Declaration and Address Analysis

Declaration and Address Analysis

The Declaration and Address’ intended audience was all who love our Lord Jesus Christ. The intended audience ties in with the message of most of the document in that it speaks of unity. A major part of the Stone-Campbell Movement was to bring unity and the Stone-Campbell Movement was formed through unity. I think a couple of the main reasons why unity is so important in the document was one, because God calls us to unity through Him, and two, because the Stone-Campbell Movement was created through unity. If Stone and Campbell stayed separate in their thoughts, beliefs, and motives the impact they were able to have would not have happened. The importance of unity is far beyond describing. When there is not unity in the Church, then the Church will fall. Division makes anything weak. That is why the topic of unity is discussed with such importance. There is just about as much emphasis on the importance of unity as there is on the condemnation of division among Christians. It is very important to be unified; however, there is a slight difference in just not being unified and having a division. To not be unified signifies a stand-still; nothing is really happening. There could be a church that gets along and encourages one another, but if they are not unified in a common goal of glorifying God and doing all they can then there is a lack of unity. However, when a church has a lack of unity because there is a division among beliefs, or something of the like, that is where a major problem lies. I was part of a church where this disunity caused division and it was a terrible thing. The division was caused over something as small as the music. There were a couple other things that caused disagreement, but the major problem formed because of disagreements with music choices. There were some people in the church who wanted to bring in more instruments such as multiple guitars both acoustic and electric, electric drums,