The First Modern Apostolic Christian Church in America: Tucked away in the quiet farm country of Lewis County 1847, New York, a small congregation gathered that would leave a deep mark on modern church history. In the Croghan, Naumburg area, a group of immigrant believers formed what would become the first American congregation of the movement now known as the Apostolic Christian Church.
At first glance it looked like many other rural churches of the era: simple wooden buildings, hard-working farmers, services held in homes and barns. But behind that simplicity was a powerful conviction – a desire to return to the faith and practice of the apostles, taking the New Testament as a literal, practical guide for everyday life.
1 Corinthians 3: 11 For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Apostolic Christian Church From Switzerland to the North Country
The story does not begin in New York, but in Switzerland. Samuel Heinrich Fröhlich (1803–1857), a young Reformed minister, experienced a deep conversion and became convinced that the state-church system of his day had drifted from the pattern of the New Testament. In 1832 he was baptized as a believer and soon gathered like-minded Christians into fellowships known in Europe as the Evangelical Baptist Church.
Fröhlich’s teaching stressed repentance, new birth, believer’s baptism, separation from the world, and a life of visible holiness, themes that would have sounded very familiar to the first-century apostles. His followers soon spread through Switzerland, Germany, and Alsace, meeting mostly in homes and small chapels rather than grand cathedrals.
Among those touched by this movement was Benedict Weyeneth (1819–1887), a Swiss believer who would play a key role in bringing Fröhlich’s message to the New World.
A Call from an Amish-Mennonite Farmer
Across the Atlantic, in the wooded clearings of Lewis County, New York, lived Joseph Virkler, an Alsatian Amish-Mennonite farmer and minister. His community had its own Anabaptist heritage, but internal tensions and spiritual hunger led him to seek help. Hearing of Fröhlich’s work in Europe, Virkler appealed for someone to come and teach this fresh call to Apostolic Christianity.
Fröhlich responded by sending Benedict Weyeneth. In 1847, Weyeneth arrived in Lewis County 1847 and began to preach, teach, and gather believers around a clear, New Testament-centered faith. That same year, a congregation was formally organized – the first American church of this movement.
Here, in a remote corner of New York State, a fellowship emerged that explicitly sought to live by the teaching of Christ and His apostles, much as the early church had done.
Names, Denominations, and an “Apostolic Christian Church” Identity
In those early years, the believers in Europe and New York often used the name Evangelical Baptist for their churches. In some places they were also called New Amish, because many members came from Amish and Mennonite backgrounds.
Only later, as the movement grew across the Midwest and beyond, did the name Apostolic Christian Church become common, and in 1917 it was adopted as the uniform name for many of the congregations.
The word “apostolic” was chosen deliberately. It signaled a church that wanted to stand in continuity with the apostles’ doctrine and life – echoing Acts 2:42, where the first believers “continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship.”
Acts 2: 42 And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ [a]doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.
So they had several streams meeting in one place:
- Samuel H. Fröhlich – Swiss revivalist, founder of the Evangelical Baptist Church.
- Benedict Weyeneth – missionary sent from Europe to America.
- Joseph Virkler – Alsatian Amish-Mennonite farmer-minister in Lewis County.
- Anabaptist roots – drawing from Mennonite and Amish traditions.
- Evangelical Baptist / Apostolic Christian – the evolving denominational names.
Out of these intertwined stories, the Lewis County congregation of 1847 became the first American expression of what we now call the Apostolic Christian Church.
A Quiet Beginning with a Lasting Influence on the Apostolic
From that small start in Lewis County 1847, additional congregations were soon planted, including a church in Sardis, Ohio, just a year later.
Over time, the movement’s centre of gravity shifted toward the fertile farm regions of the American Midwest, where many rural families, often from other Anabaptist backgrounds, embraced this call to a serious, Scripture-governed Christian life.
Yet Lewis County still holds a special place in the story. It was the soil where the seed first took root on American ground, where the language of apostolic faith, brought over from Europe, began to shape a distinct community in the New World.
For modern readers, the lesson is simple but searching: long before “apostolic” became a popular label, a handful of humble believers in upstate New York were quietly asking, What would it look like to order our life, our church, and our witness by the plain teaching of Christ and His apostles?
Their answer was not flashy. It was rural, slow, and rooted in ordinary farm families. But from that hidden corner of New York State, the Apostolic Christian Church would grow into a global fellowship, still bearing in its very name the desire that stirred those first saints in Lewis County 1847: to be a people shaped by the apostles’ faith in a modern world.
Lewis County 1847
