The Church of the Brethren joined Anabaptist beliefs to Pietist warmth, and still practises feet-washing and peace.
Alexander Mack and seven others baptised one another in the Eder river at Schwarzenau in 1708, joining Anabaptist convictions to Pietist devotion. Known for the love feast, feet-washing and a peace witness; most emigrated to Pennsylvania within a generation.
The tree's references for this branch: Britannica: Brethren · Church of the Brethren: History · Wikipedia: Schwarzenau Brethren.
Lineage: Israel and Judah: the First Temple›Second Temple Judaism›The early, undivided Church›Catholic Church›Reformed (Zwingli, Calvin)›Anabaptist›Church of the Brethren
The Church of the Brethren began in a German river in 1708, when eight people baptised one another and started a church with no creed in it. They are the ones who wash each other's feet before communion, who will not go to war, and whose old nickname, Dunker, comes from the way they baptise.
Schwarzenau, in the county of Wittgenstein, was one of the few corners of the Holy Roman Empire where religious dissenters were left alone, and dissenters went there. Among them was Alexander Mack, a miller from Schriesheim who had been drawn both to Radical Pietism, with its small meetings for prayer and its impatience with state religion, and to the older Anabaptist conviction that baptism belongs to those who choose it. In August 1708 five men and three women went down to the Eder to be baptised. All had been baptised as infants, so what they were doing was against the law. One of the eight, whose name they deliberately never wrote down, baptised Mack; Mack then baptised the other seven. They took no title for themselves beyond brethren 2,19.
Pressure and poverty pushed them out of Europe almost at once. Peter Becker brought a group to Pennsylvania in 1719 and organised the first American congregation at Germantown on 25 December 1723. Mack followed with another group in 1729, and by 1740 nearly every Brethren family had gone, leaving nothing of the movement behind in Germany. In America they spread west with the land, into Maryland and Virginia, then Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois after the Revolutionary War, and on to Kansas, Iowa and the coast by the middle of the 1800s 2,19.
The Brethren then divided, as growth and industrialisation pulled them apart. In the early 1880s came a three way break: those who wanted the old order without revival meetings, Sunday schools or foreign missions organised as the Old German Baptist Brethren, those who wanted evangelism and an end to plain dress formed The Brethren Church, and the largest group kept the name German Baptist Brethren until it became the Church of the Brethren in 1908 2,19. Conservative congregations left again in 1926 to form the Dunkard Brethren Church, and again in 2020 to form the Covenant Brethren Church 15,19. The resulting bodies still share a love feast they cannot always share with one another.
See it on the family treeThe Brethren have never adopted a creed. What holds them together is a way of living rather than a list of propositions, and their own beliefs page begins by saying so: the central emphasis is not a creed but a commitment to follow Christ in simple obedience 3.
They believe in God as Creator, confess Christ as Lord and seek the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and they read the Old Testament as the unfolding purpose that the New Testament completes. The New Testament itself they call their guidebook for living, which is a stronger statement than it sounds: where a practice is described there, they try to do it, and where Jesus gives a command, they take it as addressed to them. Out of that reading come the things they emphasise, which their own summary lists as peace and reconciliation, simple living, integrity of speech, and service to neighbours near and far, a summary the church itself draws from work done at Elizabethtown College 3,18.
The practical shape of this is old and specific. Brethren do not go to war, and the church is one of the three historic peace churches alongside the Mennonites and the Quakers 6,24. They affirm rather than swear, on the ground that a Christian's word should already be good. They were long reluctant to settle disputes at law. Plain dress and plain meetinghouses once marked them out; the church today puts the same conviction as a question about what members buy and how they use money in a wealthy society 3.
The service that matters most happens in the evening, once or twice a year, and it comes in three parts. The congregation washes one another's feet, then eats a full meal together at long tables, then shares the bread and the cup. Brethren call the whole thing the love feast, and it is the closest thing they have to a centre. Anointing the sick with oil, following the instruction in James, is kept as well 19.
Baptism is by trine immersion. The candidate kneels in the water and is dipped forward three times, once at the naming of the Father, once of the Son and once of the Holy Spirit, which is where Dunker came from, out of the German word for dipping 19. Congregations elect their own ministers and deacons. Once a year delegates from the congregations and districts meet as Annual Conference, which decides what the church will say and do; its minutes run back to 1778 and are indexed by subject, so anyone can look up what the Brethren concluded about a question and when, and its statements are published in full 4,7,8.
The New Testament is the guidebook, and the Brethren have never made a particular translation part of the deal. The first generation read Luther's German. Their descendants in America moved to the King James Version as the German faded, and most Church of the Brethren congregations now read the New Revised Standard Version. What has stayed constant is the habit of reading the Gospels as instructions rather than as background.
One printer in this church changed what Americans could read. Christoph Sauer, a Brethren printer at Germantown who had come from Wittgenstein, put out a quarto Bible in Luther's German in 1743, in an edition of 1,200 copies. It was the first Bible printed in North America in any European language, and another forty years passed before an English one appeared 21. On this site the Lutherbibel 1912 is the nearest edition to the German those first Brethren heard read aloud, and the King James Version is what their grandchildren in Pennsylvania used.
