Campbellites
THE FRENZIED EXCITEMENT of nineteenth-century frontier revivalism not only helped to imprint the evangelical style on much of Southern religion, but also led to the emergence of an interest in returning to the practices of primitive Christianity. Both commonsense rationalists and emotional revivalists sought to return to a presumably more pure Christian practice untainted by the accretions of time that had corrupted authentic Christianity. While this restorationist impulse attracted many campmeeting advocates, including Barton W. Stone, in time it coalesced around Alexander Campbell (1788-1866). Restorationists discarded denominational labels at first as signs of division within the one church, preferring to call themselves simply "Christians." In time, however, the followers of Alexander Campbell grew into one of the first indigenous denominations in the United States, the Disciples of Christ or the Christian Church.
As the movement grew, it enlarged its vision to include a conviction that American society itself could be transformed into a culture replicating the pure simplicity of New Testament Christian communities even as it extended its following into both the North and the South. For many years Campbell maintained an unofficial headquarters in Bethany, West Virginia. As with other groups, the sectional divisions over slavery brought tension to the movement, which combined with disagreement over religious practices (such as the use of musical instruments in worship, the support of ecumenical missionary societies, and the like) to split the developing denomination in two by 1906,
THE FRENZIED EXCITEMENT of nineteenth-century frontier revivalism not only helped to imprint the evangelical style on much of Southern religion, but also led to the emergence of an interest in returning to the practices of primitive Christianity. Both commonsense rationalists and emotional revivalists sought to return to a presumably more pure Christian practice untainted by the accretions of time that had corrupted authentic Christianity. While this restorationist impulse attracted many campmeeting advocates, including Barton W. Stone, in time it coalesced around Alexander Campbell (1788-1866). Restorationists discarded denominational labels at first as signs of division within the one church, preferring to call themselves simply "Christians." In time, however, the followers of Alexander Campbell grew into one of the first indigenous denominations in the United States, the Disciples of Christ or the Christian Church.
As the movement grew, it enlarged its vision to include a conviction that American society itself could be transformed into a culture replicating the pure simplicity of New Testament Christian communities even as it extended its following into both the North and the South. For many years Campbell maintained an unofficial headquarters in Bethany, West Virginia. As with other groups, the sectional divisions over slavery brought tension to the movement, which combined with disagreement over religious practices (such as the use of musical instruments in worship, the support of ecumenical missionary societies, and the like) to split the developing denomination in two by 1906,
No comments:
Post a Comment