1801 - Cane Ridge "Communion"
Got a minute for a Woodland Memory?
Since the American Revolution, Christianity had been on the decline, especially on the frontier. In 1794, Methodist Bishop Francis Asbury wrote that “not one in a hundred came here to get religion, but rather to get…land” even at the cost of their souls. The minutes of the Transylvania Presbytery reveal deep concern about the prevalence of vice, infidelity, alcoholism, and land-grabbing among the pioneers.
Camp meetings in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee would soon become the driving force behind a century of church growth. Religion historian Sydney Ahlstrom wrote that the most important fact about the Communion at Cane Ridge (as it was known at the time) is that it was an unforgettable revival of revivalism... especially among the Baptists and Methodists…less so for the Presbyterians. (More about Cane Ridge next time.)
Let's do a quick thought experiment. If you're willing to play along, close your eyes, and let's see if we can transport ourselves back to 1801.
Imagine you, and your brothers and sisters are romping on a bed of straw in the family's horse-drawn wagon. It is August in Kentucky and the carriages, horsemen, and people on foot have the dust swirling. The evening is warm, and as you peer down the rutty dirt road, you see the light from the bonfires in the distance. Behind you on the road are many more wagons; many more families. Like you, they have come prepared to camp out for several days. As you break into the clearing, you smell the cook pots and see the milling crowds of hardened, tobacco-chewing, frontier farmers. You see crude improvised tents all around and catch the scent of manure from the horses and cows staked out behind. And you hear the first of many preachers, including a ten-year-old girl, holding forth from the stump of a tree – excoriating sinners and proclaiming that salvation is free to all mankind.
Can you see it?
Well, underlying everything was the immense loneliness of frontier life. The exhilarations of such a huge gathering - there in the grove on the forest’s edge - with the flickering light from so many campfires, the music, dancing, singing, and shaking –the effect on these pioneers must have been dramatic, and perhaps conducive to revelation.
Let’s keep the memory, and the Woodland ministry alive.
Since the American Revolution, Christianity had been on the decline, especially on the frontier. In 1794, Methodist Bishop Francis Asbury wrote that “not one in a hundred came here to get religion, but rather to get…land” even at the cost of their souls. The minutes of the Transylvania Presbytery reveal deep concern about the prevalence of vice, infidelity, alcoholism, and land-grabbing among the pioneers.
Camp meetings in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee would soon become the driving force behind a century of church growth. Religion historian Sydney Ahlstrom wrote that the most important fact about the Communion at Cane Ridge (as it was known at the time) is that it was an unforgettable revival of revivalism... especially among the Baptists and Methodists…less so for the Presbyterians. (More about Cane Ridge next time.)
Let's do a quick thought experiment. If you're willing to play along, close your eyes, and let's see if we can transport ourselves back to 1801.
Imagine you, and your brothers and sisters are romping on a bed of straw in the family's horse-drawn wagon. It is August in Kentucky and the carriages, horsemen, and people on foot have the dust swirling. The evening is warm, and as you peer down the rutty dirt road, you see the light from the bonfires in the distance. Behind you on the road are many more wagons; many more families. Like you, they have come prepared to camp out for several days. As you break into the clearing, you smell the cook pots and see the milling crowds of hardened, tobacco-chewing, frontier farmers. You see crude improvised tents all around and catch the scent of manure from the horses and cows staked out behind. And you hear the first of many preachers, including a ten-year-old girl, holding forth from the stump of a tree – excoriating sinners and proclaiming that salvation is free to all mankind.
Can you see it?
Well, underlying everything was the immense loneliness of frontier life. The exhilarations of such a huge gathering - there in the grove on the forest’s edge - with the flickering light from so many campfires, the music, dancing, singing, and shaking –the effect on these pioneers must have been dramatic, and perhaps conducive to revelation.
Let’s keep the memory, and the Woodland ministry alive.
- William Henry Perrin, History of Bourbon, Scott, Harrison and Nicholas counties, Kentucky. P. 48
- https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/revival-at-cane-ridge/
- Ahlstrom, Sydney E., A Religious History of the American People, (1972) New Haven and London: Yale University Press, P. 949-963.