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The Church of the Blessed Hope (or Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith) is a small first-day Adventist Christian body. The churches [lower-alpha 1] have common roots with the Christadelphians and the Church of God General Conference (Abrahamic Faith).
Benjamin Wilson spent his early life in Halifax, England. Benjamin, with his brothers, Joseph, John, and James, questioned the teachings of their local Baptist church and "became convinced that the promises to Abraham were central to salvation". Benjamin and James moved their families to Geneva, Illinois in 1844. Brothers John and Joseph came to Geneva around 1849. Together they started a church in Geneva. Because of adopting a stance against military service, there was a need to adopt an "official" name during the Civil War. The name "Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith", suggested by Benjamin Wilson, was chosen. The work of the Wilsons led to a number of congregations from Ohio to California (where Benjamin later moved), but no central organization.
John Thomas, founder of the Christadelphians, was also a British emigrant who had been associated with the Campbellite movement in Illinois. Thomas and Wilson first corresponded by letter from 1846-1856 then met and were in active fellowship from 1856-1862. However, in 1863 a disagreement between the two men concerning the judgment seat and the resurrection caused the groups associated with them to separate, and the rift was confirmed when the two groups registered (for the purposes of conscientious objection in the American Civil War) with different names in 1865. [1]
The Church of the Blessed Hope began as a local congregation in Cleveland, Ohio. It was organized on October 4, 1863. Mark Allen, a missionary of the Church of God Abrahamic Faith movement from Woburn, Massachusetts, led fourteen Ohioans in founding this body. Congregations were soon afterward established in Salem and Unionville, and these congregations incorporated themselves as the Church of the Blessed Hope in 1888. All these congregations still exist, although the Cleveland body has moved to Chesterland. The leader of the Cleveland congregation from 1922–1927 was a Christadelphian.
The Church of the Blessed Hope and the Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith were different in name, but part of the same movement. By the early 20th century, the movement had grown to over 200 congregations in about a dozen states. They were only a loose fellowship of churches. Some ties were maintained by state conferences and a periodical, The Restitution.
When Benjamin Wilson retired in 1869 he left his The Gospel Banner to be merged with his nephew Thomas Wilson's Herald of the Coming Kingdom and Bible Instructor, which was renamed in The Restitution in 1871 and published by Thomas Wilson and W.D. St. Clair in Chicago. In 1911 the five man Ministerial Association objected to the next editor of The Restitution, A. R. Underwood of Plymouth Indiana, leading to a severing of fellowship of the churches.
The majority followed those opposed to Underwood, led by L. E. Connor, and they added two doctrines to their statement of faith - universal resurrection and open communion. Later, they also added the belief in a personal devil. The majority regrouped in 1921 and organized the Church of God (General Conference) (CoGGC) publishing a new magazine The Restitution Herald, published in Oregon, Illinois.
Five congregations (three in Ohio and one each in Kentucky and Indiana) rejected these doctrinal additions and stood for the old Geneva Statement of Faith, now publishing The Restitution from Cleveland, Ohio. The minority congregations maintained ties, and in 1966 four of the then six churches adopted a uniform doctrinal statement. In 1976 these six churches (informally known as CGAF) began to gather for an annual gathering, which is now held each year in August at various colleges in Ohio. [2]
The Church of the Blessed Hope (CGAF) rejects the doctrine of the Trinity; recognizes the Bible as God's revealed word; teaches that salvation is obtained through hearing, believing, confessing, and obeying the gospel; and expects the premillennial return and reign of Jesus, in which the righteous and the unjust will be raised, but that those who have not heard the gospel will not be raised from the dead. Valid baptism is performed through the immersion of believers in water. Christ's command to partake the bread and the cup (communion) is observed weekly.
