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An American Religious Movement
An American Religious Movement
A Brief History of the Disciples of Christ By Winfred Ernest Garrison CHRISTIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION (The Bethany Press) ST. LOUIS 3, MO. Copyright , 1945 By C. D. Pantle First Printing, Sept., 1945 Second Printing, June, 1946 Printed in the United States of America...
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PREFACE
PREFACE
In an earlier volume, I recited the history of the Disciples of Christ under the title, Religion Follows the Frontier . The phrase was designed to emphasize the fact that this religious movement was born under pioneer conditions on the American frontier, in the days when the frontier was just crossing the Alleghenies, that much of its formative thinking followed patterns congenial to the frontier mind, and that its early expansion kept pace with the westward wave of migration. Since that book is
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A Preview
A Preview
Stone was a native American of old colonial stock, born in Maryland, educated in North Carolina after spending most of his boyhood in Virginia. He did his most important work in Kentucky. Thomas and Alexander Campbell, father and son, were born in North Ireland, were educated at Glasgow University, and came to America only a short time before the launching of their reformatory movement. The influences seen in their work are those of a British background and an American environment. The center of
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Three Sources, Two Streams
Three Sources, Two Streams
Looking back from a later time to describe the reformatory movement as it had been in the 1820’s, Walter Scott wrote that there were then “three parties struggling to restore original Christianity.” The first of these was the independent “Churches of Christ,” which stemmed from the work of Glas, Sandeman, the Haldane brothers, and similar eighteenth century British restorers of primitive Christianity. Scott himself for a time belonged to one of these churches in Pittsburgh. They were few in numb
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The Idea of Union
The Idea of Union
The essential unity of the church was and is a basic principle of Roman Catholicism. It was a formative idea in the Catholic Church of the second and third centuries, which had not yet become Roman, and it continued to be so through all the history of the imperial church of the Middle Ages. The great Protestant reformers of the sixteenth century did not cease to be “catholic” in their belief that the church was divinely intended to be one body. They wanted to reform the church, not to break it i
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The Idea of Restoration
The Idea of Restoration
The other principle stressed by “the reformation of the nineteenth century” was the restoration of primitive Christianity. That also had a long history, which can be only sketched. Thomas and Alexander Campbell made a new use of this idea, and it will have a large place in the story of their work, but in order to understand their contribution it is necessary to note that the idea itself was not new. The oldest Christian bodies claim to have preserved primitive Christianity uncorrupted, and every
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Eighteenth Century Restorationists
Eighteenth Century Restorationists
In the eighteenth century there arose, in Great Britain, some movements which applied the restoration formula in a way that contributed more directly to the Campbells’ use of it than those already mentioned. None of these gained a large following, and even their names have been forgotten by all except special students of the period. Their leaders were bold and independent spirits who saw that the church needed reforming and were not afraid to attempt it. They laid hold of a great idea, but they
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Restoration and Division
Restoration and Division
Two wealthy brothers, Robert and James Alexander Haldane, laymen of the Church of Scotland, became alarmed at the state of religion in their country. It seemed to them that the church had become merely a respectable institution enjoying the patronage of the state, supporting a clergy chiefly concerned about their own professional dignity and privileges, and doing little to carry a vital gospel to those who needed it most. At their own expense, while still members of the Church of Scotland, they
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America in 1800
America in 1800
George Washington had died the year before. John Adams was president. The country consisted of sixteen states, only Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee having been added to the original thirteen. It had a population of 5,308,483, less than 10 per cent of whom lived west of the Alleghenies. (Twenty years later, in spite of the great westward movement, 73 per cent of the people were still on the Atlantic slope.) The population, wealth, industries, and cultural institutions were very largely concentra
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American Churches in 1800
American Churches in 1800
The term, “the Church,” had little meaning in America at and after the beginning of the federal period. There was no Church , either as a visible and functioning reality or as an ideal; there were only churches . If we call them “sects,” it is not to criticize but simply to describe the fact that the church had been cut into many parts. In view of the kind of compulsory unity (or attempted unity) in European and British Christianity out of which these sects arose, the divisions were not to their
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Land of the Free
Land of the Free
One reason for this sectarian condition was that this was a free country. Under the First Amendment to the Constitution, which is the first article of the Bill of Rights, no church could ever receive special favors from the government nor could there be discrimination against any. When the American Government adopted this hands-off policy, leaving the whole matter of religion to the churches and to the people, the old compulsory unity disappeared—even the ghost of unity which England had, with i
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In Virginia and North Carolina, 1794
In Virginia and North Carolina, 1794
