The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (usually ientified as National Council of Churches, or NCC) is an association of 35 Christian faith groups in the United States with 100,000 local congregations and 45,000,000 adherents. Its member communions (also variously called denominations, churches, conventions, or archdioceses) currently (2008) include a wide variety of Mainline Protestant, Orthodox, African-American, Evangelical and historic Peace churches.