Introduction - The Purpose & Why of the Project
- Tanner Hawkins
- Aug 17
- 4 min read
Updated: 22 hours ago
Christadelphian Unamended First Principles
Introduction - The Purpose & Why of the Project
By Bro. Tanner Hawkins & Sis. Bonnie Washeck
Tanner: Hey everyone, this is Tanner with The Gospel Proclamation, and we’re excited to share a new project that we believe is of utmost importance and has been in development for some time: the Unamended Christadelphian First Principles Project. The purpose of this project is to strengthen the Unamended body on those essential elements of the Gospel in a way that is easy to understand, accessible, and concise. I believe there has been a need for something of this kind for some time, but it was only when I spoke with my aunt, Sis. Bonnie Washeck, who brought up the project idea that the ball officially began rolling.
Sis. Bonnie is the one who is helping coordinate teachers for this project. Bonnie, can you introduce yourself and tell everyone where this idea came from?
Bonnie: Thank you, Tanner. I’m Sis. Bonnie Washeck of the St Louis Unamended Christadelphian Ecclesia. I’ve been a member of that ecclesia all of my life, and as Tanner said, he and I are related as Aunt and Great Nephew. We are 4th and 6th generation Unamended Christadelphians.
In order to give my side of this project I need to go back a few years. When I was young, I remember hearing the phrase First Principles often, it was as familiar to me as “In the beginning” and “Hear O Israel”. I heard it enough that I knew it was important, but I was still too young to really understand it - although I was learning them from my parents, class, and other teachers and speakers. In addition to hearing this phrase, things like “we are different than other Christian beliefs” were often spoken of. As I grew older and continued to learn, this all began to make sense, and the importance of First Principles became more and more clear. When my parents allowed me to attend a “church” with my cousins and friends, I was readily able to discern what differences I had been taught about, and it strengthened my belief.
Fast forward a number of years – let’s say about 13, 14 years ago. It occurred to me that I was not hearing that phrase hardly at all anymore, so I spoke to some other brothers and sisters, and they agreed with me. I decided 12 years to write a First Principles class for young people. This lesson was taken from Bro. Dunaway’s First Principles Arkansas class, Bro. Bachman’s First Principle book, and Bro. Butch Shelton’s writings. I taught that class in Arkansas.
Earlier this year (2025), I went back to First Principles and requested that the Brothers in our two ecclesias start to give semi-regular First Principle talks, and this has gone really well. I also made several other inquiries into other avenues on how First Principles could be presented on a larger scale, but I wasn’t exactly happy with the responses. I then said to myself, “Well you can stop here or you can keep trying. Given how important First Principles are, I kept trying.
I spent a lot of time thinking on this, and one day driving down the road, the word “podcast” popped into my head. I thought, “Wow, that’s different.” I had heard of these but had never listened or had any idea of how they worked. I did a little research and more thinking, and then went to some young people to ask them about it as I knew they would be honest with me on what they thought. I kept thinking on it and there were challenges, but the main challenge was that I am a sister and am aware of and support the Biblical role of Sisters in our community. I thought about a brother who knew technology, but more importantly had the same passion for First Principles as I do, that brought me to my great nephew Bro. Tanner Hawkins. After sharing my idea with Tanner, I was pleased to hear that he was wanting to do the same exact thing. He quickly agreed that it was a good idea, and the Unamended Christadelphian First Principles Project was a go.
Bro. Tanner and I have invested a lot of time in ensuring that this is as structured and concise as possible, and our hope is for this podcast to shine a light on the Unamended Christadelphian First Principles and stir up a renewed interest in this foundation of our belief. We also hope that these podcasts will be used both individually and as a guide for family, adult, or young person classes.
I’ll let Bro. Tanner speak more in depth about the content and structure of the podcast.
Tanner: Thanks Bonnie. This project is based on the Christadelphian Statement of Faith as printed by The Christadelphian Advocate. It is the Unamended Statement of Faith. There are numerous versions of the Statement of Faith. This first podcast you’re listening to introduces the project, and the second podcast will explain the importance of first principles as taught through Scripture and give a brief history of the Statement of Faith. This will explain why we are basing it off of this particular version and also explain why there are so many versions out there.
After this, each proposition, doctrine to be rejected, and commandment of Christ will have its own concise podcast which will explain what it is, what it means, and why it is a first principle. Some podcasts will be short and some will be longer as some propositions will take more time than others to cover, but each will have its own podcast so it’s easy to navigate. Our hope is to keep all of them between 10-50 minutes long.
This will take a significant amount of time to complete, but we believe it’s an important subject and there is a need for a project of this sort as we get closer to Christ’s return, and there are many distractions in the world.
If anyone has any questions or suggestions, you can contact us at editor@thegospelproclamation.com.
