The Myth of the Stone-Campbell Movement
by
James Cook, Ph.D.
A Dissertation
In
HISTORY
Submitted to the Graduate Faculty
of Texas Tech University in
Partial Fulfillment of
the Requirements for
the Degree of
PH.D.
Approved
Mark Stoll
Gretchen Adams
Patricia Lorcin
Mark Webb
John Borrelli
Dean of the Graduate School
August, 2007
Copyright 2007, James Cook
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. iii
CHAPTER ONE: INRODUCTION ......................................................................... ….1
Chapter Two: The Stone Movement and the
Campbell Movement…………………………………………….17
Chapter Three: Alliance in Word Only………………………………………...58
Chapter Four: The Christian Connexion's Stone……………………………..96
Chapter Five: Stone’s Universalism, Campbell’s Particularism, and a
Restoration Nostalgia at Home and Abroad…………..138
Chapter Six: Pacifism, Poverty, and Exclusion………………………………..179
Chapter Seven: Conclusion………………………………………………………219
BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................. ….224
ii
Abstract
The Stone-Campbell Movement was created in 1832 when Barton Stone’s
“Christ-ians” from the West merged with Alexander Campbell’s “Reforming
Baptists.” By the beginning of the Civil War it was the sixth largest religious
movement in the United States. In the twentieth century the movement split into
three main branches that exist today. In recent years, scholars from these
branches have worked to better understand their nineteenth-century roots. A
historical sub-field often called “restoration history” has emerged, in which
historians and other scholars debate the influence of Stone and Campbell on
certain characteristics of the existing branches.
This dissertation uses the writings of both Stone and Campbell to show
that Stone was never a viable leader of the movement after 1832, and his ideas
were never part of what influenced the various men and ideas that led to the
development of the twentieth-century branches of the movement. The debates
going on between “restoration historians” are thus predicated on the false
assumption that Stone influenced people within the movement. The evidence
presented in this dissertation proves that Stone was an outsider in the movement
that bears his name. This dissertation furthermore provides evidence that
Stone’s broad and inclusive view of Christianity was an influence on another
group called the Christian Connexion which partly grew out of Stoneite churches
that openly rejected the 1832 union with Campbell. The history of the Christian
Connexion and its development into the twentieth-century ecumenical
movement called the United Church of Christ represents Barton Stone’s true
legacy.
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Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
Chapter One
Introduction
In 1832, two Christian movements came together in an attempt to practice
Christian unity. One was led by Barton Stone, a preacher from the western regions, and
leader of the Cane Ridge Revivals. The other was led by Alexander Campbell, a prolific
writer and Christian leader who had caused much controversy among the Baptists.
United, the “Stone-Campbell Movement” became an important part of American
Christianity. The purpose of this study is to present evidence that Stone was never a
leader in the movement, and not an influence on those who moved it in the direction it
went after the Civil War. Furthermore, if Stone was never a leader in the movement that
bears his name, then the “Stone-Campbell Movement” is a myth of sorts, and Stone’s
legacy lies elsewhere. The use of the word “myth” is not used in the traditional sense, as
a story used to explain the origins of cultures and religions. Here, we mean “myth” in a
modern sense as an erroneous understanding or perception. Stone’s role in the StoneCampbell Movement, understood as it is by historians, is just such an erroneous
understanding or perception.
The first order of business in clearing up such a myth, is to have a general
understanding of Christianity in the early years of the United States. This will help to set
the stage for Stone and Campbell, and their respective movements:
1
Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
In America after the Revolution, Christianity had a French Revolution. That is to
say, patriotic church-goers did not revolt according to the conservative American model,
but rather, according to the radical French model. American churches tapped into a new
democratic urge that changed them permanently. The effect was electrifying. It was felt
even in old Europe, where France’s revolution also transformed European societies. 1 In
America, ordained ministers functioning within strictly hierarchal denominations lost the
attention of the people to itinerant preachers who roamed the cities and countryside,
proposing a democratic approach to Christianity. 2 Within this radical revolution in
American churches, primitivism and restorationism flourished, based on the belief that
this was the time set aside by God to bring back or restore the original church. These
newly radical American Christians believed that the true church had virtually disappeared
during the long centuries of apostasy. The reforms of Wycliffe and Luther had failed. 3
The job before them now was to tear down these tightly structured denominations and
replace them with one universal “catholic” church as it existed in the first century.
This was not a new idea. The Puritans in the seventeenth century had advocated a
particular version of this primitivist-restorationist ideal. Indeed, it was not a new idea
even for them. As historian Theodore Bozeman points out, most Christian views are
primitivistic because they reach back to a pure beginning. The Puritans who came to
America starting around 1620 were simply the next link in a chain of primitivistrestorationist ideologies that had always guided Christianity through its many phases.
1
Sidney E. Ahlstrom, “Religion, Revolution, and the Rise of Modern Nationalism: Reflections on the
American Experience,” in American Church History: A Reader, Henry W. Bowden and P.C. Kemeny, eds.
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 24-36. Ahlstrom’s essay stresses the impact that the American and
French Revolutions had on all Western societies.
2
Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989), 5.
3
Ibid., 167-168.
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Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
According to Bozeman, the Puritan’s unique contribution was their rejection of all human
invention in religion. They rejected Anglican duality which taught that biblical authority
prevailed in all matters of salvation, but human authority prevailed in matters of church
governance. 4 More than all the medieval reforms, and more than Luther himself, the
Puritans fought for a sole authority of scripture as the foundation for their restoration of
the true church. So the primitivist-restorationist ideal that existed within the newly
democratized churches after the American Revolution rested on a Puritan foundation,
even as it rejected the Puritan’s Calvinism.
Restorationist and anti-Calvinist sentiment inspired many new Christian groups
during the early years of the new republic. Two of these were the Stone and Campbell
groups respectively. Barton Stone’s group was often referred to as the “Christians” or
sometimes hyphenated as “Christ-ians” in order to distinguish them from other Christian
groups. Alexander Campbell’s group associated itself with the Baptists and came to be
known as the “Reformers” or “Reforming Baptists.” 5 In 1832, after much prodding
from leaders on both sides, these two movements came together into one large movement
called the “Stone-Campbell Movement.” Adherents called themselves the Disciples of
Christ, although they never fully agreed on names and titles. With as many as 300,000
members, the Disciples of Christ/Christians were the sixth largest religious group in the
United States on the eve of the Civil War. 6
Jumping ahead to recent years, the churches that have developed out of this
“Stone-Campbell myth” still struggle to understand their influences and identities. In
4
Theodore Bozeman, To Live Ancient Lives: The Primitivist Dimension in Puritanism (Chapel Hill,
Virginia: University of Carolina Press, 1988), 57.
5
D. Newell Williams, Barton Stone: A Spiritual Biography (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2000), 183.
6
Earl Irvin West. The Search for the Ancient Order: A History of the Restoration Movement, 1800-1865,
Vol. 1 (Delight, Arkansas: Gospel Light Publishing Company, 2002), 129.
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Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
February 2006 Abilene Christian University (ACU) held their eighty-eighth annual
lectureship, which was also the centennial of the school’s founding in 1906. 7 Long
labeled a “progressive” university within the Churches of Christ college system, most
who attended these lectureships expected ACU to do and say unorthodox things. A
theme of unity and ecumenicity had been included in the lectureships for years now.
Leading writers, scholars and ministers within the tradition—loosely labeled “restoration
historians”—had been using the ACU lectureships as a platform for change within the
Churches of Christ as far back as the 1960’s. They called for a rejection of the
movement’s history of condemning other church traditions and denominations. They
called for more tolerance and cooperation, especially between the three branches of the
“Stone-Campbell” tradition, namely the Churches of Christ, the Christian Churches
(Independent), and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). They called for more
attention to be given the group’s nineteenth-century origins, which began with the socalled union between Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell in 1832. The desire was to
move cautiously away from the exclusionism that had always been a part of this
conservative branch of the “Stone-Campbell” tradition, and toward more cooperation
with the other branches.
Many were not prepared for the extent to which the progressives at ACU were
willing to embrace change at these centennial lectureships. The thinking perhaps was
that all this talk of ecumenicity and embracing of other branches of the “Stone-Campbell”
tradition was merely a needed corrective to the excessive exclusionism of the past. There
had always been calls to unity, but never one that was not predicated on other groups
7
This author attended the event and spoke with some of the participants as part of the research in
preparation for writing about the “Stone-Campbell” tradition.
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Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
seeing their biblical errors and giving some ground on them. Indeed, that was the proud
tradition of Churches of Christ, who were known as people of the Word, willing to argue
for a correct interpretation of scriptures as their studious, “common sense” approach led
them. It was a style they had inherited from Campbell himself. Many within the group
were unwilling to give those things up in order to have unity with other groups.
The centennial lectureships began with an opening ceremony at ACU’s Moody
Coliseum on a Sunday night. The keynote speakers were Royce Money, the president of
ACU, and Don Jeanes, president of Milligan College which is affiliated with the
Christian Churches (Independent). Together they called for unity between the two
churches, and asked mainline Churches of Christ to set aside their differences with the
Christian Churches, and to repent of their past contentiousness. The hermeneutic issues
that separated the two churches should be set aside, they claimed, in the interest of
Christian unity. Issues such as the use of instrumental music in worship and the role of
women in the church should be seen as matters of opinion, they implied, although
without directly engaging those key issues. It was a bold yet cautious push toward unity:
bold because the key note speaker position was being shared with a college president
from the Christian Churches; cautious because they spoke in a way that danced around
many of the points of contention between the two churches. Most of the audience
applauded.
The next day at a “Restoration Unity Forum” a panel of Church of Christ and
Christian Church leaders (including one woman) gave testimony to the need for unity
among the two factions of the Stone-Campbell tradition. Again, as in the opening
ceremonies, most people in the audience seemed to agree with the changes being
5
Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
discussed. Comments indicated that many saw these changes as something the churches
had been working toward for a very long time. Yet, there was an uneasiness also present
in the audience. How willing would the mainline Churches of Christ be to give up their
cherished stance on instrumental music, the role of women in the church, and other
biblical issues that defined their beliefs in restorationism and anti-denominationalism?
After all these years of being exclusive, could they successfully fellowship with Christian
Churches? Could they all go back to their roots in the “Stone-Campbell” tradition and
find some common ground upon which to unite? Many doubted that such a thing would
be possible or even desirable. Many traditionalists felt that ACU was giving away their
long-fought-for stand on biblical purity and right-headed, rational interpretation of
scripture. They were selling out on the doctrinal and interpretational stances that defined
the Churches of Christ and gave them their distinctive role as seekers of exact scriptural
truth. Who had authorized ACU to make such a choice? Who was in charge here
anyway? What was going to happen now?
All the above questions were asked at the 2006 ACU centennial lectureships.
They were not necessarily asked publicly because the ACU agenda of unity prevailed in
all the public speaking engagements. But privately, these fearful questions were asked
among many Churches of Christ members who were uncomfortable with the attempted
uniting of their church with those they had always disagreed with on important issues.
The fearful questions continued after the lectureships as the drive toward unity spread to
places like Lubbock, Texas. Churches of Christ and Christian Churches there began to
move toward some sort of historical reconciliation. Many members within the Churches
of Christ were against these unity efforts, and therefore were not consulted when attempts
6
Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
to carry them out began. Those behind the unity efforts (and the media reporting them)
simply assumed that anyone not interested in joining the unity effort was entrenched in
the old exclusionism. In a newspaper article about the unity phenomenon, critics of it got
barely a mention, and it was a negative one. 8 Many thought that the whole question of
the nature of unity and the cost of unity to individual freedom should have been readdressed. Instead, the unity efforts moved forward, without further debate. Despite this,
it is doubtful how successful they ultimately will be, given the internal resistance to them.
