While it’s not always easy being first, the UCC has been at the forefront of applying faith and action. 

In 1620, seeking spiritual freedom, forebears of the United Church of Christ left Europe for the New World -later generations know them as the Pilgrims. Their pastor, John Robinson, urges them as they depart to keep their minds open to new ways. God, he says, "has yet more light and truth to break forth out of his holy Word."

The Pilgrims published the first book on the North American continent, The Bay Psalms Book, in 1640.

The UCC values education for all people. Active in establishing the first public schools, they also founded Harvard(1636), Yale(1701), and Dartmouth(1769) as well as many more colleges, including many historically black colleges, six of which remain affiliated with the UCC to this day.

Forebears of the UCC were the first mainline church to take a stand against slavery in the year 1700. On June 24 Samuel Sewall, a Puritan, speaks out against slavery and writes the first anti-slavery pamphlet in America.

No tax on tea! That was the decision on December 16, 1773, when 5,000 angry colonists gathered at the Old South Meeting House to protest a tax and started a revolution with the Boston Tea Party. the Old South Meeting House(Congregational church) was the largest building in colonial Boston. African American poet Phillis Wheatley and statesman Benjamin Franklin were members of Old South's congregation. As a meeting place and a haven for free speech and assembly, Old South Meeting House has been in continuous use for over 250 years.

In 1777, American patriots smuggled the Liberty Bell up from Philadelphia, just ahead of the British Army. They hid the Liberty Bell under the floor of the Second Zion Reformed Church in Allentown, PA to keep the British from melting it down to make cannons.

In 1785 Lemuel Haynes became the first African American person to be ordained to preach in a mainline Protestant denomination and the first to receive an honorary Master of Arts degree.

In September 1810, the UCC organized the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the first foreign missionary agency in North America.

On September 15, 1853, Antoinette Brown, was the first woman ordained to ministry in the modern era.

In 1943 Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr preaches a sermon that introduces to the world to the now famous Serenity Prayer ,which the AA has so widely adopted: "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."

In 1963 Charles Cobb pushes, the UCC General Synod to take a stand for powerful civil rights resolutions .

The UCC ordains the Rev. William R. Johnson in June of 1972—the first openly gay person in history to become a Christian minister. Six years later, the first openly lesbian minister, the Rev. Anne Holmes, is ordained. From the 1970s on, the UCC General Synod supports equal rights for homosexual citizens, and calls on congregations to welcome lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered members.

In1973 the UCC General Synod flies delegates to Coachella Valley as a public witness to the  plight of farm workers after being notified by Cesar Chavez that the Teamsters Union had unleashed a campaign of violence against the strikers, which almost claimed the life of one of the workers who was nearly beaten to death.

In 1985 the UCC voted at General Synod to monitor-- but also support -- genetic engineering and technology.

 In July 2005 the UCC  General Synod became the first major denomination to offer its support for marriage equality by advocating ecclesiastical changes and legislative efforts to extend full rights and responsibilities to same-gender couples now enjoyed by opposite-gender couples in church and society.