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
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 now out of print, while interest in the theme is
increasing, it has seemed desirable to rewrite the history. If this were
merely a sequel to the other, I would call it _Growing Up with the
Country_.
It remains true that the pioneer beginnings must be remembered and
understood if the initial motives and methods of the Disciples and the
processes of their growth are to be understood. But important as the
frontier is, as a fact in the history of the United States and of every
phase of culture in the Middle West, an equally significant fact is
that, as the frontier rolled westward, it left behind it a widening area
in which pioneer conditions no longer prevailed. As the country was
growing by the expansive drive of which the frontier was the cutting
edge, it was also growing up, both behind and on the frontier. The
process of maturing is as significant as that of expanding.
Since the present purpose is to survey the history of the Disciples
through both of these phases, I have resisted the allurement of this
second title and am giving the book a name which includes both; for the
movement is distinctively American, and every American movement which
began in pioneer days and has lived through the cycles of American life
until now has both followed the frontier and grown up with the country.
As to the future—I am only a historian, not a prophet. But I shall be
disappointed if this record of the past does not leave with the reader
an acquaintance with the essential data upon which, using his own
judgment and imagination, he will be disposed to project the curve of a
future development far beyond any present attainments in promoting the
ends for which the Disciples of Christ came into existence—the unity and
purity of the Church, a reasonable and practical religion, and the
enrichment of life through fellowship in the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
W. E. G.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I. Prelude 9
II. Ideas with a History: Union and Restoration 14
III. The American Scene 28
IV. The “Christians” 41
V. The Coming of the Campbells 60
VI. With the Baptists, 1813-30 76
VII. First Years of Independence, 1830-49 90
VIII. Organization and Tensions, 1849-74 108
IX. Renaissance, 1874-1909 125
X. Growing into Maturity, 1909-45 142
Index 157
CHAPTER I
PRELUDE
Who are these “Disciples of Christ”? What are these “Christian Churches”
or “Churches of Christ” which now constitute one of the major religious
groups in the United States? When, where, and how did they begin, and
how have they become what they are?
They began early in the nineteenth century with the union of two
separate movements, one of which had close kinship with two others. All
four were alike in aiming to simplify the complexities of Christian
faith and in going back of the creeds and the traditional practices of
existing churches to the plain teaching of the New Testament. They
believed that this was easy to understand, and that the divisions of
Christendom would disappear if Christians would only agree to speak as
the apostles spoke and to do as they did. They believed that man was
sinful and needed God’s salvation; but they did not believe him to be so
depraved by “original sin” that he could not, by the act of his own
intelligence and by his own free will, accept the means of grace that
have been provided. They wanted all the churches to unite on the basis
of the simple and clear requirements of discipleship as given in the New
Testament, leaving all doubtful and inferential matters in the field of
“opinion,” in which every Christian should exercise liberty, and scrap
the machinery of synods and bishops, for which they found no warrant in
Scripture.
Of the two main movements, the name of Barton W. Stone was most
prominent in one; the names of Thomas and Alexander Campbell in the
other. Stone’s movement (1804) began earlier than that of the Campbells
(1809), but later than two others practically identical with it. But the
Campbells’ was the more dynamic, especially after it gained the advocacy
of Walter Scott, who set the pattern for its evangelism. These are the
four great names in the early history of the Disciples—Stone, Thomas
Campbell, Alexander Campbell, and Scott. All four had been
Presbyterians.
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 their activity was the southwest corner of
Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, and the narrow strip of Virginia (now West
Virginia) that lies between them. Walter Scott, born in Scotland and
educated in the University of Edinburgh, came to America as a young man
and was a teacher in Pittsburgh when he received the impulse which led
him into the Campbell movement while it was still in its initial stage.