Methodism was not a denomination but only a revival movement in the Church of England until the end of the Revolutionary War. In 1771, John Wesley sent Francis Asbury from England. He became the most important factor in winning converts, enlisting workers, setting up the system of circuits and itinerant preachers, and organizing the church. By 1784, about 15,000 members were enrolled in Methodist societies in Virginia and the adjacent states. But these societies were not churches. They had no or
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In New England, 1801
In New England, 1801
The first “Christian Church” in New England was about seven years later than the first in the South, and its origin was entirely unrelated to the earlier one. The New England movement got its impulse from the independent reactions of two young men against the type of religion they found in the Baptist churches of which they were members and in which they began to preach. These churches were Calvinistic in their emphasis on original sin, the limitation of the benefits of Christ’s atonement to the
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In Kentucky, 1804
In Kentucky, 1804
Third in order of time, but first in importance in relation to the Disciples, among the three movements which together constituted the “Christian Church” was the one in which Stone emerged as the leading figure. Barton W. Stone, born in 1772 at Port Tobacco, Maryland, was a member of one of the oldest American families. His great-great-great-grandfather was the first Protestant governor of Maryland, 1648-53. Barton Stone’s father, a man of some property, died just before the outbreak of the Revo
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Cane Ridge Meeting
Cane Ridge Meeting
The Great Western Revival, with which the names of Stone and Cane Ridge are closely associated, resulted from transplanting to Tennessee and Kentucky the methods of evangelistic appeal which had been used by “New Light” Presbyterians, Methodists, and “Christians” in the Southern states east of the mountains. Under frontier conditions it developed some bizarre and sensational features which have drawn attention away from its real values. It began gradually with the preaching of four or five men—e
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The Springfield Presbytery
The Springfield Presbytery
These five men had left the Synod of Kentucky, not the Presbyterian Church. Their first act was to organize the Springfield Presbytery, independent of the synod. (Their “Springfield” is now Springdale, ten miles north of Cincinnati.) Their second act was to issue a statement of their position. This is a pamphlet of about 100 pages, the full title of which is: An Abstract of an Apology for Renouncing the Jurisdiction of the Synod of Kentucky, Being a Compendious View of the Gospel and a few Remar
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The Christian Church
The Christian Church
At this same meeting, June 28, 1804, it was agreed that the name “Christian” should be adopted, to the exclusion of all sectarian names. This was suggested by Rice Haggard, who had made the same suggestion to the O’Kelly group ten years earlier when the Republican Methodists were looking for a new name. Haggard had been active as a minister of the Christian Church in North Carolina and Virginia from 1794 until his removal to Kentucky about the time of the Cane Ridge meeting. The “Christians” of
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Seceding from the Seceders
Seceding from the Seceders
Partly because of ill health in his forties (he lived to the age of ninety-one), and partly to find a place of ampler opportunity for his seven children, Thomas Campbell migrated to America in 1807, as many of his Ulster neighbors had done before him. He landed at Philadelphia on May 13, fortunately found the Associate Synod of North America, which represented all the Seceders in America, in session in that city, presented his credentials and was received into the synod on May 16, and two days l
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Alexander Campbell at Glasgow
Alexander Campbell at Glasgow
When Thomas Campbell came to America, he left his family in Ireland. Alexander, then nineteen years old, was to conduct his father’s school at Rich Hill until the end of the term and to bring his mother and the six younger children to America when his father gave the word. The word came when Thomas Campbell had been in America about fifteen months. On October 1, 1808, the family embarked at Londonderry. Their ship ran aground on one of the rocky islands of the Hebrides. During that experience, A
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The “Declaration and Address”
The “Declaration and Address”
The Declaration and Address is one of the most important documents in the history of the Disciples. It deserves not only reading in full but careful study. As published in a later edition, it is a pamphlet of fifty-six pages containing four parts: first, a Declaration (3 pages) stating briefly the plans and purposes of the Christian Association of Washington; second, an Address (18 pages), signed by Thomas Campbell and Thomas Acheson, giving an extended argument for the unity of all Christians a
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The Brush Run Church
The Brush Run Church
Alexander Campbell, newly arrived on the scene of this nascent reformation, immediately settled down to a strenuous course of private study—Bible, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and church history. He preached his first sermon on July 15, 1810, in a private house. He had no license to preach and he was a member of no church, for he had left his Presbyterianism in Scotland, and the Christian Association of Washington was not yet a church. He preached a hundred times during the next twelve months. After Th
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Debates on Baptism
Debates on Baptism
Mr. Campbell’s Baptist colleagues may have considered him heretical about the covenants, but they could not fail to value him as a champion of immersion. So when a Seceder Presbyterian minister, John Walker of Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, issued a challenge for a debate on that topic, they urged him to accept it. Mr. Walker, as challenger, affirmed that the infant children of believers are proper subjects for baptism and that sprinkling is a proper mode. As to the baptism of infants, he rested his case a
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“Reforming Baptists”
“Reforming Baptists”
The Christian Baptist began in 1823 and continued for seven years. Mr. Campbell was his own publisher. He set up a printing office on his farm, secured the location of the post office of Buffaloe (later Bethany), and was appointed postmaster. The magazine took up at once the delayed task of “detecting and exposing the various anti-christian enormities, innovations and corruptions which infect the christian church.” It was small, as a hornet is small, and its sting was as keen. It attacked especi
