Restorationist
Stone-Campbell churches
Restoration by subtraction. Where the Latter-day Saints restore by new revelation, this branch restores by refusing anything the apostolic church cannot be shown to have done.
In its own terms
What this body is doing
The governing rule is that where the scriptures speak the church speaks and where they are silent the church is silent, which produces a body with no creed, a congregational polity and a deep suspicion of anything added since. Held consistently it also produces a cessationist position, and by a different route from the Reformed one: not that the gifts were withdrawn by decree, but that they belonged to the apostolic age whose pattern is the whole of what may be restored.
Carried here as the clearest available contrast within its own family. Three bodies share the premise that the church was lost; this one concludes that nothing may be added, and the body above it concludes that a prophet is speaking now.
Where it stands in the tree
Descent
Separated from
The restorationist impulse · 1832A union rather than a division: two frontier movements merging on the principle that the New Testament church can be restored by keeping to what the New Testament actually prescribes, and that creeds are the cause of division rather than a cure for it.
The same questions asked of every body
What it holds
Are the gifts still given?
Inferred from the surrounding textsCeased with the apostolic age, on the same rule that governs everything else here.
The restoration principle limits practice to what the New Testament prescribes for the church; the gifts are read as attending the apostles' own ministry rather than as ongoing provision.
Who may act?
Not established here. The first thing a rite settles, usually in its opening rubric, and the sharpest divide between an office and a gift.
What counts as evidence?
Not established here. Where a tradition decides it is dealing with a spirit rather than an illness, a grief, or nothing at all.
Where is the spirit?
Not established here. All four inherit gospel scenes in which spirits are in people. What each adds beyond that is the largest difference between them.
Whom do the words address?
Not established here. A formal difference a reader can check by counting clauses rather than by weighing tone.
What restraint is written in?
Not established here. Every one of these traditions knows the practice can harm. What each does about that is what popular accounts leave out.
What closes the matter?
Not established here. Whether the encounter ends, and who declares it, separates a rite from an ongoing practice.
This page records what a body holds and where that is written down. It takes no position on whether any of it is true, and nothing here is instruction — the rites are described by what they contain, never as something to follow.