Soon the followers of the Campbells, most of whom had recently been
Baptists, and the associates of Stone, many of whom had been
Presbyterians, discovered the identity of their programs, and the two
movements flowed together into one. Stone’s “Christians,” chiefly in
Kentucky and Tennessee, plus the Baptists who had joined Campbell’s
“Reformers” and were beginning to call themselves “Disciples,” plus the
hundreds of converts who had already responded to the
faith-repentance-and-baptism evangelism of Scott and the others who had
learned to preach as he did, added up to twenty or thirty thousand by
the time of this union in 1832. From that point, growth was rapid, by
persistent and persuasive preaching, by propaganda in print, and by the
constant movement of population to new frontiers farther and farther
west carrying with it the nuclei of new churches in the new settlements.
This was at first a popular movement, unorganized and uncontrolled, with
no high command, no common treasury, no general machinery for either
promotion or direction. But the increasing magnitude of the enterprise,
the changing social conditions as the Middle West grew out of its
frontier stage, and the realization that such a religious body as this
was coming to be had some responsibilities other than propagating
itself—all these things made organization inevitable. Then followed
colleges, missionary societies, conventions, and the other apparatus of
an organic fellowship. But still, and always, there was fierce
resistance to anything that seemed to threaten encroachment upon the
liberty of the Christian individual or of the local congregation.
Cooperation must always be voluntary.
So the Disciples of Christ have become “a great people.” It is to their
credit that there has always been some confusion about their name.
Aiming to promote union, they wanted a scriptural name that all
Christians might use. They found in the New Testament certain terms
applied to the undivided church or to its members. Alexander Campbell
liked the name “Disciples.” Stone preferred “Christians.” A local church
is commonly called a “Christian Church,” or a “Church of Christ”; less
frequently a “Church of Disciples of Christ.” The name “Churches of
Christ” (in the plural), as the designation for a group, generally
refers to the conservative or antimissionary-society churches which
became completely separated from the main body in 1906.
But, though it is well to have unsectarian names which any Christian or
any Christian church can use, it is highly convenient to have some
designation which others do not generally use, so that the public will
know what is meant when reference is made to the churches or members of
this movement. Its objective may be the unity of all Christ’s followers,
but meanwhile it is a specific group, if not a denomination then a
“brotherhood”—and a brotherhood is just as distinct an entity as a
denomination. So, as a term that will be generally understood to mean
_us_, the term “Disciples of Christ” has come into common use.
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 number, had little relation to each other,
little concern for union, and no evangelistic drive. This party is
important for our purpose because it is one of the sources from which
the Campbells derived suggestions for a rational conception of faith and
the idea of “restoration” in its more legalistic and literalistic
aspects. It will be described more particularly in the latter part of
Chapter II.
The _second_ was the “Christian” churches, existing in three independent
groups in Virginia and North Carolina, in New England, New York, and
Pennsylvania, and in Kentucky and adjacent states. The last of these
divisions is doubtless the one Scott had chiefly in mind, and it is the
one most closely related to our theme. Some account of these three
bodies of “Christians” will be given in Chapter IV.
The _third_, said Scott, “originating with the writings and labors of
Bro. A. Campbell,” was at that time “chiefly in the bosom of the Regular
Baptist churches.” Chapters V and VI will tell the story of these
“Reformers” down to the time of their separation from the Baptists.
The first of these is significant as an influence and as part of the
historical background. It contributed to the united movement few
churches, few men, and no literature; but two of the men who came to the
Disciples through this channel were invaluable—Walter Scott and Isaac
Errett. The other two parties became substantial bodies, and they are
the two main streams whose confluence produced the Disciples of Christ.
CHAPTER II
IDEAS WITH A HISTORY: UNION AND RESTORATION
The union of all Christians and the restoration of primitive
Christianity were the two main ideas announced by Thomas Campbell in his
_Declaration and Address_ in 1809 and championed by Alexander Campbell
for fifty years thereafter. With some differences of emphasis and
phrasing, they were the ruling ideas of Stone and the other reformers
whose work preceded, paralleled, and reinforced his. To this day, these
are the two foci of interest among Disciples, and every difference of
opinion which threatens to create parties among them revolves about
answers to the questions: “Restoration of what?” and “What price union?”
Each of these ideas, union and restoration, has a long history, only a
small part of which can be told here, but part of which must be told.