This stalemate between progressives and traditionalists is exacerbated by the inability or
unwillingness of these churches to agree on the meaning of their nineteenth-century
roots. The hope is that this study’s focus on a correct analysis of Stone and his real
contributions to American Christianity will aid these churches in getting past some of the
conflicts they now face.
Another purpose of this study is to understand, within the context of this
particular Christian tradition, the paradoxical urge to embrace unity and at the same time
seek absolute truth in scripture. The Churches of Christ exemplify this paradox, for how
can a church embrace an absolute understanding of scripture yet be united with those who
disagree with that understanding? On a basic level, it seems that one must choose either
unity or truth. Trying to have both at the same time does not work. This dilemma was at
the foundation of the “Stone-Campbell” union in 1832, where Barton Stone’s
“Christians” from the West joined with Campbell’s Reformed Baptists. This union of the
two groups was pushed forward, even though the differences between Stone and
8
An article in the Lubbock Avalanche Journal on April 1, 2006 (by Beth Pratt, in the Vista section B1 &
B2) says, “Opposition to the unity movement is equally adamant that unity is a wicked compromise.” The
implication is that those against these unity efforts are against all unity, and are therefore exclusivists. In
reality, these “exclusivists” claim to have unity agendas of their own.
7
Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
Campbell were considerable. Therefore, this study will focus on a particular answer to
this unity-truth dilemma. The answer leads us back to the central thesis: Barton Stone,
although he supported the 1832 union, did not consequently become a leader in the
consolidated movement that union created. His understanding of Christian unity and
truth were so universal and broad compared to Campbell’s, that his voice was effectively
muted within the movement from the very beginning. In short, Stone was never a leader
in the “Stone-Campbell Movement.” He was always a voice on the outside, urging all to
embrace a broad Christian path. No one within the Campbell Movement was listening.
This analysis begins by showing the deep divide that existed between these two
men. Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell, when they united their two Christian
movements, were far from being in agreement on any of the key theological,
philosophical, or political ideas of their time. In many ways, they were complete
opposites, contradicting themselves in so many ways that it almost seems bizarre in
retrospect that they ever brought together their movements in the first place. Once these
differences are established, it will then be possible to move toward the understanding that
Campbell was the only true influence in the movement after 1832. It is common for the
“restoration historians” who study this part of American religious history to debate over
the various influences that Stone and Campbell had within the movement. Some
characteristics are explained as being the result of Campbell’s influence, while others are
explained in lieu of Stone. By showing how these arguments wrongly assume that Stone
had an influence on the movement, it is then possible to look at the history of the
movement in a new light. The events at ACU in 2006 are understood differently when
we see them as not being the result of a Stone versus Campbell conflict. It also helps to
8
Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
put Stone in a more accurate historical context, for although he has no influence on the
movement that bears his name, his unique voice does resonate in other Christian groups
who embrace his broad Christian view.
Over the past four decades, a notable body of work has developed in this field we
call “restoration history.” The writers and scholars who participate in this field are
mostly from the modern churches that are derived from the “Stone-Campbell” tradition.
They are too numerous to list here, for this is a field that has attracted many religious and
historical scholars over the past few decades, and many of them have been influential in
my own research. But the following have made important contributions that particularly
stand out as influential in my conclusions, and therefore they deserve mention:
Richard T. Hughes was one of the first voices in restoration history. He has
written extensively about it since the 1960’s. In an article published in Religion and
American Culture in 1992 he proposed what he termed an “apocalyptic” understanding of
Stone’s world view which became the basis for the Southern-dominated Churches of
Christ division in the twentieth century. He went on to show how modernism finally
prevailed in the Churches of Christ. 9 His embrace of Stone as this sort of alternate
leadership within the movement, led to a tradition of pitting Stone against Campbell in
regards to the ongoing historical development of the movement. More recently, Hughes
has written about the role of myth in the American religious experience, which appears to
be a successful attempt to broaden the previous discussions to include restorationism and
primitivism in a discussion of American religious history in general. 10 This blending of
restoration history with the broader field of American religious history can only have
9
Richard T. Hughes, “The Apocalyptic Origins of Churches of Christ and the Triumph of Modernism,”
American Origins of Churches of Christ (Abilene, Tx: ACU Press).
10
Richard T. Hughes, Myths America Lives By (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004).
9
Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
positive results for our understanding of this and other American church traditions. But
Hughes’ polarization of the “Stone-Campbell” movement leads to my questions: what if
the evidence requires that you take Stone out of the leadership equation? What new
perspectives on the movement would emerge? Hopefully the chapters that follow will
shed some light on those questions.
C. Leonard Allen co-wrote a book with Hughes called Illusions of Innocence:
Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630-1875. 11 This book attempted to show how the
Stone-Campbell tradition (as well as other primitivist efforts) was grounded in these
apocalyptic urges of grass-roots Christian movements after the American Revolution.
Allen has recently published a valuable book called Thing Unseen: Churches of Christ In
(and After) the Modern Age, 12 which builds on years of research to show that the StoneCampbell tradition is indeed moving away from modernism. Together, Hughes and
Allen represent the approach to restoration studies in keeping with intellectual history.
They tend to see events as motivated by ideas. In 1988, Hughes and Allen, along with
Michael Weed wrote a book called The Worldly Church: A Call for Biblical Renewal. 13
This small but influential book was the beginning of attempts by scholars within the
Churches of Christ tradition to awaken their members to the underlying theological
themes that the movement is rooted in. They proposed a new sort of sectarianism, which
amounted to a return to a more counter-cultural approach to society. The Churches of
Christ, they claimed, had become too beholden to the world, too comfortable in their
11
Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen, Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America,
1630-1875 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).
12
C. Leonard Allen, Things Unseen: Churches of Christ In (and After) the Modern Age (Siloam Springs,
Arkansas: Leafwood Publishers, 2004).
13
Richard Hughes, C. Leonard Allen, and Michael Weed, The Worldly Church: A Call for Biblical
Renewal (Abilene, Texas: ACU Press, 1988).
10
Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
mainstream role. Some saw this book as a thinly veiled plea to reject the “Campbell”
side of the tradition and embrace the “Stone” side. Again, if evidence required that we
take Stone out of the leadership equation, the message of this book would have to be reevaluated on those new terms.
David E. Harrell represents the other side to restoration studies. He presents a
social historian’s view of the tradition. Back in 1964 he wrote his influential article,
“The Sectional Origins of Churches of Christ” 14 which clearly showed the importance of
the Civil War in the impending division of the Stone-Campbell tradition. Then in Quest
for a Christian America 15 he further advances his view that religious divisions in the
Campbell tradition occurred because of social factors more often than because of
theological differences. More recently, Harrell has written a very thorough history of the
Churches of Christ in the twentieth century, 16 which has been an important source for my
project. Harrell’s roots in the anti-institutional Churches of Christ give him a unique
perspective on issues and events in the twentieth century.
Two historians from the Independent Christian Church division, Henry Webb and
James North, also represent this social versus intellectual approach to Restoration studies.
Webb tends to work through social history while North through intellectual history.
Their perspectives reflect what is sometimes called a middle approach between the liberal
Disciples of Christ and the sectarian Churches of Christ. 17
14
David E. Harrell, “The Sectional Origins of Churches of Christ,” American Origins of Churches of Christ
(Abilene, Texas: ACU Press).
15
David E. Harrell, Quest for a Christian America: The Disciples of Christ and American Society to 1866
(Nashville, Tennessee: Disciples of Christ Historical Society, 1966).
16
David E. Harrell, The Churches of Christ in the 20th Century: Homer Hailey’s Personal Journey of Faith
(Tuscaloosa, Alabama: The University of Alabama Press, 2000).
17
Henry E. Webb, In Search of Christian Unity: A History of the Restoration Movement (Cincinnati:
Standard Publishing Company, 1990) and James North, Union in Truth: An Interpretive History of the
Restoration Movement (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing Company, 1994).
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Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
Nathan O. Hatch, who is not directly attached to the “Stone-Campbell” tradition,
is best known for his astute assessment of the role of American democracy in the creation
of the Second Great Awakening. His book, The Democratization of American
Christianity 18 shows how peripheral Christian movements from roughly 1790 to 1830
were attempts to create a “bottom-up” church structure that rejected the centralized,
authoritative system of the established denominations. Democracy infused Christianity
in a significant and radical way, and to a certain extent, the early Stone and Campbell
movements were a part of that. In an engaging fashion, Hatch shows how Calvin’s
“elect” were tossed out in favor of a Jeffersonian-egalitarian view of Christianity.
Historian and church activist Leroy Garrett figures prominently in restoration
studies. He has been a dissident voice within the Churches of Christ since the 1950’s.
His ideas have recently gained a following in certain pockets of the movement, and his
story is a big part of the developments within Churches of Christ in recent years. He was
the first one to write a comprehensive history of the Stone-Campbell movement that
treated all divisions more or less equally. 19 Part of Garrett’s appeal is his sense of
fairness and openness to the variety of opinions and beliefs that exist within what I will
simply refer to in this work as the Campbell tradition. Building on the more ecumenical
stance that Garrett helped create, other men such as Douglas Foster, professor and
director of restoration studies at Abilene Christian University, have written and edited
numerous books on restoration subjects. Along with Paul Blowers, Anthony L.
Dunnavant, and D. Newell Williams, Foster has edited the first detailed encyclopedia of
18
Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989).
19
Leroy Garrett, The Stone-Campbell Movement: The Story of the American Restoration Movement (Joplin,
Missouri: College Press Publishing Co., 1981).
12
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the “Stone-Campbell” Movement. 20 D. Newell Williams has also written a “spiritual
biography” of Stone, which was valuable to the completion of this work. Newell’s thesis
is that Stone never fully abandoned his Presbyterian roots. 21 Seeing Stone as clinging to
Presbyterian traditions helps to understand his complexities, and why he would want to
unite with Campbell even though they had so little in common. It also speaks to Stone’s
view of unity as a thing that embraces all differences.
The above-mentioned Dunnavant and Williams are both scholars from the
Disciples of Christ branch of the Campbell tradition. 22 They are preceded by earlier
Disciples scholars, all of whom contributed various studies to the Campbell tradition.
Two of these earlier scholars are Winfred Ernest Garrison and Alfred T. DeGroot. 23
Also, George Beazley Jr. edits a collection of works on the Disciples of Christ which
offers an analysis within a cultural context.24
Many scholars outside the Stone-Campbell tradition such as George Marsden,
Mark Noll, Theodore Bozeman, and Grant Wacker, have done similar studies of other
Christian traditions with much the same effect. Referred to as the “new evangelical
historians,” 25 they have attempted to help certain Christian traditions revive themselves
and often redefine themselves by looking to the past for clues as to why their movements
are the way they are. In other words, the goal of these writers is to create a usable past
20
Douglas Foster, et al. eds, The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (Grand Rapids, Michigan:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004).
21
D. Newell Williams, Barton Stone: A Spiritual Biography (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2000).
22
Anthony Dunnavant. “David Lipsomb and the ‘Preferential Option for the Poor’ among Postbellum
Churches of Christ,” in The Stone-Campbell Movement, Douglas Foster, ed. (Knoxville, Tennessee:
University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 435-454.
