Check.Church

Stone-Campbell

The Stone-Campbell movement united the Christians of Barton Stone and the Disciples of the Campbells at Lexington in 1832, pleading for Christians only, patterned on the New Testament church. It divided into the Churches of Christ, the independent Christian Churches, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).

On the tree

The Stone-Campbell family and the bodies it separated from or was organized out ofAD 33today1004314511054151915341560158116331706180318091814183218891927The post-apostolic church (The spine)The post-apostolicchurchThe spineThe conciliar church (The spine)The conciliar churchThe spineThe Chalcedonian church (The spine)The Chalcedonian churchThe spineRoman Catholicism (Catholic)Roman CatholicismCatholicReformed (Reformed and Presbyterian)ReformedReformed and PresbyterianChurch of England (Anglican)Church of EnglandAnglicanChurch of Scotland (Reformed and Presbyterian)Church of ScotlandReformed and PresbyterianCongregationalists (Congregational)CongregationalistsCongregationalParticular Baptists (Baptist)Particular BaptistsBaptistPresbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (1789 line) (Reformed and Presbyterian)Presbyterian Church inthe U.S.A. (1789 line)Reformed and PresbyterianThe Christians (Stone movement) (Stone-Campbell)The Christians (Stonemovement)Stone-CampbellThe Disciples (Campbell movement) (Stone-Campbell)The Disciples (Campbellmovement)Stone-CampbellTriennial Convention (Baptist)Triennial ConventionBaptistDisciples of Christ (Christian Church) (Stone-Campbell)Disciples of Christ(Christian Church)Stone-CampbellChurches of Christ (Stone-Campbell)Churches of ChristStone-CampbellChristian Churches / Churches of Christ (independent) (Stone-Campbell)Christian Churches /Churches of Christ (ind…Stone-Campbell

Solid lines are separations and unions; dashed lines are renewals that began inside a body; dotted gray lines are national organizations of one communion; a diamond marks a fork event where neither side is drawn as the one that left. Every line runs back to the post-apostolic church; no body descends from the assembly of Acts 2.

Bodies in this family

  1. The Christians (Stone movement)1803–1804 · merged

    Barton W. Stone and colleagues, censured by the Synod of Kentucky after Cane Ridge, withdrew, formed and then voluntarily dissolved their own presbytery, urging believers to be known simply as Christians and to take the Bible alone as their guide.

  2. The Disciples (Campbell movement)1809–1830 · merged

    Thomas Campbell's Declaration and Address (1809) condemned division over doctrines not expressly taught in scripture and pleaded for the union of all Christians on the New Testament alone; the movement he and Alexander Campbell led passed through Baptist associations before emerging independent by 1830.

  3. Disciples of Christ (Christian Church)1832

    The 1832 union of two independent restorationist movements — the tree's earliest large-scale merger, formed explicitly to overcome denominational division, from which three streams later emerged.

  4. Churches of Christ1889–1906

    Congregations holding the strict regulative reading of the New Testament — no instrumental music, no missionary societies — separated over decades from the Disciples, aggravated by the North–South divide over the missionary society's pro-Union resolutions (1861–63); the 1906 census made the separation official record.

  5. Christian Churches / Churches of Christ (independent)1927–1971

    The middle stream: congregations sharing the Churches of Christ's restorationism but accepting instrumental music, which resisted the Disciples' centralization and liberalizing trajectory across the mid-20th century and stood apart when the Disciples restructured in 1968.

Claimed lineage

What this tradition says about its own origin · restoration

Not a succession but a plea: all Christians united in a single body patterned after the New Testament church — 'Christians only, but not the only Christians'; 'No creed but Christ'; 'Where the Scriptures speak, we speak.' The movement's heirs typically decline the 'Protestant' label: restoration, not reformation.

Its own sources: Thomas Campbell, Declaration and Address (1809); Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery (1804); the movement's slogans (Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, p. 688).

The documented record: Documented origins in the Second Great Awakening frontier revivals (Cane Ridge 1801; the union of 1832). The claimed-lineage layer expresses the plea; the tree records the history.

In the explorer's claimed view this renders as a dashed line, labeled "pattern claimed, not descent".

Research compiled July 2026. Page data built 2026-10-10.