THE COMING OF THE CAMPBELLS
Thomas Campbell, an Argyle Scot by lineage, was born in North Ireland in
1763, took a full classical course in the University of Glasgow, and
after that the full course in the theological seminary of the
Anti-Burgher section of the Seceder branch of the Scottish Presbyterian
Church. After preaching and teaching for several years, he became the
settled pastor of a church at Ahorey, in County Armaugh, thirty miles
south of Belfast, where he remained from 1798 until 1807. Meanwhile he
had married the daughter of a French Huguenot family, and his son
Alexander had been born in 1788. While ministering to the Ahorey church,
he also conducted a private academy at the neighboring town of Rich
Hill. Throughout his life, Thomas Campbell devoted more of his time to
teaching than to preaching.
The Seceder Presbyterians had split from the established Church of
Scotland in 1733 in protest against the arrangement by which the right
of appointing ministers had been taken from the parishes and given to
lay “patrons,” or landlords, for whom the right to appoint the parson
went with their ownership of land. No question of doctrine was involved
in this secession. The Seceders were, if anything, stricter Calvinists
than the Church of Scotland. Later, the Seceders divided into Burghers
and Anti-Burghers, and each of these into New Lights and Old Lights, on
fine points concerning the relations of the church to the state. These
divisions were carried from Scotland to Ireland, though the issues were
irrelevant to conditions there. Thomas Campbell was an Old Light,
Anti-Burgher Seceder Presbyterian. But he early outgrew any interest in
these divisive issues and sought ways of promoting unity at least among
the Seceders.
Aside from the odious examples of disunion before his eyes, two other
influences drew Thomas Campbell toward a wider fellowship. One was the
Independent (Congregational) church at Rich Hill, a church of the Scotch
Independent type, strongly affected by the ideas of Glas and Sandeman
and the Haldane brothers. Here he met the celebrated English evangelist,
Rowland Hill, who preached an ardent gospel that took little account of
sectarian boundaries, and the eccentric John Walker of Dublin, who left
the Episcopal Church and resigned a fellowship in Trinity College to
lead an independent movement. Campbell was already familiar with the
writings of Glas and Sandeman and with the work of the Haldanes. None of
these was explicitly an advocate of union; but they all played down the
doctrines and creeds which create divisions and the ecclesiastical
institutions which perpetuate them; and all played up a warm evangelical
faith voluntarily accepted and a return to the simple practices of the
New Testament church.
The second influence which moved Mr. Campbell toward a nonsectarian view
of religion was the writings of the philosopher, John Locke, especially
his _Letters Concerning Toleration_. In these essays Locke had urged
toleration, not only by the state toward dissenting groups, but also by
the church toward varieties of theological opinion within itself.
Sentences could be quoted from Locke which sound as though they came
straight from the _Declaration and Address_. All this rested on a
philosophy carefully worked out in his _Essay on the Human
Understanding_. Thomas Campbell diligently studied these two books by
John Locke and made them required reading for his son Alexander, who
never ceased to give them his unbounded admiration.
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 later was appointed to the Presbytery of Chartiers in
southwestern Pennsylvania. The minutes of the presbytery show that he
had preaching appointments at “Buffaloe” (now Bethany, W. Va.),
Pittsburgh, and other points beginning July 1. So, in less than three
months after preaching his farewell sermon in the Ahorey church in
Ireland, Thomas Campbell was ministering to a circuit of communities on
the American frontier.
But the connection so promptly made was not long peacefully maintained.
