1815 - "Racoon" John Smith
A number of important ministers contributed to the growth of the Disciples in Lexington Kentucky. Most colorful among them may have been “Raccoon” John Smith. Like most frontier preachers, Elder Smith worked for free and sustained himself by farming. He was largely uneducated, but very effective, causing Alexander Campbell to say that Smith was the only man that he knew who an education would have spoiled.
If Stone and Campbell were the architects of the Disciples of Christ and America's first nondenominational movement, then Kentucky's Raccoon John Smith was their builder. The son of a Revolutionary War soldier, Smith spent his Youth in the untamed frontier country of Tennessee and Kentucky. A quick-witted, thoughtful, and humorous youth, Smith was shaped by the unlikely combination of his dangerous surroundings and his Calvinist religious indoctrination. But when the death of his two children and wife forced him to question the philosophy of predeterminism, Smith emerged a changed man with a new vocation: to spread a Christian faith wherein salvation was available to all people.
But he knew how to draw a crowd. He once preached to an empty meeting house - until news of a “crazy preacher” spread and attracted the whole town. By the end of another sermon in Lexington, he had all of the Stoneites and Campbellites holding hands.
My favorite – One day Smith had kept his camp meeting audience waiting. Then he came storming in on horseback. As he rode under a tree, he grabbed a low-hanging branch, and the horse kept on going. He hung there for several minutes yelling, “Take heed! Take heed!” until he fell to the ground calling out “Lest ye fall!”—which introduced his sermon from 1 Corinthians.
“For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.” 1 Corinthians 10:17
In one two-year period, he baptized 4,000 Kentuckians.
Let’s keep the memory and Woodland’s ministry alive.
If Stone and Campbell were the architects of the Disciples of Christ and America's first nondenominational movement, then Kentucky's Raccoon John Smith was their builder. The son of a Revolutionary War soldier, Smith spent his Youth in the untamed frontier country of Tennessee and Kentucky. A quick-witted, thoughtful, and humorous youth, Smith was shaped by the unlikely combination of his dangerous surroundings and his Calvinist religious indoctrination. But when the death of his two children and wife forced him to question the philosophy of predeterminism, Smith emerged a changed man with a new vocation: to spread a Christian faith wherein salvation was available to all people.
But he knew how to draw a crowd. He once preached to an empty meeting house - until news of a “crazy preacher” spread and attracted the whole town. By the end of another sermon in Lexington, he had all of the Stoneites and Campbellites holding hands.
My favorite – One day Smith had kept his camp meeting audience waiting. Then he came storming in on horseback. As he rode under a tree, he grabbed a low-hanging branch, and the horse kept on going. He hung there for several minutes yelling, “Take heed! Take heed!” until he fell to the ground calling out “Lest ye fall!”—which introduced his sermon from 1 Corinthians.
“For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one bread.” 1 Corinthians 10:17
In one two-year period, he baptized 4,000 Kentuckians.
Let’s keep the memory and Woodland’s ministry alive.
- Raccoon John Smith: Frontier Kentucky's Most Famous Preacher (2005) by Elder John Sparks
- Smith is buried in the Lexington Cemetery: Section O, Lot 130