Free to read here: Lutherbibel 1912, King James Version, Berean Standard Bible. The full note on which Bible Church of the Brethren use, with sources ›
These passages illustrate themes discussed in this profile; they are not a survey of members' favorite verses. Each is quoted from the King James (Authorized) Version and links to its chapter. You can explore the text for study or personal reflection; memorization is optional.
If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.
The Brethren read this as an instruction, not a picture. It is why a basin and a towel come out before communion.
For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come.
The bread and the cup, taken at the end of a shared meal in the evening, as the love feast keeps it.
¶ Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.
Three names in the commission, so three immersions. This is the text behind trine immersion and behind the Dunker nickname.
Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord:
Anointing the sick with oil is still practised, and this verse is the reason given for it.
Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing.
Not rendering evil for evil. A church that has refused military service through three American wars keeps coming back to lines like this one.
The American church is small and getting smaller. Its own history page reports over 70,000 members in almost 800 congregations in the United States as of 2025, well down from the middle of the last century 2. What it built has outlasted its own size: Brethren Volunteer Service, begun in 1948, still places volunteers full time in the United States and abroad 6; Brethren Disaster Ministries and Children's Disaster Services turn up after floods and fires 1; and Heifer International and SERRV both started as Brethren projects before growing past the church that began them 3,17,22.
The larger part of this family is Nigerian. Ekklesiyar Yan'uwa a Nigeria, the Church of the Brethren in Nigeria, grew from a mission begun in 1923, became self governing in 1972, took its present name in 1976 and joined the World Council of Churches in 1985 13. How large it is now depends on who is counting: the American church's Global Mission office calls it the largest Anabaptist communion in the world 11, while the World Council's own undated profile still lists 160,000 members, 450 pastors and 403 congregations 13. Beyond it sits the Global Church of the Brethren Communion, which gathers the autonomous Brethren bodies from Nigeria, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and elsewhere 9. In the United States the 1708 movement now runs through several separate churches, among them The Brethren Church at Ashland, Ohio, the Old German Baptist Brethren, the Dunkard Brethren Church and the Covenant Brethren Church 14,15,16,19.
This church has a long habit of putting its conclusions on the record. Annual Meeting forbade members to hold slaves in 1782, decades before most American churches acted, and returned to the question repeatedly through the 1850s 8,19; in 2023 Annual Conference adopted a lament of the Doctrine of Discovery in which it says it cannot be silent about injustice whether it is lost to history or fresh and new 5. Its heaviest present concern is Nigerian: from 2014 Boko Haram's campaign fell hardest on the heartland of Ekklesiyar Yan'uwa a Nigeria, which by the church's own count lost 1,668 of its churches and branches, close to 70 percent of its buildings, and the American church has raised more than 5.8 million dollars toward relief 10.
From the German word for dipping. Brethren baptise by trine immersion: the candidate kneels in the water and is dipped forward three times, once at the naming of the Father, once of the Son and once of the Holy Spirit. Neighbours called them Dunkers, Tunkers or Dunkards, and in German-speaking Europe they were known as Neue Taufer, the new baptists 19.
No, and the shared word has caused confusion for three centuries. The largest body called itself German Baptist Brethren from 1871 until 1908, but it had no tie to the English Baptists and grew from a different root, Anabaptism joined to German Pietism. Brethren baptise by three forward immersions rather than one backward one, keep the love feast with feet washing, and hold a peace position that most Baptist bodies do not 2,19.
They are cousins, not the same. All three are Anabaptist and all three refuse to go to war. The Amish and Mennonites come from the Swiss and Dutch Anabaptism of the 1520s and 1530s; the Brethren began in 1708 in Germany and added Radical Pietism, with its warmth and its small meetings, to Anabaptist convictions. Some Old Order Brethren bodies keep plain dress and limit technology in a way that looks Amish from outside; the Church of the Brethren does not 6,19.
It is held in the evening, usually once or twice a year. The congregation divides, and members wash one another's feet and dry them, following John 13. Then everyone eats a full meal together, usually simple, at long tables. Then the bread and the cup are passed. In some congregations members greet one another with a kiss of peace. The whole thing takes a couple of hours and it is the service Brethren will drive furthest to attend 19.
The church's position has not changed, though individual members make their own decisions. Brethren have opposed participation in war on the teaching of Jesus since the beginning, and the church is counted as one of the three historic peace churches. During the Second World War nearly 7,000 conscientious objectors from the Brethren, the Quakers and the Mennonites served in Civilian Public Service, fighting forest fires, staffing mental hospitals and volunteering as medical subjects instead of taking up arms 6,23,24. Brethren Volunteer Service, founded in 1948, grew directly out of that experience 6.
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BibleVerse. “Church of the Brethren: where they came from, what they hold, and the Bible they read.” bibleverse.site, version 2026-09-07, https://bibleverse.site/denominations/brethren/
Awaiting review by a member of the tradition. First published 2026-09-07; last changed 2026-09-07. Years before the common era are written BC, and later years plainly, as the site's Christian pages do.
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A basin, a towel, and a church that decided this was meant literally. Three hundred years later they still kneel down and do it.
If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.