FIRST YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE, 1830-49
With the dissolution of the Mahoning Association, the Disciples became a
separate people with churches of their own, which were generally called
“Churches of Christ.” The disbanding of several Baptist associations in
Kentucky within the next few months and the division of others added to
the number of churches in the new body. Scattered through the entire
area which had been affected by the teaching of Mr. Campbell and the
_Christian Baptist_ were many churches which were ready to follow the
Reform, or had already begun to do so. Some of these voluntarily
withdrew from the Baptist associations with which they were connected;
others were put out. And in Baptist churches which adhered to their old
position, the individuals or minority groups who accepted the new way
were generally excluded. One point should be made clear: there is no
known record of any case in which the Reforming, or Disciple, element in
what had been a Baptist church ever excluded those who insisted on
continuing to be Baptists.
By 1833 the Disciples had been pretty thoroughly eliminated from the
Baptist churches, to the number of something like twenty thousand
members, nearly all in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, and
Tennessee. Their most important accomplishments during the next two
decades were: the growth of a conscious fellowship and the sense of
being a united group; the union with the greater part of the western
“Christian” churches; the development of institutions, customs, and
procedures by which their common life and purpose could be expressed;
and a remarkable increase in numbers and geographical extent.
Mr. Campbell brought the _Christian Baptist_ to an end with the
completion of its seventh volume and immediately began the publication
of the _Millennial Harbinger_, January, 1830. This was a larger
magazine, devoted less to “detecting and exposing” the corruptions of
the divided churches than to presenting a constructive program for
curing their ills. Moreover, it had the responsibility, as the earlier
magazine had not, of reporting the news of a movement which had now
become a going concern and of discussing the problems which arose in the
life of the new body. The name does not indicate any special interest in
what is generally called the “millennium,” as implying a visible second
coming of Christ in the near future. The kind of millennium of which
this magazine proposed to be the harbinger was the triumph of the
Kingdom of God on earth. If that was ever to come, the editor thought,
it could be only when the church had been purified and united.
The _Millennial Harbinger_ appeared monthly from 1830 to 1870. Mr.
Campbell was its editor for nearly thirty years. During this time it was
the backbone of Disciples’ periodical literature. A great many small
monthlies very soon began to spring up. Most of them had small
circulation and short life, but their total influence was great, and a
few became important. A list printed in 1845, and not claiming to be
complete, names fifteen monthlies and two weeklies in existence at that
time.
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
their congregations in many communities. But the process was rapid, and
the union may be dated as of 1832. It began with a consultation among
some of their leaders on the first day of that year and was far enough
advanced to insure its success before the end of the year.
Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell first met in 1824. They were
friends from the start, and both were impressed by the similarity of
their pleas for simple and evangelical Christianity. In 1826 Mr. Stone
began the publication of a monthly, the _Christian Messenger_, at
Georgetown, Kentucky. In a communion having no general organization and
no cooperative work, it was his position as editor which, more than
anything else, gave him the prominence that has led to calling the
Christian church in Kentucky, not very accurately, “the Stone movement.”
Since he wrote constantly and copiously for his magazine and also
published reports of the activities of the churches and evangelists, it
gives a good contemporary picture of his mind and of the principles and
practices of the Christian churches during the years immediately before
the union.
The unity of all Christians was the theme of a series of articles which
began in the first issue of the _Christian Messenger_, and the topic
frequently recurs. Stone gives the arguments for unity and states and
answers the possible objections. The principal obstacle to union, as he
sees it, is insistence upon doctrinal agreement. Stone is for tolerance
on all matters of opinion. Yet there are some doctrines in the orthodox
creeds which Stone considers so erroneous that he is not content to say
that they ought not to be made tests of fellowship; he must try to
disprove them and eliminate them from the minds of all Christians. These
are the generally accepted doctrines of the Trinity, the nature of
Christ, and the atonement. Upon each of these subjects Mr. Stone wrote
many long articles and editorials. He did not hesitate to say that “we
deny the Trinity,” not because it is mysterious but because it is not a
revealed doctrine. The character of God is revealed, but not his essence
or the mode of his existence. Christ was the Son of God, being of the
same nature but not of the same substance. The Holy Spirit “means the
power or energy of God, never a third person in deity.”
It is not surprising that the orthodox denominations regarded the writer
of these statements as a dangerous man and the “Christians” as rank
heretics. The orthodox, and especially the Presbyterians, would have
been sensitive about such statements at any time; but just at this time
they were in a more than usually suspicious mood, for the first year of
the _Christian Messenger_ (1826) was the very year in which the
Unitarian, Dr. Horace Holley, had been dismissed from the presidency of
Transylvania University, and Kentucky was still ringing with the
conflict between the orthodox and the “liberals.” So it was inevitable
that the charge of “Unitarianism” should be hurled at Stone and his
party. In the eyes of his most bitter critics, Stone was also a
“Crypto-Arian” and a “Crypto-Socinian.” Controversial pamphlets flew
back and forth. As one reads them now, Stone seems to hold his own in
theological scholarship and English style, and they cast no cloud upon
his devotion to Christ or upon his zeal for the union of Christ’s
followers in one family of faith and the salvation of sinners by the
power of the gospel. Stone was anti-Calvinist, anti-Trinitarian,
anticreed, but he was _not_ a Unitarian.
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 matters of doctrine that were not
considered as unmistakably revealed, and held that simple faith in
Christ was sufficient.
3. They agreed that Christ died for all and that all could believe on
him and be saved.
4. They agreed that saving faith, at least in its minimum essentials,
was nothing else than an act of the mind in accepting rational evidence
of the truth, and that even fallen and sinful man was capable of that
act without special assistance from the Holy Spirit. This idea was
prominent in Campbell’s thought, and it was fundamental in Scott’s
method, which gave the Reformers their evangelistic drive. Stone had
expressed the same idea earlier but he did not make much use of it, and
the evangelism of the Christians does not seem to have been greatly
affected by it.
5. The practice of believers’ baptism by immersion and the conception of
baptism for the remission of sins were common to both, subject to some
limitations to be mentioned presently.
6. Both opposed the use of unscriptural names as sectarian and divisive.
On Stone’s side there was much argument that Acts 11:26 (“The disciples
were called Christians first in Antioch”) meant that they were so called
by divine appointment, so that this name _must_ be used. But this
extreme opinion was not insisted upon, and Campbell’s preference for
“Disciples” was no obstacle. The use of the two names—and of “Churches
of Christ” as well—confused the public but was no barrier to union.
Replying to a correspondent who asked why the Christians should not
unite with the “New Testament Baptists” (meaning Campbell’s Reformers),
Stone wrote in 1828: “If there is a difference between us, we know it
not. We have nothing in us to prevent a union; and if they have nothing
in them in opposition to it, we are in spirit one. May God strengthen
the cords of Christian union.”
But there were some differences of emphasis and practice. The chief
differences were these:
1. The Christians did not make immersion a condition of membership. Most
of them had been immersed, but they considered baptism as lying in the
field of opinion, in which there should be liberty. Stone repeatedly
defended this position. In 1830 he wrote: “These reforming Baptists are
engaged in a good work. They proclaim union with all who believe the
simple facts of revelation and manifest their faith by their works of
holiness and love, without any regard to the opinions they may have
formed of truth. Should they make their own peculiar views of immersion
a term of fellowship, it will be impossible for them to repel
successfully the imputation of being sectarians and of having an
authoritative creed (though not written) of one article at least, which
is formed of their own opinion of truth; and this short creed would
exclude more Christians from union than any creed with which I am
acquainted.” Yet only a few months later he admitted feeling some
inconsistency between preaching immersion for remission of sins and
admitting to church membership without it. “When asked for our divine
authority from the New Testament, we have none that can fully satisfy
our own minds. In this state our minds have labored, and are still
laboring.” (_Christian Messenger_, Vol. IV, pp. 200, 275.)
2. The Christians had at least the beginnings of a method of obtaining a
responsible ministry. Stone criticized those who thought that a church
could “induct into the ministerial office”; that function belongs to the
“bishops and elders.” If a minister is charged with “preaching doctrine
contrary to the gospel,” he should be examined by a “conference of
bishops and elders.” The idea was that the ministry as a whole, or by
conference groups, should have power to protect the churches against
erratic or unworthy ministers. There is no evidence that such control
was actually exercised, but even the idea of such control was alien to
the Disciples until much later, and still is with most of them. But at
the time of the union, the Christians seem to have had a somewhat
“higher” conception of the office of the ministry.
