WITH THE BAPTISTS, 1813-30
After the Brush Run Church had joined the Redstone Baptist Association,
Alexander Campbell began to preach more widely among the Baptist
churches of the region. Thomas Campbell, who was more occupied with
teaching than with preaching, rather rapidly dropped out of his position
of leadership, which was taken over by his son. Alexander had married
the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, and his father-in-law had deeded to
him the farm which was to be the nucleus of his large Bethany estate,
part of which became the campus of Bethany College thirty years later.
Even at the age of twenty-five he enjoyed economic security and was well
on the way toward becoming a substantial citizen.
At a meeting of the Redstone Baptist Association in August, 1816,
Alexander Campbell preached his famous “Sermon on the Law.” There seems
to have been some scheming to keep him off the program, and he was
called in only at the last moment to fill a vacancy. But the content of
the sermon, if not its form, had evidently been the subject of long and
careful study. The central point of it was that the Christian system is
not a continuation of the Jewish regime but is based on a new covenant
which, though prepared for and prophesied in the religion of the Old
Testament, is a radically new thing. Therefore, he said, no arguments
can be drawn from the Old Testament about the nature or form of
Christian institutions. The law of the Sabbath has nothing to do with
the observance of the first day of the week; baptism cannot be
understood by considering it as taking the place of circumcision; paying
tithes and keeping fasts are no part of a Christian’s duty; and any
alliance between church and state, as in the old covenant of God with
the Hebrews, is alien to the spirit and nature of Christianity.
Some of these conclusions—especially separation of church and state and
the denial of any analogy between baptism and circumcision—were pleasing
to the Baptist audience. But the basis of the argument, the complete
abrogation of the Old Testament law, seemed to many a dangerous
doctrine. The preachers who heard the sermon went out to spread among
the churches their fears that this bold and brilliant young man might be
a disturber of Baptist usage. Thereafter he “itinerated less” among the
Baptist churches and confined his labors to “three or four little
communities constituted on the Bible, one in Ohio, one in Virginia and
two in Pennsylvania.” But he also made one or two preaching trips a year
among the regular Baptists. He opened in 1818, and conducted for four
years, a boarding school for boys, especially with a view to finding and
training candidates for the ministry.
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 almost wholly on the proposition “that baptism came in the room of
circumcision, that the covenant on which the Jewish church was built and
to which circumcision is the seal, is the same with the covenant on
which the Christian church is built and to which Baptism is the seal.”
This is precisely the proposition that Mr. Campbell had denied in his
“Sermon on the Law,” and it gave him opportunity to elaborate and
reinforce his argument as to the radical newness of Christianity and its
freedom from Old Testament law. In addition, he made use of his careful
studies of the Greek word _baptizein_ and the prepositions used with it
in the passages describing baptism. He quoted pedobaptist lexicographers
and commentators to prove that the Greek verb means “to immerse”; and he
stressed the distinction between “positive” and “moral” precepts to show
that the former, including baptism, demand implicit obedience with no
reasoning on our part as to the expediency or value of the thing
commanded.
The debate with Walker was held at Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, in June, 1820. It
greatly enhanced Campbell’s reputation, especially among the Baptists of
the Mahoning Association in eastern Ohio, and brought him many
invitations to preach in the churches of this association. The
publication of the debate as a book gave much wider publicity to his
ideas and brought on another debate, in October, 1823, with W. L.
Maccalla, a Presbyterian minister of Augusta, Kentucky. This debate was
held at Washington, Mason County, Kentucky. On the horseback trip from
his home to that place, Mr. Campbell was accompanied by Sidney Rigdon,
then a young Baptist minister in Pittsburgh, later one of the three who
constituted the “first presidency” of the Mormon Church and still later
a rival of Brigham Young for its leadership after the death of the
“prophet” Joseph Smith. The text of Campbell’s side of the discussion,
as subsequently published, is based on Rigdon’s report.
In the Maccalla debate, Campbell began to develop his theory of the
design of baptism. Baptism is appropriate for penitent believers, not
for innocent infants, because it is the “washing of regeneration,”
designed to cleanse, not from inherited original sin, but from the guilt
of actual personal sins. Yet it is not a magical “water salvation,”
though he was often accused of teaching that. “The blood of Christ
_really_ cleanses us who believe.... The water of baptism _formally_
washes away our sins.” This distinction was never again so clearly
stated, and it may be argued that it represents a stage through which
Mr. Campbell’s thought passed, rather than a conclusion on which it
rested. However, it brought into prominence the conception of “baptism
for the remission of sins.” When the distinction between “real” and
“formal” remission was dropped, other ways were found for avoiding the
morally repugnant conclusion that, if remission comes by baptism and
only immersion is baptism, then the unimmersed must necessarily be
damned. Neither Campbell nor the Disciples after him ever believed that.
