What Is Kingdom Christianity?

Kingdom Christianity is a way of following Jesus that treats his kingdom as a present reality, not only a future hope. Its core convictions: Jesus is King now; the Sermon on the Mount is the law of his kingdom, meant to be obeyed; the church is a colony of heaven whose allegiance transcends every nation; entrance is by voluntary faith and believer's baptism; and the King's people renounce violence entirely. It is the faith of the church before Constantine, recovered by the Anabaptists in 1525.

No. Kingdom Christianity is not a denomination or an organization but a set of convictions about the kingdom of God that cuts across church labels. It is most at home among conservative Anabaptists (Mennonite, Amish-background, Hutterite, and independent kingdom-minded congregations), but it also describes many converts and house fellowships with no Anabaptist heritage who have embraced the kingdom vision of the early church.

The idea is as old as the gospel — Jesus' own message was "the gospel of the kingdom." As a modern label, it was popularized in the conservative-Anabaptist renewal of recent decades, especially through David Bercot's book The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down and his recorded teaching, and through gatherings like Kingdom Fellowship Weekend and the Strength to Strength network that connect kingdom-minded believers across denominational lines.

Anabaptism is the historical movement (born 1525) that recovered kingdom convictions after Christendom; Kingdom Christianity is the theological heart of what they recovered. Most Kingdom Christians hold historic Anabaptist convictions — believer's baptism, nonresistance, separation from the state — but the term deliberately reaches wider than ethnicity or denomination: it names the kingdom vision itself, which any follower of Jesus can embrace.

The difference is the kingdom's location in time and the Sermon on the Mount's authority. Mainstream evangelicalism tends to treat the kingdom as future (or as a synonym for personal salvation) and reads the Sermon on the Mount as an ideal pointing to grace. Kingdom Christianity holds that the kingdom began at Christ's enthronement and that the Sermon is present-tense law for the King's people — which produces visibly different lives: nonresistance instead of just war, kingdom allegiance instead of Christian nationalism, and churches that function as disciplined communities rather than voluntary audiences.

Kingdom Christians renounce warfare and lethal violence entirely, following the early church's consistent refusal of military service and Jesus' command to love enemies. Toward the state they practice respectful non-participation: honoring rulers, paying taxes, and obeying law wherever it does not conflict with the King — but declining the sword, the oath of office, and typically the ballot, because the church's calling is to be a witness-nation within every nation, not a faction within any of them.

A Kingdom Christian is a follower of Jesus who has transferred citizenship to Christ's present kingdom: baptized on personal faith, obedient to the Sermon on the Mount as the kingdom's law, nonresistant toward enemies, and holding allegiance to King Jesus above every nation, party, and flag. The term describes a conviction, not a membership — Kingdom Christians are found among conservative Anabaptists, independent congregations, and converts from every background.

No. "Kingdom theology" (also called inaugurated eschatology or "already/not-yet") is an academic framework about the timing of God's kingdom, held by many evangelical and charismatic theologians who still embrace just-war doctrine and political engagement. Kingdom Christianity is a lived allegiance: it draws the practical conclusions — nonresistance, no oaths, kingdom-first loyalty, believer's baptism — that the early church actually drew from Christ's present kingship. Many hold kingdom theology on paper; Kingdom Christians stake their lives on it.

Start with the free Christian Citizenship course by David Bercot, which lays out the kingdom as the early Christians understood it. Then read the Sermon on the Mount alongside the early church's own commentary in our free Sermon on the Mount library, and watch the Kingdom Fellowship Weekend talks. If the history grips you, Dean Taylor's Radical Reformation History course tells how the Anabaptists recovered the kingdom at the cost of their lives.