This film was donated by a keen filmmaker who lived in Skidby, East Yorkshire, Albert Smith. Albert left a sizeable collection of extremely well made films, often revealing his interests in wildlife and travel. The films that the YFA have date from 1956 to 1970, and include a film on The Changing Face of Skidby from 1967. For more on Albert see the Contexts for The East Riding, and A Bedtime Story, both made in 1959.   Both who the makers of this film are, and how it come into the hands...

This film was donated by a keen filmmaker who lived in Skidby, East Yorkshire, Albert Smith. Albert left a sizeable collection of extremely well made films, often revealing his interests in wildlife and travel. The films that the YFA have date from 1956 to 1970, and include a film on The Changing Face of Skidby from 1967. For more on Albert see the Contexts for The East Riding, and A Bedtime Story, both made in 1959.

 

Both who the makers of this film are, and how it come into the hands of Albert, is obscure.  The film may well have been filmed by Albert as a member of the Christadelphians, who have given themselves the name of "Christian Adelphoi" (Christian Brothers) and "Truth Films” in the credits.  All we have to go on is the clues in the film. The address on the letters in the film may well have been made up, or Kingston could refer to Kingston-upon-Hull, which is near Skidby, and the locations look as if they could also be in the Skidby area of East Yorkshire.  Both the way the it has been filmed, and the use of music, is similar to Albert’s The East Riding made in the following year.  There is an existing Christadelphian group near Beverley.

 

The Christadelphians are not a very well-known group – they refer to themselves as a group rather than a ‘church’, and have adopted the name to distance themselves from ‘Christian’ churches which they see as failing, in various ways, to properly follow the Bible.  Nevertheless, they do have ecclesia, or 'church', dotted around the UK.  They do not have such a high as profile as similar religious groups like the Jehovah Witnesses, with whom they have much in common, even though they predate them.  Some of this is due to the fact that they aren’t a very strident evangelical group, knocking on doors.   The group has been bedevilled by schisms – over several issues, the status of baptism being one of them, military service another –creating several different ‘Fellowships’.  At about the time of this film, in 1957-58, some of these Fellowships re-united – see the entry on them in Wikipedia.  They have groups in several countries, including the US and Australia (but also some in Poland, Russia and India), although by far the biggest is in the UK, the Central group based in Birmingham, which has an estimated 55,000 members – see Wikipedia.

 

Christianity has never been a unified religion, but the number and variety of independent churches or groups claiming to be Christian is bewildering.  After the great schism in the Church in the 11th century, resulting in the division between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, the next major division was the Reformation in the 16th century.  Both during that movement, and subsequently, Protestantism has splintered into very many sects – with the mid-19th in the US a particularly fertile time and place.  The Christadelphians, like many similar groups, were formed in the US in this period: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) were founded by Joseph Smith in 1830. Many more have formed since them, and these are sometimes grouped together under the heading of new religious groups – see Lewis (References), although his compilation of groups does not include the Christadelphians; possibly because they are relatively orthodox.  

 

Although formed in the US, they were founded by an Englishman, John Thomas, the son of a Congregationalist minister.  After arriving in the US in 1832, having escaped shipwreck, he founded a magazine called The Apostolic Advocate in 1834, and joined the newly formed Disciplines of Christ, founded by Alexander Campbell.  This group emphasised baptism by immersion, the second coming of Christ, based its teachings entirely on the Bible, and rejected mainstream creedal beliefs.  These were all positions that were adopted by the Christadelphians; their name taken from the Greek, ‘brothers, or brethren, in Christ’.  Thomas’ chief disagreement with Campbell was that he believed that those being baptised should be old enough to make an intelligent judgement; hence he founded the Christadelphians in 1848, the year he wrote his Elpis Israel – An Exposition of the Kingdom of God.   When Thomas died in 1871 leadership passed to Robert Roberts who published his lectures as Christendom Astray which become a standard source of interpretation for the Christadelphians.

