Beginnings of this denomination

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aSaintoneday

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I have been trying very hard to find the starting point of the “Church of Christ” (no not the Catholic Church), I cannot find which group or what person started this denomination, or the year that they were founded, or what country they were founded in.

They believe that they were started by Jesus Christ, but they fail to give their history for atleast 1500 years. I cannot find a straight answer about their history or who/when they were founded, besides them saying Jesus.

Their churches are in an autonomous state from each other, they also believe in shunning when one has fallen away from their church, also if someone fails to be converted that person is also shunned. They believe that since in the bible that it states “Church of Christ” this fully justifies them being the one true Church. All lethal force, even to protect you or your family is banned. All miracles ceased after the last apostle died. These are just a few of their beliefs that differ more than usual, from other protestants.

So if anyone out there can help me find, who founded the “Churches of Christ” and when. I would really appreciate that.

Please and thank you.
 
HI,
All miracles ceased.
I can not remember which playright wrote the words but I like the words, maybe Noel Coward, “Anyone who doesn’t believe in miracles isn’t facing reality.”
Christ be with you
walk in love
edwinGhttp://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon7.gif
 
They started with the ministries of Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone in the late 1800’s or so…
 
I have also questioned their preachers about Thomas Campbell, Alexander Campbell, Barton W. Stone, and a few others but, the Campbells started the “disciples of Christ” and Barton W. Stone is attributed to the “christian church” (that is just the name of that church).

Believe me, lol, i have been through all of these people and none of them have turned out to be the one, or the group that did this.

I have read different articles about “Churches of Christ” starting somewhere in england in the 1600’s, to the most solid evidence that the “Church of Christ” started in 1906 as a split from the “disciples of Christ”, but none of all that i have read is solid solid, to their beginnings.
 
I found about 3 months ago that the Church of Christ was started in 1836 in Illinois as an offshoot of a Presbyterian Church.

I will look for that address.
 
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aSaintoneday:
I have been trying very hard to find the starting point of the “Church of Christ” (no not the Catholic Church), I cannot find which group or what person started this denomination, or the year that they were founded, or what country they were founded in.

They believe that they were started by Jesus Christ, but they fail to give their history for atleast 1500 years. I cannot find a straight answer about their history or who/when they were founded, besides them saying Jesus . . .

So if anyone out there can help me find, who founded the “Churches of Christ” and when. I would really appreciate that.
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I have posted on this at some length at least twice, elsewhere.

In the middle to late 1700’s in frontier America, a movement knowns as the ‘Christian Connection’ or as ‘restorationism’ sprang up among Christians seeking to evangelize those whom the established Protestant denominations tended to have limited contact with or concern about. The idea was that Christians could re-discover their unity if only they would ‘restore’ the worship and practice of the church to it’s apostolic simplicity. In many ways, the early movement resembled non-denominational mega-churches of the modern era: there was originally great liberty in the structure of individual congregations and how they were governed. Some portions of the ‘Christian Connection’ were absorbed into the “Christian And Reformed” denomination, which was absorbed in turn into the United Church of Christ, now a very liberal mainline denomination.

In the early 1800’s, a father/son team (Thomas and Alexander Campbell) began evangelizing in the emerging midwestern frontier, while a Barton Stone did likewise in the Dixie South. The churches established by the Campbells tended on-balance to favor the names ‘Disciples of Christ’ (in the American East) or ‘Christian Church’ (in the Midwest); Stone’s congregations tended to prefer ‘Church of Christ’. In the middle 1800’s, a split emerged in what was becoming, loosely, a denomination which denied it was a denomination, over the issue of slavery. The Churches of Christ tended to be pro-slavery; other parts of the movement tended to be abolitionist. As modernist (early liberalism) seeped into Protestant churches following the American Civil War, the Churches of Christ ‘split’ from their Yankee sister-churches.

Towards the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, the Disciples of Christ formed a national governing body, which the independent Christian Churches resisted, largely because the Disciples tended to be more liberal than the Independents. The Disciples became an official denomination in the 1920’s though the ‘Christian Churches, USA’ (official name of the Independents) did not incorporate any sort of national denominational body till the 1950’s or 1960’s. The Churches of Christ and the Independents are similar, but the Independents are far more moderate and Evangelical. The Churches of Christ are usually thoroughly fundamentalist. They still follow a strictly Congregational form of governance not entirely dissimilar to that of the Baptists.

