Congregational in the context of "Paschal greeting"

Zephaniah Swift Moore (November 20, 1770 – June 29, 1823) was an American Congregational clergyman and educator. He taught at Dartmouth College during the early 1810s and had a house built in Hanover, New Hampshire, that now serves as Dartmouth's Blunt Alumni Center. He served as the President of Williams College between 1815 and 1821 and the first President of Amherst College between 1821 and 1823. He is most famous for leaving Williams in order to found Amherst, taking some of the faculty and 15 students with him. The rumor that Williams College library books were also taken to Amherst College was declared false in 1995 by Williams College President Harry C. Payne.

Moore died two years after Amherst was founded, and was succeeded by Heman Humphrey, a trustee of Williams College. Moore's departure from Williams College established the foundation for the intense Williams–Amherst rivalry that persists to the present. To this day, he is regarded with a measure of derision on the Williams campus.

The Westminster Assembly of Divines was a council of divines (theologians) and members of the English Parliament appointed from 1643 to 1653 to restructure the Church of England. Several Scots also attended, and the Assembly's work was adopted by the Church of Scotland. As many as 121 ministers were called to the Assembly, with nineteen others added later to replace those who did not attend or could no longer attend. It produced a new Form of Church Government, a Confession of Faith or statement of belief, two catechisms or manuals for religious instruction (Shorter and Larger), and a liturgical manual, the Directory for Public Worship, for the Churches of England and Scotland. The Confession and catechisms were adopted as doctrinal standards in the Church of Scotland and other Presbyterian churches, where they remain normative. Amended versions of the Confession were also adopted in Congregational and Baptist churches in England and New England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Confession became influential throughout the English-speaking world, but especially in American Protestant theology.

The Assembly was called by the Long Parliament before and during the beginning of the First English Civil War. The Long Parliament was influenced by Puritanism, a religious movement which sought further reform of the church. They were opposed to the religious policies of King Charles I and William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury. As part of a military alliance with Scotland, Parliament agreed that the outcome of the Assembly would bring the English Church into closer conformity with the Church of Scotland. The Scottish Church was governed by a system of elected assemblies of elders called presbyterianism, rather than rule by bishops, called episcopalianism, which was used in the English church. Scottish commissioners attended and advised the Assembly as part of the agreement. Disagreements over church government caused open division in the Assembly, despite attempts to maintain unity. The party of divines who favoured presbyterianism was in the majority, but the congregationalist party, which held greater influence in the military, favoured autonomy for individual congregations rather than the subjection of congregations to regional and national assemblies entailed in presbyterianism. Parliament eventually adopted a presbyterian form of government but lacked the power to implement it. During the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, all of the documents of the Assembly were repudiated and episcopal church government was reinstated in England.

Washington Gladden (February 11, 1836 – July 2, 1918) was a leading American Congregational pastor and early leader in the Social Gospel movement. He was a leading member of the Progressive Movement, serving for two years as a member of the Columbus, Ohio city council and campaigning against Boss Tweed as religious editor of the New York Independent. Gladden was probably the first leading U.S. religious figure to support unionization of the workforce; he also opposed racial segregation. He was a prolific writer who wrote hundreds of poems, hymns, articles, editorials, and books.