An American Religious Movement : A Brief History of the Disciples of ChristGarrison, Winfred Ernest
History
An American Religious Movement : A Brief History of the Disciples of Christ
Garrison, Winfred Ernest
Disciples of Christ -- History
New England Congregationalism, though already disturbed by the
theological controversy which later produced the Unitarian defection,
was in the main soundly Calvinistic. It differed from Presbyterianism
only in its tradition of the independence of the local church, and even
this was qualified by the growth of what was called “associationism” by
those who viewed it with alarm. So, when an interest in home missions
began to appear, about 1800, the Plan of Union was formed under which
Congregationalists and Presbyterians cooperated until 1837 in carrying
the gospel to the new settlements, first in western New York and then in
the regions beyond. The Presbyterians ultimately got most of the
churches organized in the Middle West by Congregational missionaries
operating under this plan.
Presbyterians came from England, Scotland, and North Ireland. They never
had a colony of their own, though they missed having Massachusetts Bay
only because the Presbyterian Puritans who founded it became
Congregational. Puritans who came to other colonies generally were and
remained Presbyterians. They found a footing in New York, New Jersey,
Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia and were among the first
settlers of Kentucky. Pennsylvania became the scene of some of their
most vigorous activities, both in and around Philadelphia and in the
central and western part, where they were the most numerous and
influential group. William Tennent’s “Log College” at Neshaminy (1720)
initiated theological education in America, at least outside of
Harvard’s effort to provide a learned clergy for New England. It trained
evangelists as well as scholars, and led to the founding of Princeton.
The great Scotch-Irish immigration, about the middle of the eighteenth
century, brought both regular Presbyterians, in communion with the
Church of Scotland, and Seceder Presbyterians, representing the Great
Secession of 1733. Large numbers of both came to the western parts of
Pennsylvania and Virginia, where these Presbyterian Ulstermen “formed an
American Ulster larger and richer than that they had abandoned,” as one
of them wrote, with some exaggeration of the degree of their occupancy
though not of the size and resources of the area. Thomas Campbell was
following a stream of Scotch-Irish Seceder Presbyterians when he
migrated from the vicinity of Belfast, Ireland, to the southwestern
corner of Pennsylvania.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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