RENAISSANCE, 1874-1909
After the dark ages of controversy and organizational stagnation—which
were by no means so dark in other respects—came a renaissance in which
the Disciples gained a clearer view of their central purpose and a
better command of the resources for realizing it. They began to make
more intimate contacts with the social and intellectual currents of the
time and to escape from the cultural isolation into which they had
fallen. Those who thought of this as apostasy from the true faith tended
to withdraw, and ultimately did withdraw, into a separate and
noncooperating group. The main body no longer took interest in what now
seemed trivial disputes about organs, pastors, and the legitimacy of
missionary organizations. The new issues which arose were such as were
shared by the whole Christian world, so that even their dissensions
related them to the main currents of religious thought.
This period saw the continuance of westward expansion, the winning of a
second and almost a third half-million members, the creation of new
missionary and benevolent organizations, more than a hundredfold
increase in giving for missions, new journalistic enterprises, an
educational awakening, a new type of evangelism, new outreaches in
Christian union and interdenominational cooperation, and some slight
beginning of a discovery of social ethics as a field of Christian
responsibility.
The “dark ages” had not been stagnant in numerical and geographical
growth. That process needed only to be continued. As the completion of
the transcontinental railroads brought new land within reach for
settlement, and as homesteaders invaded what had been the open range,
towns sprang up throughout the West. In town and country, Disciples were
there among the first, and churches were planted. After the American
Christian Missionary Society was relieved of its foreign
responsibilities, it could do more in promoting new work in the West.
Soon the Board of Church Extension came to give first aid to the new
church needing a house. It was never a log-cabin frontier west of the
Mississippi (except Missouri and Arkansas), and building was a different
problem from what it had been on the old timbered frontier. Even though
the Disciples could draw less support from the East than some
denominations, they became relatively strong in most of the Western
states and very strong in some, such as Kansas and Oklahoma.
Total estimated membership in 1875 was 400,000. The official figure was
641,000 for 1890; 1,120,000 for 1900; 1,363,533 for 1910.
Journalism and Missions
A new center of journalistic influence began when J. H. Garrison moved
his paper, the _Christian_, from Quincy, Illinois, to St. Louis, on
January 1, 1874, and organized the Christian Publishing Company. He had
been on the point of moving it to Chicago, when the Great Fire of 1871
intervened. B. W. Johnson’s _Evangelist_, which had lately moved from
Iowa to Chicago, merged with the _Christian_ in 1882 to produce the
_Christian-Evangelist_. By its conservatively progressive policy, it
became at once a powerful force in leading the Disciples out of the age
of sterile controversy and into a wider conception of religion and more
active work in its promotion. The _Christian Standard_, at Cincinnati,
under Isaac Errett, was already exercising a similar influence. As long
as Mr. Errett lived, the two papers worked together for the same ends.
The relations between these two great editors were always intimate and
affectionate. Writing from his deathbed (1888) to his brother editor, J.
H. Garrison, who was his junior by twenty-two years, Mr. Errett said:
We have been together from the beginning of this missionary work. We
have stood shoulder to shoulder ... and the two most effective
instrumentalities in educating our people and bringing them into
active cooperation in spreading the gospel in all lands have been the
_Christian-Evangelist_ and the _Christian Standard_; and indeed, upon
all points of doctrine and practice and expediency you and I have
always worked on the same lines in perfect harmony.
A third paper, destined to hold a very prominent place in American
journalism at a later date, was plodding its useful way through most of
this period with a rather local constituency. This was the _Christian
Oracle_, which began at Des Moines in 1884 and later moved to Chicago.
In 1900 it became the _Christian Century_. For several years thereafter
it reflected the liberal spirit of Herbert L. Willett, who was its
editor for a time. Coming under the control and editorship of Charles
Clayton Morrison in 1908, it soon began to evolve into an
undenominational journal of religion.
The real awakening of the Disciples came with the rise of their interest
in missions. Legalistic controversy over missionary methods had
previously absorbed so much energy that little was left for missionary
work. The old society had barely kept itself alive. The Louisville Plan
had been a total failure. Into this vacuum came a band of devoted women,
led by Mrs. C. N. Pearre, of Iowa City, who formed the Christian Woman’s
Board of Missions in 1874. The organizing ability and untiring energy
that went into it would have made almost any enterprise a success. The
regular meetings of the local auxiliaries and of Junior and Intermediate
groups and the publication of the monthly _Missionary Tidings_ and other
literature constituted a vast program of missionary education. A system
of regular dues produced a trickle of dimes which aggregated a torrent
of dollars. By 1909 there were 60,000 adult members. Offerings up to
that time had totaled nearly $2,500,000. Missions were conducted in
Jamaica, India, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Argentina, and Liberia. There were
schools in the backward Appalachian Mountain area, institutes and
missions for Orientals on the West Coast, evangelists in thirty-three
states, a missionary training school at Indianapolis, and “Bible chairs”
at the Universities of Michigan, Virginia, Kansas, and Texas.
