The International Churches of Christ

Movement·Founded 1979 CE·About 112,000 members in roughly 700 congregations across 147 or 148 nations, on the movement's own March 2024 reporting; its own site gives 107,000 in 767 congregations for a slightly different date. Membership peaked at about 135,000 in 2002 and fell after the 2003 crisis. All figures are self-reported and there is no independent audit.

Judaism → Christianity → Catholicism → Protestantism → The Restoration Movement (Churches of Christ) → The International Churches of Christ

Branch
Core tenet of The International Churches of Christ

You are not baptised into Christ unless you were baptised as a disciple.

The doctrine that defined the movement and separated it from its parent: a valid baptism requires that the person already be a disciple who has counted the cost, which meant almost every previous baptism was void. Converts from other churches, including from the Churches of Christ, were routinely rebaptised.

Understanding it — context, not catechism: how this passage is held

The disciple-baptism doctrine is the ICOC's inheritance from the Restoration Movement pushed one step further. The a cappella Churches of Christ hold that baptism is immersion of a penitent believer for the forgiveness of sins; the ICOC added the requirement that the candidate must already have made the decision to be a disciple in the full sense taught by the movement, and concluded that baptisms not meeting that standard — including most Church of Christ baptisms — were invalid. In practice this meant almost everyone who joined was rebaptised, including lifelong members of the parent body, and it is the doctrinal reason the two are separate movements rather than wings of one. It also had a social effect: a person's standing dated from their ICOC baptism, which reset their religious biography and put them at the bottom of a structure they then climbed. The doctrine has been softened in some ICOC congregations since 2003 and remains in others.

The same ground, other faiths

claims that share this one's ideas
Chrismation, and confirmation. Christianity · rite Go deeper →
Baptism is immersion, of a believer, for the forgiveness of sins. The Restoration Movement (Churches of Christ) Go deeper →
The doorway, the tulsi, and the kitchen. Hinduism · rite Go deeper →
Paritta — the protective chant. Buddhism · rite Go deeper →
The kitchen. Jainism · rite Go deeper →
Shabbat — the palace in time. Judaism · the interior Go deeper →

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