The Disciples of Christ is a movement that sought to unite all Christians on the basis of a return to the faith and to the life of the original Christianity. The beginning of this movement was laid by Thomas Campbell and his son Alexander. In 1812, they left the Presbyterian congregation and organized their congregation by joining the Baptist union. In 1823, in the journal "Christian Baptist", Alexander Campbell began to preach a sermon on a return to the Gospel teaching of apostolic times. He did not call for a new reformation, he called everyone for restoration, not for the organization of a new sect and not for the reform of existing ones, but for "a return to Jerusalem – for the restoration of apostolic Christianity." But, divorced from the Conciliar Mind of the Church, Alexander Campbell, guided by his personal conjecture, his own opinion, declared everything that in various confessions and sects was beyond the Holy Scriptures to be human wisdom. Excommunicated by the Baptist Union for his preaching, A. Campbell began to create his own community. From 1839 to the year of his death, A. Campbell published his own magazine, and throughout the nineteenth century this movement grew; its growth slowed down in the XX century with the emergence of new trends in the Protestant environment. In 1952, the Campbellites had 1.8 million members in America, divided into 8,000 communities.

The Campbellites accept in their entirety all the tenets of faith common to all Protestant denominations, but, unlike other sects, they recognize the pre-eminence of the New Testament for the Christian. They refrain from the use of theological systems of doctrine and terms that reject the understanding of the sacraments as sacraments, imparting special gifts of grace to the faithful, and they demand from those who enter into their movement only the confession of Christ as the God-man, repentance, obedience to evangelists, and a promise to renounce sin and do righteousness. They consider the day of Pentecost to be the beginning of Christianity and teach about the unity of the Church with one head – Christ, and since there are many Churches, the Campbellites consider all Churches to be illegal gatherings. Denying the priesthood as a sacrament, they also reject the baptism of infants, and those baptized in infancy are rebaptized. Not recognizing the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the Campbellites accept the Divine Supper as a remembrance, approaching it every Sunday.

Sunday is strictly observed as a day of meeting and prayer of the "people of God", as a day of communion with the "community of saints", a day of evangelism, i.e. preaching and exercises of families in fulfilling the commandments of the Lord.

Mormons who call themselves "Latter-day Saints"

This is an American sect of a semi-pagan character, founded around 1830 by Joseph Smith.

The history of the emergence of this sect is as follows. A former preacher of one of the Protestant sects, Salomon Spaulding, wrote about 1812 a fantastic novel called "The Found Manuscript", which told the fictitious story of two Jewish colonies, allegedly founded in America in ancient times and leaving degenerate offspring in the form of red-skinned tribes. The novel was not published, but it was well known to the author's relatives and friends; after the author's death, a copy of this novel fell into the hands of the Baptist preacher Sidney Rigdon (in Ohio), who was close to Joseph Smith, who lived in the neighborhood, born about 1800 in Vermont, the uneducated son of a craftsman, known for his bad life and many fraudulent tricks. Soon after (Rigdon) became acquainted with Spaulding's novel, Smith, who had long pretended to be a sorcerer and treasure discoverer, announced that he had a revelation from above: that in a cave on Mount Cumora (New York) there was an ancient sacred chronicle of American Israelites, written by one of the leaders, Mormon. Going to the indicated place, upon his return, he assured that after a fierce struggle with the devil, the higher beings had handed him a book consisting of gold plates striated with unknown writings in a special New Egyptian language. The book allegedly contained an optical instrument in which he recognized the Urim and Thummim (the divinatory apparatus of the ancient Jewish high priests). Reading the golden book with this projectile, he understood its meaning and, sitting behind a curtain, dictated its English translation, published in Palmyra (New York) in 1830. Many people familiar with Salmon Spaulding's novel stated that Smith's Book of Mormon was nothing more than a reproduction of Spaulding's novel The Found Manuscript, i.e., plagiarism. Since Sidney Rigdon, who had a copy of the novel, turned out to be a personal friend and adherent of Smith, the matter was simply explained. Moreover, the original manuscript was stolen from Spaulding's heirs who claimed plagiarism and exterminated by the Mormons. The "Golden Book", allegedly discovered by Smith, remained invisible, and, according to Smith, was completely hidden by angels, remaining an object of religious faith for Smith's adherents. The criminal antecedents of the "prophet", for which he was tried and for which he himself repented, make deception more than likely. Nevertheless, hundreds, and soon thousands, of people believed in Smith as a messenger of God, called to gather a new American Israel and prepare it for the millennium that would soon be revealed in America. The movement that began among the people soon took on ugly forms; the crowds of people became extremely religious in the midst of frenzied men and women grimacing and shouting in unknown tongues, so that Smith himself decided to moderate his followers. He announced that John the Baptist had appeared to him, ordered him to be baptized by immersion, ordained him to the priesthood according to the order of Aaron, and then according to the order of Melchizedek, and ordered both titles to be communicated to other worthy persons. With the help of the hierarchy thus established (which later became much more complicated), Smith introduced order and discipline into his sect. Most of his followers concentrated in Independence, Missouri, while he himself remained with a few in Curtland, Ohio, where he engaged in banking operations, but, having gone bankrupt, fled to Independence. Here the surrounding population was stirred up with hostility by the arrogance of the Mormons, who recognized themselves as the only saints, and saw only pernicious errors in all other confessions and sects; Mormons were also accused of crimes against the common law and, after many abuses, were forced to leave Missouri (1838). Settling in Illinois, they turned the insignificant town of Commerce into a flourishing city, which they called Nova, with a vast and original temple. From here they sent numerous missionaries to Europe and Australia. At first, the population reacted favorably to them. But a reaction soon began when it was discovered that Mormons had introduced polygamy as a religious law. In 1843, Smith informed his friends of a revelation he had received from above, permitting the "saints," following the example of the Old Testament patriarchs and kings, to have several wives. Although it was allowed to marry only between maidens or widows, in fact Smith and his chosen disciples encroached on the honor of married women as well. Smith himself had 30 wives. Several offended men rebelled against this abuse and began to publish a denunciation. Smith and a crowd of adherents destroyed and burned the printing house of this newspaper. The people appealed to the judiciary; after an unsuccessful attempt to escape, Smith and his brother, the "patriarch" Girem, were arrested. An anti-Mormon mob surrounded the prison, and the two brothers were shot dead on June 27, 1844.