In 1875, almost with the founding of the women’s work, came the
organization of the Foreign Christian Missionary Society. Its early
development was slow, and it was ten years before it had an office of
its own or a full-time secretary. By 1881 its annual income had risen to
$13,178. It was still sending the gospel only to Christians. It had
missions in Denmark, England, France, and among the Armenians in Turkey,
and was planning to send (but did not send) missionaries to Italy and
Germany. An address by J. H. Garrison, at the convention at Louisville
in 1881, appealing for missions to the heathen, led immediately to the
establishment of Children’s Day for that purpose. The foreign missionary
deadlock was at last broken. Receipts of the foreign society doubled the
next year, and G. L. Wharton and seven others were sent to India. Japan
was entered in 1883, China in 1886, the Belgian Congo in 1897, Cuba in
1899. A. McLean was an invaluable missionary leader for many years, and
an unforgettable personality.
When the American Society was permitted to devote itself wholly to
American missions, its energies revived and it had an important part in
the expansion that has been mentioned, as well as on the new frontier of
foreign populations in the cities. In addition, it sponsored the Board
of Church Extension, which at first made only small building loans to
new and weak churches but later, as its resources increased, was able
also to help some important city churches with their housing problems.
George W. Muckley, as representative of Church Extension for nearly
forty years, from 1888, linked his name inseparably with this cause.
The National Benevolent Association, 1887, grew out of a purely local
impulse in St. Louis, but its work expanded from a single orphans’ home
in that city to a long list of institutions for children and old people
in all parts of the country. This and the Board of Ministerial Relief
showed that the Disciples were awakening to social responsibilities of
which they had not previously taken account on a national scale.
Ministerial “relief” was found to be inadequate, but it prepared the way
for the more businesslike Pension Fund.
Renaissance in Education
At the beginning of this period a new birth in education was as badly
needed as in organization and missions. It came, but not as promptly.
The colleges had been founded largely as training schools for ministers,
and they performed that function better than any other. From the Civil
War to the end of the century they were poorly equipped, meagerly
supported, and inadequately staffed. Since there were few high schools
outside the cities, and the Disciples were 93 per cent rural in 1890,
entrance requirements and academic standards were necessarily low. The
young preacher who had finished the ministerial course in one of these
colleges was supposed to have completed his professional education.
The educational awakening included three things: First, a few men in the
1890’s, then scores and hundreds, went to the divinity schools and
graduate departments of the great universities for further training
after they had been graduated from the colleges of the Disciples.
Second, these colleges themselves gained greater resources, raised their
standards, and many of them became excellent institutions. Third, with
well-trained men now available for faculties, there arose some graduate
schools of sound quality in connection with a few of the Disciples’
colleges. This advance proceeded slowly and on an uneven front. Some
colleges became better than others, and some became better sooner. Some
died because they could not meet the more rigorous demands of the modern
age, including those of the standardizing and accrediting agencies; and
some with small resources and low academic standards continued to render
valuable service in educationally retarded areas. Most of the
improvement in the colleges came after the beginning of the twentieth
century. In 1897 there were forty-five educational institutions,
including five “universities” and twenty-five colleges; and the total of
their endowments was $1,177,000. Six years later this amount had been
doubled. Thirty years after that, these doubled endowments had been
multiplied by ten—and seventeen of the forty-five schools had
disappeared.
The establishment of the first “Bible chair” at the University of
Michigan by the Christian Woman’s Board of Missions was a piece of
educational pioneering which led to great developments and became the
Disciples’ most original contribution to American education. There was a
touch of genius in the discovery of the obvious fact, hitherto
apparently unnoticed, that the students in state universities, which
were growing enormously, offered a constituency for religious education,
and the further fact that there were more young Disciples in state
schools than in their own colleges. Bible chairs were established at
many other state universities, some under the auspices of state
missionary societies, others under independent boards. Some developed
into schools of religion in which several denominations cooperated. The
one at the University of Virginia became an integral part of the
university. The whole development showed that the education of the
future lay leaders did not rest wholly with the Disciples’ colleges,
indispensable as these were, but could be promoted by using also state
or other endowed institutions.
Similarly, the education of the ministry gained vastly by utilizing
universities and theological seminaries maintained by others. Before
1909 there was already a beaten trail from some of the colleges to Yale
Divinity School, and the numbers who traveled it later ran into the
hundreds. Many went to Union Theological Seminary in New York, and
others to Harvard, Princeton, Hartford, or Vanderbilt. The University of
Chicago, which opened its doors in 1892, furnished a seat of learning in
the Middle West and therefore nearer to the geographical center of the
Disciples. Though its divinity school was at first nominally Baptist, it
appealed definitely to students of all denominations and successfully
sought ways of evading the restriction of its faculty to Baptists. The
Disciples Divinity House was established, 1894, in affiliation with the
university and its divinity school, and at once a large number of
students came, many of whom were mature men already in the ministry but
eager for graduate study. Through all these means, by the end of the
period here under consideration, the educational average of ministers
among the Disciples had been greatly raised and their intellectual
horizons vastly widened. The improvement of the colleges was one of the
causes and also one of the consequences of this.
Higher Criticism
The old differences of opinion about the organ and the missionary
society continued, but there was no longer any interest in controversy
about them. The opposing element ceased to cooperate with the
“progressives” and was moving toward separation, which had become an
accomplished fact, for all practical purposes, years before it was
registered by the separate listing of the statistics of the “Churches of
Christ” in the religious census of 1906.
New issues arose which afforded topics for lively debate in the papers,
at preachers’ meetings, and at the Congresses which met annually after
1899. Chief among these were higher criticism, the reception of the
unimmersed, and federation. Since federation was the only one of these
that called for collective action, and since it had very strong support
as soon as it was proposed, it had full and frank discussion in the
conventions also, as the other two questions did not.
“Higher criticism,” or the study of the Bible by critical methods of
historical and literary analysis, began in Europe early in the
nineteenth century. By the middle of the century, controversy had grown
hot, especially because the new method did not assume the inerrancy of
the Bible, as the older orthodoxy did, and because some of the results
of research cast doubt upon the historicity of some parts of the Bible.
American scholars reacted, positively or negatively, to the higher
criticism during the two decades after the Civil War. It became fairly
well known by name, though not well understood, and there were some
famous heresy trials. But Disciples did not become generally aware of it
until the 1890’s. Professor J. W. McGarvey, stalwart opponent of the new
methods, began in 1893 his Biblical Criticism Department in the
_Christian Standard_. With acumen and acrimony he denounced every new
conclusion or theory about such things as the authorship of Deuteronomy
and the latter part of Isaiah or the date of Daniel as an attack upon
the faith and the work of “enemies of the Bible.” This weekly page was
widely read and much discussed. It gave great publicity to the subject
and, by its caustic tone, its pungent personalities, and its
identification of higher criticism with infidelity, added bitterness to
what would in any case have been a very real divergence of opinion. “Few
scholars and few students were permanently influenced by the
department,” says McGarvey’s biographer and long-time associate, W. C.
Morro.
Disciples were vitally interested in this battle of the Book, for they
had always claimed to be, in a peculiar sense, a Bible people. Many of
them remembered the first of Alexander Campbell’s “rules of
interpretation”: in studying any book of the Bible, “consider first the
historical circumstances of the book—the order, the title, the author,
the date, the place, and the occasion of it.” The young men who had been
going to the Eastern universities and seminaries had become acquainted
with the new methods of Bible study, which were directed to these very
questions. The opening of the University of Chicago, just three months
before the beginning of Professor McGarvey’s antibiblical-criticism
page, gave an immense impetus to this trend, for its president, Dr. W.
R. Harper, was the most conspicuous exponent of these new methods in the
United States, with extraordinary gifts for teaching and for publicity
as well as for research. It might almost be said that it was Dr. Harper
who put higher criticism on the map in the Middle West. Dr. Herbert L.
Willett, who had been a student under Harper at Yale, became a colleague
in his Semitic Department at Chicago and dean of the Disciples Divinity
House. During several years he devoted much of his time to extension
lecturing and the holding of institutes on the Bible. His popularity and
success in this field were sensational. For most Disciples, Willett
became the personal embodiment and symbol of the new biblical learning.
He carried the flag with complete boldness, and his brilliant and
winsome figure became a shining mark for the counterattack.
The papers were inevitably involved in the higher criticism controversy.