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 into pieces. Efforts to heal the breach with Rome were long continued
and frequently renewed. But reunion with Rome proved to be impossible on
any other terms than submission to that usurped authority from which
they had revolted. Different types of Protestantism soon appeared. The
principal varieties—Lutheranism, Calvinism, Zwinglianism, Anabaptism,
episcopal Anglicanism—represented, not divisions of an originally united
Protestantism, but separate and independent revolts from Rome. Among
these there was a long series of conferences, negotiations, and
proposals designed to unite, if possible, all Protestants into one body.
Such efforts continued to be made throughout the seventeenth century.
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most people believed that a
nation could not be politically united unless it had only one church, of
which all its people were members. Consequently, the power of the state
was generally used to support one church and to suppress all others.
“Dissenters” were subjected to various degrees of pressure or restraint
to induce them to conform to the established church. Only gradually did
dissenters gain liberty of conscience. The intolerance and persecution
of which they were the victims meanwhile proved the importance that was
attached to the unity of the church, at least within the limits of each
nation. This kind of unity without liberty, or compulsory religious
unity conceived as an instrument of social control and as essential to
political stability, was the expression of a social philosophy which was
carried over from medieval Roman Catholic Europe to the modern European
nations, both Catholic and Protestant. The idea of unity as an important
characteristic of the church did not need to be invented or even
discovered in modern times. It was there all the while. But it needed to
be liberated from its political entanglements, as the church itself did.
It needed to be conceived in terms consistent with the spiritual nature
of the church and the civil rights of man. Both the church and the
citizen had to be made free.
Besides the efforts of politicians and ecclesiastics in established
churches to get church unity by compulsion, there were a few churchmen
and independent thinkers who argued that unity might be attained by
requiring agreement only upon the few saving essentials of Christianity
and leaving everyone free to hold his own opinions on all the doubtful
and disputatious matters of doctrine, polity, and ritual. Thus the
Puritan Stillingfleet wrote in his _Eirenicon_ (1662):
It would bee strange the Church should require more than Christ
himself did, and make other conditions of her communion than our
Savior did of Discipleship.... Without all controversie, the main
in-let of all the distractions, confusions and divisions of the
Christian world hath been by adding other conditions of
Church-communion than Christ hath done.
In very similar words, and only a few years later, the English
philosopher John Locke argued that, since men differ in their
interpretations of the Bible and always will, none should seek to impose
his opinions on another, and that their differences should not divide
them. In his first _Letter Concerning Toleration_ (1689), Locke wrote:
Since men are so solicitous about the true church, I would only ask
them here by the way, if it be not more agreeable to the Church of
Christ to make the conditions of her communion consist in such things,
and such things only, as the Holy Spirit has in the Holy Scriptures
declared, in express words, to be necessary to salvation?
And Rupertius Meldenius made the classic statement of this principle
when he said: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all
things, charity.”
But the churches did not respond to this appeal for liberty of opinion
within the church that there might be union of Christians in one church.
Slowly, however, the governments of most European countries in which the
Roman Catholic Church did not exercise control yielded to the demand for
liberty of religious opinion within the state. With this grant of
toleration to churches which were mutually intolerant, the states
preserved their unity, while the church sank into a condition of
complacent sectarianism. During the seventeenth century there had been
many pleas for church unity through liberty. The eighteenth century
thought much about liberty and little about unity. But it is to be
remembered that, when a new call to unity was sounded in America at the
beginning of the nineteenth century, it was the renewal of a campaign
that already had a long history. It came at a time when the churches in
America, happy in the complete liberty they enjoyed and in their freedom
from state control and equality before the law, had ceased to be much
concerned about unity and had settled into the conviction that division
and denominationalism represented the normal condition of the church.
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 reforming movement in the history of the church has claimed in
some sense to offer a restoration of its pristine purity. A few
citations, among many that might be offered, will make this clear.
