(housed at
Kunstmuseum) During the late
Middle Ages, dissenters such as
John Wycliffe and
Jan Hus called for a restoration of a primitive form of Christianity, but they were driven underground. As a result, it is difficult to find any direct links between such early dissenters and the Restoration Movement. Beginning with the
Renaissance, intellectual roots become more straightforward to discern presently. At the heart of the
Reformation was an emphasis on the principle of "scripture alone" (
sola scriptura). This, along with the emphasis on individuals' rights to read the Bible and interpret it for themselves, and a movement to reduce rituals in worship, contributed to the intellectual background of early Restoration Movement leaders. The branch of the Reformation movement, which was represented by
Huldrych Zwingli and
John Calvin, contributed an emphasis on "restoring biblical forms and patterns." by Herman Verelst The rationalism of
John Locke provided another influence. Reacting to the
deism of
Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Cherbury, Locke sought a way to address religious divisions and persecution without abandoning scripture. To do this, Locke argued against the right of government to enforce religious orthodoxy and turned to the Bible to supply a set of beliefs that all Christians could agree upon. The core teachings which he viewed as essential were the
messiahship of
Jesus and Jesus's direct commands. Christians could be devoutly committed to other Biblical teachings, but in Locke's view these were non-essentials over which Christians should never fight or try to coerce upon each other. Unlike the
Puritans and the later Restoration Movement, Locke did not call for a systematic restoration of the
early church. One of the basic goals of the English Puritans was to restore a pure, "primitive" church that would be a true apostolic community. This conception was a critical influence in the development of the Puritans in
Colonial America. It has been described as the "oldest
ecumenical movement in America": During the
First Great Awakening, a movement developed among
Baptists known as
Separate Baptists. Two themes of the movement were the rejection of creeds and "freedom in the
Spirit." The Separate Baptists saw scripture as the "perfect rule" for the church. However, while they turned to the Bible for a structural pattern for the church, they did not insist on complete agreement on the details of that pattern. The group originated in
New England but was especially strong in the
Southern United States, where the emphasis on a biblical pattern for the church grew stronger. In the latter half of the 18th century, Separate Baptists became more numerous on the western frontier of
Kentucky and
Tennessee, where the Stone and Campbell movements would later take root. The development of the Separate Baptists on the southern frontier helped prepare the ground for the Restoration Movement. The membership of both the Stone and Campbell groups drew heavily from the ranks of the Separate Baptists. Separate Baptist restorationism also contributed to the development of
Landmarkism in the same region as the Stone-Campbell movement and at about the same time. Under the leadership of
James Robinson Graves, the Landmark Baptists sought to define a blueprint of the so-called "primitive" church, believing that any deviation from that blueprint would prevent a person from being part of the "true" church.
James O'Kelly was an early advocate of seeking unity through a return to early Christianity. In 1792, dissatisfied with the role of bishops in the
Methodist Episcopal Church, he created a schismatic movement of his own. O'Kelly's movement, centered in
Virginia and
North Carolina, were originally called the "Republican Methodists". In 1794, they adopted the name "Christian Church". During the same period,
Elias Smith of
Vermont and
Abner Jones of
New Hampshire led a movement espousing views similar to those of O'Kelly. They believed that members could—by looking to Christian scriptures—be Christians without being bound to human traditions and the denominations brought by immigrants from Europe. While the Campbells resisted what they saw as the spiritual manipulation of the
camp meetings, the Southern phase of the awakening "was an important matrix of Barton Stone's reform movement" and shaped the evangelistic techniques used by both Stone and the Campbells. ==Stone movement==