J
Jacob Engle — a name at the head of a thinly recorded beginning.
The Brethren in Christ have no founding document and no founding date they can defend to the year. Engle is the figure the tradition names for the first River Brethren baptisms in Lancaster County in the 1770s, and almost nothing else about him is recoverable.
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The shared center — held across the tradition
A changed heart and a disciplined church — neither alone.
The Pietist half asks whether you have been converted; the Anabaptist half asks whether the congregation can see it in how you live. The Brethren in Christ have insisted since the 1770s that a church which drops either question stops being one.
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Contested within — affirmed by some schools, refused by others
Entire sanctification — a second work of grace, and an argued one.
Taken from the Wesleyan holiness movement in the later 1800s: after conversion, a further crisis in which the Spirit cleanses the disposition to sin. Anabaptist-minded members have never been comfortable with it, and the denomination has repeatedly restated it in softer terms.
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Cosmos & Afterlife
how reality is built, and what follows deathThe nature of reality
A converted heart and a disciplined body, held together; neither the inward experience nor the outward church is enough on its own
After death
Resurrection and judgment; assurance is preached, unlike among the Old Orders