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).

Among the theories of the atonement in the church’s history is the Pentecostal-holiness view of healing in the atonement. The North American Pentecostal Holiness Church emerged historically from both the Holiness movement and Methodism, yet there was a very strong connection with Evangelicalism, especially with A. J. Gordon and A. B. Simpson. In the 1920s, the doctrine of divine healing that brought wholeness to believers’ bodies caused a church schism. Some adherents believed that divine healing was to be without any assistance from medical science or “remedies” as they termed it. Also, there were episodes of civil disobedience associated with divine healing when some parents were arrested for “criminal neglect” by failing to allow medical care for their minor children. Anointing with oil and prayer for the sick is considered to be a kind of sacrament among Pentecostals. It is hoped that a more inclusive reading of the traditions of church history will include the Pentecostal-holiness view of divine healing in the atonement.