The journey to Kentucky to meet Maccalla was the first of Alexander
Campbell’s many visits to Kentucky. It put him in touch with men and
churches that were going his way—the “Christians,” and a strain among
the Baptists that was to furnish powerful reinforcement to his cause.
And on that long journey by horseback he carried in his saddlebags
copies of the first issue of his new magazine, the _Christian Baptist_.
“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
especially three characteristics of the existing churches: the authority
and status assumed by the clergy; unscriptural organizations, such as
synods and church courts, missionary societies, Bible societies, Sunday
schools, and all kinds of “innovations” and “popular schemes”; and the
use of creeds. There was loud outcry that it sowed the seeds of discord
among the churches. It certainly did. Mr. Campbell would have said that
there must always be discord when truth is boldly proclaimed and error
is stubbornly held.
On the constructive side, the magazine used much space in developing—as
the Postscript had suggested doing in a catechism—“that complete system
of faith and duty expressly contained in the Sacred Oracles respecting
the doctrine, worship and government of the church.” A few years later
it was said that Mr. Campbell now became the advocate of “a particular
ecclesiastical order.” To him it was the order of the apostolic church.
For a time, little attention was paid to Christian unity. This objective
was not forgotten, but it was held that emphasis should be first upon
the pattern and procedure of the primitive church as the only ground
upon which Christians could unite.
All this produced an upheaval among the Baptist churches within the area
of Mr. Campbell’s personal and journalistic influence—and it was a
considerable area. Since the Redstone Association, to which the Brush
Run Church belonged, for the most part resisted his ideas in their
earlier statement, he had formed a new Baptist church in the town which
is now Wellsburg, on the Ohio River, seven miles from Bethany, and
secured its admission into the Mahoning Association of eastern Ohio. But
in 1826, ten Redstone churches that stood firm for the Philadelphia
Confession and Baptist usages cut off thirteen that leaned toward the
Reformers, and the thirteen joined the Washington (Pa.) Association,
thereby overbalancing it in the same direction. The Mahoning Association
became thoroughly permeated by the idea of restoring primitive practice.
The church at Hiram, for example, abandoned its church covenant,
constitution, and Confession of Faith to adopt “the Bible alone” as its
standard; and all the others were following fast in the same way. Many
Baptist churches in western Pennsylvania and Virginia contained large
minorities, if not actual majorities, favorable to the “restoration”
program. One can understand the distress of Rev. Robert Semple, who,
speaking as one quite satisfied with the Baptist position, said that the
_Christian Baptist_ was “more mischievous than any publication I have
ever known.”
The ferment in Kentucky was even more acute. For more than twenty years
the Baptists in that state, while gaining rapidly in numbers, had been
troubled by dissension concerning some of their Calvinistic doctrines
and questions growing out of them—election, whether Christ died for all;
the nature of faith, whether saving faith requires a special enabling
act by the Holy Spirit for each individual; and the kind of “experience”
a converted man ought to have. Some associations had divided on one or
more of these issues. Camp-meeting methods, developed in and after the
“great revival,” offended some by their disorderly enthusiasm, gratified
others by their offer of salvation to all. The “Christian” churches,
which provided a continuing series of revivals with Methodistic
coloration, attracted those who wanted freedom both from the rigid
theology of the old creeds and from the Methodist and Presbyterian
systems of centralized control over ministers and local churches.
Stirred by these influences, many Kentucky Baptists were ready for a
call to follow a “reformer.” The _Christian Baptist_, the Maccalla
debate in 1823, and Mr. Campbell’s extensive tour through Kentucky the
next year furnished the call.
One of its most eager and receptive hearers was “Raccoon” John Smith. He
was a frontiersman with little formal education but with a keen mind, a
free spirit, and a passion for preaching the gospel. In 1824, when he
met Campbell, he was forty years old (four years older than Campbell)
and had been an ordained Baptist minister for sixteen years. Within the
next year he began to preach in the way of the Reformers—the gospel for
all, a simple faith in Christ such as is common to all sects, no creed,
every man able to believe and repent, no miraculous “experience” needed.