23
Winfred Ernest Garrison and Alfred T. DeGroot, The Disciples of Christ: A History (St. Louis, Missouri:
The Bethany Press, 1948).
24
George Beazley Jr., ed., The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ): An Interpretive Examination in the
Cultural Context (Ontario, Canada: Bethany Press, 1973).
25
Michael Casey and Douglas Foster, eds., The Stone-Campbell Movement: An International Religious
Tradition (Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 4.
13
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for these traditions that have often been ignorant of their historical roots. Within the
Campbell tradition this approach has sparked much controversy and debate, often pitting
the churches and universities against one another. It seems reasonable to suggest that
there is a need for more secular-oriented academic institutions to enter these debates and
contribute to the discussions taking place. Such an outside perspective would be
valuable.
The archives and library of Abilene Christian University have provided an
extensive collection of primary sources, especially in regards to the writings of Barton
Stone and Alexander Campbell. Their prospective journals in the 1820’s, The Christian
Messenger 26 and The Christian Baptist 27 offer a look into the minds of these two
Christian leaders as they struggled to find common ground even as their theological
views remained very separate. Interestingly, Campbell’s writing is very accessible to
scholars. The Millennial Harbinger, 28 his second and most influential journal, is widely
available. But Stone’s work is less available. An effort by Star Bible Publications has
collected and restored most of The Christian Messenger’s volumes from 1826 to 1844. I
was fortunate to have access to them at ACU. Early documents such as Stone’s “Last
Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery” and Thomas Campbell’s “Declaration
and Address” were important to this analysis also. Stone’s autobiography 29 was
valuable, especially in understanding the deep divide that existed between Stone and
Campbell after 1832. It was also helpful to compare what Stone said in his narrative to
the way he wrote in The Christian Messenger. Campbell’s important theological treatise,
26
Barton W. Stone, ed., The Christian Messenger. Georgetown, Kentucky (1826-1844).
Alexander Campbell, ed., The Christian Baptist. Buffalo, B.C. Virginia (1824-1830).
28
Alexander Campbell, ed., Millennial Harbinger, Bethany, Virginia (1830-1866).
29
Barton W. Stone and John Rogers, The Biography of ElderBarton Warren Stone (Cincinnati: J.A. & U.P.
James. 1847).
27
14
Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
The Christian System, 30 first published in 1836 provides the best look at his ideas
regarding theology and specific world-views.
Another important primary source was Robert Richardson’s biography of
Alexander Campbell 31 , written after Campbell’s death. Richardson not only was an
important part of this history, but perhaps still Campbell’s finest biographer. Because he
had access to many primary source documents now lost to modern scholars, his
biography still stands as the best there is.
Chapters Two and Three will establish the various and substantial differences in
the way Stone and Campbell viewed the Christian church. Using their journals as
primary sources, it will be shown how differently these two men thought, despite the fact
that during the 1820’s they had a close editorial alliance, mostly against the large
denominations they both criticized. Chapter Four will show that the “Christ-ians” of the
West, who Stone partially abandoned when he united with Campbell in 1832, constitute
Stone’s true legacy. They become a vital part of what is called the “Christian
Connexion.” Therefore, Chapter Four will be a thorough analysis of the development of
the Christian Connexion, an often ignored Christian tradition that ultimately became a
part of the modern-day United Church of Christ, a significant ecumenical movement over
the past fifty years. Chapter Four will show them to be a valid part of restoration history,
as well as Stone’s true legacy. Chapter Five will return to the post-1832 Campbell
Movement to look at some of the problems that occur as a result of Campbell’s dualistic
nature, and the absence of Stone’s influence. Issues such as the dispute over the use of
30
Alexander Campbell, The Christian System (Cincinnati, Ohio: Standard Publishing Co., 1836).
Robert Richardson, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, Embracing a View of the Origins, Progress and
Principles of the Religious Reformation Which He Advocated. (Reprint, Gospel Light Publishing Co.:
Delight, Arkansas).
31
15
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societies outside the church, attitudes toward missionary efforts, and attitudes toward
slavery during the years of sectionalism will be explored. Chapter Six will deal with the
ways that divisions within the Campbell movement approach the question of how a
Christian is to live in relation to the world around him. Again, it will be shown that
Campbell’s dualistic nature and influence, along with the lack of Stone’s influence, are
what create the distinctive characteristics of the various branches in the twentieth century.
Chapter Seven is a brief conclusion, offering some possible directions for further study.
The hope is that this new understanding of Stone and Campbell will contribute to the
modern debates that have created situations like the one seen at ACU in 2006.
16
Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
Chapter Two
The Stone Movement and the Campbell Movement
Alexander Campbell once said, “The stream of Christianity has become polluted,
and it is useless to temporize and try experiments. All the reformations that have
occurred and the religious chymistry [sic] of the schools have failed to purify it.” 1
Campbell did not believe the experiments of men could do anything but hinder the
advancement of true Christianity. Similarly, Barton Stone once said, “We are fully
convinced that for many centuries the christian world have been, and yet are in
Babylon.” 2 Both men agreed on this basic view of the state of Christianity in their time:
it had been corrupted by men, and needed to be returned to the authority of God through
scripture. This is the foundation for primitivism and restorationism in Christianity. Yet
the purpose of this chapter is to show how different these two men were. Although they
agreed on general conclusions such as this one, they came to those conclusions from very
different places and for very different reasons.
As we look at Stone and Campbell in their early periods, we will attempt to
understand the inherent differences they had. Then we will try to show how these
differences made their 1832 union unworkable as an ecumenical or “catholic” effort.
Despite the fact that the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Christian Church
(Independent), and the Churches of Christ all thrive today as branches of the nineteenth
century tradition, they have failed the tradition’s plea for unity. One of the difficult
1
Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1989), 167. Quote from Millennial Harbinger, 1832.
2
Barton Stone, The Christian Messenger, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Dec. 1827), 25.
17
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questions these churches frequently ask is: how does a quest for unity end in further
division? The answer lies partly in understanding the differences between Stone and
Campbell and seeing that their 1832 union was never really a union at all; or at least not
in the sense that the modern-day branches understand it today.
First, there are important demographic distinctions to be made when comparing
Stone and Campbell. America was experiencing a population boom caused by
substantial immigration. Between the Revolution and 1845, the population of the U.S.
went from 2.5 million to 27 million. 3 This dramatic increase had already started before
1800 and accounts for the rapid growth of anti-authoritarian Christian groups like the
Stone and Campbell movements. Their early growth was fueled by European
immigration to a large extent. New immigrants from Europe were more attracted to the
new Christian populism than to the old authoritative, highly-structured mainstream
Protestant churches. Even Catholics who immigrated had a much more democratic view
of religion than the European Catholics they left behind. 4 This is especially true of the
very large groups of Scotch-Irish who were migrating to the U.S. With their roots in a
very contentious Presbyterianism, they naturally flocked to the Christian populism being
practiced by groups led by Stone and Campbell in the early years of the nineteenth
century. 5 Therefore, it is significant that the Campbells were Scotch-Irish immigrants,
and that although Scotch-Irish, Stone was not an immigrant. Stone and Campbell
3
Hatch, 3-4.
Jay Dolan, In Search of an American Catholicism: A History of Religion and Culture in Tension. (Oxford;
New York; Oxford University Press, 2002). One of Dolan’s main points about Catholicism in early
national America was that it embraced the idea of democracy, thus distinguishing itself from European
Catholicism.
5
Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1990), 164. Note that nearly every contributor to Restoration history makes this point clearly,
including Leroy Garret, Nathan Hatch, Earl West, and others.
4
18
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represent two very different Scotch-Irish experiences. A brief overview of their personal
origins will be instructive on this point:
Barton Stone was born in Port Tobacco, Maryland in 1772. His father died when
he was very young, and his mother moved the family further west during the American
Revolution. 6 Stone as a young boy saw first hand some of the fighting, and also
experienced the many vices that soldiers brought back home after their war tours,
especially practices such as drinking, gambling, and profanity. These things molded his
early rejection of war. In his autobiography he said this of the effect of war on American
society: “These vices soon became general, and almost honorable. Such are universally
the effects of war, than which a greater evil cannot assail and afflict a nation.” 7 Stone’s
rejection of war as inherently evil indicated his general distrust of secular authorities. He
blamed the evils of war and government-initiated conflict not on the individual men who
came back home corrupted by it, but on larger outside forces that manipulate them and
lead them astray. In his view, wars are not evil because of the actions of evil men, but are
inherently evil. For Stone, the individual was all that mattered, and society was a
necessary evil thrust upon him.
Stone came from a family that was part of the Southern aristocracy. His ancestor,
Captain William Stone, was the first Protestant governor of Maryland. 8 Yet, with the
death of Stone’s father, the family’s fortunes wane. With the hard times, there seemed to
have been a subsequent lack of interest in religious matters in the Stone family. They had
6
Nathaniel S. Haynes, A History of the Disciples of Christ in Illinois, 1819-1914 (Cincinnati: Standard
Publishing Company, 1915), 611-614.
7
Barton W. Stone and John Rogers, The Biography of Elder Barton Warren Stone, (Cincinnati: published
for the author by J.A. and U.P. James, 1847) 3. See also “Stone-Campbell Dialogue,” located on the
website: http://www.disciples.org/ccu/stonecampbell.htm.
8
D. Newell Williams, Barton Stone: A Spiritual Biography (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2000), 9.
19
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been practicing Anglicans, and this may have posed a problem for them during the
Revolution. As historian Nancy Rhoden points out, no other religious group was as
conflicted during the Revolution than those with ties to the Church of England. 9 This
may have been why, as a young man, Stone seemed to be searching for a more heart-felt
religious experience, but also one that was less at odds with the Revolution. He would
find this within groups like the Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists. Rhoden says,
“Under the Presbyterian cleric, John Witherspoon, the College of New Jersey functioned
as a ‘seminary of sedition.’ Its graduates were overwhelmingly patriot.” 10 So although
Stone was anti-war, he developed a revolutionary view that was in keeping with the
ideals of the American Revolution, and he easily applied this to his new interest in active
religion.
Stone spent his portion of the family inheritance on a classical education and
pursued a career in law. 11 But his plans for wealth and social standing soon gave way to
his desire to embrace a heart-felt religion. William Hodge, a Presbyterian minister who
preached a unique message of God’s love to all men, impressed Stone. Hodge did not
dwell on God’s wrathful justice the way Calvinist ministers did. Stone soon gave up law
to be a preacher. In 1794 Stone taught in a Methodist academy in Georgia. Then in 1796
he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister, which led to his preaching assignment at
Cane Ridge in 1801 where he would help to found the strong revivalist tradition that was
so much a part of the Second Great Awakening. Within just a few years of the beginning
9
Nancy L. Rhoden, Revolutionary Anglicanism: The Colonial Church of England Clergy during the
American Revolution (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 1-4.
10
Ibid., 5.
11
Stone and Rogers, 6. See also Williams, 16.
20
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of the Cane Ridge revivals, Stone would split from Presbyterianism and help found his
movement commonly known as the “Christians” in the West. 12
The early lives of Thomas and Alexander Campbell suggest opposite a view of
individuals and their relationship to society, more in keeping with older European ideas.
