The Christian Churches and Churches of Christ

Denomination·Founded 1927 CE·No membership roll exists and none can, since there is no body to keep one. The Christian Standard directory listed about 5,200 congregations at its last compilation, down from nearly 6,800 six years earlier, and a new count was under way as of late 2024. Estimates of adherents commonly run above a million and are not from an audited source.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → The Christian Churches and Churches of Christ

Christian StandardArchiveDisciples of Christ Historical Society

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Overview Belief 3How to Live 1Practice 1Stories & Scripture 1Community 1 You × The Christian Churches and Churches of Christ Discussion

History & overview

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The third stream: instruments yes, denomination no.

The middle wing of the Stone-Campbell movement — congregations that kept the organ and the missionary agencies but refused to be organised into a denomination, and that separated from the Disciples over roughly 1926 to 1971 as the Disciples restructured. They have no headquarters, no convention that can bind, and no membership roll; what holds them together is a network of Bible colleges, mission agencies, the North American Christian Convention and the magazine Christian Standard.

Why it is filed this way

These congregations reject the word denomination more consistently than either sibling body, and there is genuinely nothing to join — no roll, no charter, no assembly with authority. What exists is a directory, a convention, a set of colleges and a magazine. Sociologically that is a denomination held together by institutions rather than by government.

DeitiesThe Trinity, held plainly and evangelically; these congregations are broadly conservative in theology and would be recognised as evangelical by anyone visiting.
Founded1927 CE · Indianapolis, Indiana
FounderBy descent from Barton W. Stone and the Campbells
AfterlifeResurrection and judgment, preached directly
TextsThe Bible · Thomas Campbell, Declaration and Address (1809) · Christian Standard, published since 1866

The map

The Christian Churches and Churches of Christ’s corner of it — solid lines are descent; dotted lines are resemblance only, ideas held in common across unrelated faiths. Click a node to recenter; ✕ returns here. All 171 faiths →
c. 1000 BCE Judaism 30 CE Christianity 1517 CE Protestantism 1927 CE The Christian Churches and Churches of Christ

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →
There is nothing to join. No general assembly, no roll, no charter, no officers over the congregations. A church is one of these churches because it says it is and because other such churches recognise it — which means the boundary is maintained by a magazine, a convention and a set of colleges rather than by any authority. Go deeper — context →
The instrument is a matter of expedience; the pattern is not. This is the position between the two siblings: the organ and the missionary agency are permitted because Scripture does not forbid them, while immersion for the forgiveness of sins, weekly communion and congregational elders are not negotiable because Scripture shows them. held by most Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →
P P. H. Welshimer — fifty-five years in one pulpit. He preached at First Christian Church in Canton, Ohio, from 1902 until 1957 and built it into the largest congregation in the movement, with a Sunday school that ran into the thousands. He chaired the early North American Christian Conventions and is the movement's pattern of what an independent congregation could be. Domain The independent congregation as a working modelStanding Named as the type of the movement rather than as an authority over it Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →
Weekly communion, and the invitation left to you. The elements are passed every Sunday and the invitation is characteristically neither fenced nor formally open: the person at the pew decides. It is a small thing that carries the whole ethos — the congregation will not adjudicate your standing. When Weekly — communion at every Sunday serviceWho The congregation, with the invitation left to conscience Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in
Christianity — 10 shared ideas, a different faith Sikhism — 10 shared ideas, a different faith Judaism — 9 shared ideas, a different faith Islam — 9 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The Christian Churches and Churches of Christ — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The Christian Churches and Churches of Christ shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

Numbers count Panfaith activity only — never real-world adherence.

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