United Brethren In Christ

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United Brethren In Christ was 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 (1725-1812), 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; 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.

In 1889, a controversy over membership in secret societies, such as the Freemasons, the proper way to modify the church's constitution, and other issues split the United Brethren into majority liberal and minority conservative blocs, the latter of which was led by Bishop Milton Wright (father of the Wright Brothers). The minority withdrew and formed the body initially known as the United Brethren in Christ of the Old Constitution, now called the Church of the United Brethren in Christ.

The Liberal branch had 3732 organizations in 1906 with a total membership of 274,649. This body carried on missions in West Africa (since 1855), Japan, China, the Philippines and Puerto Rico. It had a publishing house (1834) and Bonebrake Theological Seminary (1871) at Dayton, Ohio; and supported Otterbein University (1847) at Westerville, 0.; Westfield College (1865) at Westfield, Illinois; Leander Clark College (1857) at Toledo, Iowa; York College (1890) 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 majority faction merged with the Evangelical Church in 1946 to form a new denomination known as the Evangelical United Brethren Church (EUB). This in turn merged in 1968 with The Methodist Church to form the United Methodist Church (UMC).

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).

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• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.