In the 20th century, the Congregational tradition in America fragmented into three different denominations. The largest of these is the United Church of Christ, which resulted from a 1957 merger with the Evangelical and Reformed Church. Congregationalists who chose not to join the United Church of Christ founded two alternative denominations: the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches and the Conservative Congregational Christian Conference.
Above is from wiki. I was wondering about that myself when I saw an old church (very fancy) that still called itself Congregational in Great Barrington.
Awesome, thank you! Part of my problem is I downloaded full county data by individual church into Excel, and I am using a hodge-podge of methods to fill in columns for more broader categories (e.g., "Lutheran" and "Protestant - Mainline"). So, for denominations I do not know a lot about, it's kind of confusing combining what I can find on Wikipedia with the Pew Religious Landscape Survey, especially when they seem to contradict each other.
The Wiki history is correct, and the Congregrational churches have their origins with Puritan New England. The role of the church was so strong in colonial times that you couldn't form a town until you had a Congregational church (which often served as the meeting house). Today many UCC churches, especially in New England, have the name (nth) Congregational Church of placename. UCC churches with other names are generally from the E&R merger or adopted a new name in recent decades.
The UCC churches are certainly mainline, but the splinter Congregational churches are usually not considered mainline due to their more conservative theology. I view it as similar to ELCA vs other Lutheran denominations.
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