Alexander Campbell and Joseph Smith

Book excerpt: Two nineteenth-century men, Alexander Campbell and Joseph Smith, each launched restoration movements in the United States, pejoratively called Campbellites and Mormonites. In post-revolutionary America, characterized by the Second Great Awakening and disestablishment, they vied for seekers and dissatisfied mainstream Christians, which led to conflict in northeastern Ohio. Both were searching for the primordial beginning of Christianity: Campbell looking back to the Christian church described in the New Testament epistles, and Smith looking even further back to the time of Adam and Eve as the first Christians. Campbell took a rational approach to reading the Bible, emphasizing the New Testament and began by advocating reform among the Baptists. Smith took a revelatory approach to reading the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, and adding new scriptures. Campbell was most focused on restoring to the church ordinances and practices of the apostolic church that had been neglected¿whereas Smith was restoring ancient doctrines, practices, ordinances, and covenants to a church that had ceased to exist shortly after the time of the Apostles.