The “Christian Connection”

After Methodists, Baptists were the largest denomination in North America. The Baptists’ more informal, spontaneous, and simple style of worship made them popular among working-class citizens. As the years passed, there was a “settling down” among many of the Baptist clergy. They endeavored to be more respectable in education, preaching style, dress, and civic involvement. This change offended many Baptists, among whom was a man named Elias Smith. A man of deep convictions, Smith rejected the growing respectability of Baptists and argued that denominational names and distinctions were the great evil that prevented Christians from coming together in apostolic unity. Smith said that “Christians” should restore the experience of the New Testament church in all its particulars. Consequently he forsook the Baptist Church and established, with the participation of a Freewill Baptist named Abner Jones, the New England branch of the “Christian Connection.”1EGWLM 920.1

“Christians” had no creed but the Bible and were strictly congregational in style, with a free and dynamic form of worship. While Smith and Jones were the main leaders in New England, there were similar but separate “Christian” movements in other parts of the country. By the 1840s the New England “Christian” churches, in loose connection with Freewill Baptists, had become a significant religious group. While Ellen White came from a Methodist background, both of the other two principal founders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, James White and Joseph Bates, were active ministers in the “Christian” Church.1EGWLM 920.2