Thomas Campbell was born in Ireland in 1763 and attended the University of Glascow in
Scotland. He was greatly influenced by the Scottish “Common Sense” philosophy of
Thomas Reid. In 1787 he married Jane Corneigle, who was descended from a French
Huguenot family. Their first son, Alexander, was born the following year. Thomas went
on to become a Presbyterian minister in Ireland, and worked to unite the Burgher and
Anti-Burgher factions of Presbyterianism. Thomas came to America in 1807, and his
family followed once he had established himself. He quickly became a popular frontier
preacher, but just as quickly got himself into trouble with the Presbyterian Assembly,
which presided over all ordained ministers. His unorthodox opinions led to censorship,
especially regarding his belief in an open communion. Thomas believed that all should
be allowed to partake of communion, not just church members. 13
Meanwhile, the family, led by oldest son Alexander, fell victim to bad weather on
their journey to America and wound up shipwrecked on an island off the coast of
Scotland. During the year until they could sail again, nineteen year-old Alexander
studied at the University of Glasgow. The university gave him a taste of the natural
sciences, poetry, and variously different theological positions, which helped him start to
12
Stone and Rogers, 39-55.
Robert Richardson, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, Embracing a View of the Origins, Progress and
Principles of the Religious Reformation Which He Advocated (Delight, Arkansas: Reprinted by Gospel
Light Publishing Co.), 224-225.
13
21
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develop his own ideas as an intellectual. 14 Thus, Alexander came to America with ideas
inspired and shaped in Europe. Both Thomas and Alexander would modify their
European educations in light of their New World experience.
When the Campbell family reached America and rejoined Thomas in 1809, he
was finally completing his separation from Presbyterianism with his “Declaration and
Address.” 15 Alexander had, over the course of his experiences in Ireland and Scotland,
come to the same conclusions as his father. Together, they used the Declaration and
Address to separate themselves from the authority of the Presbyterian Church.
Barton Stone developed attitudes about the supremacy of the individual over
society which would instruct his views for the rest of his life. He fought against
Calvinism’s predestination, wanting to raise individual men to a higher plane of activity
in terms of their salvation. But he saw no value in raising society to a higher plane, since
it was inherently evil. He turned to Christianity as a young man in to resist materialism
and decadence in the South during the American Revolution. In his autobiography he
often emphasized asceticism, or a need to resist the corruption of worldly things. For
instance, he wrote that during his conversion to Christianity, “I resolved from that hour to
seek religion at the sacrifice of every earthly good, and immediately prostrated myself
before God in supplication for mercy.” 16 Stone gave himself but two options: worldly
success or spiritual success. One must be chosen over the other. A Christian does not
live well in this world, for in the act of accepting Christ he rejects all comforts. Stone is
far removed from European traditions that make the church synonymous with society. In
his view, Christianity must treat society as the enemy to be resisted.
14
Richardson, 188.
Ibid., 242-244. Richardson gives us the Declaration and Address in its full entirety.
16
Stone and Rogers, 9.
15
22
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The Campbells were the product of post-Reformation Europe. They were deeply
entrenched in those traditions as they learned them at the University of Glascow. They
were Europeans, not Americans. Look at, for instance, Alexander Campbell’s tendency
to do a large part of his reading in French, 17 and his views on France’s revolutionary
process. His love of French, which perhaps came from his Huguenot mother, was
connected to his views on the violence of the French Revolution, which he saw as the
result of a desperate need of the French to escape Catholicism. 18 In escaping the Catholic
Church, the French were escaping the superstition and ritualism that supported it.
Catholic doctrines such as transubstantiation, are part of a superstitious past. In
Campbell’s words, such doctrines “destroy the credibility of all testimony, human and
divine, and necessarily tends to atheism.” 19 According to Campbell, belief in miracles
and doctrines predicated on miracles (i.e., transubstantiation), undermines the very
credible testimony afforded us in God’s word, the Bible. If men must depend on
supernatural miracles to have faith, then why do we need God’s word? And when men
ignore God’s word in favor of these supernatural doctrines, they ultimately are led to
skepticism and atheism. French infidelity in Campbell’s time was the result of the
ritualistic subjectivity of Catholicism. The brutality of the French Revolution had been
caused not by men such as Robespierre, but by the irrational mystery doctrines of the
Catholic Church. As historian Robert West says, “A lifelong position of Campbell is that
France was converted into a nation of infidels by the Roman Catholic Church.” 20
17
Robert Frederick West, Alexander Campbell and Natural Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1948), 47.
18
Ibid., 60.
19
Ibid. The quote comes from the Campbell-Purcell debate.
20
Ibid., 59-60.
23
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Stone was perhaps just as opposed to Catholicism, yet does not seem to see it as
the root cause of skepticism and atheism like Campbell saw it. With no direct experience
of Catholicism’s power in Europe, he could not support such a strong view. Being born
in America, Stone’s historical view was not as burdened by the power of Catholicism.
Stone’s thoroughly American experience puts him in a very different place than
Campbell’s very European experience.
Other voices preceded Stone and Campbell. For example, in 1793 (about the
same time that Stone was moving toward a life of ministry) James O’Kelly, a Methodist
minister from Virginia, disassociated himself from the Methodist church (itself a
departure from orthodox Anglicanism) in order to practice a republican form of
Christianity coming out of the revolutionary fervor of the times. O’Kelly left the
Methodist fold in order to form what he at first called a Republican Methodist Church in
Manakintown, Virginia. The intention was to have a Christian church that rejected all
hierarchal structures in favor of a democratic and representative republican structure. 21
This was in keeping with the fervent republican idealism of the time.
These same ideas also drove politics. Thomas Jefferson and others with strong
democratic ideals were forming Democratic-Republican clubs to serve as a counterbalance to the Federalist-dominated government, and gave rise to the first political
parties. This gradual development of political parties seems natural today, but for early
America political division was against the values of republicanism. 22 These early
Christian innovators also frowned on division. They saw their views as promoting a
21
Winfred Ernest Garrison and Alfred T. DeGroot, The Disciples of Christ: A History (St. Louis, Missouri:
The Bethany Press), 85-87. Also see W.E. MacClenny, The Life of Rev. James O’Kelly (Indianapolis:
Religious Book Service, 1950), 114-117.
22
Saul Cornell. The Other Founders: Anti-Federalism and the Dissenting Tradition in America, 17881828 (Chapel Hill, NC: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1999).
24
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unified Christianity. Barton Stone belongs in their company as well, for he also proposed
a Christian unity above all differences.
Yet O’Kelly as well as Stone faced the paradox of splitting from other Christians
in the name of unity. Indeed, unity was spoken of often, but was far from the reality of
the times. Some historians have pointed out that the concept of unity was only rhetoric
for many, and they used it to either spread their own ideas or simply just to get along with
other denominations. 23 In other words, unity sounded good in public speeches and
sermons, but was not necessarily something anyone within orthodox Protestantism really
wanted. O’Kelly, and then later, Stone along with his fellow ministers at Cane Ridge,
were to move beyond such unity rhetoric, toward unity as a real goal that superseded any
and all man-made divisions, even their own. It would in fact lead to a rejection of any
notion of orthodoxy or heresy within Christianity. Stone advances this idea when he
compares Christian division to “a large collection of boys in an open plain playing at
bandy.” They toss their ball around, bloodying and bruising each other so that “to a
spectator, not interested in the play, how foolish such conduct appears!” Stone further
compares these foolish games with church division:
This is truly the play of the heretical parties now in being. Each party is
endeavoring to throw the heresy-ball from their encampment to that of their
neighbor, with the same spirit and temper of the bandy boys. And the man who
has the temerity to reprove them, and bring them to a proper spirit, will certainly
incur the displeasure of all the parties, and be persecuted from their society. 24
23
Garrison and DeGroot, 59-60. Here, they indicate that the statistics do not speak the truth, for even
though only ten percent of Americans belonged to churches, there was a tremendous religious fervor
building within the population, based on the idea of a unified Christianity. Thus the idea of unity was
“bought into” by many in and out of the various established churches.
24
Barton Stone, The Christian Messenger, Vol. 3, No. 8 (June 1829), 195. Stone uses the bandy boys as a
metaphor for the use of heresy as a tool of division.
25
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Stone spent some time struggling with his rejection of the Calvinism that his
Presbyterian ordination was founded upon. 25 Finally in 1801 he attended a revival in
Kentucky’s Logan county, which he described in his autobiography:
The scene to me was new, and passing strange. It baffled description. Many,
very many fell down, as men slain in battle, and continued for hours together in
an apparently breathless and motionless state—sometimes for a few moments
reviving, and exhibiting symptoms of life by a deep groan, or piercing shriek, or
by a prayer for mercy most fervently uttered. After lying thus for hours, they
obtained deliverance. 26
Moved by what he witnessed, Stone took this new style of revival and conversion with
him to his ministerial appointment at Cane Ridge, Kentucky. Upon this basis, Cane
Ridge became a legendary event, even in its own day. In Paul Conkin’s book on Cane
Ridge, his careful research stresses that it was largely a Presbyterian communion in the
tradition of “great communions” that existed among Scottish Presbyterians going back to
the seventeenth century. But he also points out that it was something new and unique. It
was the beginning of the ecumenical camp meeting tradition in American Christianity,
which would have a profound effect on the development of the Second Great
Awakening. 27 The ecumenical camp meeting tradition would dominate this Awakening
for years to come. 28 By 1803 Stone and a handful of other Presbyterian ministers had
begun a new movement, separate from the structures of the Presbyterian Church, and
embracing this new camp meeting experience with its emotional conversions, like the
ones they witnessed it at Cane Ridge.
25
Stone and Rogers, 34.
Ibid.
27
Paul K. Conkin, Cane Ridge: America’s Pentecost (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 31.
28
William G. McLoughlin, Revivals, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in
America, 1607-1977 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 134-135.
26
26
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Stone and Campbell had very different understandings of salvation in terms of the
conversion experience. In studying the words of Alexander Campbell as a young man, 29
one sees that his conversion experience was drawn out over the couple of years that he
was leading the family toward America, where his father had gone. It was an intellectual
process founded on deep reflection and study. Even as his reading habits were influenced
by his mother’s French Protestant history, his religious views were being formed by his
experiences in Ireland and Scotland. They were formed by the shipwreck, the university
classes at Glascow, the effects of experiencing conflict within the Presbyterian system.
He saw all this as God directing him even further away from Catholicism (and later,
Protestantism), toward a radically restored view of the church. God was determining
what would happen to Alexander Campbell as he left Europe as a very young man.
Many years earlier, Barton Stone’s conversion experience had been based on a
rejection of all the determinism that comes out of Calvin’s doctrines. His salvation
journey was based on God’s love as a free gift—but a gift that men must wrench
themselves from worldly wickedness to accept. This was envisioned by Stone as a
singular event. Salvation was a leap away from the world. This is much different than
Campbell’s understanding of salvation as a sometimes long and complicated process one
undergoes in the world.
In 1809, as both Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell were setting out to build
their Christian movements, each man had a clearly different view of how salvation comes
Stone’s road to salvation looked a lot like Wesleyan Methodism, 30 driven by the human
heart and individually determined by each person who encounters God’s saving grace.
29
Richardson, 180-190.
John H. Wigger, Taking Heaven by Storm: Methodism and the Rise of Popular Christianity in America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
30
27
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This soteriology was deeply embedded in the present-tense: what the sinner does now in
order to attain salvation. This present-tense salvation was embodied in the revival
conversion. Campbell saw salvation as derived from an intellectual process, mostly
rooted in the past. His emphasis was on the justification of the sinner under God’s law.
