“First Called Christians”

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“First Called Christians”:

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So Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul,

and when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch.

 For a whole year they met with the church

and taught a great many people.  And in Antioch

the disciples were first called Christians.

– Acts 11:25-26 ESV

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“The First Colonial Event” 1739-1742

America’s First Great Awakening was identified by Harvard’s Perry Miller as “the first colonial event.”  In the midst of this event George Whitefield (1714-70), aware that his friend John Wesley had adopted Arminian theology, wrote to this Methodist leader urging him to stay in England.  Whitefield explained that in America God was blessing the biblical message as it had been expounded by the incomparable scholar John Calvin. [1]  In fact, the 1734 revival at Northampton, Massachusetts, which preceded Whitefield’s preaching tour, was precipitated by Jonathan Edwards’ preaching on the subject of “Justification by Faith Alone.”  Whitefield’s evangelistic tour stretched from South Carolina to Maine.  His New England ministry concluded with a crowd of 30,000 people on the Boston Commons.  Later that year Gilbert Tennent’s three-month preaching tour of New England took place (at the urging of Whitefield himself).  Tennent, along with his brothers, had been trained for Christian ministry in his father’s “Log College” –which in time became the “College of New Jersey” (later Princeton).

In 1743, James Davenport, great-grandson of the founder of New Haven, Connecticut, independently conducted his own flamboyant preaching tour of New England.  Davenport was judged mentally deranged both at Hartford and Boston before returning to New London, where he founded a separatist church and conducted a public book-burning ceremony destroying the works of reputable New England pastors.  History records his 1744 Confessions and Retractions and his later parish service.

New England Congregationalists soon divided into “Old Light” and “New Light” camps.  As early as 1741, Presbyterians had divided into “Old Side” and “New Side” on the basis of their response to Gilbert Tennent’s famous sermon entitled “The Dangers of an Unconverted Ministry.”  Those Scotch-Irish Presbyterians who formed the “Old Side” strictly subscribed to the Westminster Standards.  The “New Side” Presbyterians who embraced the revival preaching of the Tennents affirmed the “sum and substance” of the Westminster Standards.  Ironically, the healing of the 1741 Presbyterian rift took place in 1758 at a combined synod meeting in Philadelphia where Gilbert Tennent served as moderator.

Boston’s influential clergyman Charles Chauncy (1705-87), having adopted Arminian theology, publicly opposed the Great Awakening in New England, and eventually became a Unitarian denying the biblical doctrine that the one holy God eternally subsists in three persons–Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. [2]  Jonathan Edwards, in his Treatise on Religious Affections, defended the substance of the Great Awakening over against Chauncy’s misrepresentations.  The sovereignty of God clearly came under attack in the 18^th century as one New Englander, typifying the “spirit of ‘76,” defiantly insisted that not even God had the right to implicate him in Adam’s sin! [3]  Benjamin Franklin, on the other hand, was deeply impacted by Whitefield’s “Calvinistic” preaching, and this proved to be significant in the establishment of America. [4]  John Calvin paved the way for representative democracy by emphasizing the true meaning of the Greek word in Acts 14:23 concerning the election of church elders [5].  Franklin had a building erected in Philadelphia for Whitefield’s preaching which would become the first building of the University of Pennsylvania.  Both American-owned African slaves and native Americans were wonderfully impacted by the First Great Awakening. [6]

America’s Second Great Awakening 1795-1801

A second Great Awakening in America was sparked most notably by (1) Jonathan Edwards’s grandson, Timothy Dwight (1752-1817) who became the president of Yale in 1795, and (2) Barton Warren Stone (1772-1844), Presbyterian minister at Cane Ridge and Concord, Kentucky.

As the President of Yale, Dwight delivered a series of lectures to address the skepticism (Deism, Unitarianism, and Atheism) of his students.  Dwight’s theology was less “Calvinistic” than that of his grandfather.  Dwight held that benevolence rather than holiness was the primary attribute of God. A third of the student body responded to his intellectual defense of the Christian faith including Lyman Beecher and Nathaniel W. Taylor who themselves would help spread the revival outside the walls of the established churches. [7]  Church historian Sydney E. Ahlstrom noted that these New England Second Great Awakening revivals “were without the hysteria and commotion that had brought the [First] Great Awakening into disrepute in many quarters.” [8]

In Kentucky, however, Barton Stone adopted the camp meeting preaching technique of the Scotch-Irish  Presbyterian James McGready (1758-1817).

In 1801 Stone visited a revival in Logan County and was impressed by the “religious exercises” he observed (falling, jerking, dancing, barking, running, laughing and singing), believing them to be authentic manifestations of God’s presence.  These religious exercises were increasingly seen in his own famous revival at Cane Ridge.

Stone’s revival methods generated tension between himself and the Presbyterian Synod of Kentucky.  In turn, he and several other revivalists organized in 1804 the Springfield Presbytery.  Within a few months they began questioning the validity of presbyteries and dissolved theirs.  The group then agreed to be known as Christians only and to follow the practice of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins. [9]

Ahlstrom described the Cane Ridge event as follows:

After some preliminary revivals, he [Barton Stone] announced a great meeting to be held at Cane Ridge on 6 August 1801.  When the day arrived, so did a great many ministers, including some Baptists and Methodists, and an unbelievably large concourse of people.  The crowd was estimated at from ten to twenty-five thousand–and this at a time when nearby Lexington, the state’s largest city, barely exceeded two thousand. This “sacramental occasion” continued for six or seven days and nights, and would have gone on longer except for the failure of provisions for such a crowd.  When it was over, Cane Ridge was referred to as the greatest outpouring of the Spirit since Pentecost.  It marks a watershed in American church history . . . [10]

Stone himself reflected upon the event:

Many things transpired there, which were so much like miracles, that if they were not, they had the same effects as miracles on infidels and unbelievers; for many of them by these were convinced that Jesus was the Christ, and bowed in submission to him. [11]

The “Christian Connection” Restoration Movement

The Cane Ridge revival created tension resulting in an ultimate breach with the westward-moving Presbyterian and Methodist denominations.  Barton Stone would be joined by (1) free-will Baptists from New England some of whom would align themselves with the Shakers in western New York;  (2) “Republican Methodists” from Virginia led by James O’Kelly and Rice Haggard; and (3) Alexander Campbell who would found the Disciples of Christ before Stone parted company.  This independent Restoration Movement, known as the “Christian Connection,” sought to restore primitive Christianity, discarded all historic creeds which summarize biblical belief, and designated itself simply “Christian.”

