The Pilgrims Come to America: Seeking spiritual freedom, forebears of the United Church of Christ prepare to leave Europe for the New World. Their pastor, John Robinson, urges them as they depart to keep their minds and hearts open to new ways. God, he says, “has yet more light and truth to break forth out of His Holy Word.”

Abolitionist Movement: Congregationalists are among the first Americans to take a stand against slavery. The Rev. Samuel Sewall writes the first anti-slavery pamphlet in America, “The Selling of Joseph.” Sewall lays the foundation for the abolitionist movement that comes more than a century later.

Boston Tea Party: Five thousand angry colonists gather in the Old South Meeting House to demand repeal of an unjust tax on tea. Their protest inspires the first act of civil disobedience in US history – the “Boston Tea Party.”

The First African-American Pastor: Lemuel Haynes is the first African-American ordained by a Protestant denomination. He becomes a world-renowned preacher and writer.

Foreign Missions: America’s first foreign mission society, the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions (ABCFM), is formed by Congregationalists in Massachusetts.

The Amistad: Enslaved Africans break their chains and seize control of the schooner Amistad. Their freedom is short-lived, and they are held in a Connecticut jail while the ship’s owners sue to have them returned as property. The case becomes a defining moment for the movement to abolish slavery. Congregationalists and other Christians organize a campaign to free the captives. The US Supreme Court rules that the captives are not property, and the Africans regain their freedom.

The First Ordained Woman: Antoinette Brown is the first woman since New Testament times ordained as a Christian minister, and perhaps the first woman in history elected to serve a Christian congregation as pastor.

The Serenity Prayer: Evangelical and Reformed theologian Reinhold Niebuhr preaches a sermon that introduces the world to the now-famous Serenity Prayer: “God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.”

The First Openly Gay Minister: The UCC’s Golden Gate Association ordains the first openly gay person as a minister in a mainline Protestant denomination: the Rev. William R. Johnson. In the following three decades, General Synod urges equal rights for gay citizens and calls on congregations to welcome gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) members.

Since 2004, the UCC has gained national and international attention for its God is still speaking campaign and the commercials that followed. Based on the Gracie Allen quote, “Never place a period where God has place a comma,” the UCC, now known as much for the comma as its traditional logo (the cross-crown-and-orb) believes, as Rev. Robinson said that the there is “yet more light and truth to break forth” from God’s Holy Word. God is still speaking. Yes, God speaks to us through the pages of scripture, but God also speaks to us through prayer, worship, friends, strangers, glorious sunsets, and especially the laughter of children. God calls us “to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God” (Micah 6:8).