Restorationism, also known as
Restitutionism or
Christian primitivism, is a religious perspective according to which the early beliefs and practices of the followers of
Jesus were lost or adulterated after his death and required "restoration".
[1][2][3] It is a view that often "seeks to correct faults or deficiencies (in other branches of
Christianity) by appealing to the primitive church as normative model".
[1]: 635
Efforts to restore an earlier, purer form of Christianity are often a response to
denominationalism. As
Rubel Shelly put it, "the motive behind all restoration movements is to tear down the walls of separation by a return to the practice of the original, essential and universal features of the Christian religion."
[4]: 29 Different groups have tried to implement the restorationist vision in a variety of ways; for instance, some have focused on the structure and practice of the church, others on the
ethical life of the church, and others on the direct experience of the
Holy Spirit in the life of the believer.
[1]: 635–638 The relative importance given to the restoration ideal, and the extent to which the full restoration of the early church is believed to have been achieved, also varies among groups.
More narrowly, the term "Restorationism" describes unrelated Restorationist groups during the era of the
Second Great Awakening, such as the
Christadelphians (Greek: 'Brothers of Christ'),
Swedenborgians (i.e.,
The New Church),
Irvingians (the largest of which is the
New Apostolic Church),
Latter Day Saints (i.e.,
Mormonism),
Jehovah's Witnesses (from the
tetragrammaton for God),
La Luz del Mundo (Spanish: 'the Light of the World'), and
Iglesia ni Cristo (
Tagalog: 'Church of Christ').
[5][6][7][8] In this sense, Restorationism has been regarded as one of the six taxonomic groupings of
Christianity: the
Church of the East,
Oriental Orthodoxy,
Eastern Orthodoxy,
Roman Catholicism,
Protestantism, and Restorationism.
[9][10] These Restorationist groups share a belief that historic Christianity lost the true faith during the
Great Apostasy and that the Church needed to be restored.
[11][12]
The term has been used to refer to the
Stone–Campbell Movement in the United States,
[2]: 225–226 and has been also used by more recent groups, describing their goal to re-establish Christianity in its original form, such as some anti-denominational
Charismatic Restorationists, which arose in the 1970s in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
[13][14
