Christadelphian History
CHAPTER 1: Changing Explanations for Christadelphian History
The historical explanation for the origination of the Christadelphian community was an event in the life of a medical doctor, Dr John Thomas. I remember my father telling me the story how as a young man he had a near shipwreck when he travelled from Britain to America to emigrate. This troubled him because he realised he had never worked out his salvation and he vowed to search the Bible out for himself and find out what it really said. As a result, the story goes, he found that all the churches had been teaching wrong doctrines and he “rediscovered the Truth.”
The appeal of John Thomas was to independence of thought and to the independent study of scripture and the claim was that he had recovered the saving truth as a result of his diligence, high intelligence and high independence of thought. In tandem with that it was suggested creeds, church authority.
Historically this claim that existing church beliefs were wrong and he had recovered the saving truth was met with incredulity by people at the time and the community itself today generally plays down the founding claim of the movement and has sought to moderate that position. It is therefore often claimed today that he was one of a whole line of people and groups with the same beliefs (example). The evidence, however, for this is scant and it gained prominence as a result of perceptions created by two books, The Protesters and Brethren in Christ.