Barton Stone
Among the three "Christian" movements in New England,
Virginia-North Carolina, and Kentucky-Tennessee, the most important,
in relation to the Disciples of Christ, would have been the latter.
This is the one in which Barton W. Stone became the most conspicuous
figure. Unlike the Christian church in New England, it was related
in its origin to the O'Kelly secession from the Methodist. Its
roots run back into the "New Light," or revivalistic,
strain of Presbyterianism in Virginia and the southern states.
So important is Stone's place in the Kentucky phase of the movement,
and so close were his contacts with the earlier influences before
he came to Kentucky, that an account of his early life is an
essential part of the total picture.
 A native American frontiersman,
Barton Warren Stone was born in 1772 near Port Tobacco, Maryland,
and was educated at David Caldwell's Academy of North Carolina.
He enrolled with the intention of pursuing a career in law, but
changed his mind and entered the Christian ministry. After teaching
in Georgia and preaching in North Carolina, he moved to Kentucky
and requested ordination from the Transylania Presbytery.
Presbyterians subscribed to a creed, the Westminster Confession
of Faith, and required their ministers to accept it as containing
the system of doctrine taught in the Bible. Stone hedged, agreeing
to regard it as normative study only insofar as it was "consistent
with the word of God." Ordained, in spite of this qualified
endorsement, he became pastor of two small Presbyterian churches
at Cane Ridge and Concord, both in Kentucky.
The Great Western Revival was a tidal wave of religious interest
and excitement which began in about 1800, reaching its crest
in 1803, and then gradually diminishing as it merged with the
normal stream of evangelism. Its principal expansion fields were
in Tennessee and Kentucky. On Sundays of May and June 1801, there
were a succession of Great Western Revival meetings at churches
in the region around Lexington, Kentucky. At the last three meetings,
the attendance ran to 4,000 for the first, 8,000 for the second,
and 10,000 for the third, according to contemporary estimates.
The "May communion appointment" at the Concord Church,
of which Stone was a member, brought together between 5,000 and
6,000 people of various sects and many preachers of different
denominations.
This Bluegrass portion of the Great Western Revival climaxed
at a Cane Ridge meeting which lasted from Friday to Wednesday,
August 7-12, 1801. An estimated crowd of 20,000 gathered for
the entire meeting. Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist ministers
preached, often simultaneously at different stations throughout
the neighboring woods. As the revival interest grew, and as the
meetings became larger and longer, unexpected and bizarre manifestations,
called "exercises," began to occur. Stone, in his Autobiography,
listed many of the varieties of "exercises." The commonest
were the "falling exercises" and the "jerks."
The barking exercises sometimes accompanied the jerks, and the
dancing exercises grew out of them. There were also the running
exercises. It was reported that those who came to scoff were
not immune to these seizures. All of these exercises were considered
visible manifestations of the direct action of the Holy Spirit.
While Cane Ridge was the host church, it was by no means under
the control of Barton Stone. As host minister, he played a prominent
role in this revival but was overshadowed by Richard McNemar,
another Presbyterian minister in Kentucky. Disapproving of the
"acrobatic" Christianity so much in evidence at Cane
Ridge, orthodox Presbyterians brought formal charges against
McNemar for deviating from the Westminster Confession and violating
church discipline. Before he could be exonerated or found guilty
as charged, he withdrew from the jurisdiction of the Presbyterian
Synod of Kentucky.
Stone and three other dissenters accepted McNemar's decision
as their own, and five of them in 1803 formed the independent
Springfield Presbytery in 1803 which answered to no synod or
any other ecclesiastical body. Within a year, they and David
Purveyance dissolved the presbytery and published The Last Will
and Testament Of The Springfield Presbytery, renouncing the name
of "Presbyterian" as sectarian, and they agreed henceforth
to call themselves "Christians." Of the original five
men of the Springfield Presbytery, only Stone held to his conviction
while two became Shakers and two returned to Presbyterianism.
There was a firmness, a sweetness, and a saintliness in Stone's
character that gave him a growing influence among his brethren.
Moreover, when the movement was a little more than twenty years
old, Stone began to edit and publish a magazine, The Christian
Messenger. In the absence of any general organization among the
churches, this periodical became the chief instrument of such
unity as they had. And in the absence of any actual "ecclesiastical
head," the editor, who was the outstanding elder statesman
of the group, and the sole survivor of those who had initiated
it, became the most influential personality among the Christians
of the West. [Garrison & DeGroot, 1958] |
