Churches Uniting In Christ

Churches Uniting in Christ (CUIC) is a new body bringing together 9 mainline American Protestant denominations, namely:

• African Methodist Episcopal Church
• African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church
• Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
• Christian Methodist Episcopal Church
• Episcopal Church
• International Council of Community Churches
• Presbyterian Church (USA)
• United Church of Christ
• United Methodist Church

In addition, the [Evangelical Lutheran Church in America]? is a "partner in mission and dialog".

CUIC is to be inaugurated on January 20, 2002, and is the successor organization to the [Consultation on Church Union]? (COCU) founded in 1962. The original task of COCU was to negotiate a merger between its member denominations; however, the membership of the denominations overwhelmingly rejected a merger when it was proposed in 1969. With the failure of the merger proposal, COCU then turned to negotiating "intercommunion", whereby each member church would retain its own autonomy and identity, while recognizing the validity of the rites and ministry of the others and accepting them as true churches. In 1991 it was proposed that this was to be done on the historic model of bishop, presbyter and deacon. However, the Presybterian Church USA was unwilling to implement some of the changes to its internal rules that this model would require, and the Episcopal Church did not feel able to participate at the time. It was then proposed that intercommunion be established without a resolution of the ministry issue, which would be resolved by 2007 by means of intensive dialog between the churches. This modified proposal was then accepted by the member churches.