The Church of the Brethren

Denomination·Founded 1708 CE·est. 81,345 members in the United States in 2022, the last full denominational Yearbook figure, down from 91,608 in 2020 — a fall of more than ten thousand in two years. Membership passed below 100,000 in 2020 for the first time since the nineteenth century. Counts exclude the related Old German Baptist Brethren, Dunkard Brethren, Brethren Church and Grace Brethren, who separated in 1881-83 and 1883 and 1939.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → Anabaptism → The Church of the Brethren

Church of the BrethrenYoung Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, Elizabethtown College

Branch
Overview Belief 3How to Live 1Practice 1Stories & Scripture 1Community 1 You × The Church of the Brethren Discussion
Precept of The Church of the Brethren

The oath is refused, the war is refused, and so is the lawsuit.

The Brethren are one of the three historic peace churches with the Quakers and the Mennonites, and Brethren Volunteer Service came out of the alternative service arrangements of the 1940s. Refusal of the oath cost them civil office in colonial Pennsylvania and later in the Revolution.

Add to My Beliefs →
What it asksNo oath, no war, no lawsuit, no creed, and simple living
Who it bindsMembers, by the promise made at baptism in the water
Where it bitesConscription, and the recurring proposal to adopt a doctrinal statement
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The Brethren, Mennonites and Quakers are the three historic peace churches, and the Brethren have been the most institutionally inventive about it. Their conscientious objectors in the First World War were court-martialled and imprisoned; in 1940 the three churches negotiated Civilian Public Service with the United States government, which put objectors into forestry, mental hospitals and public health work. Brethren Volunteer Service, founded in 1948, and Heifer International, founded by the Brethren farmer Dan West in 1944 after he ladled out rationed milk in the Spanish Civil War and thought it would be better to send the cow, both come from this. The refusal of the oath is older and less visible: it kept Brethren out of colonial and Revolutionary-era office and produced fines and confiscations in Pennsylvania in the 1770s.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
The Five Precepts. Buddhism Go deeper →
Ahimsa at the table. Jainism Go deeper →
The hundred and eighty precepts. Taoism Go deeper →
No sword, no oath, no lawsuit against a brother. The Mennonites Go deeper →
The dharma of one's station. Hinduism Go deeper →
The commandments are how the covenant is lived. Judaism · core tenet Go deeper →

The conversation

argument stays attached to the claim it is about All discussion →

Sign in to open the first thread. Everything here is attributed.

Where next

The Church of the Brethren's How to Live roomback up one layer Propose a change to this passageone button — it routes to the review pool

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

Built on Hatchable