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Alexander Campbell’s View of Religious Conversion in the Context of Early Nineteenth-Century American Religious Culture KCI 등재
The 1830s was a crucial decade within the shifting context of American religious culture in the nineteenth century. This changing context had an influence on the way religious conversion was viewed, especially on the Frontier. One significant religious leader in this period was Alexander Campbell (1788-1866). In an attempt to position himself in relation to both Calvinist and Arminian theologies, Campbell was further required to respond to the growing tide of both revivalism and restoration in America. In the end, with the rise and spread of both revivalism and Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints on the American frontier, Campbell offered his own morphology of religious conversion. Based upon his reading of the Scriptures, he proposed “immersion” as the spiritual act that procures religious conversion in the individual. Campbell’s The Christian System (1839) offers a full reading of his view of religious conversion, being the most systematic of his written theological statements. Within the pages of The Christian System, Campbell develops an apologia for religious experience, one that he identifies as biblical and at the same time avoids two perceived extremes: “Enthusiasm” (revivalism) and “delusion” (Campbell’s response to Joseph Smith and the Latter-day Saints).