The General Convention of the Christian Connection (now minus the Campbellites) met in New York state in 1850.  In view of Acts 11:26, the Convention designated Yellow Springs, Ohio, as the location for “Antioch College” to embody and propagate the principles of the movement.  The Planning Committee would decide otherwise.  The Unitarian Horace Mann, known as the “father of public education” in America became the first president.  Ahlstrom states, “Mann looked back on his Christian nurture as a blight on his life; he consciously rebelled at an early age and became a pronounced liberal in theology.” [12]

The subtle influences of Unitarianism were now powerfully evident.  Antioch College suffered years of conflict between those true to the earlier Christian Connection beliefs and those who had become Unitarian.  The irony is that President Mann was charged with non-adherence to sectarianism.  The Christian Connection’s rejection of the importance of ordination procedures, and standards of admission to the Lord’s Table, all of which they had associated with the religious bodies from which they withdrew, gave opening to Unitarian dominance.

For all of its efforts to return to the simplicity of the New Testament, the Restoration Movement/Christian Connection overlooked the fact that the sixteenth-century Reformation (which it dismissed) was actually the restoration to apostolic standards.

A University of Virginia student stated that, as the result of reading this writer’s Profile of the Last Puritan, she had come, not only to understand, but to embrace the logic of what many call “Calvinism” (better identified simply as sound biblical teaching).  Jonathan Edwards underscored that that theological system which makes man most dependent upon God in the matter of salvation is the system that most glorifies God! [13]  That was a clincher for her as it has been for this writer!  Is it any wonder why Jonathan Edwards would exclaim, “Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God.” ? [14]  Indeed it was a wonder, but at the same time a most logical truth.  How could God, by very definition, be any less than sovereign in the absolute sense?

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End Notes

[1]. Alan Heimart and Perry Miller, The Great Awakening: Documents illustrating the crisis and its consequences, xxvi cited in David C. Brand, Profile of the Last Puritan, p. 69

[2]. Num. 6:22-27; Isaiah 6:1-3; 48:12-16; John 14:16-17,26; 15:26; 2 Cor. 13:14

[3]. Logan, Samuel T., 1986. Presidential Inaugural Address: “Where Have All the Tulips Gone?”, Westminster Theological Seminary. See Romans 5:12-21.

[4]. See David C. Brand’s article “Did Ben Franklin Speak According to the Analogia of the Faith”?, www.christianobserver.org

[5]. Calvin noted that the Greek word in Acts 14:23 [commonly rendered “appoint” in English versions] was used in the Greek city-states and literally means “to elect by a show of hands.”

[6]. See Jonathan Edwards’s Life and Diary of David Brainerd.

[7]. An analysis of Dwight’s approach, by way of contrast with Jonathan Edwards’ preaching, is found in David C. Brand’s Profile of the Last Puritan, pp. 130-144

[8]. Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, p. 417

[9]. D. G. Hart and Mark A. Noll, Dictionary of the Presbyterian & Reformed Tradition in America, pp. 252-53 emphasis mine

[10]. Ahlstrom, pp. 432-33.

[11]. Ahlstrom, p. 433

[12]. Ahstrom, p. 412

[13]. Brand, Profile of the Last Puritan, pp. 103-104

[14]. Jonathan Edwards, Personal Narrative, Works, vol. 1, p. lv, quoted in Brand, Profile of the Last Puritan, p. 12

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Sources

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Ahlstrom, Sydney E. 1972. A Religious History of the American People. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

Brand, David C. 1991. Profile of the Last Puritan: Jonathan Edwards, Self-Love, and the Dawn of the Beatific. The American Academy of Religion. Academy Series. Edited by Susan Thistlethwaite. Atlanta: Scholars Press

Calvin, John.  1960. The Institutes of the Christian Religion. General Editors: John Baillie, John T. McNeill, Henry Van Dusen.  Library of Christian Classics, Volumes XX & XXI  Philadelphia: Westminster Press

Class Notes: Jonathan Edwards Course. Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, 1984

Crampton, W. Gary. 1992. What Calvin Says: An Introduction to the Theology of John Calvin. Jefferson, Maryland: The Trinity Foundation

Latourette, Kenneth Scott. 1953. A History of Christianity. New York, Evanston, and London: Harper and Row, Publishers

Holy Bible (English Revised Version) 2001. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles

Wikipedia. Articles on “Restoration Movement” and “Christian Connection”

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About the Author

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David Clark Brand is a retired pastor and educator with missionary experience in Korea and Arizona. He and his wife now reside in Wooster, Ohio, where they first met at a Presbyterian youth conference. They have four grown children and seven grandchildren. With a B.A. in the Liberal Arts, an M. Div., and a Th.M. in Church History, Dave continues to enjoy study and writing. One of his books, a contextual study of the life and thought of Jonathan Edwards, was published by the American Academy of Religion via Scholars Press in Atlanta.

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