Camp Meeting

A camp meeting is a Christian gathering, typically characterized by biblical preaching, sessions of prayer and testimonies, and enthusiastic hymn singing. Camp meetings traditionally are held in groves of trees or on a campground with rustic buildings, and most participants stay in rustic tents or cabins. Camp meetings are held for the purpose of revival and evangelism.

Contextual Beginnings

The open-air revival meetings held during the transatlantic Great Awakening were a precursor to camp meetings. These revival meetings occurred due to immigration to colonial America where traditions and practices from a number of religious traditions were adapted and appropriated in new and creative ways. The international Puritan network brought with it to America an emphasis on personal piety and conversion. Pietists from Europe stressed the importance of a personal and introspective spirituality. Anglicans contributed an emphasis on vigorous spirituality and the practice of innovative organization.¹ But the major precursor for the open air revivals and consequently camp meetings was the Scottish Presbyterian practice of gathering semi-annually with other believers for the Lord’s Supper and to hear sermons calling for repentance and revival. Scottish immigrants spread the practice to colonial America.² Together these religious practices contributed to revivals prior to the American Revolution that became known as the Great Awakening.

After the formation of the United States, inspired by concern about declines in participation in organized religion, disruption in church participation due to the war, and a fervor to evangelize the new nation, a second series of revivals took place in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century known as the Second Great Awakening.³ Camp meetings in North America developed in conjunction with the Second Great Awakening in frontier regions. As revivalism became increasingly a populist and democratic movement, a greater emphasis was placed on personal emotional experience over intellect and education. Some even gravitated toward anti-intellectualism. The need not only to have revival, but to long for and strive for such revival, became just as important as the revivals themselves.⁴ Revivals bred more revivals, and camp meetings were central to these revivals.

The innovation of camp meetings in the United States is generally attributed to frontier revivalist and Presbyterian minister James McGready (1760-1817). In 1800, he held a series of meetings in rural Kentucky in the Red River and then the Gasper River region.⁵ Presbyterian and Methodist ministers participated by giving revivalist sermons. One of the attendees, Barton W. Stone (1772-1844), sought to inspire spiritual revival and growth in his own church and did so in the largest known camp meeting held up to that point in Cane Ridge, Kentucky in 1801.⁶ Some came to the event for religious reasons, others arrived merely to gamble and rabble rouse. Several Baptist and Methodist clergy joined the throng and participated in the preaching. Some critics of Cane Ridge remarked afterward that as many souls were conceived as were saved at the event. As clergy made emotional appeals for repentance and spiritual renewal, some in the congregation wept while others laughed uncontrollably. Still yet other participants ran and danced, and not a few barked.⁷ The meeting lasted a week and resulted in similar camp meeting revivals being held as others sought to duplicate its success at inspiring spiritual revival.⁸

The perception of pandemonium at Cane Ridge by Presbyterian church leaders contributed to their action against ministers who participated in the revival which somewhat squelched the camp meeting tradition within their denomination.⁹ But the Baptists and Methodists quickly adopted this practice as “an important part of social life on the frontier.”¹⁰ Soon camp meetings became ubiquitous across the frontier. These meetings were a staple feature of American religion and revival. The egalitarian structure and emphasis matched American mores of the time.¹¹ Other denominations and religious groups, including the Spiritualists and Shakers, started to convene camp meetings of their own, too.¹² Early Millerites and Sabbatarian Adventists similarly adopted and adapted the practice of camp meeting. The Millerites used camp meetings as opportunities to contagiously nurture and spread their faith.

Millerite Camp Meetings

Large tent evangelism and camp meetings were a hallmark of the Second Advent Awakening of the 1840s. The first Second Advent camp meeting began June 21, 1842, in Hatley, Quebec, and lasted a week. Then, from June 28 to July 5, 1842, another was held in East Kingston, New Hampshire. Initially three camp meetings were scheduled, but eventually thirty-one camp meetings were held that first year (1842), with forty more in 1843, and fifty-five in 1844.¹³

