The Christians (Stone movement)
Stone-Campbell · 1803–1804 · Kentucky, Ohio valley
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.
The Christians (Stone movement) was formed between 1803 and 1804, as a process rather than a single event. It ended as a separate body in 1832, entering Disciples of Christ (Christian Church). The Christians (Stone movement)'s institutional line runs back through Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (1789 line), Church of Scotland, Reformed, Roman Catholicism to the post-apostolic church. No body on this tree is the assembly of Acts 2; where a body claims that, the claim appears in the claimed-lineage layer.
Between the post-apostolic church and The Christians (Stone movement) stand 3 divisions along the institutional line, counting separations and disputed forks, not mergers, renewals or national organizations.
At a glance
- Formed
- Between 1803 and 1804, as a process rather than a single event
- Family
- Stone-Campbell
- Region
- Kentucky, Ohio valley
- Ended
- It ended as a separate body in 1832, entering Disciples of Christ (Christian Church).
- Key figures
- Barton W. Stone
- Cause tags
- Doctrine, Governance
- Also known as
- Christian Movement; Stoneites (exonym)
What it separated from
- Separated from Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. (1789 line).
Bodies organized out of it or separated from it: Disciples of Christ (Christian Church), United Church of Christ.
On the tree
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.
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".
Notes
- Cross-link: the Christian Connection stream entered the Congregational Christian Churches (1931) and thence the UCC (1957).
Sources
Research compiled July 2026. Page data built 2026-10-10.