Articles for tag: Society Of Biblical Literature

Scholarship in the Stone-Campbell Movement

By Douglas A. Foster So-called scholars trained in prestigious schools are blinded in their judgment by the speculations of academicians.” “Common sense is more valuable than all the accumulated knowledge of the learned.” “A theological seminary is a theological cemetery.” Sound familiar? Such ideas were a powerful part of the intellectual landscape in the early 1800s at the beginning of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Many believed that not only was scholarship useless, but that it prevented people from seeing simple truths evident to “unschooled” people. Richard Hofstadter in Anti-intellectualism in American Life shows how the new American sense of freedom and