Joshua V. Himes (1805-1895) was critical to fostering the use of camp meetings in the Millerite movement. Even before the East Kingston camp meeting, Himes had collected enough money to employ Edward Williams of Rochester, New York, to manufacture the largest tent in the country at that time.¹⁴ This “Great Tent,” as it came to be known, was first pitched in July 1842 in Concord, New Hampshire. Hiram Munger (1806-1902) later recalled the Millerite camp meetings and his experience of camp meetings in Joshua V. Himes’ “great tent.” The great tent had a 55-foot pole that was 120 feet in diameter.¹⁵ Munger estimated it could hold some 3,000 to 4,000 people (with the possibility up to an additional 2,000 people in the aisles). He was astonished by its size but worried that it covered an area much larger than needed for a revival meeting. But each night Munger watched the crowds grow and when Himes called sinners to the alter, “there was such a rush to the altar for prayers as I had never seen.” He thought Himes must surely be “beside himself.” ¹⁶ He added that it was a “noisy place indeed” noting that it was even louder than the “Methodist prayer-circle.”¹⁷

Millerite camp meetings were opportunities to affirm their core conviction about the Second Advent and to disseminate new ideas. For example, in August 1844, Samuel S. Snow (1806-1890) shared his “new light” based upon the Kairite Jewish calendar that the “tenth day of the seventh month” would be on October 22, 1844, and that that meant Jesus’s second coming would be no later than on that day. The news spread like wildfire.¹⁸ After the Great Disappointment, Millerite camp meetings fizzled out as the movement broke apart into many different groups, and some even lost their faith.

Earliest Seventh-day Adventist Camp Meetings

Early Sabbatarian Adventists were initially reticent to hold camp meetings after the disappointment due to concerns about fanaticism and whether proper order and decorum could be maintained. The Adventist penchant for health reform and temperance similarly contributed to hesitancy as camp meetings could be rowdy events where alcohol flowed freely.¹⁹ Not a few Adventists opined that continuing camp meetings would have been “a terrible mistake, a step backward.”²⁰ Historian A. W. Spalding noted: “First-day Adventist camp meetings had not encouraged them, for there was much of disorder and confusion; nor were the Methodist camp meetings wholly reassuring. It was felt that to hold a camp meeting might be risking much from the public, and possibly from irresponsible campers, and might gain less than the effort should warrant.”²¹

Several early factors contributed to breaking down resistance to camp meetings. Early Sabbatarian Adventist ministers used tents initially for evangelistic meetings. Some of these tents had been used for Second Advent camp meetings during the heyday of the Millerite revival. In May 1854 M. E. Cornell acquired a tent from first-day Adventists that by June was being used for evangelistic purposes. “Tent companies” rapidly became a common way for ministers to share the Adventist message. As the Sabbatarian Adventist message spread through the 1860s, it also became common to meet in homes for monthly or quarterly meetings that extended over a weekend, that encouraged fellowship. In 1867 a series of small, regional gatherings in Iowa, Quebec, and Wisconsin effectively functioned as regional camp meetings. The Wisconsin gathering had an estimated attendance of 1,200 including James and Ellen White.²²

Seventh-day Adventists were reluctant to embrace camp meetings, but the success of the smaller regional meetings led the 1868 General Conference to discuss the idea of “a camp meeting for the whole field.”²³ James White thought the season for holding camp meetings was too far along and plans would need to be postponed until the following year. As they sat in council, Ephraim H. Root (1828-1906) volunteered his farm at Wright, Michigan, as the site for the proposed camp meeting modeled after the earlier Millerite camp meetings. The ensuing denomination-wide camp meeting would serve two purposes: first as a source of “spiritual good,” and second, “the promulgation of our views among the people.”²⁴ It was espoused that this “general rally” should ideally be held in a rural setting, something not unlike similar gatherings by other religious groups. The town of Wright was selected because it was “comparatively a new field” providing new opportunities to share the Adventist faith. Church members at church headquarters in Battle Creek also seemed somewhat relieved since the financial burden wouldn’t fall on them.²⁵ Ultimately the Wright 1868 camp meeting is the first official camp meeting in Seventh-day Adventist history. Review editor Uriah Smith (1832-1903) described the Wright camp meeting as “The largest, most important, and by far the best meeting ever held by Seventh-day Adventists.”²⁶

