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Calvin Synod of the United Church of Christ


The Calvin Synod is an acting conference of the United Church of Christ, composed entirely of Reformed, or Calvinist congregations of Hungarian descent. Unlike much of the UCC, the Synod is strongly conservative on doctrinal and social matters, and many members of the "Faithful and Welcoming Movement," a renewal group acting to move the UCC in a more orthodox direction, belong to this body.

Hungarians began to emigrate to the United States toward the end of the 19th century. Like other immigrants of Protestant faith, they brought their Bibles, catechisms and hymnals with them, in order to pray and worship in their native language. Some congregations were independent, and some become affiliated with the German Reformed Church, the Reformed Church in America and the Presbyterian Church (USA). The attempts to create an independent denomination failed at first.

However, the independent churches formed a Classis (the equivalent of a presbytery in Anglo-Saxon Presbyterian churches) in 1896, relating to the Reformed Church in Hungary. After the First World War, the Hungarian Reformed Church was no longer able to provide money to the American immigrant congregations. The Reformed Church in Hungary assigned its Classis churches to the German Reformed Church in the U.S, then known as the Reformed Church in the United States (not the same denomination as the current one by that name, however). The RCH and the Classis signed the Tiffin Agreement in 1921. Under the terms of the agreement, despite the formally presbyterian structure of the RCUS, the Classis congregations were given relative autonomy to practice their own traditions without outside interference. Several congregations, though, rejected this effort and created the free-standing Hungarian Reformed Church in America.


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