Chapter 4 — The Rise and Fall of the Springfield Presbytery (1803–1804)
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The Story: Barton W Stone and minister friends are brought up on trial. They withdrew, but refused to un-church the men who were un-churching them. When their own movement started becoming a sect, they killed it. In the process, they ascribed all religious authority to the gathered body of believers.
The Idea: Our movement is built on institutional self-sacrifice, and the willingness to lay down every obstacle to unity and freedom. And to relentlessly embrace the priesthood of all believers.
Connections:
- Chapter 2’s echo in the other founding stream: the same heresy machinery, five years earlier, with a different ending — the five walked together, built something, and then laid it down.
- Returns the class to the very room of Chapter 1: the Last Will was signed in the Cane Ridge meetinghouse, where the communion tables stood three years before.
Narrative…
Ideas
- Exit without excommunication. They withdrew from the synod’s jurisdiction — but pointedly not from its communion, refusing to un-church their judges. The movement’s founding moral gesture.
- Institutions are mortal by design. “It is appointed for all delegated bodies once to die.” When a structure obstructs unity, the faithful act is willing dissolution — and they did it while succeeding, not while failing.
- Conscience has a price tag. Stone tore up his own salary paper in front of his congregations, having already freed his slaves — “I preferred honesty and a good conscience to all these things.”
- Freedom requires forbearance. “Pray more and dispute less” — and the scattering of the will’s own signers shows what happens when it isn’t practiced.
Future
What is beautiful here? What do we carry forward?