The Brethren of the mid-1800s would have looked very much like the Amish, with a distinctive dress that was meant to set them apart from the fashion-crazed world. The specific features of the Brethren uniform had gradually evolved during the first half of the...
Without doubt the most contentious issue that stirred the emotions of the German Baptist Brethren during the 1870s was the correct mode of feetwashing. The reason for this derived from how highly the Brethren valued unity of both thought and practice, especially...
From the beginning of the Brethren movement in Germany, the church had maintained a strong commitment to evangelism during the 1700s. However, this commitment had waned during the first half of the 1800s, possibly due to their German subculture and hesitancy to...
Traditionally, the Brethren felt that a “common school” education, the basic education provided by most states during the nineteenth century, supplied the children of Brethren parents with the necessary skills of reading, writing, and arithmetic. As stated by...
The Sunday School movement is generally considered to have begun in 1780 in England under the leadership of Robert Raikes, though some Brethren historians in the early twentieth century tried to claim this honor for the Brethren, citing young people’s meetings at...
In the previous post, I mentioned that the scattered nature of the Brethren family from the east coast to the west coast by the 1840s and 50s led to a sense that greater unity was needed to hold the family together. Another effort, besides Annual Meeting, that...
The Brethren Church had its origins in a division within the German Baptist Brethren in the early 1880s. In the next series of posts, I would like to explore the issues that brought about this division and the various parties that were part of this three-way...
One of the most influential elders among the Brethren in the first half of the 1800s was George Hoke (1783-1861). Though not as much is known about Hoke as those who came shortly after him, like Henry Kurtz, John Kline, and Peter Nead, he played significant...
Perhaps no man changed the trajectory of the German Baptist Brethren more than Henry Kurtz, at least until Henry Holsinger came on the scene. Holsinger would credit Kurtz with inaugurating the progressive era in Brethren history. Henry Kurtz (1796-1874) was born in...
A man who is revered by all Brethren groups as a martyr of the faith and an example of the best of the Brethren tradition is John Kline (1797-1864). Kline’s forebears were Brethren; they originally settled in Pennsylvania, but his father moved the family to...