Church of the United Brethren in Christ
Church of the United Brethren in Christ belongs to the Methodist family of churches.
Governance: connexional.
Church of the United Brethren in Christ reports 160 congregations in the United States (RCMS 2020 (ARDA national table), 2020).
"Wir sind Brüder — we are brethren": born of a barn-meeting embrace between a Reformed pastor and a Mennonite preacher, and often counted the first denomination organized on American soil.
Heritage
At a "great meeting" in Isaac Long's barn in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania in 1767, the German Reformed pastor Philip William Otterbein embraced the Mennonite preacher Martin Boehm with the words "Wir sind Brüder" — we are brethren. The German-language revival that followed ran parallel to English-speaking Methodism, and in 1800 it organized as the Church of the United Brethren in Christ, with Otterbein and Boehm as its first bishops — a church born in America rather than transplanted to it. An 1889 division over the church constitution and secret-society membership sent the larger "New Constitution" branch toward the Evangelical United Brethren (1946) and ultimately the United Methodist Church (1968); this body is the continuing "Old Constitution" church, headquartered in Huntington, Indiana, home of Huntington University.
Theological family
Wesleyan-Arminian in substance with German pietist roots: conversion, holy living, and believers gathered in earnest fellowship; evangelical and orthodox, with its confession of faith dating to the church's earliest years.
Who decides what
Connexional with an elected bishop and a General Conference; congregations and national conferences carry substantial responsibility in a deliberately small structure, and the historic bar on secret-society membership remains part of its identity.
What a first-time visitor would find
Straightforward evangelical Protestant worship — hymns and contemporary songs, prayer, and expository preaching; a visitor will find it warmer than formal and will hear the Bible treated as the point of the meeting.
What it has always cared about
Heart religion in the German tongue before it was fashionable in English; lay preaching; missions from an early date; and the stubborn keeping of a constitution the majority left behind — twice the smaller party, never absorbed.
Its gift to the wider church
The embrace in the barn itself: two traditions that had reason to distrust each other — Reformed and Anabaptist — recognizing one work of God in each other and building a church on that recognition. American Christianity has few better founding images for unity across confessional lines.
Commonly confused with
With the United Methodist Church, where its larger branch eventually landed; with the Moravians, whose Latin motto is also rendered "Unity of the Brethren"; and with the Plymouth Brethren, an unrelated movement. The name causes more confusion than the church ever did.
Range of views inside it
Congregations vary in worship style and size across the US conference and international conferences; the body is theologically compact, and its internal range is modest.
A note from the mapmakers: The 160-congregation figure is RCMS 2020. Nothing here may be asserted of a specific congregation. Sentences drawn from this record hedge as "United Brethren congregations typically…" and yield to the church's own materials.
Sources: Our History (Church of the United Brethren in Christ, USA) · Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Abingdon Press) · 2020 U.S. Religion Census (ASARB)
Where Church of the United Brethren in Christ churches are on the map
9 Church of the United Brethren in Christ congregations appear on The Church Map, across 7 states.
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