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“The Bible only” was the rallying cry of Barton Warren Stone, a cry that led him to question orthodox doctrine and create a new church whose members would be called merely “Christians.”

After his father died, young Barton invested his portion of the estate in education. He studied law in Greensboro, North Carolina, and while there sat under the preaching of Presbyterian evangelist James McGready. After three years, Stone set aside his legal ambitions and took up preaching.

He headed west and became the pastor of two Presbyterian parishes, in Concord and Cane Ridge, Kentucky. He was troubled by the spiritual acedia in his parishes, so when he heard about a revival in southwestern Kentucky, he went there to see what it was about.

He returned home enthused, and within months, a revival had erupted in Stone’s parishes; in August of 1801, it reached its climax at Cane Ridge. An estimated 20,000 listened to revival preaching and responded by shouting, dancing, singing, and collapsing: “With a piercing scream,” Stone said, people would “fall like a log on the floor, earth, or mud, and appear as dead.”

Since many of his Presbyterian colleagues frowned on such emotionalism, Stone and four others formed the independent Springfield Presbytery. But in less than a year, they dissolved it because they believed each congregation should be independent, guided by nothing but the Bible.

When his wife died in 1809, Stone was left with four daughters, the oldest of whom was 8. He put them into the care of friends until he remarried so he could devote his “whole life gratuitously to the churches, scattered far and near.”

In 1830 Stone met Alexander Campbell, another Presbyterian-turned-independent who believed in “Bible only” Christianity. “I will not say there are no faults in brother Campbell,” wrote Stone, “but that there are fewer, perhaps, in him, than any man I know on earth.”

Their friendship and common passion led to a merger in 1832. “We plainly saw that we were on the same foundation,” wrote Stone, “in the same spirit, and preached the same gospel.” The writings of Stone, published in The Christian Messenger, a monthly launched by him in 1826, gave direction to the movement and cemented the merger.

Stone was sharply criticized for his unorthodox views, which included a denial of the Trinity. “The word Trinity,” he said, “is not found in the Bible.” So he refused to accept “that the Son of God was very and eternal God and yet eternally begotten.”

Stone’s legacy endures in the large number of churches called “Disciples of Christ” or “Church of Christ,” who have been committed to a “Bible only” Christianity.

Separated by the Atlantic Ocean, Presbyterian preacher Thomas Campbell and his son Alexander simultaneously came to the same conclusion: the future was not with Presbyterianism.

The plan was for Thomas to sail to America with his Irish family to follow later. But the ship carrying Campbell’s family was shipwrecked, and they had to spend a year in Glasgow. There, 19-year-old Alexander answered the call to preach and began studying at the University of Glasgow. He quickly became disgusted with what he perceived to be theological pettiness in Presbyterianism. One Sunday he refused Communion, symbolically breaking with the faith of his father.

When Alexander arrived in Pennsylvania, though, he discovered his father had seceded from the local presbytery! One reason: a perceived lack of scriptural support for infant baptism. Thomas had founded The Christian Association of Washington (County, Pennsylvania). “Where the Scriptures speak, we speak,” declared Thomas, “where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent.”

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