The Churches of Christ are SELDOM pacifistic so I suspect you’ve either found a deviant sect amongst them or have misunderstood something. They are ‘cessationists’–they don’t believe in the perpetuity of the ‘sign’ gifts such as speaking in tongues, etcetera. They practice weekly communion (all in this tradition do likewise), do not use musical instruments in congregational singing, deem themselves strictly “New Testament Christians”. They baptize all new converts immediately following a profession of faith but do not practice nor accept infant baptism. They are especially sectarian and some few have been plagued by deviations into something akin to cultism–the ‘Boston Church of Christ Movement’ is notorious in this respect.
 
Wow, thank you very much flameburns623.

I am wondering now, where can i find proof of all that you have said? not that I am calling you a liar or anything like that, no not at all. It would just be nice so I can present all of this information to this family that I’m being an apologetic too, to show that they are just like all the other protestant denominations, not started by Jesus Christ.
Please and thank you so very much for all this information and than if you do provide me with the documention to go along with all that you have said, thank you for that too.
 
If you were to try to evangelize a C o C member to the RCC , where would you start?
 
I was one of those “independants” for 14 years. However, I know many C of C-ers. I would say bring them back to the Bible and show them that the Bible supports Catholic beliefs all over the place. The Bible is their only rule of thumb so if you show them that the Bible doesn’t even say that it is the only rule of thumb it will get them thinking. Prayer is always the most important thing to do. Its tough cause they are one close-knit fundamentalist group.
 
According to The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2002’s Major Christian Denominations: How Do They Differ?, the origins of the Church of Christ (Disciples) are “Among evangelical Presbyterians in KY (1804) and PA (1809), in distress over Protestant factionalism and decline of fervor; organized in 1832.”

By the way, it also says that the origins of the Roman Catholic Church are “Traditionally, founded by Jesus who named St. Peter the 1st vicar; developed in early Christian proselytizing, especially after the conversion of imperial Rome in the 4th cent.”
 
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aSaintoneday:
Wow, thank you very much flameburns623.

I am wondering now, where can i find proof of all that you have said? not that I am calling you a liar or anything like that, no not at all. It would just be nice so I can present all of this information to this family that I’m being an apologetic too, to show that they are just like all the other protestant denominations, not started by Jesus Christ.
Please and thank you so very much for all this information and than if you do provide me with the documention to go along with all that you have said, thank you for that too.
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I am Anglican, but raised in the ‘Independent Christian Churches of the USA’. Links are fairly easy to locate. Try these:

ne.essortment.com/christianchurch_rdsh.htm

This next one has some serious flaws (it says the ‘Christian Churches merged with the Congregationalists in 1931’. Actually the Congregationalist merger with the ‘Christian Connection’ happened over a hundred years prior, and the Congregationalists merged with the Reformed in 1931 to become the ‘Christian and Reformed Church’, then merged with what is now the UCC in the post-WWII era, finalizing that merger in 1957. Just goes to show that one does have to take some care with one’s sources, especially on the Internet):

infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0812094.html

The related article is rather more accurate and especially pertinent to the Churches of Christ:

infoplease.com/ce6/society/A0812190.html

Here’s of C of C tract which reviews their own history:

churches-of-christ.net/tracts/job121u.htm

One last link:

religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/restor2.html

Again I would ‘quibble’ with a couple of details. Of course my own memory can also be at fault. I happened to find a half-dozen out-of-print histories of this movement in my university library, some 18-plus years ago. (At the time my university shared it’s library with the United Churches of Christ. BTW–the UCC has SOME historical links to the Christian Connection, owing to it’s several mergers, but is NOT synonymous with the Churches of Christ and should not be confused with them).
 
Here is a website that is full of articles for the church of christ. It’s really a very good website for understanding their beliefs and other Protestant denominations. You will even find responses to the Catholic Church.

retainthestandard.com/index.html

In my discussions with a gentlemen who belongs to the church of Christ I could never pin him down to tell me where the Bible came from. He would always try to hit me with some other claim about the Church… I followed Mr. Keating’s advice about trying to take the dicussion back to the topic at hand but with him there was little chance. I just had to let it go. I can say this, they do know their Bible. I compliment them on their devotion to study. I hope one day to be as diligent in my studies.

