Bloomington Churches

The Christian Church

This is the big rich liberal church downtown. They had their 195th anniversary and the HT wrote a puff piece. I responded thus:

I don't think founder Barton W. Stone would be very happy with the church he founded. Here is what he said Robert Owen's New Harmony:

"We formerly gave an abstract of his system as detailed by the pretended reformer himself, and expressed approbation of its leading features, as they were then exhibited. It now appears that Mr. Owen was then feeding the American public with milk, deeming them unable to bear the strong meat of his doctrine. ... It is indeed a system of undisguised Atheism, and social corruption; which does not recognize even the existence, much less the providence and moral government of God, and admits none of the sanctions of religion. It proclaims religion, marriage and property the greatest evils, and thus removes every restraint upon the most unbounded and brutal licentiousness and debauchery. It will be perceived too, by the article to which we refer, that it has not even the merit of originality, but is merely a revival in language and with circumstances, somewhat more refined, of the infidel principles of the last century." https://webfiles.acu.edu/departments/Library/HR/restmov_nov11/www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts/bstone/cm/CM0102.HTM#INRW