What are Progressive Dunkers?

One hundred years ago, in 1906, the Census Bureau completed its fifth collection of statistics on religious bodies in the United States. Previous surveys had been done in 1850, 1860, 1870, and 1890. The report, Religious Bodies: 1906, was first published in 1910 as Census bulletin 103 and was 146 pages in length. It was later republished in two parts (Part 1 - Summary and General Tables; and Part 2 - Separate Denominations: History, Description, and Statistics) and was 1,246 pages long.

The Brethren Church, more commonly known as the "Progressive Dunkers" was a Christian denomination that separated from the larger German Baptist Brethren Church, or the "Dunkers" in 1882. The Progressive Dunkers preferred a more local or congregational form of church governance over the centralized, more powerful form that the larger church had taken on since its formation in the late 17th century.

Check out the full report to find out more about the Progressive Dunkers and other groups like the Two-Seed-in-the-Spirit Predestinarian Baptists, Japanese Buddhists, Christadelphians, Volunteers of America, Schwenkfelders, and Defenceless Mennonites.