The Wright camp meeting had an estimated 200-300 people who arrived at the maple grove or “sugar bush” farm of Ephraim H. Root who lived just outside of Wright, Michigan. According to W. C. White (1854-1937), the site was chosen largely because several wealthy and philanthropic Adventist farmers lived there. They thus had the requisite land and resources. The layout and arrangement of the camp meeting was described by J. O. Corliss (1845-1923) as “very primitive.”²⁷ Lodging consisted of bolts of factory cloth sewn together and spread over poles. The ends were fastened with nails to either upright posts or tree limbs cut for the event.²⁸ Altogether there were twenty-two of these makeshift tents arranged in a circle. Each tent was a community tent representing a church or group of families and held an estimated twelve to twenty people.²⁹

As one participant recalled, James White woke up early in the morning, made a bonfire, and “prepared a kettle of hot porridge for all in the camp.” He in “stentorian tones” invited “all to come and be served.”³⁰ Unfortunately, only one tent, the tent from Olcott, New York, the home church of J. N. Andrews, had a waterproofed (or “duck”) covering or canvas, which after it rained, convinced participants that for future camp meetings, waterproofed canvas was an essential requirement. James White had initially urged participants to obtain plain “cotton drilling” so that just in case the venture did not go well participants could still use the material to make overalls or sack covers. The success of the camp meeting meant that the church needed to invest in proper waterproof sleeping tents.

Some of the tents were up to sixty-feet in diameter. These large tents would become characteristic of both earlier and later camp meetings. The tents were erected as “a precautionary measure against the possibility of stormy weather.” The first tent was pitched to keep straw that was used for either bedding or feeding the horses dry.³¹ A second tent was reserved for use of campers and reserved as a meeting place in case it rained. Fortunately, the weather was overall pleasant, so the preaching was held in the open air instead. The pulpit was a simple, crude covered structure made up of boards. The audience were seated on rough planks with risers taken from the nearby beech and maple trees. “The camp was lighted by wood fires,” wrote A. W. Spalding, “built on earth-filled boxes elevated on posts; and there were also log fires on the outskirts to warm the chilly.”³²

The 1868 Wright camp meeting included a nascent Adventist bookstore, a bookstand that was placed at the camp entrance. Three twelve-foot boards were placed in a triangle between trees. The twelve-inch boards gave just enough room to place an assortment of tracts, periodicals, and books from the Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association. Behind stood an aspiring young minister, E. R. Palmer (1869-1931), son of Dan Palmer, who would become a lifelong worker in the Adventist publishing work and John O. Corliss (1845-1923) who would serve as a preacher and missionary. Together they would sell over $600 worth of books and tracts.³³

According to M. E. Olsen (1873-1952), the success of the Wright camp meeting led to the proliferation of camp meetings in the Seventh-day Adventist Church.³⁴ Camp meetings were held later that year in Clyde, Illinois (September 23-30) and Pilot Grove, Iowa (October 2-7). The following year the General Conference recommended that state conferences organize all future camp meetings. Six such camp meetings would be held in 1869. As camp meetings became increasingly popular it became common to pass along suggestions for how to have the best possible experience at such events. Such details even included directions about how to make your own camp meeting tent.³⁵ James and Ellen White traveled to so many camp meetings that James found it expedient to publish the family’s bedding needs in the denominational periodical.³⁶

“Camp Meeting Season”³⁷

During the 1870s, there were five to fifteen camp meetings held annually across North America. Camp meetings became a mechanism to bring together geographically separated believers to work, worship together, and hold evangelistic meetings. Often in conjunction with these camp meetings, conferences and related church entities, like the tract and missionary societies, would hold their annual meetings and organize. Thus, camp meetings became an important feature facilitating organization and administration and providing a convenient venue to facilitate community outreach, raise funds, and garner support for denominational projects. Often the topics of camp meeting sermons were geared toward attracting those who might be curious or who might have questions about spiritual matters. Ellen White, for her part, frequently preached during the 1870s at camp meetings on temperance. She was also an effectual revivalist who could make altar calls. At one such camp meeting, held in 1874, Ellen White exhibited her “eloquence and persuasive powers” as “she implored sinners to flee from their sins.” According to Uriah Smith, during her appeal “probably 300 came forward for prayers, and it seemed as if the early days of Methodism had returned again.”³⁸

Reportedly the largest Adventist camp meeting in the nineteenth century was held at the Groveland, Massachusetts, in 1876. Ellen White’s estimate of 20,000 people³⁹ appears to be overstated as contemporary newspapers estimate the peak attendance at about only 4,000.⁴⁰ Throughout her lifetime it would be at camp meetings that Ellen White and other Adventist preachers drew their largest crowds. As Adventism spread across the continent and beyond, they continued to hold camp meetings. The first Adventist camp meeting on the west coast occurred in Windsor, California, in October 1872. The first Seventh-day Adventist camp meeting held in Canada took place August 21-26, 1879, in Magog, Quebec, and was organized by A. C. Bourdeau (1834-1916) and G. I. Butler (1834-1918). There were an estimated 90 people in attendance. Altogether camp meetings remained a consistent way to solidify an Adventist identity as Adventism spread.