 

To quote from their own website: “The Christadelphians are a religious group who base our beliefs wholly on the Bible, regarding it as fully inspired by God, and hence believe it is error free.”  Further they believe that Christ will return to the earth, bring eternal life to His people and establish the long-awaited Kingdom of God – the millennial belief that Jesus and his followers will live for a thousand years (the millennium). For Christadelphians this will be before the final battle of Armageddon, as in the Olivet Prophecy.  They have no priests, central leadership, or elaborate churches, robes or ceremonies, and in this are like other Congregationalist churches.  

 

The belief in the literal word of the Bible – what is called Biblical inerrancy – is one that is shared with many churches: for example, the Evangelical Free Church of America, an association of 1,500 autonomous churches, also takes this position.  Yet despite this, the Christadelphians still have differences over some aspects of the Bible, such as the nature of God, with the Christadelphians rejecting the doctrine of the Trinity – a view shared by other non-Trinitarians like the Jehovah Witnesses.  For a list of differences between Christadelphians and more mainstream Christianity see Burrell, which also presents a critical overview of their doctrines (References).

 

These differences reveal one of the difficulties of Biblical inerrancy – of being a Bible-only religion – namely, the need for some interpretation.  The problem here is having some external source for interpretation and for resolving interpretative disagreements.  This need has given rise to a vast wealth of Biblical study, historical and interpretive, or hermeneutics, which poses a large range of problems for Biblical inerrancy.  From the very earliest times, scholars have debated the meanings in the Bible, whether it should be read literally or figuratively.  The study of Biblical hermeneutics developed in Germany towards the end of the 18th century.  Since then many scientific developments have also posed problems for those who see the Bible as being the literal truth; for example, with the theory of evolution.  Some Bible-only religions, such as the Jehovah Witnesses, have sought to challenge these on rational and scientific grounds. 

 

The problem of having a consistent basis for religious belief has bedevilled generations since Thomas Aquinas attempted to resolve the reason vs faith divide in his unfinished Summa Theologica, written between 1265 and 1274.  Many modern theologians view the duality as being a false one, and have either given up the idea of a purely literal reading of the Bible, or developed a much more sophisticated conception of what a ‘literal’ reading entails – see ‘The Discipline of Scripture’ in Rowan Williams, References.

 

The film focuses on something most of us probably take for granted, baptism.   The Christadelphians have the distinctive practice of Believer's baptism (credobaptism), which derives from the Anabaptist tradition. Like other Churches of Christ, the Christadelphians believe baptism to be an integral part of the conversion process and of salvation.  The idea of being old enough to make an independent and informed decision about ones beliefs would seem to be an obvious one within this view, and certainly chimes in with the very different tradition of the Enlightenment which stresses individual autonomy.  But those, like the Anglican Church, who practice child baptism, do not see it as part of ‘conversion’, so much as symbolising being part of a community.  In this view the idea of a child being completely ‘neutral’ is naïve: an orientation is required, and this is a gift symbolised in the sacrament of baptism.  Clearly, an entire language and theology underpins these understandings, and sacraments need to be understood within this context – see ‘Sacraments of the New Society’, Williams.

 

This film provides a rare glimpse into the other side of a relatively small religious group at a time when evangelical groups were very active in Britain: for example with the evangelistic crusades of the US Baptist minister Billy Graham – see also the Context for Dale Days with Cpas (1949).  Many of these groups have been criticised for recruiting vulnerable people using unscrupulous means, but here we have an example of a group that values a genuine conversion.  

 

References

 

Maurice Burrell, The ‘Christian’ Fringe, The Canterbury Press, 1996.

F L Cross (editor), The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Oxford University Press, 2005.

James Lewis, The Encyclopedia of Cults, Sects and the New Religions, Prometheus Books, 1998.

Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology, Blackwell, Oxford, 2000.

Christadelphians

BBC: Christadelphians

The Cross Denominational Mission

 Christadelphians in Wikipedia

 

Andrew Shanks, Faith in Honesty: The Essential Nature of Theology, Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2005.