At the October meeting of the presbytery, another minister filed charges
against him for heretical teaching and disorderly procedure, and others
testified unfavorably. After several confused and stormy sessions, the
presbytery suspended Mr. Campbell. He appealed to the synod in
Philadelphia at its meeting the next year. There were extended and
complicated proceedings, culminating in a formal trial in which he was
found guilty on several counts, and was sentenced to be “rebuked and
admonished.” At the same time the synod censured the presbytery for its
irregular and unfair handling of the case. Evidently the synod did not
think too badly of Mr. Campbell, for it gave him appointments with the
Philadelphia churches for the summer and then sent him back to resume
his preaching in the Presbytery of Chartiers. But the presbytery,
smarting under the synod’s censure and the reversal of its act of
suspension, gave him a chilly reception. Specifically, it failed to give
him any preaching appointments, and a rule of the church forbade a
preacher to make his own. Tensions and animosities developed until, on
September 13, 1808, Thomas Campbell orally—and the next day in
writing—renounced the authority of both presbytery and synod. From that
act, severing his connection with the Seceder Presbyterians, Thomas
Campbell never receded. But the presbytery continued to summon him to
appear and answer charges until, a year and a half later, it gave him up
as hopeless and voted to depose him “from the holy ministry and from the
sealing ordinances.”
What were the reasons for this break? Richardson, in his _Memoirs of
Alexander Campbell_, says that Thomas Campbell gave offense first by
inviting Presbyterians other than Seceders to participate in the
communion service. This does not appear among the written charges in the
minutes of either the presbytery or the synod, but it may well be true.
He is quoted as saying that the test of fitness to commune should be
only a “general,” not a “particular,” acceptance of the Westminster
Confession, and that he himself would gladly commune with other
Christians, Lutherans, for example, if a church of his own order were
not available. Moreover, he admitted advising Seceders to attend the
preaching services of other churches if none of their own was at hand.
The heart of the difficulty was that he said that “the church has no
divine warrant for holding Confessions of Faith as terms of communion”;
creeds may be useful for teaching, but they should not be used as tests
of fellowship, because they contain some things that cannot be proved by
the Bible and many things that ordinary people cannot understand. The
only strictly theological point related to the nature of “saving faith,”
which, in Mr. Campbell’s view, did not necessarily include a sense of
“assurance that we in particular shall be saved.” He had already moved
far toward the conception of faith as the rational belief of testimony
about Christ and trust in him, rather than a mystical experience
evidencing a special act of divine grace in favor of the individual to
assure him that he had been accepted by God. Two other complaints show
that Mr. Campbell had been restless under the restraints of the
Presbyterian system. He had preached, on invitation from the people,
within the parish or circuit of another minister without getting his
consent. And he had said that, in the absence of a minister, “ruling
elders” (who would be laymen) might properly pray and exhort in public
worship.
At this stage, then, it appears from the record that Thomas Campbell did
not radically reject either the Calvinistic theology as a system of
doctrine or the Presbyterian polity as a system of church government,
though he was far on the way toward rejecting both. His divergence from
the Seceder Presbyterians can be summed up under these points: (1) He
wanted closer relations with Christians of other denominations. (2) He
did not regard the creed as the standard of truth or as an authoritative
compendium of the truths revealed in Scripture, but claimed for himself
and for every Christian the right to be judged and to test the creed by
reference to the plain teachings of the Bible. (3) He held that
acceptance of the creed in detail should not be a condition of communion
or fellowship. (4) He was suspicious of clerical monopoly. (5) He said
that a feeling of assurance of salvation was not of the essence of
saving faith, though it might accompany a high degree of such faith. (6)
He held that Christ died for all men, and that any man could believe on
him and be saved. This last point was his most definite departure from
Calvinism.
If the presbytery gave Campbell no preaching appointments after the
synod had sent him back “rebuked and admonished,” naturally it gave him
none after he had renounced its authority. But he continued to preach in
private houses as opportunity offered. None of the churches for which he
had preached followed him, and no Presbyterian ministers joined him in
withdrawing from the Presbytery of Chartiers. In those respects his
movement differed in its beginning from that of O’Kelly and from that of
McNemar and Stone. But in both of the earlier secessions the separatists
had been preaching in their districts for years, and the ground had been
plowed by revivals, and in Kentucky the way had been prepared by the
immigration of many “Christian” ministers and laymen from the East.
Thomas Campbell, on the other hand, was a newcomer from Ireland and made
the break in a community where there had been no such preparation and
where he had no wide acquaintance.
