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.
Meet them — context →
The shared center — held across the tradition
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 →
Cosmos & Afterlife
how reality is built, and what follows deathThe nature of reality
The New Testament read as a practicable rule, with no creed permitted to stand between the reader and it
After death
Resurrection and judgment, with a long-standing minority hope that all will finally be restored