History & overview · every faith gets one
No Trinity, no immortal soul, no hell, no clergy — and a kingdom coming to Jerusalem, not to the sky.
A Bible-only body founded by John Thomas, an English doctor who emigrated to America, survived a shipwreck, and resolved to work out Christian doctrine from the text alone. Christadelphians reject the Trinity, the personal pre-existence of Christ, the immortality of the soul, a personal devil and hell; they hold that the dead are unconscious, that the faithful will be raised and judged when Christ returns, and that the kingdom will be a literal restored kingdom of Israel with Jerusalem as its capital. They have no ministers and no headquarters.
Why it is filed this way
Christadelphians describe themselves as a community of ecclesias rather than a denomination and reject the label, but they maintain a written statement of faith, fellowship boundaries policed between ecclesias, and a recognised legal identity obtained in 1864. Non-Trinitarian and conditionalist, they sit outside the Nicene definition of Christianity, as they say themselves.
The founding
John Thomas sailed for America in 1832; his ship nearly foundered in a storm, and he vowed that if he survived he would find out for himself what the Bible actually taught. He joined the Campbell movement, fell out with Alexander Campbell over doctrine, was rebaptised on his own new understanding in 1847, and toured Britain from May 1848 to October 1850, lecturing and gathering the groups that became the Christadelphians. The name was coined in 1864 so that American members could claim conscientious objector status in the Civil War, which required a recognised denomination with a name.
Its founding is bound to John Thomas — 1848 CE.
What it holds
Reality. One God, one purpose worked out in history, and a future kingdom on this earth rather than an escape from it.
The divine. One God, the Father, alone. Jesus is his son, who did not exist personally before his birth and who is now immortal; the Holy Spirit is God's power rather than a person. Christadelphians describe the Trinity as an importation from Greek philosophy and argue the case at length..
Death and after. The dead are unconscious and know nothing; the responsible dead are raised at Christ's return, judged, and either given immortality or destroyed. There is no hell of torment and no immortal soul to put in one..