The road that I live on has two Church(s) of God of the Abrahamic Faith within a couple of thousand feet of each other, where one schismed off the other around 70 years ago. Recently the older one has covered their permanent sign with a temporary cloth sign where they have changed from a Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith to a Church of God, Faith of Abraham. I’m curious, anyone have any ideas about the doctornal differences? I’m getting a distinct “People’s Front of Judea vs Judean People’s Front” vibe.
Me too (or maybe “angels on the head of a pin”, but in an idle moment some googling produced these:
Maybe it’s not a doctrinal thing. Perhaps the older church is just trying to update their image a bit and differentiate themselves from the other church more. “Church of God, Faith of Abraham” has a cleaner, more modern-sounding rhythm to my ear than “Church of God of the Abrahamic Faith”.
As “Abrahamic Faith” is used (in religious and non-religious circles) to mean all the three major religions who consider Abraham their founding figure (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). So could it be they changed it to make it clear they are in Christian not one of the other two religions?
Wasn’t Abraham Jewish, so the “faith of Abraham” literally would be Judaism?
Yeah! And how can all those Baptist churches be the first?
According to tradition (I can’t remember if it’s especially stated in Genesis), Abraham came from the land of Ur, somewhere in what’s now Iraq, to Canaan and settled there. Of course his pact with God was the foundation of the Jewish faith, but the Jews as a people didn’t already exist. So it’s debatable if you can call Abraham Jewish.
Depends on what is meant as Jewish. Abraham was not a son of a Jewish woman, raised with Jewish traditions. Neither was he a descendant of Judah nor Jacob. But perhaps he received special dispensation to be Jewish.
This is a debate that has raged amongst three religions for two millennia so is unlikely to be settled on this thread (or by a change of church signage) 
Abraham was a Jew, everyone who followed was only Jewish.
It could just be that the Church of God, Faith of Abraham disaffiliated with the parent COGAF for any number of reasons: they didn’t want to pay affiliation dues anymore, the parent church was pressuring the two congregations to bury the hatchet and combine, they didn’t like the newly elected head of the parent church, whatever.
“The faith of Abraham” — some sort of proto-Judaism.
“Abrahamic Faith” — Judaism, Christianity, Islam.
That is what those words mean.
The meaning some church somewhere ascribes to them is also very interesting for bored anthropologists everywhere.
Ask them which end of the egg they open first.
You mean Judah? The clue is in the name…
Well yes, if you wanna be correct about it and ruin the joke, Abraham was a Hebrew (עברי)
There is also the (in)famous variant, “Im Grunde gab es nur einen Christen, und der starb am Kreuz.”
I’ve checked into a few of these churches, They look like an attempt by Christians to convince the other two groups to believe in Jesus.
I didn’t know the quote, but I was sure it was from Nietzsche after reading it. For the non-German speaking crowd:
“In essence, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross.”
The Wikipedia link earlier tends to show why the church might want to change its name. Abrahamic Faith in modern parlance is very generic. Faith of Abraham is underlining a core difference they have from mainstream Christians. They are placing explicit emphasis in their doctrine on Abraham and his covenant, to the exclusion of some mainstream Christian doctrine.
The history of the church does however read like the People’s Front of Judea. But they are hardly alone in this.
This kind of reminds me of the dispute between the Judean People’s Front and the People’s Front of Judea.