The _Christian Standard’s_ position was never in doubt. It was against
it, not only on Professor McGarvey’s page, but on every other page as
well. The _Christian-Evangelist_ was cautiously liberal editorially. Its
editor was not a technical scholar in this field, but his mind was
always alert to discover new truth. He was hospitable to the critical
methods and was not alarmed by their results, even though he did not
personally accept all of them. For several years he had Dr. Willett
write for the paper the weekly article on the Sunday school lesson. This
showed editorial courage, rather than caution, but it was part of a
consistent editorial policy that did as much as a university could have
done for the education of the Disciples.
Rethinking Baptism
“Open membership” had few advocates during the period under
consideration, but there had already begun to be lively discussion of
baptism in relation to the problem of union. When Thomas Campbell wrote
the _Declaration and Address_—the event marked by the 1909 centennial as
the beginning of the Disciples—he had not yet adopted the immersion of
believers as part of the basis of union and communion. But after that
practice was adopted by the Brush Run Church, it became an integral part
of the program of the Campbells and it was a pivotal point in Scott’s
technique of evangelism. The “Christians” in Kentucky generally
practiced immersion but considered it a matter of opinion and did not
insist upon it. Those who merged with the Disciples yielded on this
point and became strict immersionists. Campbell’s reply to the
“Lunenburg letter” showed that he regarded the pious unimmersed as
Christians. Later developments showed that he would also commune with
them as Christians. But he would not have favored admitting them as
members, even if such a proposal had been made.
The first Disciple to argue for the admission of the unimmersed was Dr.
L. L. Pinkerton, in 1868. Pinkerton, a medical doctor as well as a
preacher, was a remarkably free spirit and may be called the first
thorough “liberal” among the Disciples. He also challenged the theory of
the inerrancy of the Bible, though he probably never heard of the higher
criticism. Apparently no other Disciple of his time shared his views
about either baptism or the Bible, except John Shackleford, co-editor
with him of the _Independent Monthly_, a breezy magazine which lived
less than two years.
W. T. Moore, a missionary in England for the Foreign Christian
Missionary Society, about 1885 became minister of West London
Tabernacle, an independent church having many unimmersed members.
Defending himself against criticism in a convention to which he was
reporting during a visit back home, he suggested that baptism might
cease to be a barrier to union if it were agreed to recognize as
baptized persons those who had already been sprinkled, whether as
infants or as adults, but to practice only immersion thenceforth. In
spite of the high regard in which he was held, this opportunistic
proposal found little favor. At the Congress of Disciples in 1901, Dr.
Moore renewed and elaborated this proposal, that a united church be
formed at once with all Christians as members and that only immersion
should be practiced thereafter.
Robert L. Cave, an eloquent Virginian, who was pastor of Central
Christian Church, St. Louis, in 1889 issued a pronunciamento widely at
variance with the generally accepted views of Disciples, and of other
evangelical Christians, on many points and demanded a vote of confidence
on that basis. Failing to get it, he withdrew, followed by nearly half
of the members, and established the Non-Sectarian Church. This was the
outstanding heresy case of the period. But Dr. Cave’s rather casual
treatment of baptism was such a small item in the sum of his heresies
that it was scarcely noticed, and the whole episode produced a
conservative reaction even in the minds of moderately progressive
leaders. The editor of the _Christian-Evangelist_ at once launched a
doctrinal revival, the permanent record of which is the volume entitled,
_The Old Faith Restated_. Dr. Cave’s advocacy did more to retard than to
advance the acceptance of liberal ideas, including ideas about baptism.
In the 1890’s the religious papers began to print contributions
discussing the function of baptism and questioning whether it is
indispensable. R. T. Matthews, a professor at Drake, said that some of
the unimmersed “are in essential union with Christ.” John Shackleford
denied McGarvey’s statement, in the first edition of his _Commentary on
Acts_, that “faith without immersion is dead.” J. J. Haley, when pressed
to declare categorically whether he thought baptism necessary, gave the
Delphic answer that baptism is “as necessary as an ordinance can be,
_considering what an ordinance is_.” Thomas Munnell, former missionary
secretary and one of the most honored veterans, wrote a long article, in
the _New Christian Quarterly_, April, 1894, arguing that the requirement
of baptism be waived in the interest of union. In the correspondence
columns of the weeklies, there were expressions of the opinion that a
Christian union movement which excludes from its churches a large
proportion of those whom it regards as Christians is both illogical and
futile. These were the opinions of a small minority, and there were
vigorous replies. In 1901 Dr. H. L. Willett published a little book,
_Our Plea for Union and the Present Crisis_, which was a bold argument
for open membership.