In his great theological work, The Christian System, he describes the salvation process as
a remedial system, rooted in obedience to God’s laws, and carried out in a process of
spiritual and physical regeneration. It is not bound by human restrictions, nor is it
predicated on an emotional salvation event. 31 Instead it is a process thoroughly owned
by God. Campbell wrote, “Man unregenerate is ruined in body, soul, and spirit; a frail
and mortal creature. From Adam his father he inherits a shattered constitution.” 32
Campbell saw no reason to emphasize emotional revivalism in the salvation process. It
did not fit his understanding of the process by which God justifies sinners under His law.
In reading Robertson’s account of the Campbell family’s trip to America, nineteen-yearold Alexander clearly saw each event in the trip, from the shipwreck to the year at
Glasgow University to the eventual crossing of the Atlantic, as various phases of his
personal conversion process. 33 According to Campbell, God drove men to salvation,
often over a long period of time. According to Stone it happened in a single presenttense event. Yet, as different as these two men’s conversions were, as well as their
understanding of the salvation process, in 1832 they united their movements into one.
Where was the common ground upon which these men met? Stone and Campbell’s
31
Alexander Campbell, The Christian System: In Reference to the Union of Christians, and a Restoration
of Primitive Christianity, as Plead in the Current Reformation (1835; reprinted, Nashville: Gospel
Advocate Company, 2001), 219-265.
32
Ibid., 219.
33
Richardson, 195-221.
28
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personal experiences were completely different, and union between them, at least from
this perspective, looks more imagined than real.
In addition to O’Kelly’s movement, another primitivist-restorationist group began
growing in New England under the leadership of two Baptist preachers, Abner Jones and
Elias Smith. 34 Although these New England congregations would become a part of the
overall move toward a less structured Christian Church, it is doubtful that they ever
associated with the O’Kelly movement, nor were they that closely tied to Barton Stone’s
movement as it began in 1803. Restoration historian Leroy Garret argues that any
connection between Jones and Smith’s New England Christians and other restorationoriented groups is not backed up by the evidence. They remained separate until later
when many of Stone’s followers joined what was called the “Christian Connexion.” 35
They did, however, form many of the same ideas that mark the O’Kelly and Stone
groups. One of those ideas is that Christian unity should be based on a superseding of
man-made divisions. This idea never gets much traction in the Campbell Movement
where a rejection of man-made divisions is the basis for unity. Stone, O’Kelly, Jones,
and Smith believed that Christian division was wrong and should not exist. Campbell
also believed this, but without the caveat that difference could be endlessly absorbed into
that unity. This distinction is vital to an understanding of what was inherently different
between the Stone movement and the one began by Thomas Campbell and Alexander
Campbell in 1808.
34
Elias Smith. The Life, Conversion, Preaching, Travels and Sufferings of Elias Smith (Boston: Published
by the author, 1840). See also, Abner Jones, Memoirs of the Life and Experiences, Travels and Preaching
of Abner Jones (Exeter, Mass: Norris and Sawyer, 1807).
35
Leroy Garrett. The Stone-Campbell Movement: The Story of the American Restoration Movement.
(Joplin, Missouri: College Press Publishing, 1981), 68.
29
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What about the mainstream denominations? If the American Revolution caused
this individuated and democratic shift in Christian thinking, then why did the established
churches not jump on the bandwagon, just as they had politically during the Revolution?
Why did dominant groups such as the Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and Anglicans
react so negatively to these uniquely American movements led by O’Kelly, Jones, and
Smith, and then later Stone and Campbell? Religious historian Mark Noll addresses this
situation when he says, “In the decades after 1790 the rising Protestants in the United
States were those who had made a very specific, often self-conscious choice against the
proprietary model of institutional Christian authority that remained dominant in
Europe.” 36 In other words, groups that rejected institutional authority grew, while those
who maintained it did not. Why did mainstream denominations not embrace that which
would make them grow? The obvious answer is that these churches did not feel
compelled to give up the hierarchal power structures that historically kept them strong.
Nor were they necessarily evangelical in their priorities. Adhering to organizational
traditions would have been a higher priority for many denominations than increasing the
numbers brought into the fold. Nor did the individualism that emerged out of the
American Revolution fit their conception of Christianity. The church was more than its
people, for it also represented an authority that stood above all people. This old
European idea of the Christian church did not fit with the new American ideal, or what
Mark Noll calls “The American Synthesis” of republicanism, Protestantism, and
commonsense moral reasoning that created this unique evangelical Protestantism in
36
Mark Noll, God and Mammon: Protestants, Money, and the Market, 1790-1860 (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 269.
30
Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
America. 37 Less obvious, perhaps was the traditional denomination’s understanding of
the separation of church and state. They did not perceive it in the pluralistic sense that it
was developing in the United States. Separation of church and state did not mean a
thoroughly secular government. This might have allowed denominations to defend their
personal (secular and political) lives in terms of freedom, while still defending their
Christian lives in terms of obedience to authoritarian traditions. Such a duality would
lead them to embrace American republicanism and still cling to their comfortable nonrepublican church structures. However it came about, there was no desire among the
established denominations to accommodate the rise of the common man, as America and
France seemed to be doing in the 1790’s. Politically this new level of freedom made
sense to them, but not religiously. When the revivalism of the Stone Movement came to
the mainstream churches in the person of Charles Finney in the 1820’s, the
manifestations of it were personal and societal transformation, and not structural church
reform. 38
Therefore we see that the restructuring (or un-structuring) of churches in order to
achieve religious republicanism played into the larger idea of restoring the primitive
church as it had existed before it was taken over by man-made creeds. Stone and
Campbell both believed this, although in different ways. Stone wanted to subjugate these
man-made creeds to a broad Christian unity. Campbell wanted to destroy man-made
creeds in order to allow Christian unity to exist. The “Democratization of American
Christianity” as Nathan Hatch terms it, set the stage for a new version of primitive
37
Mark Noll, America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2002), 9.
38
William G McLoughlin, Jr. Modern Revivalism: Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham (New
York: The Ronald Press Company, 1959), 11-20.
31
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restorationism, different from the Puritans’ primitivist ideal. But this new restorationism
was not understood the same way by Stone and Campbell. They would never be united
in their view of Christian unity. Lester McAllister and William Tucker say, “On balance
however, the Christians (Stoneites) tended to emphasize unity at the expense of fullblown primitivism whereas Disciples (Campbellites) were less willing to compromise
their understanding of New Testament faith and practice for the sake of unity.” 39 From
this it seems that the two groups had very different understandings of what unity is and
how it should be carried out. Even if one accepts the idea that unity can be achieved
through Christian love and tolerance, can it still work if two groups cannot agree on what
unity means? That is the basic question underlying this rejection of the 1832 StoneCampbell union as a legitimate merger of these two very different movements.
Setting aside for a moment this rift over the meaning of Christian unity, there was
also a fundamental difference between Stone and Campbell as to how restorationism
should be practiced. Restoration scholars such as Garrison and DeGroot emphasize
Campbell’s unique mix of unity and restorationism when they say, “When Thomas and
Alexander Campbell adopted the familiar formula of restoration, they combined it with
the almost forgotten ideal of union and thus produced a strikingly different result.” 40
The result was a new mix of patternism (i.e., following a strict New Testament pattern)
and ecumenical idealism with equal emphasis placed on restoring the old patterns of
worship (as practiced in the first century) and the union of all Christians.
Stone’s view of restorationism did not contain any patternism. Nowhere does he
stress old patterns of worship as being a vital part of the restoration of the pure church.
39
Lester G. McAllister and William E. Tucker, Journey of Faith: A History of the Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ) (St. Louis: Bethany Press, 1975), 148.
40
Garrison and DeGroot, 53.
32
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He may at times agree with Campbell’s patternistic views, but he never treats them as
essentials. For Stone, restorationism was the tearing down of the structural hierarchy of
the Presbyterian system, to be replaced with a free or republican system of congregational
autonomy. Throughout his writings in his famous journal that began in the 1820’s called
The Christian Messenger, Stone repeatedly defends this un-structuring of Christ’s church
in keeping with primitive Christian practices. 41 In this light, Stone is seen as embracing a
negative restorationism in that he centers it on what the church should not do in order to
be like the first-century church (i.e., it should not practice this hierarchal system of
leadership not found in scriptures).
In contrast, Campbell is seen as embracing a positive restorationism which tries to
stress what the church should do in order to be identical to the first-century church. He
based this on the examples given in scripture, such as meeting for the Lord’s Supper on
the first day of every week, praying, singing, and exhorting one another through
preaching. Stone gladly followed these practices, but never indicated they are essential to
salvation or to the complete restoration of the church. Even the important role of baptism
as necessary to salvation was practiced by Stone, but not made an essential pattern or
belief by him. Listen to Stone’s words when he is attacked by Baptists for believing in
baptism for the remission of sins:
The writer (The Baptist Banner) may believe what he has here stated; but it is
well known by all acquainted with my writings that what he imputes to me, with
regard to baptism, is untrue. I have opposed the ideas in plain, unequivocal
language, not once only, but often. I do believe in baptism connected with faith
and repentance, for remission, but the inferences mentioned by the writer are not
received by me. 42
41
Barton Stone, “History of the Christian Church in the West,” The Christian Messenger Vol. 1, No. 11
(September 25, 1827), 241-242.
42
Barton Stone, “The Baptist Banner,” The Christian Messenger Vol. 10, No. 4 (April, 1836), 49-50.
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It seems from this statement that Stone is claiming to reject baptism for the remission of
sins, yet then stating that he believes baptism is “connected” to remission of sins. He
must tease out this particular distinction in order to not have to accept Campbell’s
axiomatic “baptism for remission of sins” as part of a purely restored Church of Christ.
Instead of an essential, as with Campbell, it is a thing that can be practiced in good faith,
but not made binding. Many of the Christian churches in Stone’s movement still
practiced various forms of baptism, and he was not willing to make one version binding.
Thus, Stone had to conclude that “Christian baptism is an individual and personal duty,
and is not a subject of fellowship, which implies plurality.” 43 Note the way Stone talks
about baptism for the remission of sins in his autobiography: “Even this I had once
received and taught, as before stated, but had strangely let it go in my mind, till brother
Campbell revived it afresh.” 44 Gone is the urgency of a doctrine of salvation. If
believer’s baptism is necessary in order to be saved, then why would Stone have treated it
so casually? The answer is that patternism, in regards to practices of worship and ritual,
did not exist in Stone’s version of a restoration of the true Church of Christ. Only the
rejection of denominational hierarchy and embrace of republican-like congregational
autonomy constituted Stone’s revival of the true church.
For Stone, being a Christian has nothing to do with doing things correctly, but it
has everything to do with accepting God and moving towards correctness. This is best
illustrated in Stone’s handling of Campbell’s doctrine of baptism for the remission of
sins. He goes as far as to discourage his fellow preachers from teaching the doctrine in
certain areas, even though he admits that the Bible teaches it! D. Newell Williams, in his
43
Barton Stone, “The Baptism of John; and the Baptism of the Holy Ghost; and of water, as a Christian
Ordinance,” The Christian Messenger Vol. 5, No. 5 (May, 1831), 103.
44
Stone and Rogers, 76.
