Cane Ridge, Kentucky

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Cane Ridge, Kentucky, USA was the site, in 1801, of a large camp meeting which drew thousands of people and had a lasting influence as one of the landmark events of the Second Great Awakening. While Methodists, Baptists and Presbyterians all participated, and many of the "spiritual exercises" such as glossolalia were exhibited that later became more associated with the Pentecostal movement, perhaps the most lasting legacy of the Cane Ridge experience was a formalization of what became known in the future as the Restoration Movement, the origin of the Disciples of Christ, the Church of Christ, and several other, smaller groups.

Cane Ridge is located in Bourbon County, Kentucky near Paris. The ridge was named by Daniel Boone when he went through the area, and noticed a form of bamboo growing in the area. A Disciples congregation met on the site for many years subsequently, for a time Barton W. Stone was its minister; the place was so dear to him that several years after his death his remains were disinterred and reburied there. The log building used as the Disciples meeting house was many times modernized until it was unrecognizable; when the congregation ceased to meet there regularly in the 1920s the building fell into disuse. Later, historically-minded persons, predominantly from the Disciples, restored the building and then preserved it by building a stone shrine to surround and protect it.

The 1791 meeting house contained within the stone shrine is the largest single room log structure in North America(seats 500). The burial ground contains an unmarked section which is among the largest unmarked burial grounds in the country. The restoration of the original slave gallery is the oldest documented restoration of a slave gallery in the United States. The removal of the gallery in the 1820s was partially because the congregation was an early abolitionist congregation. When restoration work began in the 1930s, the original cherry railed gallery was returned from a local barn where it had served as a hay loft for more than a century.

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[edit] Further reading

  • Brown, Kenneth O. HOLY GROUND, A STUDY OF THE AMERICAN CAMP MEETING. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1992.
  • Brown, Kenneth O. HOLY GROUND, TOO: THE CAMP MEETING FAMILY TREE. Hazleton: Holiness Archives, 1997.
  • Conklin: Paul Keith. CANE RIDGE: AMERICA'S PENTECOST. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.
  • Dickinson, Hoke S. THE CANE RIDGE READER. No publication data, 1972.
  • Eslinger, Ellen. CITIZENS OF ZION: THE SOCIAL ORIGINS OF CAMP MEETING REVIVALISM. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1999.