The Roman Catholic Church professes to present original Christianity
unchanged. “What Christ made it in the beginning, that must it ever
remain,” says Rev. B. J. Otten, S.J., in _The Catholic Church and Modern
Christianity_. A representative of the Eastern Orthodox Church more
recently wrote: “The Russian Church, having alone preserved the picture
of Christ, must restore that picture to Europe.” A Chinese Nestorian who
visited Europe in the thirteenth century said to the College of
Cardinals: “As for us Orientals, the Holy Apostles taught us, and up to
the present we hold fast to what they have committed to us.”
The great reformers of the sixteenth century conceived of their work as
clearing away the human additions and getting back to primitive
Christianity as found in the Bible. Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin all made
their appeal directly to Scripture. Bucer exhorted believers to “reject
all false speculations and all human opinions.” The Anabaptists cited
the example of the first Christians as their authority for refusing to
have a creed or to bear arms or to take oaths or to hold civil office,
and Melchior Hofmann announced a “resurrection of primitive
Christianity.” When Queen Elizabeth was masquerading as a Lutheran, for
diplomatic reasons, she said she would hold to the Augsburg Confession
because it “conformed most closely to the faith of the early church.”
Chillingworth stated the principle of the Reformation in the words, “The
Bible and the Bible alone is the religion of Protestants,” excluding
ecclesiastical tradition because it furnished neither legitimate
additions to the primitive faith and practice nor trustworthy evidence
as to what these had been. Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and
Congregationalists, in seventeenth-century England, all claimed the
authority and example of the New Testament church in support of their
respective forms of church organization and their conceptions of the
ministry.
One modern Lutheran writer declares that “the Lutheran Church is the old
original church,” and another that “Lutheranism is Bible Christianity.”
A book issued by the Presbyterian Board of Publication says that “of all
the churches now existing in the world, the Presbyterian Church comes
nearest to the apostolic model.” John Wesley wrote to the Methodists in
America after the Revolution that, being free from the English state and
hierarchy, they “are now at full liberty to follow the Scriptures and
the primitive church.”
More secular thinkers have made similar appeal to the ancient standards
as the cure for the modern church’s ills. Rousseau “only wanted to
simplify Christianity and bring it back to its origins,” says A. Aulard
in his work on _Christianity and the French Revolution_. John Adams
wrote in 1770: “Where do we find a precept in the Gospel requiring
ecclesiastical synods, councils, creeds, oaths, subscriptions, and whole
cart-loads of other trumpery that we find religion encumbered with in
these days?”
These references do not, of course, prove that all or any of those who
claimed to follow the primitive model actually did so. The point is that
they claimed to do it. The restoration of primitive purity has been the
standard formula for reformation.
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 were never able to build a substantial enterprise upon
it. Yet they handed it down to those who could.
John Glas, a minister of the Church of Scotland, about 1727 came to the
conviction that, since the New Testament church had no connection with
the state, the whole scheme of establishment as embodied in the
“National Covenant” was without authority. Further, he found no warrant
for synods or other law-making bodies with power to fix standards of
doctrine for the whole church and exercise discipline over it. He
therefore left the state church and organized an independent
congregation. He next inquired how this autonomous local church should
order its affairs, conduct its worship, and establish its ministry.
Finding that the New Testament churches “came together on the first day
of the week to break bread,” whereas the Presbyterian Church of Scotland
observed the Lord’s Supper no oftener than once a month, Glas and his
associates adopted the practice of weekly communion. “They agreed that
in this, as in everything else,” says his biographer, “they ought to be
followers of the first Christians, being guided and directed by the
Scriptures alone.”
Further, Glas found that in the early churches there was a “plurality of
elders” and that “mutual edification” was practiced—that is, that public
services of worship were not conducted solely by one ordained minister.
This opened the way for a large degree of lay leadership and less
emphasis on the special functions of the clergy. After it was observed
that the Epistles of Paul made no mention of a university education or a
knowledge of the ancient languages among the qualifications for the
eldership, the line between clergy and laity grew still more dim.
Robert Sandeman, who married one of Glas’s daughters, adopted his
principles and gave them a somewhat more vigorous advocacy, so that the
resulting churches were more often called “Sandemanian” than “Glasite.”
