History Of Methodist Reform, Volume I - Media Sabda Org

Methodists, so in 1801 O'Kelly published a pamphlet in which was proposed a new name — " The
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Christian Church." Most of his societies accorded with it; but it became a new occasion for
division among them, and led to the Charlotte County defection of four of his preachers and a
number of members. The original movement was confined to Virginia and North Carolina, with
fragmentary adherents in the adjacent states. As the Christian Church it held well. The old Methodist
doctrines were zealously preached, the means of grace observed, and there was nothing in the
teaching that savored of O'Kelly's alleged Unitarianism. He circulated among them, aided by Rice
Haggard, and they were accomplishing the work of Methodists under a liberal polity; but the
organization was fated to suffer from the heresy allegation in an unexpected manner. Rev. Dr. John
Paris of North Carolina, author of a "History of the Methodist Protestant Church," etc., and who was
thoroughly acquainted with the Christian Church and its divisions, bears testimony, in 1849, "The
Church in connection with Mr. O'Kelly always did and still does believe, and the ministers preach,
the doctrine of a Trinity, the divinity of the Son of God, and His atonement for lost sinners, as fully
and closely as any people on earth." Ten years after this date he wrote a pamphlet, "Unitarianism
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exposed as it exists in the 'Christian Church,' from which the following facts are cited. Rev.
Leonard Prather, the friend and pupil of O'Kelly and for many years one of their ablest and most
learned preachers, says: "Some years after the organization of this [the Christian Church], a sect
sprang up in New England that was strictly Unitarian, and also calling themselves the Christian
Church. They published a paper called the Herald of Gospel Liberty, edited by Elias Smith, in which
they deny the divinity of Christ and ridicule the doctrine of the atonement." This paper was instituted
in 1808, and, it is conceded, was the first religious paper ever published in the United States. Hearing
of O'Kelly's Christian Church in the South, they sent one of their missionary preachers, by the name
of Plummer, to visit them at Pine Stake, N. C., where the Conference had assembled. Why was
Plummer sent? Undoubtedly because years before Lee and others had circulated the heresy charge
against O'Kelly in New England, and Plummer was impressed that the southern Christian Church
must be doctrinally akin to his own. Making his mission known at the Conference, O'Kelly
confronted him with the direct question, "If Jesus Christ were now on earth, and you knew it were
he, would you worship him?" He answered, "No; no sooner than I would you, for I do not believe
he was any more divine." Mr. O'Kelly replied, "Then I have no fellowship with you." Plummer was
a man of ability and insinuating address, and drew off William Guirey, author of the "Rise of
Episcopacy," cited in this work, one of their ablest preachers; and the infection spread among others,
and "some of the most numerous and respectable societies in Virginia." O'Kelly was now an aging
man and unable to cope with the outbreak, but he and his adherents refused all fellowship with the
northern Christian Church, and until long after his death there was no intercourse between them. The
Christians under Plummer and Guirey established not long after a weekly paper at Suffolk, Va.,
which continued a feeble existence many years, called the Christian Sun. It was against them that
Paris wrote while defending the orthodoxy of O'Kelly and his societies.
It is but fair to the preachers and people, still quite numerous in North Carolina and Virginia, to
state that they have ever denied being Unitarians of the Priestley and Channing order. About 1840
a union was formed of these Christians in the North and in the South, both the Trinitarian and the
Unitarian sections of O'Kelly's people (it was fourteen years after his death), and the disciples of
Barton W. Stowe in the West. The platform on which they united is a broad one. "1st. Christ the only
head of the Church. 2d. The name of Christian to the exclusion of all party or sectarian names. 3d.
The Holy Bible, or the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, our only creed or confession of