3. The Christians were much more zealous in evangelism than the
Reformers had been before the outburst of evangelistic fervor with John
Smith and a few other “New Testament Baptists” in Kentucky and the
campaign of Walter Scott in Ohio in 1827. But their method of evangelism
had been of the Methodist type. There is clear evidence that theirs was,
in practice, a “mourners’ bench” revivalism, in spite of Stone’s theory
of faith as a rational act. Christian evangelists, sending to Stone’s
paper the reports of their meetings, write that “crowds of mourners came
forward weeping and crying for mercy”; or, “the preachers had a good
measure of the Holy Ghost and ... several [hearers] appeared to be cut
to the heart and were crying for mercy”; or, “crowds of weeping mourners
came forward to unite with us in prayer”; or, more specifically, that
the summer camp meetings (in Georgia) are “conducted in the main in the
manner of Methodist camp meetings.” Scott’s new method of presenting the
“Gospel restored” in clear steps created some surprise and questioning.
A Christian preacher writes: “His method and manner are somewhat novel
to me.... He seems to suppose the apostolical gospel to consist of the
use of the following particulars: faith, repentance, baptism for
remission of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and eternal life. Thus,
you see, he baptizes the subject previous to the remission of his sins
or the receiving of the Holy Spirit.” Stone replies: “We have for some
time practiced in this way throughout our country.” Evidently Stone had
already come to a position identical with that of Campbell and Scott as
to the nature of faith, the purpose of baptism, and the technique of
evangelism. But just as evidently, the Christian preachers and churches
generally had not. They had zeal for evangelism, but they still had much
to learn about its method. Scott was their teacher.
4. Whereas the Reformers early adopted the practice of observing the
Lord’s Supper every Sunday, the Christians did not. By 1830, Stone had
decided that this was the practice of the early church, and he wrote:
“Whenever the church shall be restored to her former glory, she will
again receive the Lord’s Supper every first day of the week.” But he was
less ardent than Campbell about “restoring the ancient order of things,”
and he was disposed to be patient about this as he was about immersion.
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 Christians and Disciples
led to a number of consultations between their leaders at various places
in Kentucky, and finally to a meeting at Lexington, January 1, 1832,
attended by prominent representatives of both. It was unanimously agreed
that they should unite. Since neither group recognized any church
authority superior to the local congregation, actual union could be
accomplished only by going to the congregations and persuading them to
unite. “Raccoon” John Smith (Disciple) and John Rogers (Christian) went
out as a team to carry this message to the churches. Others took it up.
Stone’s _Christian Messenger_ and Campbell’s _Millennial Harbinger_
supported it. Within three years the greater part of the Christian
churches in the area mentioned had joined the merger. On the points of
difference, especially baptism and evangelistic method, the practice of
Campbell and Scott prevailed. The Christians contributed a revived
emphasis upon liberty of opinion and upon union, which the Reformers had
been in danger of subordinating in their zeal for the restoration of “a
particular ecclesiastical order.”
There had been, up to this time, no organizational connection among the
three great groups of “Christian” churches. Those in New England and
those in the southern Atlantic states were not affected by the merger
with the Disciples. They tightened their denominational organization and
continued their separate existence until, nearly a hundred years later
(1930), they united with the Congregationalists.
It is not possible to give a clear picture of the numerical growth and
geographical expansion of the Disciples in their first twenty years.
There were at first no organizations to promote the movement, no
headquarters to project plans, no agencies to collect statistics, no
yearbook to list churches and preachers. The energy of the movement was
tremendous. As a plea for union, its appeal was to Christians of all
faiths; therefore there was no hesitation about proselyting. As a
presentation of the way of salvation, its message was to the
unconverted. Both classes responded in large numbers. This “Gospel
restored”—Scott’s five steps in conversion—and the call to union on that
basis were a simple message. One had only to hear it to believe it, and
almost anyone who believed it could preach it—and a great many did. Most
of those who evangelized went out on their own initiative and
responsibility. The frontier was open, and there was a steady flow of
migration to the west. Among the migrants were many preachers, who were
often farmers also. But if there was no preacher in the new community,
laymen might carry the message and plant the seed of a church. The
distinction between ministers and laymen was often very vague. One who
could preach became _ipso facto_ a preacher. Besides farmer-preachers,
there were lawyers, doctors, teachers, and merchants who preached, won
converts, baptized them, and established churches.
The need of some simple and efficient method of cooperation was soon
felt. Some doubted whether any organization of the churches was
scriptural. But the decision of most was that organized cooperation
among the churches to spread the gospel—but _not_ to exercise authority
over the churches—was a proper expedient. A meeting of representatives
of several churches at New Lisbon, Ohio, in 1831, and another at
Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1835, reached this conclusion and considered
ways and means of cooperation. A few glimpses, almost at random, at the
beginnings of churches and organizations in certain states will indicate
something of the method and rate of expansion during these two decades.
In Indiana, several local movements, some beginning as early as 1810,
contributed to the stream of the Reform. Some Free Will Baptists,
regular Baptists, Dunkers, and “Christians” had arrived independently at
similar ideas, and presently the _Christian Baptist_ helped to unify
them, and the merging of the Disciples and Christians completed the
process. Their first cooperation for a specific purpose was when five
churches joined in supporting John O’Kane as an evangelist, and his
first work was to organize the First Church in Indianapolis in 1833.
Indiana’s first state convention was held in 1839, with fifty preachers
present and reports of 115 churches with over 7,000 members. The state
missionary society was formed ten years later. But the growth in numbers
and churches—and it was rapid and substantial—was due to the work of
individuals, local churches, and county cooperation more than to the
state organization.
The first Disciples in Illinois came from Kentucky and Indiana in 1830.
Stone visited Jacksonville in 1832, preparatory to moving there two
years later. He found a Christian church and a Disciple church, and
persuaded them to unite. In 1834 a group of churches in that vicinity
voted to employ an evangelist and issued an invitation to a state
meeting. But the first state meeting was not held until 1842.
To Missouri came the Christian preacher, Thomas McBride, from Kentucky
in 1816, followed soon by Joel Haden, T. M. Allen, and others. By 1820
there were eight churches. State meetings began, irregularly, in 1837.
In that year a church was formed in St. Louis, but it did not persist
and was started again in 1842. Missouri was, from the start, a “strong
state” for the Disciples.
Texas was still a part of Mexico when Collin McKinney, a devout
“Christian” layman from Kentucky, came to the vicinity of Texarkana in
1824 and then moved on to what became Bowie County, where he spent the
rest of a long and active life. He did not have a church there until a
preacher came in 1842; but when there was a church, McKinney was a
pillar of it, as he was of the republic, and then the state, of Texas.
The first church in Texas was one that came in a body from Tennessee,
with reinforcements from Alabama and Mississippi, in 1836, and settled
at Clarksville. Lynn D’Spain and Mansil W. Matthews were the preachers
who came with this church. David Crockett accompanied this caravan on
part of its journey. At that time the Mexican constitution prohibited
the exercise of any religion except the Roman Catholic, but the agencies
of enforcement were weak, the seat of government was far away, and the
revolution which made Texas an independent republic was imminent.
California had two churches, at Stockton and Santa Clara, within two
years after the discovery of gold. They were established by Thomas
Thompson, a Disciple preacher who went west with the forty-niners but
preferred to evangelize, at his own expense, rather than to seek gold.
This falls just beyond the limits of our period, the first two decades,
but it illustrates the promptness with which Disciples followed the
frontier. There is a report of a congregation organized in Oregon
Territory in 1846, three years after the beginning of the “great
immigration” and the very year in which American title to the territory
was settled by treaty with England.
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 the most impressive figures that ever stood upon
an American platform. Mrs. Trollope, mother of the English novelist, and
herself the author of _Domestic Manners of the Americans_, was present
at the debate with Owen and described Mr. Campbell as “the universal
admiration of his audience.”
In 1836 Mr. Campbell published a volume entitled _The Christian System_.
This came near to being such an “exhibition of the fullness and
precision of the Holy Scriptures upon the entire subject of
Christianity” as Thomas Campbell had suggested in the Postscript to the
_Declaration and Address_. Those who had felt the sting of his
denunciation of creeds now shouted with glee that here at last was the
“Campbellites’ creed.” But it was not a creed, because it was never used
as a creed and was never intended to be so used. It was a rather full
statement of Mr. Campbell’s views on every religious topic that he
considered important. But no church or organization of churches ever
adopted it. No applicant for membership was ever asked to accept it. No
minister’s orthodoxy was ever tested by it. No one could even be
required to read it. The book itself repudiates the notion of requiring
conformity to this or any other body of doctrine. In it the author says:
The belief of one fact is all that is requisite, as far as faith goes,
to salvation. The belief of this one fact and submission to one
institution expressive of it, is all that is required of Heaven to
admission into the church. The one fact is expressed in the single
proposition, that Jesus the Nazarene is the Messiah. The one
institution is baptism.