Along with much discussion, there was some action, but only a little
within this period. J. M. Philputt was minister of a church on 119th
St., New York, which from about 1890 to 1900 received the unimmersed as
“members of the congregation,” not of the church. “We receive them,” he
explained, “not as Disciples of Christ but simply as Christians.” This
distinction proved embarrassing. The practice drew too much criticism
and it was abandoned. Similar “associate membership” arrangements were
practiced for some time at South Broadway, Denver (B. B. Tyler); at
Central, Denver (W. B. Craig); at Shelbyville, Kentucky; and elsewhere.
At Hyde Park, Chicago (now University Church of Disciples of Christ),
Dr. E. S. Ames in 1903 led the church into receiving unimmersed persons
as “members of the congregation.” Though the distinction between the two
classes of members seldom came to attention it was not formally
abolished until 1919 when the church became, _de jure_ as well as _de
facto_, an open-membership church. Long before that, in 1906, the Monroe
Street Church, Chicago, of which Charles C. Morrison was pastor, had
become the first church among the Disciples to receive into full
membership the unimmersed members of other evangelical churches. When
Morrison took over the _Christian Century_ in 1908, he promptly made it
an outspoken champion of liberal views, including open membership.
As the last item in the record of changing views on baptism within this
period, it may be noted that at the Centennial Convention at Pittsburgh,
1909, Dr. S. H. Church, a grandson of Walter Scott, delivered an address
in which he held that baptism is a matter of opinion in regard to which
there should be individual liberty.
Federation
The movement for federation among the Protestant denominations quickly
won the favor of all Disciples except the most rigidly noncooperative,
but these were many, and their voices were loud. The impulse to
federation came from the new sense of the social responsibilities of the
churches which became acute in the latter part of the nineteenth
century. It was first proposed by the Presbyterian General Assembly as a
means of getting some united action by Protestants without compromising
their denominational differences and independence. After a decade of
desultory discussion and some local organizations, a national Federation
of Churches and Christian Workers was formed in 1901. The next year this
body proposed a conference of official representatives of denominations
to consider the feasibility of a federation of the denominations as
such. It was at this point that the matter came before the Disciples
through a brief speech by the secretary, Dr. E. B. Sanford, at the Omaha
convention in 1902, following an eloquent address on Christian union by
E. L. Powell. A resolution of approval was introduced by J. H. Garrison,
who supposed—naïvely, as he afterward said—that it would be adopted
unanimously. J. A. Lord, editor of the _Christian Standard_, objected
that joining such an association would be “recognizing the
denominations.” The resolution was adopted, with only a small opposing
vote. But the war was on, with the two papers already ranged on opposite
sides. For the next four or five years, federation was the hot spot of
controversy in conventions, ministers’ meetings, and the press. The
Disciples were represented, however, at the Interchurch Conference on
Federation, at Carnegie Hall, New York City, in November, 1905, where a
constitution was drafted. A mass meeting called during the Norfolk
convention in 1907 approved the constitution, with only one dissenting
voice, and elected representatives in the Federal Council of the
Churches of Christ in America. The first meeting of the Federal Council
was held at Philadelphia, February 2, 1908.
Thus the Disciples were in the Federal Council from its beginning. They
also cooperated from the start with the Foreign Missions Conference of
North America (1907) and the Home Missions Council (1908). Union as an
objective had not been forgotten; but, while there were barriers to
immediate union, cooperation with other Christians in the promotion of
practical Christian ends had come to seem, to the great body of
Disciples, both safe and wise.
The completion of the first hundred years was celebrated by a Centennial
Convention, at Pittsburgh, October, 1909. This was a gathering of
unprecedented and still unequaled size. It quickened the interest of
Disciples in their own history and heritage. Coming so soon after they
had embarked upon these large ventures in cooperation, it directed their
minds not only to the numerical and institutional success of their own
movement but also to the path of common service and the hope of unity
that lay ahead. It was a true instinct that directed the choice of the
centennial of the _Declaration and Address_ for this observance rather
than, for example, the promulgation of Walter Scott’s “uniform,
authoritative method of proclaiming the gospel,” or the dissolution of
the Mahoning Association. This choice expressed the feeling that the
essence of the movement is not in its separateness or in its “particular
ecclesiastical order,” but in its call for union upon the will to do the
will of Christ.