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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Dunkards

Dunker \Dun"ker\, prop. n. [G. tunken to dip.] One of a religious denomination whose tenets and practices are mainly those of the Baptists, but partly those of the Quakers; -- called also Tunkers, Dunkards, Dippers, and, by themselves, Brethren, and German Baptists, and they call their denomination the Church of the Brethren.

Note: The denomination was founded in Germany in 1708, but after a few years the members emigrated to the United States; they were opposed to military service and taking legal oaths, and practiced trine immersion.

Seventh-day Dunkers, a sect which separated from the Dunkers and formed a community, in 1728. They keep the seventh day or Saturday as the Sabbath.

Usage examples of "dunkards".

It was men, and not women, who invented such sordid and literal faiths as those of the Mennonites, Dunkards, Wesleyans and Scotch Presbyterians, with their antipathy to beautiful ritual, their obscene buttonholing of God, their great talent for reducing the ineffable mystery of religion to a mere bawling of idiots.