After a series of armed clashes with the local population, at the request of the state government, the Mormons were forced to leave Nova. Under the leadership of Bryam Yong, recognized as Joseph Smith's successor, the Mormons finally left Nova in 1846 and settled in 1847 in the desert valley of Salt Lake in the Indian part of Utah, where the bulk of them arrived in 1848 after a difficult journey. Firmly held together by brutal discipline, the Mormons soon turned the vast wilderness into a region of high culture. Extensive missionary work attracted tens of thousands of converts from Britain and other countries. During the 33-year reign of Brigham Yong (1844–77), the sect grew and prospered. Serious trials for the sect began in 1870, when the central government of America decided to destroy the main domestic basis of the Mormons – polygamy. During the lifetime of Yong, who had 25 wives, these attempts were unsuccessful, but under his successor, John Tahlor (1877–87), Congress passed a law prohibiting polygamy, and when it proved insufficient, a new law (1877) greatly increased punitive measures. Talor's successor, Wilfred Woodref, openly obeyed the law. Then about 2000 fanatical polygamists moved to Mexico. Those who obey the law view their obedience as an unwitting apostasy, and Mormon leaders continue to secretly adhere to polygamy.

The teaching of the Mormons, the foundations of which are laid in the writings of the founder and first "prophet" of the sect (the Book of Mormon, the Book of Doctrines and Covenants, a collection of speeches and revelations), developed on the Salt Lake into a vast system, in some parts eclectic, but in the main points very original and definite.

Only matter, which consists of eternal atoms, really and really exists; "non-material" means non-existent; "pure spirit" is pure nothingness; Christians who worship God as a spirit are atheists, idolaters.

Matter has various states; That which is called spiritual or divine is a special state of refined matter or ether.

There are many gods; although they are immortal, they do not exist from eternity: only matter is eternal. As a result of the process of complex interaction of atomic forces, the supreme deity, the androgyne, who resides in the center of the world on the luminary Kolob, appeared in time. This deity successively gave birth to all the other gods and goddesses who ruled the suns and planets. The god that Mormons worship is not a supreme deity, but a special god of planet Earth. He is a material being, a corporeal organism that exists in space and time and cannot be in two places and in two moments at once. Although Mormons use the Christian formula of the Trinity in the short creeds, it is explained in the doctrinal books that there are two divine persons in the god of the earth, the father and the son, and the third is only an impersonal energy emanating from both. The god of the Earth, from his union with the goddess of the planet Venus or Lucifer, had another son, Lucifer, but he lost his divine dignity and became an evil spirit. Once upon a time, God the Father decided to populate the entire planet Earth with people and, foreseeing their future sins and untruths, began to consult with his two sons. Lucifer said, "Give me honor, send me to correct and teach people," and Christ said to his father, "Thy will be done, and thy glory forever." God entrusted the work of salvation to Christ, and this caused the rebellion of the jealous Lucifer, who carried away a third of the gods and goddesses.

The ancestor of the human race was the god Michael, called Adam in his incarnation. An important place in the teaching of Mormons is the theory of angels and spirits, which should not be confused with gods. Spirits are pre-existent people who have to incarnate on earth and thereby receive the fullness of being, and angels are the souls of those dead people who, although they had the right faith and led a virtuous life, did not fulfill the main purpose of man: to have wives and children in order to contribute to the incarnation of as many spirits as possible, future gods. Lonely people will not be resurrected in real material bodies, but will remain ethereal angels and, although they will enter the future kingdom of God, but only as domestic servants to the saints – which is understood by Mormons in the most real sense.

Mormon ethics are very simple: the only virtue that makes all others unnecessary is unconditional faith and unquestioning obedience to sacred authority. The only important sin is distrust and disobedience to a prophet or seer who receives revelation from above.