Charges of un-Baptistic teaching were brought against him at an annual
meeting of the North District Association and were to be acted upon the
next year. Meanwhile he went forth to evangelize and before the next
meeting of the association he had won so many converts and organized so
many new churches “on the Bible alone” that the charges had to be
dropped. In April, 1830, this association formally adopted the
principles of the Reformers, but did not at that time dissolve. Within
the year, three or four other Baptist associations had taken similar
action. At the same time, through the work of other Baptist preachers
who cast in their lot with the new movement, many new independent
churches had been formed, and some old churches had dropped the Baptist
name. As early as 1825 the Baptist church in Louisville, of which P. S.
Fall was pastor, voted to give up the Philadelphia Confession and take
the Bible alone. Jacob Creath, Sr., and Jacob Creath, Jr., and John
Smith evangelized so widely and so successfully that the new movement
gathered a considerable following from the previously unconverted as
well as from the Baptist churches. By the end of 1830, the
Reformers—“Campbellites” to their opponents—were a clearly recognizable
element in Kentucky, though most of them were still nominally Baptists.
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
conducted by a Mr. Forrester, who was also the leader of a church of
immersed Haldaneans—locally known as “kissing Baptists.” Scott joined
this church. To gain a better understanding of the restoration of
primitive practices, he visited similar churches in New York, Paterson,
New Jersey, Baltimore, and Washington. He found that they did not
entirely agree as to just what the practice of the primitive church was.
He returned to Pittsburgh much depressed, but resumed his teaching and
studied the writings of Locke, Glas, Sandeman, and Haldane to clarify
his religious ideas. The sudden death of Mr. Forrester threw upon him
the care of the little church. His first meeting with Mr. Campbell, his
senior by eight years, was at Pittsburgh in the winter of 1821-22. They
met occasionally during the next year, and the contact brought Scott out
of his fog. When Campbell was planning his magazine, it was Scott who
suggested the name, “Christian Baptist,” as an indication that the aim
was to work with and through the Baptists, not to promote a defection
from them.
Scott’s chief interest was in defining the process by which one becomes
a Christian. That had really been the central point in Thomas Campbell’s
original concern, for this, in his view, would define the terms of
fellowship and become the basis of union. But attention had been
diverted to developing a complete pattern for the restoration of the
church on the primitive model. To the first four issues of the
_Christian Baptist_, Scott contributed a series of articles on “A
Divinely Authorized Plan of Preaching the Christian Religion.” The plan
of preaching it and the plan of accepting it must naturally be the same.
There must be the right elements in the right order. He found that the
exact steps, authoritatively given as constituting the way to salvation,
were these: (1) Faith, the persuasion of the mind by rational evidence.
“The messiahship rests on demonstration,” and everything else follows
from that on authority. (2) Repentance of sins, under the motive of the
promises. (3) Baptism, in obedience to divine command. (4) Remission of
sins, and (5) the gift of the Holy Spirit, both in fulfillment of God’s
promise, which is conditioned on man’s completion of the first three
steps.
These became the five points of Scott’s standard sermon and the outline
of a tremendously effective evangelistic appeal. These points were all
implicit in what Campbell was teaching, but so long as they remained
implicit they could not win converts; they could only change some
regular Baptists into Reforming Baptists, and divide Baptist churches
and associations. The Mahoning Association was more thoroughly imbued
with Campbell’s views than any other; yet at its annual meeting in 1827
all its churches together (excepting Campbell’s own church at Wellsburg,
which did a little better) reported only twenty-one additions for the
year—and there had been twelve excommunications. It was agreed to
appoint an evangelist to “travel and teach among the churches.” Scott,
who had moved to Steubenville, Ohio, within the boundaries of the
association, and who had visited its meetings twice at Campbell’s
invitation and preached before it once, was asked to accept this
appointment. He was not a member of the association, not a Baptist, not
an ordained minister. With the Mahoning Association in 1827, evidently
being a Reformer counted for more than being a Baptist.
It was a good appointment. Scott began his work at New Lisbon, Ohio. The
first convert under his new presentation of the “ancient gospel” was
William Amend, who, according to Scott’s biographer, Baxter, “was beyond
all question the first person in modern times who received the ordinance
of baptism in perfect accordance with apostolic teaching and usage.”
That was on November 18, 1827. The force and freshness of Scott’s
appeal, the exciting sense of discovery, the thought that an ancient
treasure of divine truth was just now being brought to light after being
lost for centuries, the sense of witnessing the dawn of a new epoch in
the history of Christianity—these things gave to the campaign an
extraordinary quality. It was different from other revivals. Here was no
debauch of emotion, but an attractive blending of rationality and
authority. It appealed to common sense as well as to Scripture. It
assumed man’s rational ability to understand what he ought to do and
why, and his moral ability to do it. The first three steps were man’s;
the other two were God’s. When the convert had believed, repented, and
obeyed (i.e., been baptized), he could be perfectly sure that he would
be saved by the remission of his sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit
and eternal life. He had the promise of God for it.
