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RCA (Reformed Church in America)
The RCA is
the oldest active denomination in the United States with
a continuous ministry since 1624. It connected
ecumenically in a Formula of Agreement with the
Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ,
and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It is a
mainline Protestant denomination.
The word Reformed comes from
the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the 1500's with
such leaders as Martin Luther and John Calvin. Calvin's
reformation in Geneva spread to Scotland (where it was
called Presbyterian) and to Holland (where it became our
ancestor, the Dutch Reformed Church).
Since the first
congregation in New Amsterdam in 1628, the Reformed
Church has included many different races and
nationalities in its congregations.
The Reformed Church has
about 960 congregations in the United States and Canada
with an active confirmed membership of 203,000 persons.
It's large and well known
congregations are the Marble Collegiate Church in New
York City and the Crystal Cathedral in California. There
are congregations large and small with clusters in Iowa,
in the states around Chicago, western Michigan, the
Hudson-Mohawk valley in New York state, New Jersey and
Florida. Recent church development efforts have been in
the Carolinas, Georgia, Connecticut, Texas and Canada.
This congregation was
begun in 1965 with much help from various agencies and
boards of the denomination. |