Christian Reformer

Early Disaffection.

Alexander Campbell was one of the founders of the denomination known today as the Disciples of Christ and was the most influential figure in the Restoration Movement, an effort to restore the practices of the early Christians to nineteenth-century Protestantism. A gifted speaker and prolific writer with a sharp wit, Campbell engaged in numerous public debates and gained a widespread reputation as a dedicated reformer and a rigorous religious thinker. Although his family was of Scottish origin, Campbell was born in Ireland on 12 September 1788. His father, Thomas, was a reform-minded Presbyterian minister who educated his son at home before sending him to the University of Glasgow in Scotland. There Alexander gained an impressive knowledge of the Bible but also became disturbed by the division of the Presbyterian Church into factions that quarreled over petty points of doctrine and demanded rigid and...