Stories & Scripture — The Christian Churches and Churches of Christ

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

Stories

the narratives it tells itself

The split started on a mission field in China. In the 1920s conservatives found that Disciples missionaries in China were practising open membership — receiving the unimmersed into the church. The row over that, and over the theology taught in the College of the Bible at Lexington, is where the third stream began. Read it in full — context →

The Scriptures

the texts that carry the stories — and everything else

The Bible

Thomas Campbell, Declaration and Address (1809)

Christian Standard, published since 1866