Before the final action expelling Mr. Campbell from the Seceder
Presbyterian ministry, a group of his sympathizers and habitual hearers,
meeting at the home of Abraham Altars, between Mount Pleasant and
Washington, Pennsylvania, resolved to form a society “to give more
definiteness to the movement in which they had thus far been cooperating
without any formal organization or definite arrangement.” The result was
the “Christian Association of Washington,” organized August 17, 1809. It
was agreed that a proper motto would be, “Where the Scriptures speak, we
speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent.” One member
protested that this would lead to giving up infant baptism. The others
thought not, but considered it a sound principle wherever it might lead.
To express more fully the motives and purposes of the association,
Thomas Campbell drew up a _Declaration and Address_, which was presented
at a subsequent meeting as the report of a committee of twenty-one. (The
total membership was not much more.) On September 7, 1809, the
association approved it and ordered it printed.
It was exactly at this point that Alexander Campbell arrived from
Ireland by way of Scotland.
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, Alexander’s previous thought about devoting himself to the
ministry reached the point of a firm decision. The interruption of the
voyage so late in the sailing season made it necessary to wait until
spring for its continuance. The shipwrecked travelers made their way to
Glasgow, where they remained almost an entire year.
This year in Glasgow proved to be very important. It gave Alexander
opportunity to supplement the excellent instruction he had received from
his father by a year of study in the University of Glasgow. In addition,
it brought him into contact with the men from whom, as his biographer,
Richardson, says, he derived “his first impulse as a religious
reformer.” These were representatives of the movement led and financed
by the brothers Robert and James Alexander Haldane.
Alexander Campbell came to Glasgow with a letter of introduction to Mr.
Greville Ewing, who was in charge of the seminary, or training school
for lay preachers, which the Haldanes had established in that city. Mr.
Ewing became his closest and most helpful friend during that year in
Glasgow. Ewing had introduced into his seminary the books of Glas and
Sandeman, whose teachings gave the strongest possible emphasis to the
restoration of primitive Christianity in all details. In Ewing’s
conversation and Glas’s and Sandeman’s books, Alexander Campbell found
not only the general concept of a needed restoration of primitive
Christianity but such specific ideas as these: the independence of the
local congregation; weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper; a plurality
of elders; the denial of clerical privileges and dignities; the right
and duty of laymen to have a part in the edification and discipline of
the church; and a conception of faith as such a belief of testimony as
any man is capable of by the application of his natural intelligence to
the facts supplied by Scripture. The Haldanes themselves, and some of
the followers of Sandeman, had adopted immersion, but Ewing adhered to
infant baptism and sprinkling.
The action of all these influences upon Alexander Campbell’s mind, and
of his mind upon what he saw and learned of Presbyterianism in Scotland,
brought him to a profound dissatisfaction with it. He had no quarrel
with its theology. Near the end of his year in Glasgow, when he was
examined by the Seceder church to determine his fitness to partake of
the communion—because he brought no credentials, and the Seceders were
very careful to permit no unqualified person to commune—no fault was
found with his profession of faith, and he received the “token” which
would admit him to the table. But at the communion service, after
postponing his decision to the last possible moment, he laid down his
token and walked out. This was, in effect, his break with the Seceder
Presbyterian Church. He never went back.
Alexander Campbell and the family sailed for America early in August,
1809, landed at New York on September 29, and proceeded to Philadelphia
by stage-coach and thence westward by wagon. Word had been sent ahead to
Thomas Campbell, and he met them on the road in western Pennsylvania,
October 19, with a copy of the freshly printed _Declaration and Address_
in his pocket. Father and son, with an ocean between them, had
independently broken with their religious past and moved by converging
paths toward the same goal. Alexander read the _Declaration and Address_
and was enthusiastic about it. It marshaled him the way that he was
going.
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 and amplifying the principles on which the church can regain
its original unity and purity; third, an Appendix (31 pages) explaining
several points in the Address; fourth, a Postscript (3 pages), written
three months later, suggesting steps to be taken for the promotion of
the movement.
