Podcast Episode 81
Stone-Campbell Movement
with Dr. John Mark Hicks & host Nick Walters
Subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple
52+ Episodes a Year.
100% Listener Supported.
We are committed to bringing you fresh historical insights every single Monday, completely ad-free. This work is only possible through the generosity of our listeners. If our weekly episodes have enriched your faith or your understanding of history, consider a gift to help us keep this mission moving forward.
The Stone-Campbell Movement emerged from one of the most persistent problems in Christian history: division among Christians. In the early nineteenth-century United States, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and other Protestants often competed even as the Second Great Awakening challenged older denominational boundaries. Barton W. Stone became convinced that denominational structures and creeds could become obstacles to the Christian unity described in the New Testament.
The Cane Ridge Revival of 1801 in Kentucky became an important setting for Stone’s developing ideas. Thousands gathered for preaching, communion, and conversion during one of the best-known revivals of the era. Revivalism also produced tensions within Presbyterianism. In 1803, Stone and five other ministers withdrew from the Kentucky Synod and formed the Springfield Presbytery. They soon concluded that creating another ecclesiastical organization merely perpetuated the denominational system they opposed.
In June 1804, they issued the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery, declaring that the organization should “die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large.” Rather than defining believers primarily as Presbyterians, Baptists, or Methodists, Stone envisioned Christians united around their common identity in Christ and the authority of Scripture.
Thomas Campbell and his son Alexander Campbell developed a related reform movement emphasizing Christian unity, biblical authority, congregational life, and restoration of New Testament Christianity. Although the Stone and Campbell movements developed separately, their similarities eventually brought them together. Beginning in the early 1830s, the two streams increasingly united into what historians commonly call the Stone-Campbell Movement or Restoration Movement.
But escaping denominationalism created a difficult question: How do thousands of independent congregations remain united without developing institutions that begin to resemble a denomination?
As the movement expanded, congregational autonomy remained central, but Christians disagreed about cooperation. The American Christian Missionary Society, organized in 1849, became a major controversy. Supporters saw cooperation as practical; critics questioned whether such organizations had New Testament authorization and feared they could undermine local church independence.
Instrumental music in worship became another visible point of disagreement, tied to larger questions about how Scripture should regulate church practice. By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Churches of Christ and the Disciples of Christ were increasingly identifiable as separate bodies. The 1906 United States religious census listed Churches of Christ separately from the Disciples. During the twentieth century, the Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ also emerged as congregations resisted the increasingly denominational organization of the Disciples.
The Deep Dive explores this history with Dr. John Mark Hicks, Professor of Theology at Lipscomb University. Hicks has taught in higher education among Churches of Christ since 1982, and his research interests include Restoration Movement history and historical theology. His scholarship on Alexander Campbell, Cane Ridge, revivalism, Churches of Christ, and the Stone-Campbell tradition provides important context for understanding the movement and its continuing influence.
Also in Christian history, on September 10, 1922, a Pentecostal congregation was organized at Păuliș in western Romania, an important event in the development of Romanian Pentecostalism. The emerging movement was influenced by Pentecostal ideas reaching Romanian believers through transatlantic connections. Păuliș became part of a movement that would endure opposition and eventually establish a significant presence within Romanian Christianity.
On September 11, 813, Charlemagne arranged for his only surviving legitimate son, Louis, to be crowned co-emperor at Aachen. Louis succeeded his father in 814 and became known as Louis the Pious. His reign reflected the close relationship between Christianity and Carolingian government. He promoted reform and religious discipline and later performed public penance. His attempts to preserve imperial unity became entangled in conflicts with his sons.
This Week in Christian History is produced by the Center for Christian History and hosted by Nick Walters, exploring the people, movements, controversies, and events that have shaped Christianity across the centuries.