About The United Reformed Church

What is The United Reformed Church?

We are a family of Christians, worshipping in the name of Jesus in about 1300 churches from Orkney to Cornwall. The denomination formed in 1972 as a formal merger between the Presbyterian Church of England and the Congregational Church in England and Wales.

The Congregationalists and Presbyterians began life in the time of the Reformation and became separate churches when they were ejected from the Church of England in 1662. They shared very similar beliefs in the Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration, differing only on details of church government. It wasn’t until the 20th century that the churches started to unite.

The URC is a nonconformist Church. Put most simply, this means that we are not an ‘established’ Church with a formal links to civil authority like, for example, the Church of England. Being reformed sets us in a stream of tradition that goes back over 500 years. In 1517 Martin Luther launched a movement of challenge in the Church that we call the Protestant Reformation. Changes came quickly. Bibles were translated and printed in languages everybody used, there was a new emphasis on the importance of the whole church and everybody in it – members and ministers together.

Being reformed is part of our DNA. It reflects our continual aim of reforming ourselves to be a Church for the present day.

The URC is committed to working closely with Churches of all traditions, in prayer and social action, and many of our local churches are now united with local churches from other traditions (Baptist, Church of England, or Methodist to name a few).

We are:

• United – an important part of our story. We started when English Presbyterians merged with English and Welsh Congregationalists in 1972. Churches of Christ joined us in 1981 and Scottish Congregationalists in 2000. We work as closely as we can with Christians of all traditions and styles.

• Reformed – this means that we delight in the Bible, we do not fear change and we try to run our churches in ways that take everyone’s insight and contribution seriously.

• Church – we are one church; we aim to grow through supporting one another and taking decision together.

We are an intercultural church with posts open to women as fully as to men, where people of varied ethnic roots can enrich each other’s Christian living. Our people hold a range of opinions about theology and church life. Whatever our different opinions, we remain united as, in the words of the denomination’s Statement of Nature, Faith and Order, “together we are firmly committed to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the living God, the only God, ever to be praised”.