The Church of the Brethren: beliefs, history and sources

History & overview

No force in religion, no creed but the New Testament, and the full love feast.

Radical Pietists who in 1708 baptised each other in the river Eder at Schwarzenau and took Anabaptist practice with a Pietist warmth attached. They immerse three times face-forward, keep a love feast of examination, feetwashing, a full meal, the holy kiss and then bread and cup, anoint the sick with oil, and decide everything at an Annual Conference that no bishop can overrule. Almost all of them emigrated to Pennsylvania by 1740, and the church has split repeatedly ever since.

Why it is filed this way

The Brethren are Anabaptist in practice and Pietist in temperature, and historians class them under both. They did not come out of the Swiss Brethren; they came out of the Reformed church by way of the radical Pietist conventicles and then adopted Anabaptist baptism and discipline deliberately, from reading.

DeitiesThe Trinity, invoked by name three times in the baptismal formula — the candidate is immersed forward once for each person.

Founded1708 CE · Schwarzenau, Wittgenstein

FounderAlexander Mack

AfterlifeResurrection and judgment, with a long-standing minority hope that all will finally be restored

TextsThe New Testament, taken as the only creed · The Brethren Encyclopedia and the Annual Conference minutes · Alexander Mack, Rights and Ordinances (1715)

The map

The Church of the Brethren’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 1525 CE Anabaptism 1708 CE The Church of the Brethren

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →

No creed but the New Testament — and that has been tested every generation. The Brethren have never adopted a confession of faith, which is a positive doctrine rather than an absence: a creed is held to fix in one century's language what must stay open to the text. It also means every dispute goes to Annual Conference rather than to a document. Go deeper — context & 1 source →

Baptism is three times, forward, into running water if there is any. The candidate kneels in the stream and is pressed face-forward once at the name of each person of the Trinity — forward because a person bows to be baptised rather than falling backward. Then hands are laid on while still kneeling in the water. Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →

A Alexander Mack — first baptised, and refused as founder. A miller's son from Schriesheim who lost his property to persecution and led the eight at the Eder in 1708. He wrote Rights and Ordinances in 1715 as a set of questions and answers, emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1729 and died at Germantown in 1735; his grave was unmarked for a century. Domain Believers baptism, the ordinances, church order without creedStanding First among the eight; the church refuses to call him its founder Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →

The love feast — the whole of John 13, in order, at a table. It runs for hours: examination, then feetwashing in pairs with basins and towels, then an actual supper eaten together, then the holy kiss, and only then the bread and the cup. Doing the meal is the point; Brethren regard a communion without it as an abridgement. When Twice a year in most congregations — the annual and semi-annual love feast, usually near Maundy ThursdayWho Baptised members, with the unbaptised welcome to watch Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in

Christianity — 12 shared ideas, a different faith Sikhism — 11 shared ideas, a different faith Judaism — 10 shared ideas, a different faith Zoroastrianism — 10 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The Church of the Brethren — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The Church of the Brethren shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

Sources

1 cited texts

Alexander Mack, Kurze und einfältige Vorstellung (Rights and Ordinances of the House of God), Schwarzenau, 1715 (rendered) where it is cited →

These citations identify texts used in the linked passages. Follow each passage to read its quotation and context. A tradition’s own texts explain its teachings; historical claims may also require independent scholarship. Translations marked (rendered) are our own plain-English wording, not a standard edition; where a passage matters, read it in a full translation.