They reject the doctrines which the larger CoGGC grouping accepted in 1921, namely a literal devil, universal resurrection, and open communion. Additionally CGAF members do not serve in war as combatants, although some congregations permit members to serve in humanitarian positions. [3]
In 2003, the Church of the Blessed Hope (CGAF) had eight congregations [lower-alpha 2] with about 400 members. The three Ohio congregations use the name Church of the Blessed Hope and the others do not.
These CGAF churches are theologically much closer to the Christadelphians than they are to the Church of God General Conference (CoGGC), and have made moves in recent years to strengthen their ties. Most of the churches use the Christadelphian hymnal and Sunday School literature. Several of the CGAF churches, while having their own local statement of faith have also recognised the most common Christadelphian statement of the faith (BASF), [4] [5] in much the same way as many Christadelphian assemblies in Britain have their own local statements but employ the most common statement for wider purposes.
It is a common practice for members of the Church of the Blessed Hope to seek out Christadelphian ecclesias when they move to areas where there is not a Church of the Blessed Hope. They are generally accepted into the Christadelphian ecclesia, and become active members of the Christadelphian community. Likewise, the Church of the Blessed Hope will accept a Christadelphian into fellowship.
The CGAF annual Gathering, [6] currently held at Denison, Ohio, has played an important role in reintroducing CGAF to Christadelphians and Christadelphians to CGAF. The Gathering receives a large contingent of both Unamended Christadelphians and Amended Christadelphians each year, and likewise many CGAF members attend Christadelphian events such as the annual Great Lakes Christadelphian Bible School. [7] CGAF members have been invited to submit both articles, letters and event announcements in the Christadelphian Tidings, [8] and likewise Christadelphians in the Abrahamic Faith Beacon. CGAF members cooperate with Christadelphian mission and charity organisations overseas. At the same time, common participation by CGAF and Christadelphian members on discussion forums has helped to make many Christadelphians, even outside North America, aware of the common beliefs shared with CGAF, and the differences with Church of God General Conference.
The Christadelphians are a restorationist group that hold a view of biblical unitarianism. There are approximately 50,000 Christadelphians in around 120 countries. The movement developed in the United Kingdom and North America in the 19th century around the teachings of John Thomas, who coined the name Christadelphian from the Greek words for Christ (Christos) and brothers (adelphoi).
Excommunication is an institutional act of religious censure used to deprive, suspend, or limit membership in a religious community or to restrict certain rights within it, in particular those of being in communion with other members of the congregation, and of receiving the sacraments.
Unitarian Universalism is a liberal religious movement characterized by a "free and responsible search for truth and meaning". Unitarian Universalists assert no creed, but instead are unified by their shared search for spiritual growth. Unitarian Universalists do not have an official, unified corpus of sacred texts but rather draw inspiration and guidance from the six sources: personal experience, prophetic utterances, world religions, Jewish and Christian teachings, humanist teachings, and spiritual teachings. Unitarian Universalist congregations include many atheists, agnostics, deists, and theists; there are churches, fellowships, congregations, and societies around the world.
The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod (LCMS), also known as the Missouri Synod, is a traditional, confessional Lutheran denomination in the United States. With 1.8 million members, it is the second-largest Lutheran body in the United States, behind the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The LCMS was organized in 1847 at a meeting in Chicago, Illinois, as the German Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Missouri, Ohio, and Other States, a name which partially reflected the geographic locations of the founding congregations.
Church of God is a name used by numerous denominational bodies. The largest denomination with this name is the Church of God
The United Church of Christ (UCC) is a socially liberal mainline Protestant Christian denomination based in the United States, with historical and confessional roots in the Congregational, Continental Reformed, and Lutheran traditions, and with approximately 4,600 churches and 712,000 members.The UCC is a historical continuation of the General Council of Congregational Christian churches founded under the influence of New England Puritanism. Moreover, it also subsumed the third largest Calvinist group in the country, the German Reformed. Notably, its modern members' theological and socio-political stances are often very different from those of its predecessors.
