The Restoration Movement is one of those chapters of American church history that makes more sense once you understand what its founders were trying to accomplish. They weren’t setting out to create another denomination. In fact, creating another denomination was almost exactly what they were trying not to do. They looked at Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists and other Christians arguing over creeds, denominational names and church traditions and wondered why believers couldn’t simply go back to the New Testament and be Christians. That sounds simple enough. As it turned out, restoring the New Testament church was considerably easier to propose than to agree on.

The movement is often called the Stone-Campbell Movement because two largely independent efforts eventually came together. One developed around the Kentucky preacher Barton W. Stone. The other grew from the work of Thomas Campbell and his much better-known son, Alexander Campbell. All three came from Presbyterian backgrounds, and all became dissatisfied with the denominational divisions they saw around them. Their movements united in 1832, creating what became one of the distinctive traditions of American Christianity.

Barton Stone and Cane Ridge

Barton W. Stone was a Presbyterian minister serving at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, when the famous Cane Ridge Revival took place in 1801. Cane Ridge became one of the defining events of the Second Great Awakening. Thousands of people descended on the Kentucky countryside for preaching, prayer and religious meetings that sometimes continued for days. The revival crossed denominational lines, which created a problem for a man serving within a denomination whose boundaries were beginning to seem increasingly artificial to him.

Stone and several other ministers eventually organized the Springfield Presbytery, but even that didn’t last long. In 1804 they published the wonderfully titled Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery. They essentially announced the death of their own organization so its members could become part of the larger body of Christ. They blamed much of Christian division on human creeds and systems of church government.

There was something distinctly American about the whole thing. These were Christians living on the frontier, suspicious of inherited institutions and asking why a believer needed a denominational bureaucracy somewhere else to tell a local congregation how to follow Jesus. Stone’s followers increasingly preferred the simple name “Christians.”

The Campbells

Meanwhile, Thomas Campbell had arrived in America from Ireland in 1807. He was a Presbyterian minister too, and he ran into trouble over the same general problem. Presbyterians themselves were divided into factions, and Campbell disliked the practice of excluding sincere Christians from Communion because they belonged to the wrong group.

In 1809 he published the Declaration and Address, arguing for Christian unity based on the teaching of Scripture rather than denominational traditions. Alexander Campbell soon became the more prominent figure. He was an unusually capable preacher, writer and debater who spent decades arguing that Christianity had accumulated traditions that needed to be measured against the New Testament.

The Campbells eventually became convinced that baptism should be the immersion of believers rather than the baptism of infants. Alexander Campbell himself was immersed in 1812, and the Campbell congregations spent a period associated with the Baptists. That relationship didn’t last. Campbell’s ideas about baptism, conversion, church organization and the restoration of apostolic Christianity increasingly gave the movement an identity of its own.

Campbell also understood the power of publishing. Through periodicals such as The Christian Baptist and later the Millennial Harbinger, his ideas traveled much farther than he could. Walter Scott became another important evangelist and helped the Campbell movement spread through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia and the surrounding region.

Stone Meets Campbell

The Stone and Campbell movements weren’t identical, but they had arrived at remarkably similar destinations. Both wanted Christian unity. Both rejected denominationalism. Both wanted Scripture rather than denominational creeds to determine Christian belief and practice. Both increasingly emphasized believer’s baptism by immersion, and both believed Christians should recover the simplicity of the New Testament church.

The two movements formally united at Lexington, Kentucky, at the end of 1831 and beginning of 1832. Even their preferred names reflected their philosophy. Stone’s people commonly called themselves “Christians,” while Campbell’s followers were often called “Disciples of Christ.” Both names came directly from the New Testament and avoided naming a church after a theologian or distinctive doctrine.

This also explains the confusing collection of names that survives today. Christian Church, Church of Christ and Disciples of Christ can sound like interchangeable generic names to someone encountering them for the first time. Historically, they’re related because they grew out of the same movement.

Restoring New Testament Christianity

The word restoration is important. The Reformers of the sixteenth century had tried to reform the existing church according to Scripture. Restorationists increasingly asked a somewhat different question: why not restore the church described in the New Testament?

That approach encouraged a strong interest in the practices of the earliest Christians. How were people converted? How were churches organized? When did Christians observe the Lord’s Supper? What did worship include? What offices existed in a congregation? If the New Testament provided a recognizable pattern for the church, the safest course seemed to be following that pattern rather than adding centuries of later tradition.

This helps explain several characteristics that became common within the movement. Congregations tended to practice believer’s baptism by immersion. The Lord’s Supper was normally observed every Sunday. Local churches were governed largely by their own elders and congregations. Creeds were viewed with suspicion when they became tests of Christian fellowship, and biblical names such as “Christian,” “Disciple” and “Church of Christ” were preferred.