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Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
biography of Stone, tells of just such a preacher under Stone’s authority. His name was
Benjamin Franklin Hall. In 1825 Hall had an epiphany of sorts while studying the
doctrines on baptism. He became convinced on the correctness of baptism for the
remission of sins (rather than simply a sign that one had already been saved). When he
confronted Stone with his new understanding of baptism, Stone was less than receptive.
As Williams says,
Hall shared his discovery with Stone at Georgetown early in July 1826.
According to Hall, Stone strongly advised him against preaching the doctrine,
claiming he had preached it early in the century and “it was like throwing ice
water on the people;…it froze all their warmth out, and came well nigh driving
vital religion out of the country.” Hall asked Stone why he had preached the
doctrine. Stone replied he had found it in the scriptures. 45
Naturally, Hall was perplexed that Stone would admit that baptism for remission of sins
was taught in the Bible, yet Stone advised not teaching it. Why would Stone do such a
thing? The answer again is Stone’s understanding of doctrines being subordinate to a
larger good. Cooling the people’s religious fervor was a thing to avoid, even at the
expense of an accepted biblical interpretation. Hall was expressing a more Campbellfriendly view by reasoning objectively that something taught in the Bible should always
be preached to all, without exception.
From very early in his leadership, Campbell taught against a subjective view of
biblical truth. As restoration historian John Mark Hicks notes about Campbell’s decision
to be immersed in 1812, “He no longer sought a subjective religious experience to
confirm his regeneration and assure him of the remission of his sins. On the contrary, he
now regarded immersion as that objective moment which assured him of God’s
45
Williams, 177.
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forgiveness.” 46 In seeing immersion as an “objective moment,” Campbell was declaring
it a truth that applies equally to all men, above and beyond their own personal
experiences. Campbell’s views on immersion were a repudiation of the conversion
experiences at Cane Ridge, and therefore a repudiation of Stone’s theology of salvation.
Campbell tended to make not only immersion baptism for the remission of sins an
essential doctrine, but other things as well. His on-going belief in “a restoration of the
ancient order of things” included both church practices and church governance, such as
the official role of deacons. 47 Unlike Stone, Campbell believed that the objectively true
teachings of the Bible must never be subordinated to the needs of a particular group or
church. Stone saw the overall good of a particular group as taking precedence over
anything labeled “objective truth.” Indeed, it seems that Stone may have had problems
with the idea of objective truth. But a more practical understanding of this difference is
probably that Stone left such matters to individual discretion and refused to consider
baptism or any other topic as essential to salvation, thus revealing a very relational and
practical view of Christian truth and practices, much opposed to Campbell’s absolutism
and particularism. In short, patternism and particularism define Campbell’s vision of
Christian unity and church restoration, while Stone’s vision of Christian unity and church
restoration is free from such essentials. Campbell saw Christian unity in light of all
Christians following the ancient pattern. Sameness defined his concept of unity. Stone
was not tied to that same patternism, and therefore could define unity as something that is
best seen in difference.
46
John Mark Hicks, “The Role of Faith in Conversion: Balancing Faith, Christian Experience & Baptism,”
in Evangelicalism and the Stone-Campbell Movement, William R. Baker, ed. (Downers Grove, Illinois:
Intervarsity Press, 2002), 92.
47
Alexander Campbell, “A Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things No. XIX: The Deacon’s Office,”
The Christian Baptist Vol. 4, No. 10 (May 7, 1827), 210-211.
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To further clarify this point about the difference between these two men, it helps
to look at a concept that Campbell speaks about, called the concept of church universal
and church local. This is the idea that the New Testament speaks of the church in a
universal sense and in a local sense, and that both understandings of the church serve a
distinct purpose, each depending on the other. As Campbell says,
Now if Christ’s kingdom consists of ten thousand families, or churches—
particular, distinct, and independent communities—how are they to act in concert,
maintain unity or interests, or cooperate in any system of conservation or
enlargement, unless by consultation and systematic cooperation? I affirm it to be,
in my humble opinion, and from years of observation and experience
impossible. 48
Campbell was referring to the church local as individual congregations practicing selfrule. Yet they must cooperate with one another in order to form the church universal. As
Campbell pointed out, without that cooperation (i.e., patterns, sameness) nothing was
accomplished. Yet, as Campbell showed, the idea of church universal was taken too far
by the Roman Catholic Church, which set up a system by which Christ, who is head of
the church universal is to be replaced or mediated by a pope in the church local.
Similarly, the Apostles who pre-date the church local were replaced by bishops. This
merging of “universal” and “local” by the Catholic Church was seen as the reason for
apostasy. Campbell saw no reason why Christian unity could not be realized as long as
this merging of “universal” and “local” was done away with and the two “senses” of the
church are understood as equally important and co-dependent. Cooperation in advancing
the cause of Christ—based on this distinction between two understandings of the church,
with the Word of God as sole authority—creates Christian unity.
48
Alexander Campbell, “The Nature of the Christian Organization—No. II,” Millennial Harbinger, New
Series, Vol. 6, No. 2 (February, 1842), 60.
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Yet, as C. Leonard Allen points out in his analysis of Campbell, “Church and
kingdom thus became virtually synonymous terms.” 49 This is especially true among the
more conservative branches of the Campbell movement. Their concept of the Church
and the Kingdom of God are one in the same, and their urge toward a “catholic” view of
unity as mandated by scripture has taken them back to the error of the Roman Catholic
Church, which they consider to be the great whore of Babylon, the apostate church.
Campbell’s version of Christian unity created a paradox which some of his followers
could not resolve.
Enter Stone: he certainly believed in the sole authority of scripture, the autonomy
of individual congregations, and cooperation between those congregations. He certainly
shared Campbell’s distain for Roman Catholicism, but did he believe in a distinction
between church universal and church local? He appeared not to. For instance, when
Stone denied the right of churches to make creeds that are binding, nowhere did he
distinguish between a universal view of the church headed by Christ, and local churches
practicing self-government. They are one in the same, with Christ as the only authority.
Stone says that “the principle is not whether a church has a right to make a creed, but
whether a church has a divine right to make a creed.” 50 Authority is not divided into two
realms as with Campbell therefore no one ever has the right to speak for God. Stone
responds to those who would grant churches a divine right to make creeds with this
question: “Does he not know that this principle, for which he pleads, is the same as that
for which the Roman Catholic pleads, with a mere shade of difference?” 51 For Stone, to
49
C. Leonard Allen, Things Unseen: Churches of Christ In (and After) the Modern Age (Siloam Springs,
Ark: Leafwood Publishers, 2004), 36.
50
Barton Stone, The Christian Baptist Vol. 1, No. 10 (August, 25, 1827), 222.
51
Ibid.
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believe in the right of churches to make creeds binding is tantamount to returning to the
errors of Roman Catholicism. Stone sees the church in a truly universal sense, where no
one can be excluded.
Another way of understanding this fundamental difference between Stone and
Campbell is to compare their very different views of truth to other views of truth that
exist in world religions. For instance the great Oriental religions view truth as something
that cannot be communicated in a singular way. The great Buddha could not show
people truth. He could only show them the way to truth. Enlightenment was reached by
individuals who could not share that exact experience with others. This is referred to as
the doctrine of the incommunicability of truth. 52 Truth is uniquely and individually
applied to each person, who must come to it themselves. This is also the basis of the
Platonic tradition in Western thought. Truth is elusive and individualized. Christianity in
the West is, for the most part, based on a model of truth that is communicable and
therefore singular. Science also adheres to a model of truth that is communicable and
singular. From a Western perspective, Stone was so unorthodox in his understanding of
truth that he actually had more in common here with Buddhism than with Campbell. To
emphasize this point, listen to this portion of a hymn written by Stone during the Cane
Ridge Revivals:
Glad tidings! glad tidings! no more we complain,
Our Jesus has opened the fountain again;
Now mingled with mercy, enriched with free grace,
From Zion ’tis flowing on all the lost race. 53
52
Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (Princeton University Press, 1949), 33-34. See also
Donald S. Lopez, Jr., ed., Critical Terms for the Study of Buddhism (Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 2005).
53
Stone and Rogers, 313.
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It seems that all through his life, Stone wanted to stress that every person was part of this
“lost race,” and that everyone strives for truth in a unique way. We may point out each
other’s strengths and weaknesses, but we do not point out each other’s truths. Stone
never accepted Universalism as other men like him did, but he seemed to at least be in
tune with its spirit.
After the 1832 union, Stone would become a lost voice in movement that
belonged to Campbell, and had absorbed many of the churches that had been under
Stone’s leadership. The situation remained this way until Stone’s death in 1844. It is
only after his death that certain members of both movements started interpreting Stone’s
role in ways that suited their preconceived ideas. This will become apparent as we study
various leaders in the Campbell Movement after 1844. For now, the validity of this
position is apparent in the two men’s correspondence after 1832. Although they treated
each other as equals, it was clear to all that Campbell was the real leader of the
movement. Stone’s ideas on Christian unity, the nature of truth and restorationism, as
well as other theological views, were not a factor in the development of the Campbell
movement during the 1830’s.
Campbell’s well-documented aversion to the 1832 union makes sense in light of
this. The union was more or less consummated on January 1, 1832 at Stone’s church in
Kentucky. Having not participated in this initial meeting that united the two movements,
Campbell finally commented on it three months later. But his comments make no
mention of the union at all. He only says that he was glad that Stone and others had
“renounced their former speculations.” 54 This seems like something closer to a
repudiation than a statement of support. Campbell was intent on keeping his differences
54
Alexander Campbell, “The Christian Messenger,” Millennial Harbinger Vol. 3 (March 1832), 139.
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with Stone in the limelight, just as he had used those differences to advance his cause
during the 1820’s when both of them allied editorially against other groups. By the time
of the 1832 union, an alliance with Stone was no longer relevant or useful to Campbell.
He left it to other lesser leaders in the movement to make the decision to enact a unity
pact with Stone and his western churches.
The editorial history of the two men in the 1820’s shows a continual cooperative
dance going on between them, against Baptists, Presbyterians, Catholics, and even
skeptics. Their editorial battles against these outside forces often caused them to cloud
over the fundamental differences between themselves. This was done either
inadvertently by Stone, due to his broad inclusive approach to unity, or advertently by
Campbell in order to draw sharp distinctions between himself and denominational bodies
with whom he was currently at war. Take the following as an example: in December of
1827 Stone published a letter in his journal that had originally been addressed to
Alexander Campbell by the Baptist editor Spencer Clack. In the letter, Clack takes
Campbell to task for so often aligning himself with the “Arians of the West” which was
his term for the Stone Movement. Clack ends his letter with the admonition, “Beware,
my brother, lest you be ensnared, lest you be caught in the net of Mr. Stone.” 55 Stone
then uses the letter as a sounding board for his own defense, saying, “If we are Arians, so
were the Fathers of the first three centuries.” 56 There are numerous examples of such
exchanges between Stone, Campbell, and some third party who is critical of their efforts
to fight together against all others, even though they have no common ground upon
55
Spencer Clack, “Letters Addressed to A. Campbell,” reprinted in The Christian Messenger Vol. 2, No. 2
(December, 1827), 28-29.
56
Barton Stone, “Reply to Elder Spencer Clack, Editor of the Baptist Recorder,” The Christian Messenger
Vol. 2, No. 2 (December, 1827), 29-31.
