The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Denomination·Founded 1832 CE·About 278,000 total members in 2022, in the United States and Canada, down from just under 2 million at the 1958 peak. The 2024 yearbook listed 2,887 affiliated congregations, of which 2,032 reported statistics or gave to outreach. The denomination publishes its own decline figures, which is not universal.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)ArchiveDisciples of Christ Historical Society

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Overview Belief 3How to Live 1Practice 1Stories & Scripture 1Community 1 You × The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) Discussion

History & overview

The full story →

The wing of the Restoration Movement that decided unity mattered more than the pattern.

The stream of the Stone-Campbell movement that kept the missionary societies and the organ, built a denomination with a General Assembly in 1968, ordained women from the nineteenth century, joined the ecumenical councils its founders would have had no use for, and now practises the most open communion in American Protestantism — anyone at all may take it, with no examination and no membership required. It has lost roughly six in seven of its 1958 members.

Why it is filed this way

The Disciples are the one Stone-Campbell body that accepted the label. Adopting the Design in 1968 formally restructured a brotherhood of independent congregations into a denomination with regions and a General Assembly — the act that finished the separation from the independent Christian Churches, whose objection was precisely to being organised.

DeitiesThe Trinity, held loosely; the Disciples have no binding confession and the only question historically asked of a candidate for membership is whether they confess Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Founded1832 CE · Lexington, Kentucky
FounderBarton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell, by descent
AfterlifeResurrection; the denomination does not legislate on the details and mostly does not preach them
TextsThe Bible · Thomas Campbell, Declaration and Address (1809) · The Design for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), 1968

The map

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)’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 1832 CE The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Core Tenets

2 — a sample of the center, never the sum Enter →
The only test is the good confession. Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God? That question and an affirmative answer is the entire doctrinal requirement for membership. There is no creed to subscribe and no examination, and there never has been. Go deeper — context →
Silence leaves liberty. The same rule that produced the a cappella Churches of Christ produced its mirror image here: if the New Testament does not forbid the organ, the missionary society or the denomination, they are matters of expedience. The two readings of silence are the whole difference between the two bodies. Go deeper — context →

Figures

who it looks to — gods, spirits, ancestors; some rooms are empty on principle Enter →
B Barton Stone — the revivalist who would not keep a title. A Presbyterian minister who was ordained only after telling the presbytery he accepted the Westminster Confession as far as he saw it consistent with the word of God. He dissolved his own presbytery in 1804, freed the people he had inherited as slaves, and spent forty years arguing that party names are the disease. Domain Christian unity, revival, the refusal of party namesStanding The Disciples claim the Stone half of the inheritance more warmly than the Campbell half Meet them — context →

Rites & Ritual

what its people do — and when Enter →
The table is open, and it means open. No membership, no baptism, no examination, no fence: the invitation is to anyone present. Disciples regard the weekly open table as their single most distinctive practice, and the elders who preside are lay members rather than clergy. When Weekly — communion every Sunday, open to all presentWho Anyone in the room, member or not, baptised or not Go deeper — context →

Where next

the museum exit — every door leads deeper in
Christianity — 9 shared ideas, a different faith Sikhism — 9 shared ideas, a different faith Judaism — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Islam — 8 shared ideas, a different faith Branch The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) — inherit everything, change what you must The library of ideas — what The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) shares with every other faith A faith at random — somewhere you have never been

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

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