
  4. ^ TIME Magazine, May 28, 1934
  5. ^ David Roy Piper, A Handbook of the Community Church movement ..., Missouri 1922, pp. 10-11
  6. ↑ Albert C.Zumbrunnen, The Community Church, Chicago 1922, p 79
  7. ^ TIME Magazine, Aug. 11, 1947, of First Community Church , Columbus, Ohio

Sources and web links