The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a mainline Protestant Christian denomination, primarily in the Reformed and Congregational tradition, with historical confessional roots in the Reformed, Congregational and Lutheran traditions. The United Church of Christ is in historical continuation of the General Council of Congregational Christian churches founded under the influence of New England Puritanism. The Evangelical and Reformed Church and the General Council of the Congregational Christian Churches united in 1957 to form the UCC. These two denominations, which were themselves the result of earlier unions, had their roots in Congregational, Christian, Evangelical, and Reformed denominations. At the end of 2014, the UCC's 5,116 congregations claimed 979,239 members, primarily in the United States.