Thank you,

Comas
 
Whoa, that site Comas posted is true to what they believe, and that is sad. If anyone that is in the Church of Christ is reading this, i dont mean to be offensive, but to believe just this link retainthestandard.com/denomination.html

is to be delusional. Most of Church of Christ beliefs are really out there too. I mean wow, to totally disregard history, and 1800 years of it as nothing, and worthless, is totally delusional. this is a quote from the 9th paragraph, “Now let us fast forward 1800 years.” It’s like you just want to say oh no no no, explain yourself for 1800 years, and why you only have 2 million members, that is a pretty poor job of “make disciples of all nations” if you say that you’ve been around for just about 2000 years. But than we get to the part about lets blame the Catholic Church, everything is blame the Catholic Church. It is like my gosh get over yourself. I could just go on for hours about how Ludicrous their thinking is.

I feel more pity for those in the Church of Christ than anything else, because they are just being fed grave lies, and they never question them, and the going mentality that is fed is that if a Catholic says it, no matter how much proof they have to back up what they say they are still wrong, “no matter what a Catholic says is automatically a lie, just because they are a Catholic saying it”

They have no real concept of God’s love for humanity and all that God has to offer us.

And to someone else’s question about what i would do if they wanted to convert, i first want to get there, than figure it out, and their is only one of them that means something to me to convert, but her conversion wouldn’t happen for a couple of years if it ever did.
 
Spent my early life in Independant Church of Christ/Christian Churches (name varied geographically) - however, we HAD musical instruments. The others were casually referred to the “non-pianos”. Never once heard of “shunning” in any of those congregations though…

This group has the North American Christian Convention as the annual gathering, the big publication is the Christian Standard www.christianstandard.com
Kage
 
I am afraid that Latisha is not kidding, She is our resident campbellite so called “church of Christ” troll, and very biggoted against the Catholic Church.

Although she has been away for a while, she and I were in very involved debates, where she refused to answer my questions.

Has she brought up the link to www.bible.com yet? That site shows the depth of hatred from the “csofC” and the lies they tell about the Catholic Church.

BTW Latisha you have been away some time now, maybe now you can answer my two main questions?
  1. Which one of the seven different denominations that call themselves the “one and only church of Christ” do you belong to?
  2. Have you found an independent, secular, non “cofc” non Catholic source that attests to the existence of the one and only “church of Christ’s” existence BEFORE 1906?
 
See posts 39-59 on the poll “what religion are you?” thread in the meet and greet section.
 
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boppysbud:
I am afraid that Latisha is not kidding, She is our resident campbellite so called “church of Christ” troll, and very biggoted against the Catholic Church.

Although she has been away for a while, she and I were in very involved debates, where she refused to answer my questions.

Has she brought up the link to www.bible.com yet? That site shows the depth of hatred from the “csofC” and the lies they tell about the Catholic Church.
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Did I miss something? I looked at the bible.com link as well as Latisha’s links and found no explicitly anti-Catholic comments. Mostly a positive presentation of what the C of C believes about itself and it’s own origins. Those things are open to debate, of course. But scarcely anti-Catholic. In fact, one link seemed to be mainly a refutation of another Protestant movement known as ‘dispensationalism’.

In the vast majority of Protestant worship services I have attended, great care is taken by a pastor who engages in a measure of polemics NOT to be overly specific about which Christian denomination is being criticised. I have heard fairly overt rebuttals of some aspect Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinist, and Catholic theology, where the pastor steadfastly declined to name the source of the theology. Apparently, it is considered in bad taste to openly attack other Christian organizations by name.:ehh:

Of course, there are always churches whose pastors will GLADLY denounce other denominations by name. We have one group in St. Louis which airs a nightly radio show where they continually go after all other denominations except their own. I listened to them one night ripping Martin Luther to shreds, the next night Calvin, the next night Roman Catholicism, the next night Mormonism–so far as they’re concerned, all of these are apparently equally godless doctrines. They of course teach “only the Bible, and nothing else”: and apparently think they’re the only ones who’ve ever made such a claim :nope: .
 
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aSaintoneday:
… this is a quote from the 9th paragraph, “Now let us fast forward 1800 years.” It’s like you just want to say oh no no no, explain yourself for 1800 years, and why you only have 2 million members, that is a pretty poor job of “make disciples of all nations” if you say that you’ve been around for just about 2000 years.
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👍 LOL. That is a good argument. Use it.
 
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