This is a stained glass window, created circa 1950, that illustrates an 1801 event. This stain glass at the Cane Ridge Meeting House of the Christian Church (the Disciples of Christ) depicts a revival in 1801 at Cane Ridge, near Paris, Bourbon County, Kentucky, under preacher Barton Stone. The revival attracted between 10,000 to 30,000 people. That's a lot of folks at any event for the newly formed state of Kentucky on the western frontier of a young America.
The artwork depicts a placid image in which all are sitting properly and intently listening to the clean shaven Presbyterian preacher on the tree stump with a book in his hand. All the men are dressed in similar suits and the women are dressed to their necks. But in the emotional revivals of the Second Great Awakening, all sorts of folk from various walks of life came. The events were often described as those of fervor — attendees jerking, dancing, rolling on the ground, passing out, or simply lifting their hands to the sky and shouting praise.
Rural Kentuckians at the time might read parts of the Bible in their homes and contemplate its verses but relatively few attended church. The Second Great Awakening contributed, or at least coincided, with a great change in religious behavior. Church attendance and new churches boomed after the Awakening.
Barton Stone and others would later break from the Presbyterian faith. In some ways Stone had an untraditional view. For example, he did not think the doctrine of the Trinity made sense. He believed that the New Testament described three separate beings as Gods, not a three-in-one consubstantial personage. These separate Gods were unified in purpose, not in physicality. Put simply, Christ was not also God the Father. Stone also had issues with the traditional Christian view of the atonement. And he believed in sort of utilizing market forces in church governance—- that a preacher should not be called by church authorities from the top but rather he should compete (called) through the vote and voluntary financial offerings of a congregation, which was a manifestation that particular preacher was best able to have the word of God resonate with that congregation.