Through their combined efforts, there came into existence a few small
churches, probably never more than a dozen or two, in various parts of
Scotland and England. Michael Faraday, the famous chemist, was a member
of a Sandemanian church in London. Apparently not more than six or eight
such churches were organized in America, and not all these were known by
that name or acknowledged any special connection with Glas or Sandeman.
Their basic theory led them to “call no man master” and to exercise
their liberty in deciding, from their own study of Scripture, what
should be their faith and practice. Robert Sandeman spent his last years
in Danbury, Connecticut, where he died in 1771, after organizing a
church there. There were Sandemanian churches in Boston. All of them in
this country, so far as known, were in New England.
Glas and Sandeman did not find that the New Testament churches practiced
only the immersion of believers as baptism. But some of their associates
in Scotland did. Archibald McLean was the leader of these. They came to
be called “Old Scotch Baptists.” In coming to this position they seem
not to have been influenced by the English Baptists but were moved by
their own independent study of the New Testament. Similarly, some of the
members of Sandeman’s church in Danbury later reached the same
conviction, withdrew, and formed an immersionist “Church of Christ.”
Although the Sandemanians remained few and inconspicuous, Robert
Sandeman himself was a theological thinker of great ability and clarity.
His writings were widely read and highly regarded by many who had no
affiliation with his movement and who did not share his views about the
importance of reproducing exactly the model of the primitive church.
This was especially true of his treatises dealing with the nature of
faith and with the priority of faith to repentance. If this now seems a
dry and technical matter, it did not seem so then and it had very
practical implications. The gist of his thought on this point was that
it is within the power of every man to believe the gospel and obey its
commands to his own salvation. The more popular theory among
eighteenth-century evangelicals was that sinful and “fallen” man has no
power to believe. He can repent and “mourn” for the sinful state which
he inherited from Adam, but then he must wait for a special and
miraculous act of enabling grace to give him faith. This gift of faith
and regeneration will be certified to him by an exalted state of feeling
which constitutes his religious experience and is the evidence of his
“acceptance with God.”
Against this, Sandeman put the doctrine that God had not only revealed
his truth in terms intelligible to man and provided the means of
salvation through Christ, but had also furnished in Scripture adequate
evidence of the truth of his revelation, so that the natural man, just
as he is, with all his sins, can weigh the evidence and accept the
truth. That acceptance is faith. Saving faith, said Sandeman, is an act
of man’s reason, and it differs from any other act of belief only in
being belief of a saving fact.
This view of faith came to have immense importance in the history of the
Disciples. They developed from it, as Sandeman did not, the method of a
very successful evangelism. There were other influences besides that of
Sandeman which led Alexander Campbell to this view, especially the
philosophy of John Locke and, above all, his own study of the New
Testament. But it is known that he had read Sandeman’s writings
carefully in his youth and regarded them highly, and the similarity of
his view to Sandeman’s on this point cannot be regarded as purely
coincidental. A Baptist writer later tried to prove that the Disciples
were “an offshoot of Sandemanianism.” (Whitsitt: _The Origin of the
Disciples of Christ_, 1888.) “Offshoot” is the wrong word; a mighty
river is not an offshoot from a tiny trickle. But there was undoubtedly
an influence: first, in the emphasis upon restoring the procedure of the
primitive church; second, in the conception of faith as intelligent
belief based on evidence.
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 attempted to start a mission to India (which was
frustrated by the East India Company), brought twenty-four native
children from Africa to be educated in England and sent back to
evangelize their own people (but the Anglican Church took them over),
built tabernacles for evangelistic meetings, sent agents through
Scotland to organize Sunday schools, and established institutes for the
training of lay preachers. Beginning with no very definite theology or
theory about the church, they gradually came to the belief that the
chief trouble with the church was its departure from the primitive
pattern as described in the New Testament.