In the 1880s, camp meeting becoming increasingly formalized as an institution, and the traditional “camp meeting season” became normative. Uriah Smith, for example, urged that with more advanced planning it was possible to greatly enhance the effectiveness of such gatherings. An “arrangement of the proceedings according to a definite program” in advance gave participants “sufficient time to prepare.” Speakers could benefit from more time to prepare “deliberate and mature thoughts on the subjects presented.”⁴¹ With a regular program, visitors could choose which topics and speakers they wanted to hear. By 1886 it was urged that every camp meeting include a time to promote denominational schools.⁴² Smith urged that all conferences make a greater attempt to become more organized in their camp meeting program.⁴³ As Adventism continued to mature as a denomination, such planning replaced exuberance and spontaneity of the earlier denominational camp meetings.

Camp meetings were increasingly viewed as an integral part of Adventist culture. In another article, Butler, at the time church president, noted how such gatherings were held to acknowledge Christ’s soon return and to spur one another on to greater personal holiness. Butler worried that “Worldliness, covetousness, and gross wickedness” prevail and the “hearts of many are growing cold.” Yet those “who love the cause of God” therefore “know the value of our camp meetings, and will do their best to attend them.” Another significant change in the use of camp meetings was a call by Butler for all Adventist pastors and conference leaders to make sure at camp meeting time to turn in an annual report of their activity including a financial account of church funds in order to keep accurate records. Despite his emphasis on organization and the administrative tasks at camp meetings, Butler also argued that religious services needed to focus on spiritually feeding all those at the meetings. All church leaders should keep this foremost in mind so that “nothing [might] drag.”⁴⁴ Adventist minister, H. A. St. John (1840-1917) urged that to facilitate peace and unity “chronic grumblers” and “chronic loafers” need not show up.⁴⁵

The systematic organization and promotion of Adventist camp meetings contributed to the widespread growth of the institution through the 1880s. In 1882, the denomination substantially increased the number of camp meetings held to twenty-two. Another regular feature that developed during the 1880s was the practice of asking church workers to come prior to the camp meeting for training or worker’s meetings. As part of this, Adventist pastors and teachers arrived up to a week prior to the start of camp meeting and participated in training meetings as well as help to prepare the campground. It was dubbed a “camp pitch.”⁴⁶ Many church periodicals created special “camp meeting” issues for colporteurs that included both advertisements as well as key points of Adventist belief that canvassers could use to advertise and promote camp meetings.⁴⁷

Adventist Camp Meetings Around the Globe

By 1904 the denomination could boast that sixty-eight camp meetings were held in North America and an additional fifteen held globally.⁴⁸ Camp meetings were no longer merely an American phenomenon. The first recorded camp meeting held in Europe was staged by Methodists in England on May 31, 1807, in Stoke on Trent. Eccentric American revivalist preacher, Lorenzo Dow (1777-1834), who was visiting Great Britain, prompted the first camp meeting in that country.⁴⁹ Religious authorities considered such gatherings highly improper, but a group of Methodists held one anyway. As a result of this camp meeting, a new denomination called the Primitive Methodists, was formed. Camp meetings remained a somewhat novel phenomenon. Queen Victoria considered them to be alien concept. Thus, early Adventist missionaries had to work hard to sell the idea of tents and camp meetings to the British people.⁵⁰ Some Adventists, such as J. S. Washburn, discovered that a far more successful way to conduct evangelism was to simply rent a meeting hall and to advertise in local newspapers.