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which to conduct such a fight. One almost senses a perverse pleasure shared by Stone
and Campbell when they get under the skin of people like Spencer Clack. Note Stone’s
words in his response to Clack: “Brother Campbell no doubt smiles at your fears, and
wonders why you should wish to retain him among you.” 57 Yet, despite their editorial
glee, they were at odds on the meaning of Christian unity and restorationism. They also
differed on significant theological issues such as atonement, Trinitarianism, biblical
interpretation, and millennialism. Stone and Campbell were so thoroughly at odds as to
make anyone look at their 1832 union and question its soundness or even its very
existence.
It has already been established that the Cane Ridge Revivals in Kentucky starting
in 1801 marked the point at which Stone’s movement began. 58 Cane Ridge also marked
the important distinction between Stone and Campbell in terms of revivalism and
conversion. Now let us consider some of the details of this momentous event. The Cane
Ridge revivals brought perhaps 20,000 59 people from various regions in the west together
to hear revivalist preachers like Stone preach their new republican version of Christianity.
It was the largest revival of its time. The spirit of the revival was thoroughly ecumenical
as preachers from different churches worked together toward the conversion of
thousands. Held along various spots of Cane Ridge, these preachers preached at the same
time in order to accommodate the crowds. Stone preached a message that stressed the
universality of the gospel, and the role of men in their own salvation. It was this anti57
Barton Stone, “To Elder Spencer Clack, Editor of the Baptist Recorder” The Christian Messenger Vol. 2,
No. 2 (December, 1827), 29-30.
58
Barton Stone, “History of the Christian Church in the West,” No. 1 Vol. 1 Christian Messenger
(February 1827), 74-76.
59
Garrett, 74. He points out that estimates of 30,000 at Cane Ridge come from Stone and others who were
there, and that perhaps these estimates are exaggerated. Other sources estimate approximately 10,000 to
20,000 in attendance at the Cane Ridge Revivals. Covering the same topic, Garrison and DeGroot point
out that 20,000 would have been 10 percent of the white population of Kentucky at that time.
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Calvinist stance on salvation that got him and others accused of heresy by the
Westminster Presbytery in 1803. 60
It is at that point in 1803 that Stone and a few others established the Springfield
Presbytery. Realizing that creating a new Presbytery did not change anything, they
disbanded it a year later by issuing their “Last Will and Testament of the Springfield
Presbytery.” 61 There is no wording in the Last Will and Testament that indicated that a
return to first century Christianity would necessitate the duplication of patterns of
worship, as Campbell would insist upon. Instead, it was a document that proposed a
radical Christian freedom. One of the document’s items was, “We will that our power of
making laws for the government of the church, and executing them by delegated
authority, forever cease; that the people may have free course of the Bible, and adopt the
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.” 62 These powerful words negated the right of any
man to interpret for others what they were able to interpret for themselves. All the future
writings of Alexander Campbell that became the “orthodoxy” of his movement were
relegated to the dust bin of mere opinion by Stone’s testimony to the superiority of the
law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus over everything. He was stripping Christianity
down to its barest essentials.
The revivals at Cane Ridge thus indicated a deep divide between Stone’s
“Christian” view and the one the Campbells would soon promote. Along with his
stripped-down, antiauthoritarian Christian view, Stone believed in a radical form of
preaching that was embodied in the revival. Men and women gathered outdoors, in large
areas to hear a number of preachers stand on platforms and shout a variety of messages,
60
Stone and Rogers, 30-38.
Ibid., 50-55.
62
Ibid., 51-52.
61
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all meant to convict the hearts of listeners to emotionally and physically respond to God’s
message coming through them. Men and women literally quaked as their emotions drove
them to accept the message from God. These “exercises” as they were described,
included violent shaking and dancing and loud exclamations or “barking” noises. 63
What distinguished Stone from other adherents to these bodily “exercises” was his belief
that they come not directly from the Holy Spirit, but from the believer’s embrace of
God’s Word. Stone’s Cane Ridge experience has been likened to modern-day
Pentecostalism, but in reality he rejected direct Holy Spirit contact, instead opting for one
rooted in scripture. To quote D. Newell Williams, “As Stone sought to show in his 1805
account of his theological development, the view that God worked through the gospel to
make sinners willing to come to Christ, without previous work of the Holy Spirit to
enable them to believe, was consistent with the remarkable conversions of the revival.” 64
Like Campbell, he was emphasizing the role of the gospel in salvation, but unlike
Campbell, it was based on a very emotional conversion process which made Cane Ridge
such an incredible phenomenon. Campbell insisted on baptism for remission of sins, and
regarded the Cane Ridge experience as unnecessary.
But what got Stone into trouble with the Presbyterian leadership was not the
dancing and barking of his audience of converts, but rather his Arminian theology. The
message he preached at Cane Ridge drove people to experience emotional conversions as
a way of setting them on the right path toward God. Free will was implied. Unlike the
emotional conversion process of New Light Presbyterianism, which indicated election
and salvation, the emotional conversions at Cane Ridge pointed persons toward their
63
64
Stone and Rogers, 39.
Williams, 63.
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salvation. Thus, they were active agents in that salvation. God’s grace was free, but the
gift must be accepted through faith. Stone would later write, “Faith does not depend
upon grace; for by faith we receive grace.” 65 Free salvation as preached by Stone meant
that anyone was free to pursue their own salvation. Nothing was predetermined or set by
God, who allowed men to make a choice. This was in direct opposition to the Calvinist
belief that only God chooses who will be saved. The Cane Ridge message was that men
were not passive pawns in a game larger than themselves. What happened to each soul
was up to that soul, and it is this responsibility that compelled people at Cane Ridge to
physically and emotionally accept God’s call. It was necessarily an acceptance that came
from the heart. It was not an intellectual process where men rationally thought out their
own course to salvation. It was a freely-chosen and thoroughly emotional leap toward
God’s saving grace. Although rational human choice was its beginning point, the success
of such a choice was predicated on an emotion-driven leap of faith.
In contrast, the Campbells would begin their movement a few years after Cane
Ridge by establishing a local congregation at Brush Run. Revivalism was not practiced,
and emotional conversions were not encouraged. From the start, Thomas Campbell and
especially his son Alexander, took a more rational and intellectual approach to Christian
practices. They believed in a freewill faith, but with a more structured and exclusive
method for implementing it in people’s lives. While some effectively argue that the
Brush Run Church was considered just a congregation of Christians within a larger and
more catholic view of the Church, 66 the significant point here is that rather than hold
large revivals like Cane Ridge in order to convict the hearts of individuals and then send
65
66
Barton Stone, The Christian Messenger Vol. 1 No. 10 (August 25, 1827), 221.
Garrett, 14.
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them back to their prospective churches, the Campbells very quickly established a
separate congregation devoted to rigorous Bible study and a very correct structural
restoration of the primitive church based on patternism.
Stone and Campbell agreed that human creeds were dangerous. It was one of the
factors in their editorial alliance in the 1820’s. This general agreement often hid their
significant differences. Stone’s view of human creeds gave them limited validity and
purpose, but did not give them the status of “divine right.” Giving them that kind of
Godly authority is what made them dangerous. It is that embrace of all human creeds as
simply opinion that would create Christian unity. In contrast, Campbell used his journal,
The Christian Baptist, to proclaim all human creeds “an abomination.” 67 He replaced
them with a singular truth derived from his belief that a common sense approach to
biblical interpretation would always lead to this pure and absolute understanding of
God’s word. It is the absolute understanding of biblical truth that would create Christian
unity. So even though both men believed in Christian unity, they actually believed very
different things. Stone’s view was abstract and universal, so that Christian unity existed
within the freedom of separate churches to chart their own course. Campbell’s view of
congregational autonomy did not have this universal or “catholic” feature. The Brush
Run Church would stand separate from other “free” or “republican” churches, and form
its alliance with the Baptists. 68 These differences between Stone and Campbell and their
movements during this early period, and in the years leading up to their supposed merger,
were profound enough to challenge the very idea that they came together as one in 1832..
67
Robert West, 34.
Earl Irwin West, The Search for the Ancient Order: A History of the Restoration Movement 1800-1865,
Volume 1 (Delight, Arkansas: Gospel Light Publishing Co., 2002), 60-61.
68
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None of this is to say that Stone was radical while Campbell was orthodox. Both
men had their radical side. Robert Frederick West portrays Campbell as a man of the
Enlightenment, radically against the traditional structures of church and state. West says,
“There are further striking similarities between Campbell and these theoretical and
practical philosophers. Among other things, a Voltaire-type of caustic cynicism
penetrated Campbell’s anti-ecclesiasticism.” 69 Be that as it may, West also points out
that Campbell obviously did not share Voltaire’s negative critique of Christianity.
Instead, Campbell used Enlightenment ideas to attack the Enlightenment’s Deism and
defend primitive Christianity as opposed to orthodox Protestantism and Catholicism. 70
It is here that the idea of Campbell continuing the work of Luther becomes problematic,
for he was not on the side of Protestantism any more than he was on the side of
Catholicism. He took the idea of reformation much further than Luther or even Calvin
ever would have. 71 This made him a radical outsider among traditional Protestant
Christians, such as the Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and other European-derived
churches, who saw Campbell as moving far too close to Enlightenment skepticism in his
early attacks on the ecclesiastical traditions of the established denominations. There are
numerous accounts of Campbell being run out of town by traditional churches who saw
him as every bit as dangerous as a deist or an atheist. Even the Baptists and Methodists
eventually saw him as a threat equal to skepticism and atheism. In an unsigned article
69
Robert West, 48.
Ibid., 49-50.
71
Garrett, 9. Continually through his study, Garrett defends the idea that Stone and Campbell were
reformers in the tradition of Martin Luther in that they wished to continue reform rather than completely
tear down and restructure Christ’s church. The point is a good one in many respects. But in light of
Campbell’s Enlightenment radicalism, he seems to not have much in common with Luther.
70
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from the Apostolic Advocate, a Baptist writer from Philadelphia gives this warning about
Campbell and his dangerous beliefs regarding baptismal regeneration:
Alexander Campbell has shaken the steadfastness of many; and I fear if the effect
of his late discourses in this city be not vigorously opposed in every possible way,
the Baptist interest in Philadelphia will be entirely dismembered. In Baltimore,
Brother J. Finley’s church is so deeply infested, that he was under the necessity of
calling the members together, to enquire who were on his side, and who were on
that of [Campbell]. The question was put, and he found himself in the
minority.” 72
Yet as dangerous as the Baptists may have seen Campbell’s views on baptism, he was not
the threat to Baptist orthodoxy that he seemed. He agreed with Baptists on many more
points than he disagreed with them. Stone was the real threat to the Baptists
theologically, because of the extent to which he often discussed ideas that were antiTrinitarian. For instance, in 1826 Stone attacked Trinitarianism not necessarily because it
was wrong, but because groups like the Baptists made it a binding doctrine. Speaking of
the conflict between Arius and the defenders of Trinitarianism in the early church, Stone
said:
Happy would have been the church, had their notions and speculations have died
with them, and never more revived. Happy would she have been had she never
attached such importance to them, as to make them terms of union and
communion. Ever since that unhappy period, there have been, and still are so
many speculations afloat on this doctrine, and Trinitarians themselves are so
much divided on their notions, that it is impossible to ascertain the tangible point,
which may be called orthodoxy. 73
Campbell merely wanted to be seen as a threat to the Baptists because this was his style
in the editorial wars of the 1820’s. He wanted to come off as confrontational, distinct.
