CRISTADELFI (FRATELLI DI CRISTO). - Protestant sect founded by the Englishman Giovanni Thomas. Having moved to the United States in 1884, after lengthy studies of the Bible he became convinced that the principal doctrines of all the sects and Churches then existing were those of the apostate Church foretold in Holy Scripture, and that it was therefore necessary to return to the doctrines, precepts, and practices of the primitive Church, for which it was sufficient to observe what the Bible says. He therefore devoted himself to active propaganda in order “to extract from the Gentiles a people that would glorify the name of God.”
During the Civil War in the United States (1861–66), Thomas’s followers took the name of Christadelphians. They are anti-Trinitarians; according to them, the soul is by nature mortal and immortality is granted only to the righteous; Jesus Christ should soon come personally to earth to raise the dead and
