Christadelphians
Christadelphians belongs to the Adventist and Sabbatarian family of churches.
Governance: congregational.
Christadelphians reports 170 congregations in the United States (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020).
CONTESTED: non-trinitarian, no clergy, ecclesias rather than churches. ARDA files them in the Adventist family; theological reference works often set them apart.
Lay-led ecclesias without clergy or headquarters, reading the Bible daily toward the hope of Christ's kingdom on a restored earth.
Heritage
Founded from the Bible teaching of John Thomas, an English physician in America whose 1849 book Elpis Israel set out his understanding of the kingdom of God; the name Christadelphian — "brethren in Christ" — was adopted in 1864 when members sought conscientious-objector standing in the Civil War. The movement spread through Britain, North America and the Commonwealth as a fellowship of autonomous ecclesias.
Theological family
Biblical unitarian and restorationist by self-description: Christadelphians confess one God the Father, Jesus as His Son and the promised Messiah raised to immortality, the Holy Spirit as God's power, and salvation through baptism into Christ and faithful discipleship, with the dead unconscious until resurrection and the kingdom to be established on earth at Christ's return. Trinitarian bodies differ from them on the nature of Christ; this record reports the difference without adjudicating it.
Who decides what
There is no clergy and no central organization at all: each ecclesia is governed by its arranging brethren, and inter-ecclesial life runs through fraternal gatherings, magazines such as The Christadelphian, and shared statements of faith adopted ecclesia by ecclesia.
What a first-time visitor would find
The center of the week is the memorial meeting each Sunday: the breaking of bread among baptized members, presided over by members in turn, with exhortation from Scripture rather than a sermon from a pastor. Bible classes and public lectures fill the week; many members follow the Bible Companion, a shared daily reading plan that takes the whole Bible in a year.
What it has always cared about
Daily Bible reading as a community discipline; the hope of Israel and the literal kingdom on earth; conscientious objection to military service; and lay responsibility for everything, since there is no one else to do it.
Its gift to the wider church
A standing demonstration that serious, biblically literate congregational life can be sustained for over a century and a half entirely by laypeople — every member a student, every meeting member-led.
Commonly confused with
With Jehovah's Witnesses, who share non-trinitarian conviction but differ in organization, practice and doctrine; with the Church of God General Conference (Abrahamic Faith), a doctrinally close but historically separate body; and the word ecclesia leads some to assume a Greek Orthodox connection that does not exist.
Range of views inside it
Fellowship divisions (Central and Unamended in North America) differ on points of resurrectional responsibility; ecclesias vary in openness to inter-fellowship cooperation. Worship and doctrine are otherwise strikingly uniform for so decentralized a family.
A note from the mapmakers: Nothing here may be asserted of a specific ecclesia, including its fellowship affiliation. RCMS 2020 counts 170 Christadelphian ecclesias in the United States. Because the body is non-trinitarian and lay-led, outside sources routinely misdescribe it; sentences drawn from this record hedge as "Christadelphian ecclesias characteristically…" and yield to the ecclesia's own materials.
Sources: Christadelphians — who we are and what we believe (The Christadelphian Magazine and Publishing Association) · Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press) · 2020 U.S. Religion Census (ASARB)
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