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
Community of The Church of the Brethren

Annual Conference decides, and it has been dividing the church since 1881.

Queries come up from congregations through districts to a delegate body whose decisions bind the whole denomination. It split three ways in 1881-83 over dress, salaried ministry and Sunday schools, and it has been losing congregations since 2018 over sexuality.

Add to My Beliefs →
How you joinTrine forward immersion of an adult who asks for it
Who leadsCongregationally called pastors, district boards, and an Annual Conference of delegates whose decisions bind
The unitThe congregation, within a district, within Annual Conference
Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

Annual Conference is the only body that speaks for the denomination, and it works by queries: a congregation raises a question, the district passes it up, a study committee reports, and delegates decide. It has bound the church on hard questions — it condemned slaveholding by members as early as 1782 — and it has also been where the church has come apart. In 1881 and 1883 the body divided three ways: the Old German Baptist Brethren left over the abandonment of plain dress and the introduction of salaried ministry and Sunday schools, and the progressive Brethren Church left in the other direction; the Dunkard Brethren separated again in 1926 and the Grace Brethren in 1939. The current fracture is over sexuality: at least sixteen congregations and nearly four thousand members left between May 2018 and May 2020, the largest departure since the 1880s, and the Covenant Brethren Church was formed in autumn 2020 to receive them. Six Puerto Rican congregations withdrew in 2024.

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The conversation

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Where next

The Church of the Brethren's Community 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.

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