The Declaration states the aim and the means of attaining it. The aim:
“unity, peace, and purity.” The means: “rejecting human opinions, ...
returning to, and holding fast by, the original standard.” The method of
procedure is outlined under nine heads:
1. The formation of a religious association “for the sole purpose of
promoting simple evangelical Christianity, free from all mixture of
human opinions and inventions of men.”
2. Contributions “to support a pure Gospel Ministry, that shall reduce
to practice that whole form of doctrine, worship, discipline, and
government, expressly revealed and enjoined in the word of God.”
3. The formation of similar societies.
4. The Christian Association of Washington is not a church, but an
organization of “voluntary advocates for church reformation.”
5. The association will support only such ministers as conform to “the
original standard.”
6. A committee of twenty-one, chosen annually, shall transact the
business of the association.
7. Meetings shall be held twice a year.
8. An order of business for the meetings.
9. The association agrees to support those ministers whom it shall
invite to assist “in promoting a pure evangelical reformation, by the
simple preaching of the everlasting gospel, and the administration of
its ordinances in an exact conformity to the Divine Standard.”
The Address opens, and for many pages continues, with a picture of the
“awful and distressing effects” of division among Christians, an
impassioned plea for unity, an argument that conditions in America are
uniquely favorable for a union effort, and a restatement of the causes
of division and the basis of union. Mr. Campbell revealed the central
principle of his endeavor, the ground of his hope for its success, and
the breadth of his tolerance, when he wrote:
It is, to us, a pleasing consideration that all the churches of
Christ, which mutually acknowledge each other as such, are not only
agreed in the great doctrines of faith and holiness; but are also
materially agreed, as to the positive ordinances of Gospel
institution; so that our differences, at most, are about the things in
which the kingdom of God does not consist, that is, about matters of
private opinion, or human invention.
The Address then lays down thirteen numbered propositions, which, in
condensed form, are as follows:
1. “The church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and
constitutionally one.”
2. Congregations locally separate ought to be in fellowship with one
another.
3. Nothing ought to be an article of faith, a term of communion, or a
rule for the constitution and management of the church except what is
expressly taught by Christ and his apostles.
4. “The New Testament is as perfect a constitution for the worship,
discipline and government of the New Testament church, and as perfect
a rule for the particular duties of its members; as the Old Testament
was ... for ... the Old Testament Church.”
5. The church can give no new commandments where the Scriptures are
silent.
6. Inferences and deductions from Scripture may be true doctrine, but
they are not binding on the consciences of Christians further than
they perceive them to be so.
7. Creeds may be useful for instruction but must not be used as tests
of fitness for membership in the church.
8. Full knowledge of all revealed truth is not necessary to entitle
persons to membership, “neither should they, for this purpose, be
required to make a profession more extensive than their knowledge.”
Realization of their need of salvation, faith in Christ as Savior, and
obedience to him are all that is necessary.
9. All who are thus qualified should love each other as brothers and
be united.
10. “Division among christians is a horrid evil.”
11. Divisions have been caused, in some cases, by neglect of the
expressly revealed will of God; in others, by assuming authority to
make human opinions the test of fellowship or to introduce human
inventions into the faith and practice of the church.
12. All that is needed for the purity and perfection of the church is
that it receive those, and only those, who profess faith in Christ and
obey him according to the Scriptures, that it retain them only so long
as their conduct is in accord with their profession, that ministers
teach only what is expressly revealed, and that all divine ordinances
be observed as the New Testament church observed them.
13. When the church adopts necessary “expedients,” they should be
recognized for what they are and should not be confused with divine
commands, so that they will give no occasion for division.
The Appendix explains and clarifies several points in the foregoing and
answers possible objections.
The Postscript, written after the committee of twenty-one had held its
first monthly meeting, December 14, 1809, makes two suggestions. The
first is that there be prepared “a catechetical exhibition of the
fulness and precision of the holy scriptures upon the entire subject of
christianity—an exhibition of that complete system of faith and duty
expressly contained in the sacred oracles; respecting the doctrine,
worship, discipline, and government of the christian church.”
