Throughout Bethlehem’s history there have only been 12 years that we were not associated with an established church conference. Those twelve years happened in these last 25 years of our history, which we are commemorating today. From its beginning in 1832 until 1965, Bethlehem Christian Church was an active member of the North Carolina and Virginia Conference of the Christian Church. We supported the conference in three main ways. First, we sent delegates to the annual meetings, usually held in November, for almost all of these 133 years, the main exception being the war years of 1861-1865. My grandfather, Ed Brown, was a delegate eight times during the years from 1930 through 1962. Second, we contributed money to the support of the conference and its chosen works. Each church was assigned by the conference an amount of money to give based on the number of recorded members. Often our minutes recount special appeals by the minister to members to fund the conference apportionment. Third, we hosted the conference meetings. The annual NC & VA Conference met at Bethlehem Christian Church nine times in the years from 1857 through 1952. As you can see, we supported our local conference.

We changed our name to Bethlehem Congregational Christian Church after the Christian Church and the Congregational Church merged in 1931. Then in 1957 the Congregational Christian denomination merged with the Evangelical & Reformed Church to form the United Church of Christ. In 1960, we approved the constitution of the UCC and again changed our name, this time to Bethlehem United Church of Christ.

About a decade after we joined the UCC, we became increasingly concerned about the use of the money sent to the national UCC organization for use on what they designated as missions. As a church we began to be suspicious of what the UCC defined as “missions”. A committee of volunteers was asked by the congregation to research how the UCC spent missions money, and it soon became clear that many at Bethlehem disagreed with the denomination. Although there were several projects that we found questionable, two main issues pushed us to act.

First, the UCC was committed, some might say obsessed, with freeing ten people convicted of arson and conspiracy in Wilmington, NC, during the summer of 1971. They were known in the media as the Wilmington 10. One member of the group had been sent to Wilmington as a UCC employee. While that certainly played some role in their devotion to the cause of freeing them, the UCC also maintained the group’s innocence. In today’s dollars the UCC spent at least $1.5 million over nine years in legal expenses on behalf of the Wilmington 10. Innocent or guilty, we felt that spending that amount of money in legal fees was not a legitimate missions expense. This diversion of funds caused us to vote in 1972 to suspend our contributions for the rest of that year and for all of 1973. Although in 1974 we resumed contributions, we never increased our annual giving past the 1974 apportionment, despite what the conference requested. We also specified that none of our money would go to the national UCC Executive Council or to the so-called Commission for Racial Justice.

Second, in July 1977, the UCC 11th General Synod adopted, over the objections of a third of its delegates, its Preliminary Human Sexuality Study. This study recommended, among other things, that abortion be considered an acceptable means of ending a pregnancy, that laws against abortion and homosexual conduct be repealed, and that ordination of practicing homosexuals be considered. I was sent as a delegate to the Southern Conference annual meeting in Virginia Beach in April 1978. There I read into the minutes a Statement of Concern, from Bethlehem and fourteen other local UCC congregations, objecting to homosexual conduct and to the ordination of practicing homosexuals and calling on the Conference to make evangelism its priority.

Despite our protests the UCC continued on its course. In 1978 we stopped contributing to the national UCC. They continued to march steadily toward a denominational position of situational morality that ignored clear Bible teachings when the prevailing culture declared those teachings unpopular. Many of our members were embarrassed to be known as belonging to a UCC church.

Four years later on November 7, 1982, we formally withdrew from the UCC and reclaimed our original name, Bethlehem Christian Church. This name reminds us of the principle proclaimed by Rev. Rice Haggard when the Christian Church was established at the Old Lebanon conference in 1794. He held up a copy of the New Testament and said that the name “Christian” is a sufficient name for Christ’s followers.

It would be 12 years before Bethlehem would join another conference. In July 1985 an informal poll of members voted 90-17 to remain unaffiliated. At a June 1988 called meting, the deacon board presented a recommendation that we join the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference, or 4Cs. Various reasons were given on both sides. Those who favored joining said that affiliation would give us missions assistance, help in finding an interim or permanent pastor, offer opportunities for future growth, and help with problems too big for our church to solve. Those who favored remaining unaffiliated noted that there would likely be pressure to give a conference suggested amount, that the 4Cs headquarters was too far away from us to be helpful, and that there was a distinct lack of 4Cs churches to associate with in our area. After much discussion the vote was 43-40 to remain unaffiliated.

In a February 1994 called meeting the deacons held a question-and-answer session to again discuss joining the 4Cs. The concerns of a majority of our members were this time sufficiently addressed, and we voted 90-28 to join the 4Cs.

As we look back on this process I can point to at least one very positive development. For our first 150 years budgeted missions funding was largely left to the conference and denomination. Partly as a result of being disappointed by the UCC, we now have a missions board, a detailed missions policy, research to support our missions funding choices, and active missions trips by members of our congregation. I’m now proud to tell outsiders where our missions funds go.