Foreign missions became an important theme in North American camp meetings. They provided an opportunity to rally financial support and personnel for Adventist missions. G. I. Butler reported that during the summer of 1874, just prior to the denomination sending its first official missionary, a “poor sister” at the Minnesota camp meeting raised money selling food to send the American Swedish Adventist periodical, Advent Harold, to friends and family members back in Europe.⁵¹ Frequently, missionaries on furlough would share stories of their mission outreach at camp meetings and solicit funds. Many conferences sponsored a missionary family or mission outreach to a particular region of the world.

The first Adventist camp meeting outside North America was held in Moss, Norway, in June 1887. The following summer, after this successful endeavor, a second camp meeting was held in central Europe in Tramelan, Switzerland, at which both church members and the public showed up. The encampment was described as “Two large tents . . . one as a boarding house . . . there were six family tents with six to eight persons occupying each tent.”⁵² About 150 Adventists took rooms in the town. Camp meetings were still such a new concept in Europe there that many attendees did not realize that they needed tents to camp when they arrived. Over the next decade, camp meetings spread across Europe and in other parts of the world.

Legacy

Camp meetings remain an important part of Adventist identity. “The social and spiritual benefits of camp meeting in Seventh-day Adventist history are incalculable,” wrote A. W. Spalding.⁵³ It provided a “unifying effect” that brough isolated believers together to build up their faith and to encourage collaboration between groups of at a time when believers rather isolated. It also provided a venue to invite still yet others to learn about their faith.⁵⁴ Young people could make friendships as “an integrated system of social, recreational, and religious exercises for children, junior youth, and senior youth” provided “activities which are broadly cultural.”⁵⁵ And finally, it offered church leaders an opportunity to mingle and connect with church members and thereby form a better “compositive picture” of how things were going in the field.⁵⁶

Camp meetings would remain a vital feature of Adventism through the twentieth century. The adoption of the automobile made it possible for increasingly large crowds to easily gather together. The lack of readily available land contributed to a new “policy of permanently owned campsites, with main buildings, and with tents and equipment stored on the grounds for the winter.”⁵⁷ After World War II, the denomination frequently used army surplus tents erected in advance as part of the traditional “camp pitch” by conference pastors. A high point was reached in the 1960s and 1970s. As American culture became increasingly urban, camp meetings became opportunities to get away from the busyness of urban life to spend time in the countryside. In larger institutional centers, camp meetings would often morph into large celebrations, over a long weekend instead of spanning a week and held on Adventist college or academy campuses rather than campgrounds. The sale and closure of some academies with their campuses and campgrounds has gradually contributed to a decline in the number of conferences offering a traditional week-long camp meeting. Irrespective, camp meetings remain a vital part of Adventism with a rich history, especially in rural parts of North America, Africa, and Central and South America.

Historian M. E. Olsen described camp meetings as “occasions of rich special blessings” for the Seventh-day Adventist Church.⁵⁸ Adventist co-founder, Ellen G. White, urged Adventists to keep alive the evangelistic potential of these events: “The camp meeting is one of the most important agencies in our work.”⁵⁹ A. W. Spalding believed that for Adventists camp meetings competed as an annual event “that more than vied with Christmas and the Fourth of July.”⁶⁰ As camp meetings continue and change in response to economic and cultural shifts, they remain an opportunity for instruction, provide an opportunity for those unfamiliar to the faith to be discipled in Adventist beliefs and culture, and have contributed to a general sense of unity within the denomination.⁶¹ Church leader I. H. Evans wrote about the Michigan camp meeting: “We need the reviving influence of God’s Spirit in our midst. . . . We rarely know how much we need the Lord’s Spirit till we feel the reviving influence of a good meeting.”⁶²

Sources

Brown, Kenneth O. “Finding America’s Oldest Camp Meeting.” Methodist History 28, no. 4 (July 1990): 252-54.

Brown, Kenneth O. Holy Ground: A Study of the American Camp Meeting. New York: Garland, 1992.

Bruce, Dickson D. And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain-Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800-1845. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1974.

Butler, Geo. I. “The Camp-Meetings, Business, Etc.” ARH, May 9, 1882, 297.

Butler, G. I. “’Like Begs Like.’” The True Missionary, September 1874, 68.

“Camp Meeting.” In Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, 10:281-282. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 1996.

Danielson, Robert A. Tenting by the Cross: The History and Development of the Methodist and Holiness Camp Meeting. Wilmore, KY: First Fruits Press, 2019.

