Panentheist wrote: "find me the address to access the Terms of Reference of the United Church of Canada (and I am talking about the institute itself)"

EZ Answer:  http://www.united-church.ca/files/manual/2007_manual.pdf

Here it is, Panenthiest - terms of reference for The United Church of Canada. (PDF alert)

I'll warn you, it is a long document, and one that has been in constant transition since the inception of the denomination. There are very few people in the church who have actually read all of it, and it takes quite a bit of work to keep up to date with it.

I hope your summer is going well.

Christ's peace - r

*LOL* We must have been typing at the same time, EZed.

Christ's peace - r

Manual aside, there is also the United Church of Canada Act. The citation is in The Manual and I think it may be on line somewhere.  

 You're right DKS.  The Act is very much on line.  http://www.axz.ca/act.htm   There are also a variety of provincial acts with the same name, which simply reinforce the federal act for the specific province.  I never found out why the believed it necessary to do that, but they did.

It was done for legal reasons involving property as well as to establish a new church structure out of the existing denominations. The United Church of Canada is an incorporated body, both federally and provincally (not an Established church, but incorporated).  There are several good books on the union debates, including N. Keith Clifford's now out of print "The Resistance to Church Union in Canada 1904-1939".  The United Church Act establishes the national church ownership of property, the right of a minister to occupy a pulpit, chair the Session and Trustees and places them in accountability to and under oversight of the presbytery and on the Roll of the Conference. It is why we require a remit to change the Basis of Union.