Nathan O. Hatch

“Despite their wide diversity, Methodists, Baptists, Universalists, Disciples, Mormons, and Millerites were all communication entrepreneurs, and their movements were crusades for broadcasting the truth. Each was wedded to the transforming power of the word, spoken, written, and sung; each was passionate about short-circuiting a hierarchical flow of information; each was supremely confident that the vernacular and the colloquial were the most fitting channels for religious expression; and each was content to measure the success of individuals and movements by their ability to persuade. By systematically employing lay preachers, by exploiting a golden age of local publishing, and by spreading new forms of religious folk music, they ensured the forceful delivery of their message.”
― Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity

“He railed at ecclesiastical bureaucracy, particularly the theological hairsplitting and heresy-hunting that had come to characterize Presbyterian conclaves: “These things in the Presbyterian church, their contentions and janglings are so ridiculous, so wicked, so outrageous, that no doubt there is a jubilee in hell every year, about the time of the meeting of the General Assembly.”8”
― Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity