Bishop Christopher Epting, the denomination’s chief ecumenical officer

New York — A long-discussed organization of a wide range of U.S. churches and church bodies will be launched in June.

The new group, Christian Churches Together in the USA (CCT-USA), will officially inaugurate its work on June 1 at a Jesuit retreat center in Los Altos, CA.

It is the first such ecumenical group to be joined by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. They formally declared their support for CCT in late 2004.

Catholic churches in about 70 other countries belong to national ecumenical or church bodies, Catholic News Service reported.

CCT is being formed to “widen and enlarge the table” of ecumenical action, cooperation and dialogue in the United States and is not expected, at least for now, to supplant the already existing National Council of Churches (USA).

The Roman Catholic Church — the single largest denomination in the United States — does not belong to the NCC; nor do many Evangelical or Pentecostal groups.

The latest U.S. denomination to declare itself a founding member of the CCT is the Episcopal Church, whose executive council committed the church to membership during a meeting last month in Austin, TX, the Episcopal News Service reported.

Bishop Christopher Epting, the denomination’s chief ecumenical officer, told the news service that CCT could “have the potential of moving beyond the old, institutional structures and bureaucracies of the ecumenical movement and tap into the new energies of a spiritual ecumenism.”

ENS reported that, in addition to the Episcopal Church and the U.S. Catholic bishops, full CCT-USA members include the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Church of God, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the United Methodist Church, several Orthodox bodies, the Salvation Army, the United Church of Christ, Open Bible Churches, International Pentecostal Holiness Church, the advocacy group Evangelicals for Social Action, and the humanitarian organization World Vision.