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Walter Scott, the “Gospel Restored”
Walter Scott, the “Gospel Restored”
But the events which were most decisive in changing the Reformers from “Reforming Baptists” to an independent group to be known as Disciples occurred in the Mahoning Association in eastern Ohio. The man who had most to do with these events was Walter Scott. Born in Edinburgh in 1796 and educated in the university of that city, Scott was still a member of the Church of Scotland when he came to New York immediately after his graduation and to Pittsburgh the next year. Here he taught in a school co
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Separation from the Baptists
Separation from the Baptists
In three years, the Mahoning Association had lost every distinctive Baptist characteristic except its form and name as a Baptist association. Scott’s rigid devotion to the idea of reproducing the practice of the primitive church led him to the conviction that there was no warrant for associations. He suggested that the association be dissolved and persuaded Mr. Campbell not to oppose this action, as he was inclined to do. A resolution to that effect was passed. The actual separation of the Refor
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Disciples and Christians
Disciples and Christians
The union between the Disciples and the Christian churches in Kentucky and adjacent states west of the Alleghenies was an event of the utmost importance for the whole movement. Since the churches of both groups exercised a high degree of local independence, union could not have been brought about by any binding act of conferences or conventions, even if there had been general conferences or conventions in either party, as there were not. It had to depend upon a contagion of fellowship between th
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Likenesses and Differences
Likenesses and Differences
Studying Campbell’s Christian Baptist and Millennial Harbinger and Stone’s Christian Messenger for the period shortly before the union of the two movements, one finds the evidence of some important likenesses and of certain differences, which were soon adjusted without much trouble. The likenesses were these: 1. Both groups consciously and explicitly aimed to promote the union of Christians. 2. Both rejected creeds and theologies as tests of fellowship, insisted on liberty of opinion on all matt
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Union and Growth
Union and Growth
By 1830 the Christian churches west of the Alleghenies had, it is estimated, seven or eight thousand members in Kentucky, somewhat fewer in Tennessee, and smaller numbers in all the states to which migrants had been going from these two. There were district conferences in Ohio and Indiana, in Alabama and Mississippi; a Christian church organized in Missouri in 1816 was only the first of several; and there were two conferences in Iowa by 1828. The growing acquaintance and sympathy between Christi
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Campbell at His Zenith
Campbell at His Zenith
Alexander Campbell’s activities during these years were constant and varied. The Millennial Harbinger furnished a medium for the development and expression of his ideas and for the exchange of news and opinions among the churches. His many long tours for lecturing and preaching were more fruitful in building morale and gaining publicity for the movement than in winning converts, for he was never a very effective evangelist. But from the testimony of unbiased witnesses, he must have been one of t
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National Organization
National Organization
The first national convention of Disciples met at Cincinnati, October 24-28, 1849, with 156 representatives from one hundred churches in eleven states. Some came as delegates with credentials from their churches. Others represented districts. The Indiana state meeting had elected messengers. But many ministers and active laymen were present who had no formal appointment and no credentials. Since these were well-known brethren, whose standing as representative Disciples no one could deny, and who
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Growth, Journalism, Education
Growth, Journalism, Education
During the quarter-century to which our attention is now directed, the American Christian Missionary Society did something toward sending evangelists to neglected areas and planting churches on the frontier. State societies did more. But the work that produced the very substantial growth in this period was done chiefly by churches and evangelists acting independently, by county and neighborhood cooperation, and by individuals who were following the westward tide of migration. While churches were
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“We Can Never Divide”
“We Can Never Divide”
Through these years the slavery issue was mounting to the crisis of war. All the churches were deeply stirred. Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians divided. Congregationalists, being practically all in the North and therefore all on the same side of the question, did not divide. The Episcopal Church peaceably divided when the country was divided by secession, and as peaceably reunited when the country was reunited. Disciples were nearly equal in numbers, North and South. They might easily hav
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The Period of Controversy
The Period of Controversy
The issues upon which division actually occurred had already arisen before the Civil War and they were so hotly debated in the years immediately after it that 1866-75 is sometimes called “the period of controversy.” The principal topics which were discussed with greater or less heat during this period were these: open or close communion; the title, “Reverend”; the “one-man system” of the pastorate; the alleged introduction of a creed; the use of the organ; and the missionary societies. Only the
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Not Divided—Yet
Not Divided—Yet
The organ question, unlike the four issues that have been mentioned, cut deep, lasted long, and contributed to division. Protestant opposition to instrumental music in public worship began with Zwingli and Calvin (who were also strict restorers of primitive Christianity) and reappeared among New England Congregational churches in the eighteenth century. It did not become important among the Disciples before 1860, because there were few organs. About that time, L. L. Pinkerton said that he was th