The Church of God General Conference (CoGGC) is a nontrinitarian, Adventist Christian body also known as the Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith. The Church of the Blessed Hope, some of whose congregations also use the name Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith (CGAF), are a separate denomination, although they share the same origins.
Koinonia is a transliterated form of the Greek word κοινωνία, which refers to concepts such as fellowship, joint participation, partnership, the share which one has in anything, a gift jointly contributed, a collection, a contribution. In the Politics of Aristotle it is used to mean a community of any size from a single family to a polis. As a polis, it is the Greek for republic or commonwealth. In later Christianity it identifies the idealized state of fellowship and unity that should exist within the Christian church, the Body of Christ. This usage may have been borrowed from the early Epicureans—as it is used by Epicurus' Principal Doctrines 37–38.
Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith may refer to the following two modern Christian groups that had the same origin and common history from the 1850s to 1921:
Benjamin Wilson (1817–1900) was an autodidact Biblical scholar and writer of the Emphatic Diaglott translation of the Bible. He was also a co-founder of the Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith.
Biblical unitarianism is a Unitarian Christian denomination whose adherents affirm the Bible as their sole authority, and from it base their beliefs that God the Father is one singular being, and that Jesus Christ is God's son but not divine. The term "biblical Unitarianism" is connected first with Robert Spears and Samuel Sharpe of the Christian Life magazine in the 1880s. It is a neologism that gained increasing currency in nontrinitarian literature during the 20th century as the Unitarian churches moved away from mainstream church traditions and, in some instances in the United States, towards merger with Universalism. It has been used since the late 19th century by conservative Christian Unitarians, and sometimes by historians, to refer to scripture-fundamentalist Unitarians of the 16th–18th centuries.
The Unamended Christadelphians are a "fellowship" within the broader Christadelphian movement worldwide, found only in the United States and Canada. They are, like all Christadelphians, millennialist and non-Trinitarian. The term Unamended Christadelphians is not the formal name of this community but is used informally to identify the grouping since a statement of faith traditionally used by many in this community is the "Unamended Statement of Faith". Similarly, most of the much larger grouping of Amended Christadelphians traditionally use a statement of faith that has been amended and therefore, in North America is known by the prefix "Amended". Nevertheless, Christadelphians worldwide and both Amended and Unamended Christadelphians in North America share fundamentally the same doctrines, with a few exceptions.
The Fellowship of Evangelical Churches (FEC) is an evangelical body of Christians with an Amish Mennonite heritage that is headquartered in Fort Wayne, Indiana, United States. It contains 60 churches located in Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
The term Amended Christadelphians is a name given in North American publications to Christadelphian fellowships who adhere to the Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith (BASF).
The Association of Independent Methodists (AIM) is a fellowship of independent Methodist congregations that are aligned with the holiness movement. The Association is based in the United States, being founded in 1965 by churches who left the mainline Methodist Church because of disagreements on church government and doctrinal matters. As of 2023, the denomination has 90 churches in 10 U.S. states, concentrated mostly in the Southern United States.
Conservative Mennonites include numerous Conservative Anabaptist groups that identify with the theologically conservative element among Mennonite Anabaptist Christian fellowships, but who are not Old Order groups or mainline denominations.
Joseph Marsh (1802–1863) was an American Millerite Protestant preacher, and editor of The Advent Harbinger, Bible Advocate and The Voice of Truth and Glad Tidings of the Kingdom at Hand".
Nathaniel Field M.D (1805–1887) was an American abolitionist, and Adventist preacher.
Thomas Williams (1847–1913) was a Welsh Christadelphian who emigrated to America in 1872, and eventually became editor of The Christadelphian Advocate magazine and author of The Great Salvation and The World's Redemption, reserving him a place alongside Christadelphian founders Dr. John Thomas and Robert Roberts. When his appeals to English brethren went unheeded, he became the most prominent of the brethren who avoided these divisive factions, and later became known as Unamended Christadelphians because they never adopted a particular amendment to the Christadelphian statement of faith.
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