This Sunday, we will be celebrating Heritage Sunday and, in a way, we are also celebrating our Disciple Heritage, so we thought you might enjoy a very “brief” summary of the early days of the Disciples of Christ Church.
The early history of The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is shared by two other groups – The Churches of Christ and the independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. They all emerged from the same roots.
It all started during the period of the second Great Awakening. This was the second great revival movement that occurred in America around the early 1800’s. The second Great Awakening was so powerful, so influential, that it directly led to the formation of, not only the Disciples of Christ Church, but the Methodist, the Southern Baptist, the Quakers and the Holiness movement, as well as the Church of the Latter Day Saints.
The initial camp meeting that started it all was held at Cane Ridge, Kentucky in the late summer of 1801. This meeting attracted upwards of perhaps as many as 20,000 people. Numerous independent Presbyterian, Baptist and Methodist ministers participated in the services. Thanks to such leaders as Barton W. Stone (1772-1844) and Alexander Campbell (1788-1866), the camp meeting revival became a major mode of church expansion and proclamations of the Gospel throughout the Midwestern United States.
The American Bible Society and the Women’s Temperance Movement both found their roots at the second Great Awakening.
Now, Barton Stone was first ordained a Presbyterian minister, but was expelled from the Presbyterian church after the Cane Ridge, Kentucky revival meeting for his stated beliefs in faith as the sole prerequisite for salvation. His followers were first called “New Lights” and “Stoneites”. Later, he and Campbell tried to bring denominations together that relied solely on the Scriptures as inspiration, interpretation, and as the guide to one’s faith walk.
In 1824 in Kentucky, Stone met with Alexander Campbell, and that meeting led to the partial unification of the “Christian” (Stone) movement and the “Reformed Baptist” (Campbell) movement into what is commonly called the Restoration Movement. The movement sought to restore the church and “the unification of all Christians in a single body patterned after the church of the New Testament.” They did not consider themselves to be Protestants, since they maintained that their theology came directly from the first century church and not the European churches.
Barton W. Stone’s group simply called themselves “Christians”. The cornerstone for the Stone movement was that of Christian freedom, which led them to a rejection of all the historical creeds, traditions and theological systems that had developed over time and focused on primitive Christianity based on the Bible.
While waiting for God to establish His kingdom here on earth, we should live as though the rule of God or the kingdom of God has already been fully established here on earth so that our lives are continually fixated upon that spiritual truth. This apocalyptic worldview led many in the Stone movement to adopt pacifism, avoid participating in civil government, and reject violence, militarism, greed, materialism and slavery.
The Campbell wing of the movement was launched when Thomas Campbell published the Declaration and Address of the Christian Association in 1809. In The Declaration and Address he set forth some of his convictions about the Church of Jesus Christ, as he organized the Christian Association of Washington in Washington County, Pennsylvania, not as a church but as an association of persons seeking to grow in faith where one could be allowed to preach and to teach whatever they learned from the Scriptures.
A preliminary meeting of the two groups was held in late December 1831, culminating with the merger on January 1, 1832. Both saw restoring apostolic Christianity as a means of hastening the millennium. Both also saw restoring the early church as a route to Christian freedom, and both believed that unity among Christians could be achieved by using apostolic Christianity as a model. The commitment of both movements to restoring the early church and to uniting Christians was enough to motivate a union between many in the two movements. Both groups sought to restore the whole Christian church on the pattern set forth in the New Testament, and both believed that creeds kept Christianity divided.
Among other things, they were united in the belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; that Christians should celebrate the Lord’s Supper on the first day of each week; the communion table was seen as a place where one could meet Christ, know Christ, and experience Christ and that baptism of adult believers should be done by immersion.
With the merger, there was the challenge of what to call the new movement. Clearly, finding a Biblical, non-sectarian name was important. Stone wanted to continue to use the name “Christians.” Alexander Campbell insisted upon “Disciples of Christ”. As a result, both names were used. The confusion over names has been present ever since.
Pastor Mark