UNITED BRETHREN IN

See also:

• CHRIST (Gr. X pLQTOS, Anointed)
• CHRIST, WILHELM VON (1831-1906)

CHRIST  ,' an American religious sect which originated in the last part of the 18th century under the leadership of Philip William Otterbein (1726-1813), pastor of the Second Reformed Church in Baltimore, and Martin Boehm (172 1812), a Pennsylvanian Mennonite of Swiss descent . Otterbein and Boehm licensed some of their followers to preach and did a great work, especially through class-meetings of a Wesleyan type;2 in 1789 they held a formal conference at Baltimore, and in 1800, at a conference near Frederick City, Maryland, the Church was organized under its present name, and Otterbein and Boehm were chosen its first bishops or superintendents . The ecclesiastical polity of the Church is Wesleyan and its theology is Arminian: there is no hard-and-fast rule about baptism . Bishops are elected for four years . The first delegated general conference met at Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania, in 1815, and adopted a confession of faith, rules of order and a book of discipline, which were revised in 1885-1889, when women were first admitted to ordination, and when the Conservatives, protesting against the new constitution, withdrew and formed the body now commonly known as the United Brethren in Christ " of the Old Constitution." The Liberal branch had 3732 organizations in 1906 with a total membership of 274,649 . This body carries on missions in West Africa (since 1855), Japan, China, the Philippines and Porto Rico . It has a publishing house (1834) and Bonebrake Theological Seminary (1871) at Dayton, Ohio; and supports Otterbein University (1847) at Westerville, O.; Westfield Colleg . (1865) at Westfield, Illinois; Leander Clark College (1857) at Toledo, Iowa; York College (189o) at York, Nebraska; Philomath College (1867) at Philomath, Oregon ; Lebanon Valley College (1867) at Annville, Pa.; Campbell College (1864) at Holton, Kansas, and Central University (1907) at Indianapolis, Indiana . The " Old Constitution " body had 572 organizations in 1906 with a total membership of 21,401 . It has a publishing house at Hunting-ton, Indiana . See D . Berger, History of the Church of the United Brethren (1897), and his sketch (1894) in vol xii. of the " American Church History Series "; E .

L . Shuey, Handbook of the United Brethren in Christ (1893) ; W . J . Shuey,

Year-Book of the United Brethren in Christ (from 1867); and A . W . Drury, Life of Philip William Otterbein (1884) .