With this post, I want to introduce several of the influential leaders of the German Baptist Brethren during the mid-nineteenth century.  One such leader was Peter Nead (1796-1877).  He was born into a staunch Lutheran family in Hagerstown, Maryland.  After the family moved to Frederick County, Viriginia, Peter began a religious quest to find a body of believers whose beliefs and practices most reflected New Testament Christianity.  This led him initially to the Methodists but then, finally, to the Brethren.  In 1824 he was baptized in the Potomac River.

Nead married Elizabeth Yount in 1825 and settled on the Yount Homestead, now called Tunker House, in Rockingham County, Virginia.  He was called to the ministry in 1827 and served his flock with diligence and devotion.  He joined the Brethren at the time they were transitioning from German to English as their dominant language.  He became known as the “English preacher” and aided this transition both in his local congregation and the larger Brethren body.

Nead became an outstanding biblical theologian and apologist for the Brethren.  He was an avid reader and was conversant with the writings and thought of other Protestant denominations.  This wider exposure to traditions outside the Brethren was rather unusual at the time for Brethren leaders.  Nead’s knowledge of Scripture and other theological traditions served him well as an advocate for Brethren beliefs and practices.  He wrote several books and pamphlets, beginning in 1834 with Primitive Christianity, Or a Vindication of the Word of God.  This was followed by An Exposition of Certain Evangelical Truths, written in 1836, and Baptism for the Remission of Sins; The Faith Alone and Prayerless Doctrine Considered, written in 1845.  After moving west in the vicinity of Dayton, Ohio, in 1848, he revised these works and added new material in a book entitled, Theological Writings on Various Subjects, which appeared in 1850 (see photo).  It is often referred to as Nead’s Theology and became a standard exposition of Brethren thought during the last half of the 1800s, though Old Order groups continue to regard it highly.  In 1866 he wrote his final major work, which is less well known, The Wisdom and Power of God.  In this work, Nead considered such significant biblical themes as creation, redemption, the church, and eschatology.

Nead was well respected by the German Baptist Brethren, serving on Standing Committee of Annual Meeting twelve times.  As the church began to polarize between the Progressive Brethren on one hand, who advocated such “innovations” as higher education, Sunday Schools, evangelism and revivals, and a paid ministry, and the Old Order Brethren on the other, who considered such innovations as worldly temptations to be strongly opposed, Nead threw in his lot with the latter group.  He wrote numerous articles for the Old Order periodical launched in 1870 by his son-in-law, Samuel Kinsey, The Vindicator.  Though he died before the division of the early 1880s, his thought continues to guide all the Old Order groups.