Christian Connection

Christian Connection
Classification	Protestant, Restorationist
Orientation	Evangelical, Unitarian
Polity	Connectionalism
Founder	Abner Jones, Elias Smith, James O'Kelly and Barton Stone.
Separated from	Baptists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Methodists.
Merger of	Merged with the National Council of the Congregational Churches, to become the Congregational Christian Church. They then merged with the Evangelical and Reformed Church, and became the United Church of Christ.

The Christian Connection was a Christian movement in the United States of America that developed in several places during the late 18th and early 19th centuries; it was made up of secessions from several different religious denominations. It was influenced by settling the frontier as well as the formation of the new United States and its separation from Great Britain. The Christian Connection claimed to have no creed, instead professing to rely strictly on the Bible.

In practice, members tended to cluster around various shared theological concepts, such as an Arminian theological anthropology (i.e. doctrine of human nature), a rejection of the Calvinist doctrine of election, and an autonomous form of church government. The Connexion's periodical, the Herald of Gospel Liberty (first published on September 1, 1808), was among the first religious journals published in the United States.

James O'Kelly was an early advocate of seeking unity through a return to New Testament Christianity. In 1792, dissatisfied with the role of bishops in the Methodist Episcopal Church, he separated from that body. O'Kelly's movement, centering in Virginia and North Carolina, was originally called the Republican Methodist Church. In 1794 they adopted the name Christian Church.

During the same period, Elias Smith of Vermont and Abner Jones of New Hampshire led a movement espousing views similar to those of O’Kelly. They believed that members could, by looking to scripture alone, simply be Christians without being bound to human traditions and the denominations that had been brought over from Europe. Working independently at first, Jones and Smith joined together in their efforts and began exclusively using the name Christian.

In 1801, the Cane Ridge Revival led by Barton W. Stone in Kentucky would plant the seed for a movement in Kentucky and the Ohio River valley to disassociate from denominationalism. Stone and five other ministers published The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery in 1804, giving up denominational ties to the Presbyterian Church and preferring to be known simply as Christians. Stone was influenced by his earlier involvement with O'Kelly and knew of the Republican Methodist practice of simply using the name Christian.

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