_The Christian System_, then, was certainly not a creed, since it
declared that only “one fact and one institution” were essential.
But when he placed the “one institution” on a par with the “one fact,”
Mr. Campbell did not mean to imply that the unimmersed could not be
Christians. A lady wrote from Lunenburg, Virginia, in 1837, expressing
surprise at some reference he had made to unimmersed Christians. In
reply to this “Lunenburg letter,” Mr. Campbell wrote a memorable article
for the _Millennial Harbinger_ and followed it with two even more
emphatic statements answering objections. In this article, he wrote:
Who is a Christian? I answer, Everyone that believes in his heart that
Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, the Son of God; repents of his sins,
and obeys him in all things according to his measure of knowledge of
his will....
I cannot ... make any one duty the standard of Christian state or
character, not even immersion....
* * * * * * *
It is the image of Christ the Christian looks for and loves; and this
does not consist in being exact in a few items, but in general
devotion to the whole truth as far as known.
There is no occasion, then, for making immersion, on a profession of
the faith, absolutely essential to a Christian—though it may be
greatly essential to his sanctification and comfort.
In answering an objection to the original article, Mr. Campbell stated:
Now the nice point of opinion on which some brethren differ, is this:
Can a person who simply, not perversely, _mistakes_ the outward
baptism, have the inward ... which changes his state and has praise of
God, though not of all men?... To which I answer, that, in my opinion,
_it is possible_.
In 1837 Mr. Campbell defended Protestantism in a debate with the Roman
Catholic, Archbishop Purcell, of Cincinnati. It was a period in which
there was much anti-Catholic agitation, stimulated by what the Native
American party called “the rapidly increasing political influence of the
papal power in the United States” and by the violently reactionary
policy of the papacy against every liberal and democratic movement in
Europe. The public and the press had not yet adopted the hush-hush
attitude toward the Catholic question. Neither of the contestants sought
this controversy. They were virtually forced into it by the public
interest in lectures which both had delivered before a teachers’
association in Cincinnati. The debate was held in Cincinnati. It
continued through eight days and made a great impression on the city.
Mr. Campbell had now defended Protestantism against the highest Roman
Catholic dignitary who ever participated in such a public discussion in
this country, and he had earlier defended Christianity against one of
the most eminent secularists and skeptics of the time. These debates
were published and widely circulated.
But for the exposition and defense of his own movement, the high point
in Campbell’s career as a debater was his debate with the Presbyterian
minister, N. L. Rice, at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1843. Henry Clay served
as moderator. The debate lasted for eighteen days. Four of the six
propositions had to do with baptism. Campbell affirmed that the act is
immersion and the purpose is the remission of past sins. Rice affirmed
that the infant of a believing parent is a proper subject, and that
baptism may be administered only by a bishop or ordained presbyter. In
the other two propositions, Campbell affirmed that the Holy Spirit
operates only through the Word in conversion and sanctification, and
that creeds are necessarily “heretical and schismatical.” This debate,
published in a thick volume of more than 900 closely printed pages,
became a book of reference for generations of Disciples and perhaps did
as much as any other one thing to standardize their thinking and
practice.
The duty of founding colleges for the education of ministers, the
building of an intelligent laity, and the Christian culture of society
was suggested almost as soon as the Disciples realized that they were a
separate body committed to a long-term enterprise. A charter was
obtained in 1833 for a college at New Albany, Indiana, but nothing came
of it. The first actual college of the Disciples was Bacon College,
founded at Georgetown, Kentucky, in 1836. The name was selected to honor
Francis Bacon and to register approval of his empirical philosophy.
Walter Scott was its first president, but he did little beyond
delivering an inaugural address, and within less than a year he was
succeeded by D. S. Burnet. The school was moved to Harrodsburg in 1839,
was discontinued in 1850, was revived as Kentucky University, and in
1865 was moved to Lexington, where it acquired the property and historic
tradition of Transylvania University.
Bethany College was incorporated in 1840 and opened soon after. Mr.
Campbell projected and organized it, gave the land which became its
beautiful campus, raised the money for its building and maintenance, and
served as its president for more than twenty years. His writings on
education, especially the series of articles in the _Millennial
Harbinger_ during the year when he was making his plans for Bethany,
prove that he was an original and creative thinker in the field of both
general and Christian education. His expectations as to the service his
college would render to the movement as a whole were amply realized. It
became for a time the principal training school for ministers and the
educational center for the laity; and it was the “mother of colleges”
among the Disciples.