Online resources for the Churches of Christ (USA)

score:2

Accepted answer

Churches of Christ are All Autonomous

A fundamental axiom of any group that refers to itself as a church of Christ in the tradition of Cambpellite Restorationism is that it's an autonomous unit subject only to Christ himself and no human institution. As such, you will not find anything resembling official resources because there's no official hierarchy whatsoever.

There are some efforts to gather data about these individual congregations, but it's difficult to keep the data current.

Here are a few examples:

There are a few colleges and universities that are affiliated with the churches of Christ, and a great deal of leadership comes out of those institutions, although they produce no formal statements of doctrine as to "what the churches of Christ believe." They also oftentimes are the communications hubs among the disparate congregations in the United States. These higher educational institutions may be able to answer questions about what congregations generally believe. Harding University, Oklahoma Christian University, Abilene Christian University, Lubbock Christian University Pepperdine University, Lipscomb University, York College, and Freed-Hardman University are a few.

Another source of information is The Christian Chronicle, a newspaper published out of Oklahoma Christian University.

It's very common for congregations of any size (100+, let's say) will have a website with statements of belief, though they may not provide a thorough delineation of what's accepted by the local leadership.

What They Believe

As for finding congregations that "adhere to its teachings," you're not likely to find any who will admit something like that, because there's no central teaching or doctrine to which to adhere. They're likely to describe what they believe as "what's written in the Bible" without any man-made creeds or confessions added. They believe that just as eternal judgement is personal, so Biblical interpretation is the responsibility of the individual. Because of this deliberate decentralization, there's a fair amount of variation among congregations as to what they believe, although they almost all worship without instruments, have (or prefer) a plurality of elders, and accept sola scriptura as axiomatic. They will usually say that "baptism is essential for salvation" and equate water baptism with becoming a Christian. There are probably some other commonalities among most congregations, but in order to know what a particular group believes or practices, you'd have to go and talk to them, and even then, you won't find uniformity on most issues outside of those common to most evangelical Christian groups.

More post

Search Posts

Related post