Dick, E. N. “Adventist Camp Meetings of the 1840s.” Adventist Heritage 4, no. 2 (Winter 1977): 3-10.

Eslinger, Ellen. Citizens of Zion: The Social Origins of Camp Meeting Revivalism. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1999.

An Essay on Camp Meetings by the Author of the True Evangelist. New York: Lane & Scott, 1849.

Farnsworth, E. W. “Labors in Australia.” ARH, December 29, 1896, 832.

Gorham, B. W. Camp Meeting Manual, A Practical Book for the Camp Ground. Boston: H. V. Degen, 1854.

Land, Gary. “Adventism and the Camp Meeting Tradition.” Lake Union Herald, May 23, 1978.

Land, Gary. “Camp Meetings.” In The Ellen G. White Encyclopedia, 2^nd ed., edited by Jerry Moon and Denis Fortin, 676-78. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2013.

Lippy, Charles H. “The Camp Meeting in Transition: The Character and Legacy of the Late Nineteenth Century.” Methodist History 34, no. 1 (1995): 3-17.

Loughborough, J. N. Rise and Progress of the Seventh-day Adventists. Battle Creek, MI: General Conference Association of Seventh-day Adventists, 1892.

Lyon, Keith Dwayne. “God’s Brush Arbor: Camp Meeting Culture During the Second Great Awakening, 1800-1860,” Ph.D. diss., University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2016. https://trace.tennessee.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5262&context=utk_graddiss.

McLoughlin, William G. Revivals, Awakenings and Reform. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1978.

Munger, Hiram. The Life and Religious Experience of Hiram Munger, Including Many Singular Circumstances Connected with Camp-Meetings and Revivals. Boston: The Author, 1856.

Olsen, Mahlon E. “Adventists Became Health Champions.” Signs of the Times, August 21, 1923.

Palmer, E. R. “First Camp-Meeting Sales of Our Literature.” ARH, August 10, 1922.

Poirier, Merle. “Camp Meeting: Adventists and Camp Meeting Go Together Like Hand and Glove.” Adventist Review, June 3, 2019, https://adventistreview.org/magazine-article/camp-meeting/.

Robinson, Virgil E. John Nevins Andrews: Flame for the Lord. Washington, DC: Review and Herald, 1975.

[Smith, Uriah]. “The Program.” ARH, April 25, 1882.

St. John, H. A. “Who Should Not Go To Camp-Meeting.” ARH, July 25, 1882, 473.

Spalding, Arthur W. Captains of the Host: First Volume of a History of Seventh-day Adventists Covering the Years 1845-1900. Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1949.

Strayer, Brian E. J. N. Loughborough: The Last of the Adventist Pioneers. Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2014.

Swallow, S. C. Camp-Meetings: Their Origin, History, and Utility. Also, Their Perversion, and How to Correct It. Embracing a Careful Review of the Sabbath Question. New York: Nelson & Phillips; Cincinnati: Hitchcock & Walden, 1879.

Trim, David. “A History of Camp Meeting.” Hope Channel Presentation. Released July 7, 2012. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvqPsacG2lI.

White, Ellen G. Camp Meetings: Their Object, and How to Conduct Them. Cooranbong, NSW: Avondale Press, ca. 1900.

White, William C. “Sketches and Memories of James and Ellen G. White: XLVIII---The First General Camp Meeting.” ARH, March 11, 1937.

Notes

1. Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edward, Whitefield and the Wesleys (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 50, 53-68.↩

2. Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr. “Camp Meeting,” in Encyclopedia of American Religious History, 3^rd. ed., eds. Edward L. Queen II, Stephen R. Prothero, and Gardiner H. Shattuck, Jr. (New York: Facts on File, 2009), 232; Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), 153.↩

3. The term has been challenged of late. For a discussion of debates on nomenclature, see Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, 151-53.↩

4. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, 137.↩

5. Conrad Ostwalt, “Camp Meetings,” Tennessee Encyclopedia, accessed July 1, 2023, https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/camp-meetings/.↩

6. Kenneth O. Brown, “Finding America’s Oldest Camp Meeting,” Methodist History 28, no. 4 (July 1990): 252-54.↩

7. For an example with primary sources from 1804, see: https://blog.richmond.edu/jerkshistory/category/related-bodily-exercises/page/3/ [7/1/23].↩

