Churches of Christ / Christian Churches

Baptism is where this tradition parts company with most of evangelical America. Acts 2:38 reads: “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins.” These churches take that ‘for’ at face value. Immersion is the moment a believer is saved, not a sign that he already was, and they insist it is nothing he performs: it is being buried with Christ and raised with Him.

The rule behind almost everything else is Thomas Campbell’s: where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent. Applied strictly it takes a great deal out. No bishops, no synods, no denominational headquarters, no creed beyond the confession that Jesus is the Christ. In the a cappella congregations it takes out the instruments too, since the New Testament mentions Christians singing and never mentions them playing.

On communion the map names no position, and the reason is genuinely odd. These churches take the Lord’s Supper every single Sunday, more faithfully than most sacramental churches manage, and yet describe it as a memorial of Christ’s death rather than a change in the bread. The frequency points one way and the definition points the other, so the rail stays in the middle.

On grace they sit as far from Calvinism as this map goes. A person hears, believes, repents, confesses and is baptized, and none of it happens to him without him. On the gifts they are firmly cessationist, holding that tongues and prophecy belonged to the years before the New Testament was finished and were withdrawn once it was. Worship is plain, the sermon is the center, and in an a cappella congregation the singing is the whole room and nothing else.