The Churches of God, General Conference, (Churches of God, General Eldership until 1975) were popularly called Winebrennerians for the founder John Winebrenner (1797-1860). The group was organized in 1830 at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where it still had its headquarters in the 1950s. (The head offices were in Findlay, Ohio in 2010.) It emerged from the revivalistic preaching (in and around Harrisburg) of Winebrenner, a German Reformed minister of Frederick County, Maryland, ordained at Hagerstown, Maryland in 1820, who severed his connections with his church in 1825. Winebrenner taught a strict nonconformity to the world along with his revivalism, and instituted footwashing as an ordinance, also baptism by immersion. No doubt numbers of Mennonites (Mennonite Church) in the region adjoining Harrisburg (Lancaster Mennonite Conference) were won as adherents to the new faith, although no outstanding personalities of such transfers are known. In 1958 the membership was 35,700.

Additional Information

Website: Churches of God, General Conference

Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Waterloo, Ontario, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, p. 1073. All rights reserved. For information on ordering the encyclopedia visit the Herald Press website.

©1996-2013 by the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. All rights reserved.