In 1799 the Haldane brothers withdrew from the Church of Scotland and
organized an independent church in Edinburgh. Acting on the advice of
Greville Ewing, a minister who was in charge of their training school in
Glasgow, they adopted the congregational form of organization and the
weekly communion as being in accordance with the usage of the apostolic
churches. Soon they became earnest advocates of the restoration of
primitive Christianity by following in all respects the pattern of the
New Testament churches. J. A. Haldane published, in 1805, a book
entitled, _A View of the Social Worship and Ordinances of the First
Christians, Drawn from the Scriptures alone; Being an Attempt to Enforce
their Divine Obligation, and to Represent the Guilty and Evil
Consequences of Neglecting them_. This book contains an argument for
infant baptism on the ground that it was the apostolic practice, but two
years later the Haldanes decided that the evidence of Scripture was
against this position, so they gave it up and were immersed.
Other Haldanean churches sprang up, both in Great Britain and in
America. There were never many of them. No organization bound them
together, they had no cooperative work, and they took no distinctive
name. But they swelled the number of those scattered and independent
“Churches of Christ” which were attempting, with somewhat differing
results, to restore the primitive order. The tendency of all these
churches was toward a rather literalistic and legalistic interpretation
of Scripture, with special emphasis upon exact conformity to a pattern
of ordinances, organization, and worship. A few years later, two of
these churches, one in Edinburgh and the other in New York, engaged in
an earnest but very courteous argument by correspondence as to whether
the New Testament commanded that the worship service be opened with a
hymn or with a prayer. Each quoted what seemed relevant and convincing
texts: “First of all giving thanks” meant prayer first; “Enter into his
courts with praise” meant hymn first.
The Sandemanian churches also, in their anxiety to do everything exactly
as the first churches had done, took as binding commands for all time
many texts generally considered mere descriptions of customs of the
first century or instructions suitable to that time. Thus they “saluted
one another with a holy kiss” (Romans 16:16); considered private wealth
sinful (Acts 2:44, 45), though they did not actually practice community
of goods; made a weekly collection for the poor (1 Cor. 16:2); partook
of a common meal in connection with the Lord’s Supper (Acts 2:46); and
for a time practiced foot washing (John 13:14). They practiced close
communion even to the extent of excluding those of their own number who
opposed infant baptism.
None of these churches—Sandemanian, Haldanean and other—showed any
special interest in Christian unity. Indeed, there was not much division
in Scotland, where they originated, for almost everybody was
Presbyterian. The restoration of primitive Christianity was, for them, a
movement not toward unity but away from it. They were little interested
in being united with other Christians, but were anxious to be _right_,
let who would be wrong. Their insistence upon conformity to an exact
pattern of supposedly primitive procedure, about which there were sure
to be differences of opinion, tended toward division. This was doubtless
one reason why their success was so small.
Many other small and independent groups of restorers of primitive
Christianity arose in Great Britain in the eighteenth century and the
first years of the nineteenth. One writer claims to have listed forty,
but the present author has not been able to find so many. They adopted
names of confusing similarity, either “Church of Christ” or some name of
which “Brethren” formed a part. They came and went, united and divided.
Though most of the groups disappeared, the type persisted. It is now
represented at its best, and with important modifications and additions,
in the British “Churches of Christ” which are in communion with the
Disciples of Christ in America.
For three hundred years Protestantism had been based on the idea that
the Scriptures were the only guide, and the restoration of the essential
features of primitive Christianity the only method, for reforming the
church. In the sixteenth century, after freedom from the Roman hierarchy
and from bondage to ecclesiastical tradition had been won, the effort
was chiefly to restore the pure doctrine of the apostles. In the
seventeenth, attention was given to restoring a divinely authorized form
of church polity, which some held to be episcopal, others presbyterial,
others congregational. When the major divisions of Protestantism had
crystallized around their respective bodies of doctrine and systems of
polity, the restoration concept passed out of their minds. It was taken
up by smaller groups of dissenters and irregulars who, in the eighteenth
century, scarcely noticed by the larger bodies, bent their energies to
restoring the ordinances and worship of the church, as well as its
structure, according to what they conceived to be the original pattern.
When Thomas and Alexander Campbell adopted the familiar formula of
restoration and combined it with a plea for union, they gave it a
different application and produced a strikingly different result.