Crestlands: A Centennial Story of Cane Ridge

by Mary Addams Bayne

Against the jealousy and strife which arose after the religious excitement induced by the revival meetings of the previous year, Barton Stone and other ministers lifted up their voices in protest, urging that the bitter discussion of doctrinal points should cease. This only turned the tide of warfare against themselves, and they soon became the objects of bitter invective, because they had ceased to teach speculative theology, and labored instead to show the people a more liberal view of the redemptive plan.

Among the ministers who at this time taught a free salvation offered to all men on the same conditions, was Richard McNemar, a member of the Presbytery of Ohio, which had carried him through a trial for preaching what was deemed to be anti-Calvinistic doctrine. By this presbytery his case was referred to the Synod of Lexington. Stone and three other ministers of the same views, perceiving in this trial of McNemar a blow aimed against themselves, drew up a protest against such proceedings. Then, declaring their freedom from synodical authority, they withdrew from the jurisdiction, but not from the communion, of the organization; although several unsuccessful attempts were made, before the synod convened, to reclaim them in view of their record as able and influential ministers.

In due time the synod met in Lexington, and took up McNemar's case. Stone and the other three ministers presented the protest to the synod through its moderator. A committee was sent to confer and to reason with the protesting ministers. One immediate result of the conference was that Matthew Houston, a member of the committee, became convinced of the justice of the views of Barton Stone and his associates, and became an advocate of their cause.

After prolonged discussion, the synod suspended the five ministers, upon the ground that they had departed from the established creed of their church. The ministers insisted, however, that as they had already protested and withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the synod, that body had no power to suspend them—"no more," to quote Stone's words, "than had the Pope of Rome to suspend Luther after he had done the same thing; for if Luther's suspension was valid, then the entire Protestant succession was out of order, and in that case the synod had no power; so that the act of suspension in this case was utterly void."

The action of the synod created great excitement and much dissension throughout the country, and not only churches, but families, were divided. Many persons, convinced that the turmoil was produced, not by the Bible, but by human, authoritative creeds, were henceforth set against such creeds, as being disturbers of religious liberty and detrimental to Christian unity.

At the first regular appointment at Cane Ridge, after this action of the synod, Barton Stone tendered his resignation of the ministry of that church. It was not accepted, however, for he had, during his six years' ministry, labored to good purpose, and, with the exception of Hiram Gilcrest and Shadrac Landrum, the church-members were all in harmony with their minister.

As soon as the church refused to accept Stone's resignation, Hiram Gilcrest demanded that his name and that of his wife should be stricken from the church books. The church would have granted them letters of dismissal, but these he would not accept. Shadrac Landrum, though equally bitter in his opposition to Stone's teaching, did not, when it came to the test, withdraw from the church. Thus Gilcrest stood alone; and it was a bitter day for the stern and narrow, but conscientious, old man, when he found himself thus deserted by his only ally, and turned adrift from the church of which, until two years before, he had been the most influential member.

Soon after their separation from the Lexington Synod, the five ministers constituted themselves into a separate organization, which they styled "Springfield Presbytery." In a pamphlet entitled "The Apology of the Springfield Presbytery," they stated the cause which had led to the separation from the Lexington body; their objections to confessions of faith of human origin; their abandonment from henceforth of all human authoritative creeds; and their adherence to the Bible alone as the only rule of faith and practice. It has been asserted that this pamphlet was the first public declaration of religious freedom in the western hemisphere, and the first in the world since that of Martin Luther was set at naught by the act of nullification of Augsburg. The pamphlet produced much inquiry throughout the country. It was speedily republished in several other States, and it soon found many adherents among both preachers and laymen of all denominations.

Under the name of "Springfield Presbytery," the ministers who belonged to the organization continued to preach and to plant churches for about one year. Later, perceiving that the name and the organization itself "savored of a party spirit," they, in the words of Barton Stone, "with the man-made creeds threw overboard the man-made name, and took the name 'Christian' as the name given to the disciples by divine appointment first at Antioch."[¹ ] "Thus divested of all party name and party creed," continues Barton Stone, "and trusting alone to God and the word of his grace, we became at first a laughing-stock and a byword to the sects around, all prophesying our speedy annihilation.... Yet through much tribulation and opposition we advanced, and churches and preachers were multiplied."

This was the beginning, in the dawn of the nineteenth century, of that great reformatory or restoratory movement, of which another writer says: "The first churches planted and organized since the grand apostacy, with the Bible as the only creed or church book, and the name 'Christian' as the only family name, were organized in Kentucky in the year 1804;"[² ] and of these churches so planted and organized, Cane Ridge, Bourbon County, was the first.