History
The Schwarzenau Brethren was first organized in 1708 under the leadership of Alexander Mack (1679–1735) in Schwarzenau, Germany, now part of Bad Berleburg in North Rhine-Westphalia. They believed that both the Lutheran and Reformed churches were taking liberties with the "true" Christianity revealed in the New Testament, so they rejected established liturgy, including infant baptism and existing Eucharistic practices. The founding Brethren were broadly influenced by Radical Pietist understandings of an invisible, (nondenominational) church of awakened Christians who would fellowship together in purity and love, awaiting Christ's return.
A notable influence was Ernest Christopher Hochmann von Hochenau, a traveling Pietist minister. While living in Schriesheim, Mack invited Hochmann to come and minister there. Like others who influenced the Brethren, Hochmann considered the pure church to be spiritual, and did not believe that an organized church was necessary. By 1708, the date of the first Brethren baptisms, Mack had rejected this position in favor of forming a separate church with visible rules and ordinances—including threefold baptism by immersion, a Love Feast (that combined communion with feetwashing and an evening meal), anointing, and use of the "ban" against wayward members.
Religious persecution drove the Brethren to take refuge in Friesland, in the Netherlands. In 1719 Peter Becker brought a group to Pennsylvania. In 1720 forty Brethren families settled in Surhuisterveen in Friesland. They settled among the Mennonites and remained there until 1729, when all but a handful emigrated to America, in three separate groups from 1719 to 1733.
Peter Becker organized the first American congregation at Germantown, Pennsylvania, on December 25, 1723. In 1743 Christopher Sauer, an early pastor and a printer by trade, printed a Bible in German, the first published in a European language in North America.
In 1782 the Brethren forbade slaveholding by its members. In 1871 these Brethren adopted the title German Baptist Brethren at their Annual Meeting. The group continued to expand and from Pennsylvania, they migrated chiefly westward. By 1908 they were most numerous in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas and North Dakota.
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