More Union

June is the month for marriage. Fortnight ago the United Presbyterians and Northern Presbyterians joined (TIME, June 24), and this week in Cleveland the Congregational Christian Churches (membership: 1,342,000) and the Evangelical and Reformed Church (membership: 775,000) merged to become the United Church of Christ. The merger has been 17 years in the making. Some Congregationalists, e.g., the Cadman Memorial Church in Brooklyn, were so chary of losing their precious local autonomy in the merger with the E. & R. presbytery system that they sued to prevent the union, but lost. Says the Rev. Dr. James E. Wagner, president of the Evangelical and Reformed Church: "In marriage or in merger, where two become one, the very generosities required from both become channels of grace; and they discover that as each must decrease for their union to increase, they both grow in spirit."

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