8. Mark Galli, “Revival at Cane Ridge,” Christian History, #45 (1995), accessed July 1, 2023, https://christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/revival-at-cane-ridge.↩

9. Ibid.↩

10. Justo L. González, The Story of Christianity: The Reformation to the Present Day, 2^nd ed. (New York: HarperOne, 2010), 2:327.↩

11. For an overview of camp meetings, see: Ellen Eslinger, Citizens of Zion: The Social Origins of Camp Meeting Revivalism (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1999); Robert A. Danielson, Tenting by the Cross: The History and Development of the Methodist and Holiness Camp Meeting (Wilmore, KY: First Fruits Press, 2019); Kenneth O. Brown, Holy Ground: A Study of the American Camp Meeting (New York: Garland, 1992); Dickson D. Bruce, And They All Sang Hallelujah: Plain-Folk Camp-Meeting Religion, 1800-1845 (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1974).↩

12. While not much has been written about Shaker and Spiritualist camp meetings, a number of stereoviews and early photographs exist of these gatherings, and they remain an important topic for future exploration. A wide variety of religious groups appropriated the camp meeting to their own uses and purposes during and soon after the Second Great Awakening. See also this blog post from the Shaker Museum: https://www.shakermuseum.us/several-of-the-best-mediums-shakers-spiritualism-and-camp-meetings/, accessed May 23, 2023.↩

13. Gary Land, “Camp Meetings,” in The Ellen G. White Encyclopedia, eds. Jerry Moon and Denis Fortin, 2^nd ed. (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2013), 676.↩

14. Richard W. Schwarz, Light Bearers, 41-42.↩

15. George R. Knight, William Miller and the Rise of Adventism (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press, 2011), 85. The second largest tent was the Oberlin Tent that was 100 feet in diameter. See Keith J. Hardman, Charles Grandison Finney, 1792-1875: Revivalist and Reformer (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1990), 304.↩

16. Hiram Munger, The Life and Religious Experience of Hiram Munger, Including Many Singular Circumstances Connected with Camp-Meetings and Revivals (Boston: The Author, 1856), 48-49.↩

17. Ibid., 50.↩

18. J. N. Loughborough, Rise and Progress of the Seventh-day Adventists (Battle Creek, MI: General Conference Association of Seventh-day Adventists, 1892), 51.↩

19. David Trim, “A History of Camp Meeting,” Hope Channel Presentation, released July 7, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvqPsacG2lI.↩

20. George O. States, “Lessons from Past Experiences—No. 6,” ARH, October 11, 1906, 10.↩

21. Arthur W. Spalding, Captains of the Host: First Volume of a History of Seventh-day Adventists Covering the Years 1845-1900 (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1949), 352.↩

22. Gary Land, “Camp Meeting,” in The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventism, 2^nd ed (Hagerstown, MD: Review and Herald, 2013), 676-78.↩

23. Arthur W. Spalding, Captains of the Host: First Volume of a History of Seventh-day Adventists Covering the Years 1845-1900 (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1949), 354.↩

24. See editor’s note, ARH, August 11, 1868, 128.↩

25. “General Campmeeting,” ARH, August 11, 1868, 128.↩

26. As quoted by William C. White, “Sketches and Memories of James and Ellen G. White: XLVIII---The First General Camp Meeting,” ARH, March 11, 1937, 4.↩

27. J. O. Corliss as quoted in E. R. Palmer, “First Camp-Meeting Sales of Our Literature,” ARH, August 10, 1922, 24.↩

28. Ibid.↩

29. Arthur W. Spalding, Captains of the Host: First Volume of a History of Seventh-day Adventists Covering the Years 1845-1900 (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1949), 355.↩

30. J. F. Piper, “West Michigan Camp-Meeting and Pioneers’ Day,” ARH, January 15, 1925, 18.↩

31. Virgil E. Robinson, John Nevins Andrews: Flame for the Lord (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1975), 71.↩

32. Arthur W. Spalding, Captains of the Host: First Volume of a History of Seventh-day Adventists Covering the Years 1845-1900 (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1949), 355.↩