There was also a strong evangelistic streak. Restoration wasn’t intended as an antiquarian project in which Christians reconstructed the first century for historical interest. The idea was that recovering apostolic Christianity could remove unnecessary barriers between believers and make the church more effective in preaching the gospel.

Baptism

Baptism became particularly important within the Stone-Campbell tradition. Alexander Campbell connected believer’s baptism closely with conversion and the forgiveness of sins. That remains one of the areas where Churches of Christ and some other Restoration churches can sound noticeably different from many modern evangelicals.

This has sometimes produced arguments over whether Restoration Christians teach “baptismal regeneration.” The label can obscure as much as it explains because different branches and individual churches express the relationship between faith, repentance, baptism and salvation somewhat differently. Historically, however, baptism was not treated as an optional ceremony performed sometime after a person was already considered fully initiated into the Christian life. The New Testament pattern of hearing the gospel, believing, repenting and being baptized carried considerable weight.

That emphasis helps explain why debates about baptism became so important later. If the goal is to restore apostolic Christianity, the exact practice of the apostles matters.

No Creed but Christ

The Restoration Movement is associated with several memorable sayings. Some came directly from its leaders and others became attached to the tradition over time. The general idea was that Christians should speak where Scripture speaks and avoid making human opinions conditions of fellowship.

The objection to creeds wasn’t necessarily that everything contained in the historic creeds was false. The concern was what happened when a human document became an additional test determining who could belong to the church. Why require someone to subscribe to a denominational confession when the New Testament itself was available?

That principle has obvious appeal, although it contains a difficulty that eventually became apparent. Two Christians can agree to follow the Bible alone and still disagree about what the Bible requires. Getting rid of the creed doesn’t get rid of interpretation.

And interpretation eventually became a serious problem for the Restoration Movement.

When Restorationists Disagree About Restoration

As the movement grew, Christians began debating practices that weren’t explicitly described in the New Testament. Missionary societies became one major controversy. Most people agreed that evangelism was biblical. The question was whether congregations had biblical authority to create and support organizations outside the local church to carry it out.

Instrumental music became another flashpoint. Christians had used musical instruments for centuries, but opponents pointed out that the New Testament describes Christians singing without giving instructions for instrumental accompaniment in church worship. If the church was supposed to reproduce the New Testament pattern, could it introduce something the apostles hadn’t authorized?

These weren’t trivial questions to people who believed the organization and worship of the New Testament church should serve as a pattern. They went directly to the question of how restoration was supposed to work.

Other differences entered the picture as well. The Civil War intensified regional tensions, and congregations in the North and South increasingly developed different institutional and cultural identities. By the end of the nineteenth century, the division between congregations accepting instruments and missionary societies and those rejecting them had become substantial. The federal religious census of 1906 recognized Churches of Christ separately from the Disciples of Christ, although the separation had been developing for decades.

A later division developed between the increasingly organized Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and congregations that wanted to retain greater independence and a more conservative theological identity. By the middle of the twentieth century, the three major streams we recognize today were becoming clear.

Three Branches of the Same Family

Today the Stone-Campbell tradition is usually discussed in terms of three major streams: Churches of Christ, Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). Their common ancestry is unmistakable, but they have developed noticeably different identities.

Churches of Christ are generally the most recognizable conservative restorationist branch. Congregations are autonomous, worship is traditionally a cappella, baptism by immersion is strongly emphasized, and Communion is normally observed every Sunday. There is no national denominational headquarters governing the churches.

Independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ occupy something of a middle historical position. They generally use instrumental music but retained congregational independence and a conservative evangelical identity rather than following the Disciples into a more formal denominational structure.

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) developed in the direction of a recognized mainline Protestant denomination. Its present structure took shape in 1968, although local congregations continue to possess considerable freedom. The Disciples have also become active in the broader ecumenical movement, which is interesting considering that Christian unity was one of the concerns that started the movement in the first place.

We’ll examine those three traditions separately because their differences are now substantial enough that lumping them together would give a misleading picture of all three.

The Restoration Movement Today

The Restoration Movement occupies an unusual place in American Christianity. Its founders weren’t Lutherans following Luther, Wesleyans following Wesley or Calvinists following Calvin. They were suspicious of the whole idea of attaching a man’s name to the church. They wanted to strip away denominational machinery and recover Christianity as they found it in the New Testament.

They succeeded in creating a major Christian tradition, although history didn’t cooperate with their hope of escaping Christian division. Their descendants eventually disagreed about what restoration required and formed distinct streams of their own. That doesn’t make the original project meaningless. It illustrates one of the persistent difficulties Christians have faced throughout church history: agreeing that Scripture is the authority is considerably easier than agreeing about how Scripture should be applied.

The movement also left American Christianity with a useful question. How much of what Christians do comes from the New Testament, and how much have we inherited simply because Christians have been doing it for a very long time? Stone and Campbell didn’t settle that question. They did, however, force a lot of Christians to think seriously about it.