Fortunately, this was never done. The second suggestion is that a
monthly magazine be published, to be called the _Christian Monitor_, to
be started when 500 subscribers were secured, and to be devoted to
“detecting and exposing the various anti-christian enormities,
innovations and corruptions, which infect the christian church.” This
project also was dropped, and it was not until thirteen years later, and
in the hands of Alexander Campbell, that the _Christian Baptist_ took
the assignment of “detecting and exposing.”
At this distance in time it is not easy to see how the author and
signers of the _Declaration and Address_ could suppose that they would
be able to “reduce to practice that whole form of doctrine, worship,
discipline, and government, expressly revealed” without employing any
opinions of their own in interpreting the revelation, when they clearly
saw that those who had attempted this before them had produced
discordant and divisive systems. They were sounding their prophetic and
unifying note when they declared, in the same document, that the basis
of fellowship is not agreement on any complete system of doctrine and
church practice, but is the simple and saving essentials of the gospel
upon which Christians generally are already agreed.
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 Thomas Campbell had applied for admission to the regular (not
Seceder) Presbyterian Synod of Pittsburgh, and had been rejected, the
Christian Association of Washington constituted itself a church, on May
4, 1811. This became the first church among Disciples of Christ in the
Campbell strain of their lineage. The new church chose Thomas Campbell
as elder, elected four deacons, and licensed Alexander Campbell to
preach. It observed the Lord’s Supper the next day, and thereafter every
Lord’s day. A simple building was erected—the Brush Run Church—and the
first service was held in it on June 16, 1811. Alexander Campbell was
ordained on the first day of the next January.
The subject of baptism had not yet been seriously considered. Some
members of the group, and some of its critics, doubted whether the
principles of the _Declaration and Address_ were consistent with infant
baptism and sprinkling. Thomas Campbell was not disturbed about it.
Stating his views to the Synod of Pittsburgh, he had said that infant
baptism is not a command of Christ, hence not a condition of membership
in the church, but that it is a matter of forbearance. Three members of
the Brush Run Church, soon after its organization, refused to commune
because they had not been baptized. These had not even been sprinkled,
yet they had been admitted to membership. “Forbearance” had extended so
far. At their urgent request, Thomas Campbell immersed them—somewhat
reluctantly, it may be surmised, for he did it without going into the
water himself. At that time Alexander Campbell said: “As I am sure it is
unscriptural to make this matter [baptism] a term of communion, I let it
slip. I wish to think and let think on these matters.”
Almost a year later, the birth of his first child forced the question of
infant baptism upon his attention and drove him to a study of the whole
subject. The result was the conviction that the sprinkling of infants
was not baptism within the meaning of the New Testament. On June 12,
1812, Thomas and Alexander Campbell, their wives, and three other
members of the church were immersed in Buffalo Creek by a Baptist
preacher, on a simple confession of faith in Christ. Most of the members
of the Brush Run Church soon followed this example. Those who did not,
withdrew.
The adoption of immersion in this way, as the unvarying practice of the
church and therefore as an item in the proposed platform for the union
of all churches, radically changed the program of the movement. It had
begun with the idea that the churches were divided by human opinions
that had been added to a perfectly adequate common core of revealed
truth and duty which all accepted. But now the Reformers could no longer
say, as Thomas Campbell had said, that all the churches “are agreed in
the great doctrines of faith and holiness and as to the positive
ordinances of the Gospel institution.” To achieve union no longer
required only persuading the churches to unite upon something that they
already held. Now, it became necessary to persuade them also to accept
one “positive ordinance” which only the Baptists believed to be
commanded in the New Testament.
But if the adoption of immersion erected a barrier between the Reformers
and the other churches, it brought them closer to the Baptists. In the
autumn of 1813 the Brush Run Church applied for admission to the
Redstone Baptist Association, at the same time submitting a full written
statement of its position, including its protest against creeds. The
application was accepted, over the protest of some of the Baptist
ministers. For the next seventeen years, the Reformers were, as Walter
Scott said, “in the bosom of the Regular Baptist churches.” But they did
not lose their sense of mission or merge indistinguishably in the
Baptist denomination.