33. Ibid.↩

34. Mahlon E. Olsen, “Adventists Became Health Champions,” The Signs of the Times, August 21, 1923, 8-10.↩

35. D. H. Lamson, “How to Make Tents,” ARH, July 20, 1876, 26-27.↩

36. James White wrote: “We design to take a family tent with us to all our camp-meetings, and wish our brethren to provide for our company, board and bed-clothing for six. There should be at least one spring bed, and hair mattress, or their equivalent, for the worn and weary.” See James White, “Camp-Meetings,” ARH, May 17, 1870, 176.↩

37. This was a ubiquitous term among Adventists, cf. description in ARH, June 8, 1905, 32.↩

38. U[riah] S[mith], "Camp-Meeting Notings," ARH, August 18, 1874, 68.↩

39. Ellen G. White, ST, September 14, 1876. Most Adventist historians have uncritically accepted this estimate without examining other contemporary claims. Cf. Arthur L. White, 6Bio 109; idem, Ellen White: The Human Interest Story (Washington, DC: Review and Herald, 1948).↩

40. Ellen White stated that “It is estimated that twenty thousand people are assembled in the grove.” See Ellen G. White, “Incidents at Groveland, Mass.,” ST, September 14, 1876; idem., “At the Groveland Camp-Meeting,” Ms. 29, 1897. The “big day” of the Groveland camp meeting was August 27, 1876, at which she spoke about temperance. See Boston Evening Transcript, August 24, 1876, 8. The Groveland camp meeting was held from August 24-29, 1876, see Boston Evening Transcript, August 19, 1876, 8. The local newspaper estimated that the actual attendance was 4,000 at its peak. See Fall River Daily Evening News, August 29, 1876, 2.↩

41. [Uriah Smith], “The Program,” ARH, April 25, 1882, 264.↩

42. See developments under “1886,” in “Historical Summary,” 1905 Year Book of the Seventh-day Adventist Denomination: The Official Directories (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, [1906]), 178.↩

43. [Uriah Smith], “The Program,” ARH, April 25, 1882, 264.↩

44. Geo[rge] I. Butler, “The Camp-Meetings, Business, Etc.” ARH, May 9, 1882, 297.↩

45. H. A. St. John, “Who Should Not Go To Camp-Meeting,” ARH, July 25, 1882, 473.↩

46. Some of the earliest examples of such workers’ meetings held immediately before camp meetings occurred in Texas, Missouri, and Michigan in 1887. See “Texas Conference Proceedings,” ARH August 23, 1887, 540; “Michigan Workers’ Meeting,” ARH, August 23, 1887, 541; “The Missouri Camp-Meeting,” ARH, August 23, 1887, 542.↩

47. Cf. E. W. Farnsworth, “Labors in Australia,” ARH, December 29, 1896, 832.↩

48. See under, “1904,” in “Historical Summary,” 1905 Year Book of the Seventh-day Adventist Denomination: The Official Directories (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, [1906]), 185.↩

49. See Lorenzo Dow’s “Defence [sic] of Camp Meetings” in History of Cosmpolite; or The Four Volumes of Lorenzo Dow’s Journal Concentrated in One, Containing the Experience and Travels, From Childhood to Near His Fiftieth Year. Also His Polemical Writings (Wheeling, VA: Joshua Martin: 1848), 583-603.↩

50. Trim, “A History of Camp Meeting.”↩

51. G. I. Butler, “’Like Begs Like,’” The True Missionary, September 1874, 68.↩

52. As cited by Trim, “A History of Camp Meeting,” Hope Channel Presentation.↩

53. Arthur W. Spalding, Captains of the Host: First Volume of a History of Seventh-day Adventists Covering the Years 1845-1900 (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1949), 358.↩

54. Ibid.↩

55. Ibid.↩

56. Ibid.↩

57. Ibid., 361.↩

58. Mahlon E. Olsen, “Adventists Became Health Champions,” Signs of the Times, August 21, 1923, 8-10.↩

59. Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 6 (Mountain View, CA: Pacific Press, 1941), 31.↩

60. Arthur W. Spalding, Captains of the Host: First Volume of a History of Seventh-day Adventists Covering the Years 1845-1900 (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald, 1949), 360.↩

61. Mahlon E. Olsen, “Adventists Became Health Champions,” Signs of the Times, August 21, 1923, 8-10.↩

62. I. H. Evans, “Michigan State Camp-Meeting,” ARH, September 15, 1896, 595.↩