Scott’s work extended throughout eastern Ohio. Besides completing the
conquest of the Mahoning Association for the Reform, it gained great
numbers of converts—many from other denominations but many also,
probably more, who had been members of no church. New churches were
organized. Some of the Baptist preachers entered vigorously into the new
movement, and some of the new converts—such as William Hayden, A. S.
Hayden, and John Henry—became preachers of great power. The first year
of this new evangelism brought more than 1,000 additions to the churches
of the Mahoning Association, more than doubling their total membership.
Scott was assisted at times by Joseph Gaston, a “Christian” preacher who
was, Scott says, the first of that church who “received the gospel after
its restoration.” At the 1828 meeting of the association, William Hayden
was added to the staff, and the next year Bentley and Bosworth.
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 Reformers—hereafter to be called
Disciples—from the Baptists was a process which had begun two or three
years earlier and which continued for at least three years after this
event. But if a single date must be set for the beginning of the
Disciples of Christ as a separate and independent religious body, it is
in August, 1830, with the dissolution of the Mahoning Association at
Austintown, Ohio.
The doctrines and practices of the Disciples which distinguished them
from the Baptists at the time of the separation may be summarized:
_As to doctrine_: (1) The distinction between the old and new covenants,
with consequent reliance solely upon the New Testament as a source for
instruction concerning Christian faith and institutions. (2) The design
of baptism, for remission of sins; faith, repentance, and baptism
constitute regeneration. (3) The nature of faith as the belief of
testimony, a rational act of which any man is capable in the exercise of
his natural powers and free will. (4) The operation of the Holy Spirit
through the Word alone in conversion. (5) Rejection of the Calvinistic
idea (which not all Baptists held) that Christ died for only the
“elect,” a limited number of predetermined individuals.
_As to practice_: (1) Rejection of creeds and church covenants. (2)
Reception of members on confession of faith in Christ, repentance, and
baptism, without examination, the relation of an “experience,” or a vote
by the congregation. (3) Baptism and the Lord’s Supper may be
administered by any believer. (4) Weekly observance of the Lord’s
Supper. (5) No special “call” to the ministry expected or required and,
in general, no sharp distinction between clergy and laity. (6) Denial of
the authority of associations to exercise any power over local
congregations (Baptists also denied this in theory), or to pass any
judgment upon them, or to lay down conditions of fellowship and
communion, as Baptist associations did when they excluded delegates who
did not bring assurance that their churches adhered to the Philadelphia
Confession.
While the movement toward separation from the Baptists was approaching
its crisis, two events occurred, both in 1829, which added greatly to
the fame and prestige of Alexander Campbell and thus helped indirectly
to get the Disciples off to a good start.
Mr. Campbell was elected and served as a member of the Virginia
Constitutional Convention. He answered those who criticized this entry
into politics by saying that he wanted to urge the abolition of slavery
or at least some steps in that direction. But he found that it would be
impossible to do anything about slavery until the system of
representation was so altered as to take away the concentration of power
that was in the hands of the slave-owning aristocracy in the eastern
part of the state. He fought a magnificent but losing fight on the floor
of the convention for the abolition of the property qualification for
voting and for representation in proportion to population. In advocating
these democratic measures he faced, almost alone, such champions as John
Marshall, John Randolph, and ex-presidents Madison and Monroe, all of
whom were members of the convention. Anyone who doubts the intellectual
and moral stature of Alexander Campbell will find a convincing
demonstration of both by reading, in the published proceedings of the
convention, his speeches in debate with these giants.
A few months earlier, Mr. Campbell had engaged in a debate with the
noted British social reformer, philanthropist, and skeptic, Robert Owen,
on the general subject of the validity of the claims of Christianity and
a religious versus a secular and materialistic view of the world. In his
two earlier debates he had represented the Baptists against the
Presbyterians. In his two later ones, he defended Protestantism against
Roman Catholicism and certain aspects of the Disciples’ position against
its critics. But in the debate with Owen he had his most eminent
opponent and his most exalted theme—the “Evidences of Christianity.” For
this occasion he was not the advocate of a party or a particular system
of religious ideas, but was the champion of all Christianity. His own
movement entered upon its independent existence with some of the glory
of this splendid performance upon it.