For more than a hundred years the religious forces of America have been periodically attempting to solve the problems connected with unrestrained denominationalism. However inevitable in an atmosphere of unrestricted religious liberty and in an area of immense geographical magnitude the survival and multiplication of sects, large and small, has proved, it ought not to be overlooked or obscured that there has been no disposition among church leaders to regard this increasing multiplicity with

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... oncern or complacency. The growth of denominational co-operation is just as characteristic of American Christianity in the nineteenth century as was revivalism during the eighteenth. The Plan of Union, the Bible, Tract, and related societies, the American Home Missionary Society, the Overture for Union (1838), the Evangelical Alliance, the Federation of Presbyterian Bodies, all demonstrate that few and brief were the periods during the last century when considerable sections of the American church were not seriously considering or actually operating some scheme of co-operation. In this effort to remove the reproach of sectarianism, denominational statesmanship has never been more resolute than during the last thirty years. Far from satisfied with the imposing structure of interdenominational organization created to grapple with the menacing evils of our congested cities and the enlarging opportunities of world-missions, our religious leaders are today looking toward a more radical elimination of duplicated denominational effort, if not indeed the ultimate merging into a single giant organization of all our evangelical churches. To realize this hope one movement was launched fifteen years ago and is now well out to sea. Others are just emerging. In detail they have not yet 224 This content downloaded from 141.218.001.105 on August 02, 2016 13:15:27 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). CHURCH-UNION MOVEMENTS IN AMERICA 225 been entirely worked out by their promoters. The fact that we are almost in the anomalous position of being divided on projects denominated more or less carelessly as union in character suggests the propriety of attempting to discover just what is the task to which each of these movements is applying itself, and the way by which it proposes to reach its goal. With the aid of official documents the writer attempts to set these forth.