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Barton Stone: A Spiritual Biography. By D. Newell Williams. St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2000. x + 249 pages.
Even for casual students of American religious history, Barton Stone has long been a familiar name, primarily because Stone was a principal leader of the great ecumenical camp meeting held across six days in the summer of 1801 at Cane Ridge, Kentucky. Other, slightly better-versed students would add that, in 1832, Stone led the Christian congregations produced by the Cane Ridge excitement into a union with followers of Alexander Campbell, creating what was, by 1860, the fifth largest religious body in the United States, variously known as the Christian Churches, Churches of Christ, and Disciples of Christ. Beyond connecting Stone to these two "events," however, few could speak to his ministerial...