The Stone-Campbell Movement
Dr. Paul M. Blowers, Professor of Church History
Emmanuel School of Religion

The American frontier in the early nineteenth century was a grand theater of religious experience and church expansion. Denominational rivalry, while helping to energize the missionary initiatives of the various churches, also undercut the churches’ ability to speak with one voice and to represent the one Body of Christ to a world in need of the gospel.

In this context emerged two separate movements for Christian unity and evangelization. Barton Stone (1772-1844) helped inaugurate in the broad Appalachian region of Kentucky, eastern Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia a fellowship of churches seeking to overcome denominational divisions and to reclaim the “unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Eph. 4:3). They chose to call themselves simply “Christians” and they cast the net widely and broadly to include all who would demonstrate faith in Christ and obedience to the commands of the gospel.

In the OhioValley region of Western Pennsylvania and Eastern Ohio, Thomas (1763-1854) and Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) launched a movement for Christian unity that came to be known as the Disciples of Christ. The great appeal of this movement was captured in Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address (1809), in which he stated that it was the “grand design” of Christianity that human beings be reconciled to God and to one another. But how could humanity worldwide be reconciled to God if Christians within the church itself remained divided from one another? The Campbells proposed a restoration of apostolic Christianity, not only the specific practices of the New Testament church but the spirit and purpose of the church in its devotion to the person of Jesus Christ.

In 1832 the movements of Stone and the Campbells joined forces, and quickly became the fastest growing religious movement in America in the mid-nineteenth century. Their common goal was Christian unity, through the restoration of New Testament Christianity, for the ultimate purpose of world evangelization.

Two hundred years later, the Stone-Campbell Movement has sadly seen its own internal divisions, but its heirs—the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, the Churches of Christ, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) are moving toward a new spirit of reconciliation. The Movement’s goal remains the same: to encourage Christians individually, and churches as a whole, to give their primary loyalty to Jesus Christ, to find true unity in him, and—in their worship, ministry, and mission—to live up to the mandate of Christ himself for his church.