The Twelve Tribes reads church history as a fall: the community of Acts held everything in common, and within a few generations that ended, the state adopted the church, and what continued under the name was something else. The movement therefore does not call itself Christian, does not count itself among denominations and does not recognise the creeds. Its own existence is the restoration in progress — the twelve tribes being gathered again, which is where the name comes from — and it is candid that the work is unfinished and that it does not know how long it has.