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Journalism and Missions
Journalism and Missions
A new center of journalistic influence began when J. H. Garrison moved his paper, the Christian , from Quincy, Illinois, to St. Louis, on January 1, 1874, and organized the Christian Publishing Company. He had been on the point of moving it to Chicago, when the Great Fire of 1871 intervened. B. W. Johnson’s Evangelist , which had lately moved from Iowa to Chicago, merged with the Christian in 1882 to produce the Christian-Evangelist . By its conservatively progressive policy, it became at once a
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Renaissance in Education
Renaissance in Education
At the beginning of this period a new birth in education was as badly needed as in organization and missions. It came, but not as promptly. The colleges had been founded largely as training schools for ministers, and they performed that function better than any other. From the Civil War to the end of the century they were poorly equipped, meagerly supported, and inadequately staffed. Since there were few high schools outside the cities, and the Disciples were 93 per cent rural in 1890, entrance
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Higher Criticism
Higher Criticism
The old differences of opinion about the organ and the missionary society continued, but there was no longer any interest in controversy about them. The opposing element ceased to cooperate with the “progressives” and was moving toward separation, which had become an accomplished fact, for all practical purposes, years before it was registered by the separate listing of the statistics of the “Churches of Christ” in the religious census of 1906. New issues arose which afforded topics for lively d
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Rethinking Baptism
Rethinking Baptism
“Open membership” had few advocates during the period under consideration, but there had already begun to be lively discussion of baptism in relation to the problem of union. When Thomas Campbell wrote the Declaration and Address —the event marked by the 1909 centennial as the beginning of the Disciples—he had not yet adopted the immersion of believers as part of the basis of union and communion. But after that practice was adopted by the Brush Run Church, it became an integral part of the progr
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Federation
Federation
The movement for federation among the Protestant denominations quickly won the favor of all Disciples except the most rigidly noncooperative, but these were many, and their voices were loud. The impulse to federation came from the new sense of the social responsibilities of the churches which became acute in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It was first proposed by the Presbyterian General Assembly as a means of getting some united action by Protestants without compromising their denom
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Improving the Machinery
Improving the Machinery
With the recognition of many fields of responsibility besides home and foreign missions and the consequent multiplication of societies, each having an annual “special day” to promote its work and raise its funds, a good deal of rivalry and confusion ensued. There were not enough days to go around. For example, the Foreign Society bitterly opposed the claim of the new American Christian Education Society (1903) upon the third Sunday in January as Education Day, because this interfered with the ex
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Widening Educational Horizons
Widening Educational Horizons
The remarkable improvement of the Disciples’ colleges has been an indication of the widening intellectual outlook of the communion and also one of the causes of it. The increase of endowments was only one aspect of the improvement, but an essential one. In the first thirty years of this century, the total of their endowments rose from $3,300,000 to $33,000,000. There was similar betterment of buildings, libraries, and equipment. Academic standards were raised, and faculties were better trained f
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Liberal Tendencies
Liberal Tendencies
Through all these agencies, the liberalizing effects of the newer learning were widely diffused. One aspect of this was that a great number of ministers accepted the so-called “modern view” of the Bible, based upon historical and critical methods of study, in place of the theory of inerrancy and level inspiration. Proof texts lost something of their finality. The pattern of the primitive church seemed somewhat less sharply drawn, and the duty of restoring it in every detail less axiomatic. Chris
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Conservative Reaction
Conservative Reaction
From all these circumstances there arose a vigorous campaign of criticism against all the agencies that seemed implicated in this liberal tendency. The attack upon Transylvania University and the College of the Bible, long a citadel of orthodoxy but now manned by younger men of university training, was spearheaded by the Bible College League in 1916. It failed to accomplish its purpose. The “Medbury resolution,” passed by the 1918 convention, demanded that the Foreign Society forbid the receptio
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An Ecumenical Outlook
An Ecumenical Outlook
All Protestantism has been seeking ways of cooperation and dreaming of unity during the past forty years. In these efforts the Disciples have had their full share, and their hope of unity has been more than a dream. The revived conception of an ecumenical church is congenial to their best tradition and has stirred them to reconsider the ways in which they may help in its realization. The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America has been the foremost cooperative agency since 1905. A D
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Rethinking the Disciples
Rethinking the Disciples
The central body of opinion among Disciples cherishes the watchwords “union” and “restoration,” about which the whole movement has developed. But it recognizes that changed conditions and widened horizons may require a reconsideration of the program of union and of the meaning of restoration. It is not the impatience of youth but the voice of experience that rejects a static and unchangeable system. J. H. Garrison was editor and editor emeritus of the Christian-Evangelist for sixty years. In the
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