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Christos Voskrese! I came across this group, the Carelinks Christadelphians, and they seem to be "baptizing" Russian Orthodox, Greek Catholic, and Roman Catholic people. This is some of their videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/carelinks#p/uThis is their official website: http://www.carelinks.net/Are there any Orthodox or Catholic apologetic resources available about this group? I have looked and have not found anything. Thanks for the help. In Christ God, Robert
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Robert: I have an old college reference book from religion classes I took as an undergraduate (back in the days right after the earth cooled and dinosaurs roamed the earth ;)). Its called "Minority Religions in America" by William J. Whalen, published by Alba House Books, 1972. While not an official Catholic source per se, Alba books is a publishing arm of the Society of St. Paul, a Catholic religious order based in New York. The book carries the Nihil Obstat and the Imprimatur under the authority of the Archdiocese of New York. The book describes the Christadelphian movement as a sect of distinctly American origin, with a belief system somewhat similar to the Jehovah Witnesses -- rejecting the trinity, believing that Jesus was not really God, or at least not fully God, requiring adult baptism in the Christadelphian faith for salvation, an adventist-type expectation of Christ's imminent return, etc. This website affirms the same kind of information in the book: Christadelphians @ Religous Tolerance [ religioustolerance.org] But even if you examine the webpages at the Carelinks site you reference, there are references to Christadelphian doctrine that deny the divinity of Christ: "What is the Gospel" [ carelinks.net] In particular, at the end of that page, look at points 1 and 2 for their doctrinal beliefs: "So can I just summarize the things we have spoke about in seeking to respond to the question- What is the Gospel? :
1. There is only one God, not a ‘trinity’
2. Jesus is the Son of God, not God Himself; He didn’t exist before He was born. He had all our temptations and human experiences, but He never sinned. He gave His life for us in a painful death, but then, because He never sinned, God resurrected Him from the dead." Pretty obvious heresy. Its a shame. In Christ, John (aka soxfan59)
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So they're basically Arians?
Last edited by theophan; 04/14/10 05:06 PM.
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So they're basically Arians? I suppose that's so, in a basic sense. I'd have to look up how to define what the Arians of the 4th century (?) really believed. Maybe these folks would be considered semi-arians, or latter day arians. To me, its "warmed over Jehovah Witness."
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Christadelphians are not a body that one encounters w/ much frequency - especially outside the UK, where the sect began and is still strongest. Last numbers I saw cited there were only about 20K and that's of a worldwide number in the range of 60K. The US and Canada have somewhere between 5K and 10K between them, with most others scattered principally in former Commonwealth nations.
They are generally very an extremely low-key, pacifistic (at least to the point of conscientious objection), aliturgical, body. While I'd not generally recommend wikipedia as a source of reference for anything, its piece on the Christadelphians is pretty accurate (albeit over-detailed and boring, as there just is not enough to say about them to merit the length of the entry).
Many years,
Neil
"One day all our ethnic traits ... will have disappeared. Time itself is seeing to this. And so we can not think of our communities as ethnic parishes, ... unless we wish to assure the death of our community."
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Their core beliefs include (1) Restorationist (The Church Christ created has not survived, and had to be relaunched) (2) Non-Trinitarian (Christ is not part of God, nor is the HS) (3) biblical inerrancy (The bible is in fact inspired and truth) (4) no hell, just no resurrection for the nonbeliever, and utter destruction of the condemned baptised.
They are not quite the standard Arian heresy, but are part of the spectrum of Arianism.
Unlike many Arian heretics, they do seem to recognize the holy spirit, but as an emanation from the Father, and do consider Jesus the literal Son of God by virtue of the immaculate conception.
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Better an explicit Arian than the more common implicit ones frequently found among the Evangelicals and "non-denominational" Christians whose theology can best be described as naive. The former are a known quantity, they have a set of beliefs, and you can either accept or reject them; the latter are more insidious, in that they profess to be orthodox Christians but have no foundation for their beliefs other than their own personal understanding of Scripture.
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Most Evangelicals I've encountered (I grew up an Evangelical, so I know a good many), believe very strongly in the divinity of Christ, as well as the divinity of the Holy Spirit. My own paternal grandmother was raised Baptist and became Pentecostal after marrying my grandfather. She was strongly Trinitarian and had little tolerance for those Pentecostal groups that are basically Sabellian.
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It's interesting to note that many restorationist sects consider the trinity anhomoios (not like), even anhomoiousious (not of like substance), some even go so far as to deny one or more members (JW's denial of the HS, for example).
Many border on gnosticism, even when using only the orthodox texts. The Christadelphians seem to be one such group. They appear to see Christ as teacher of a way of self-denial leading to being judged rightly at the resurrection.
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Christadelphians are not a body that one encounters w/ much frequency - especially outside the UK, where the sect began and is still strongest. Last numbers I saw cited there were only about 20K and that's of a worldwide number in the range of 60K. The US and Canada have somewhere between 5K and 10K between them, with most others scattered principally in former Commonwealth nations. This does, though, give them a bit less of a problem than certain other groups with 144K to be saved . . . kind of rough when your population goes over 1M . . .  hawk
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