For a week during a hot and humid August of 1801, Kane Ridge and Bourbon County in

Kentucky was the site of one of the most important events in American

religious history.

Kentucky was not even 10 years old in 1801.

It was granted statehood in 1792.

The population of Bourbon County in 1800 was 12,000 people.

Now both of those statistics are important because of what happened during that week in August of 1801.

Over 10,000 people, that is almost the entire population of the county.

Over 10,000 people attended a week-long communion service known as a camp meeting in the hills of

Kentucky in 1801. It's also worth noting that this was the frontier in American culture in the 1800s.

Kentucky having just been one of the states and to the west were the wide open territories

and mountains.

This was on the frontier.

One witness who was there for this week of camp meetings put it this way, that for more

than a half a mile I could see people on their knees before God.

Well what was happening in Cambridge, Kentucky?

What was happening was led by a man named Barton Stone. He would lend his name to a movement come to be called the Stone Campbell movement.

It included a number of ministers from a number of churches. There were at least 18 Presbyterian ministers there with many of their congregations.

There were at least four Methodist pastors there, and there were several Baptists.

We're not sure how many were there and they gathered at

Kane Ridge for a week-long camp meeting. Now the camp meeting was something that

was a Scottish import. The church in Scotland had developed what was called the Holy Fair.

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