Stone helped him in this respect. For this reason, Campbell presented himself as an
enemy of orthodoxy when in fact he was very much in line with it on most accounts.
72
Anonymous, Apostolic Advocate Vol. 1 No. 1 (May 1, 1835), 15.
Barton Stone, “Objections to Christian Union Calmly Considered,” The Christian Messenger Vol. 2, No.
2 (Dec. 25, 1826), 29-30.
73
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One can imagine his pleasure upon reading an article by a frightened Baptist in
Philadelphia. Campbell needed an identity very much distinct from Baptists, even though
he was allied with them. By aligning himself editorially with Stone’s churches, the socalled “Arians of the West,” 74 he accomplished this.
What was Stone’s stance on the Enlightenment? Campbell was against it in the
way it attacked traditional Christianity, but found it useful in promoting his rational view
of scripture. Stone was altogether another matter. He had flirted with Enlightenment and
deist ideas as a young man, and eventually rejected them. 75 While on one of his early
itinerant preaching journeys west, Stone came into contact with a deist referred to as Mr.
Burns. Stone asked him what a deist believes, and Mr.Burns answered by saying that
deists believe in one God who is “infinitely good, just, and merciful.” Stone responded
by saying he believed the same thing, but then asked Mr. Burns where he got his
information about God, to which Mr. Burns responded, “from the book of nature.” Stone
then asked, tongue-in-cheek it seems, which page in the book of nature it says this about
God, to which Mr. Burns says, “all nature declares it.” With that said, Stone responds:
“Mr. Burns, please turn your eye to the opposite page of your book, and see the miseries,
and attend to the groans of the millions, who are suffering and dying every moment.” 76
Thus, Stone rejected Mr. Burns’ deism based on the presence of pain and suffering in the
world. It made no sense that there would be evil if all we know of God is that he is
infinitely good. Note how Stone is using human rationality to counteract the deist view
of God. He does this in order to show how deists such as Mr. Burns cannot offer any
74
Spencer Clack, “Letters Addressed To A. Campbell,” from the Baptist Recorder. Reprinted in The
Christian Messenger, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Dec. 1827), 28.
75
Stone and Rogers, 5-11.
76
Ibid.
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understanding of the paradox of evil existing in a world made by a good God, because the
deist lacks the backing of divine scripture. Stone uses human reason to show the
shortcomings of human reason, which must have divine revelation in order to
comprehend the seemingly contradictory nature of God. We do not understand God on
our own, but only through his divine intervention. This is what Stone called “the
revealed truth of God in the scriptures.” 77 Despite this being Campbell’s view also,
Stone accepts human limitation in understanding God more than what is implied in
Campbell’s “common sense” interpretation of scripture.
Stone’s use of Enlightenment rationality to prove the necessity of the divine and
therefore, irrational, is not as problematic as it may seem. Theologian Karl Barth points
this out about the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. He says, “One must in fact say that,
on closer inspection, the century possessed, somewhere in the midst of its consciousness,
in spite of and besides its cult of light, also in the end in relation to it a peculiar and
widespread and various knowledge and pursuit of the mysterious.” Barth asks, “Could
we not with almost as much justice call it the century of mystery?” 78 One need look no
further than freemasonry or Swedenborgianism to understand this dual nature of the
eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Stone was expressing it when he used Enlightenment
reasoning to refute Mr. Burns’ rationalistic deism. We hear much about the deism of
American figures like Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, but historian Edwin
Gaustad reminds us that many Enlightenment figures in America were staunch defenders
of Christianity. Gaustad’s analysis of John Adams is interesting when we compare it to
Stone. Adams used Enlightenment rationality to defend the Christian faith, but he
77
78
Barton Stone, “Of the Family of God on Earth,” The Christian Messenger Vol. 1 (November 1826), 6.
Karl Barth, Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Great Britain: Judson Press, 1976), 35.
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defended it in a very broad and inclusive way, much like Stone did. Both Stone and
Adams fought any conceptions of Christian orthodoxy by speaking out against
Trinitarianism. Both believed in a Christian unity that superseded all divisions and
differences. 79 In short, there is no inherent contradiction for any of these men when they
use the Enlightenment’s heightened role of human reason to defend the Christian faith.
As Henry May points out, there were two distinct periods of the Enlightenment: the first
was conservative, and still embraced Christianity. Only the second one, centered in late
eighteen-century France, was radical and anti-Christian. 80
Another important factor that affects this complex relationship between Stone and
Campbell is the differences between Thomas Campbell and his son Alexander. Thomas
Campbell in many ways seems closer to some of Barton Stone’s views. Both men, for
instance, were Presbyterian ministers who left Presbyterianism in dramatic and welldocumented fashion. But those documents indicate a strong difference between the two
men. Shortly after Stone instigated his split with Presbyterianism, Thomas also split
from Presbyterianism with his “Declaration and Address.” For Thomas Campbell, it was
mostly a conflict over the restrictions imposed by the Westminster Confession. 81 Along
with Stone’s “Last Will and Testament,” these two documents are considered to be the
beginning of the Restoration Movement by churches today that trace their history back to
these events. Thomas Campbell said this in his Declaration and Address: “We are also
persuaded that as no man can be judged for his brother, so no man can judge for his
brother; every man must be allowed to judge for himself.” Then further on he says,
79
Edwin G. Gaustad, Faith of the Founders: Religion and the New Nation, 1776-1826 (Waco, Texas:
Baylor University Press, 2004), 86-92.
80
Henry May, The Enlightenment in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).
81
Henry E. Webb, In Search of Christian Unity (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing, 1990), 75.
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“With you all we desire to unite in the bonds of an entire Christian unity—Christ alone
being the head, the center, his word the rule.” 82 Like Stone, Thomas Campbell was
severing all ties with Presbyterianism and forming a Christian unity movement. Like
Stone, Thomas Campbell had an abstract view of unity as emanating from Christ and His
word as the only authority. Therefore, many different groups could see themselves as
united under that, even though they had numerous differences. But who interprets
Christ’s word in such a scenario? That is the question that weakens the perceived
similarities between Barton Stone and Thomas Campbell, for the answer to it was left to
Thomas’s son, Alexander. Thomas Campbell was able to sound in accordance with
Stone’s loosely structured movement because he left the logical development of his
movement to his son, the intellectual, who tended to think in more tightly structured
ways. This early ascension of Alexander to the leadership of the movement is evident in
Robert Richardson’s biography of him, where he shows that Thomas’ reluctance to side
with Baptists against those who practiced infant baptism was subjugated to Alexander’s
wish to move forward in a new direction:
Alexander, however, not liking to remain in a state of incertitude upon the subject,
occupied himself, for some time afterward, in examining the claims of infant
baptism. He read the Paedobaptist authorities in hopes of being able to justify his
predilections, which were still in favor of the practice. In despite, however, of his
prejudices, the conviction that it was entirely a human invention gradually
strengthened. 83
This move toward an alliance with the Baptists, soon after establishing their Brush Run
Church in Washington, Pennsylvania, was the work of Alexander, taking over the
leadership of his father’s very young movement. No long after that, Alexander turned
down a lucrative academic career to devote himself to reform movement his father had
82
83
Williams, 242.
Richardson, 251.
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started. 84 This is the point where Thomas bows to his son’s leadership. It is comparable
to how Stone would acquiesce to Alexander after 1832.
The Brush Run Church soon associated itself with the Redstone Baptist
Association. This was the beginning a long and complicated relationship with the Baptist
church. 85 Stone’s early efforts to attract segments of other groups into his, contrasted
with the way Alexander Campbell entered a Baptist alliance on the promise of
independence within a Baptist structure. Alexander said this in 1827, in reference to his
Baptist connection: “The association does not intend to interfere with any of the internal
rights of the churches. That is to say: the association has no power to interfere with the
order, doctrine, government, or practice, of any church, governed in all, by the great
charter of our religious privileges—the New Testament of our blessed Lord and Saviour
Jesus Christ.” 86 Campbell saw freedom as achievable through a structured system like
the Baptist Church. Stone, on the other hand, saw freedom as only existing outside of all
human structures and certainly outside all the wickedness that is inherent in society at
large.
If Stone and Thomas Campbell were so close in terms of what Christian unity
means, then why did Stone organize existing churches into his movement and work as an
itinerant preacher among them, while Thomas and his son Alexander established a
separate church with Alexander as its leader? Indeed, it appears that although their words
were similar, their intent was somewhat different. Again, Stone’s words seem guided by
a more individualistic-universalistic approach, applying his concept of Christian unity to
the unity of all individuals in a vaguely collective body of Christ. Thomas Campbell’s
84
Richardson, 274-275.
Garrett, 125.
86
Alexander Campbell, The Christian Baptist Vol. 4 No. 10 (May 27, 1827), 194-195.
85
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words seem guided by a more traditionally collective approach. He offered thirteen
propositions upon which to found the movement. The second proposition said:
That, although the Church of Christ upon earth must necessarily exist in particular
and distinct societies, locally separate one from another, yet there ought to be no
schisms, no uncharitable divisions among them. They ought to receive each
other, as Christ Jesus hath received them, to the glory of God. And to this
purpose they ought all to walk by the same rule; to mind and speak the same
things, and to be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same
judgment. 87
As much as Alexander Campbell would later criticize the mainstream denominationalism
of his day, neither he nor his father ever completely gave up its structural logic. They
clung to the denominational ideal of a single rule, a single mind holding disparate groups
together. Stone, in rejecting the ideal of sameness for his unity model, was the one most
completely rejecting denominationalism. Words that are similar often have very different
intentions underlying them. That Thomas Campbell’s founding document sometimes
reads much like Stone’s, could be one reason that some in both groups thought it was a
good idea to unite in 1832.
So although Thomas Campbell seems to be in agreement with Stone’s view of
Christian unity, their differences were substantial. These differences make themselves
known once Thomas’ son, Alexander, became the leader of the Campbell movement. In
the “Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery,” Stone and his fellow writers
had the idea of restoring the New Testament church to its pure form, which they
perceived as being democratic and individuated in the same way that the American
Revolution was. It was the most radical departure from the mainstream denominations
to up to that time. The following excerpt makes this clear:
87
Richardson, 258.
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We will, that this body die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of
Christ at large; for there is but one body, and one Spirit, even as we are called in
one hope of our calling. We will, that our name of distinction, with its Reverend
title, be forgotten, that there be but one Lord over God’s heritage, and his name
one. We will, that our power of making laws for the government of the church,
and executing them by delegated authority, forever cease; that the people may
have free course to the Bible, and adopt the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus. 88
They are calling for a single “catholic” body of God’s people, as well as a renewed
sovereignty of each local church to carry out its mission as they determine it from reading
the Bible. The “law of the Spirit” suggests an individuated interpretive process at work,
whereby each man is guided by the Holy Spirit as they read and interpret scripture. This
does not mesh with Alexander Campbell’s later understanding of scriptural interpretation,
which he imagined being structured on human reason and scientific induction. 89
Campbell’s view of interpretation would allow every man who reads the Bible with a
rational mind to come to the same absolute truth. Campbell’s “scientific interpretation”
is really the opposite of interpretation. Since all men come to the same conclusion, there
is no “interpretation” involved, just absolute truth revealed to all rational minds. The
very idea of interpretation implies more than one truth.
That every man will come to the exact same single truth is not indicated in
Stone’s “Last Will and Testament” document. Instead it indicated that there are different
“truths” for different people. Therefore, it concluded by saying, “We will, that all our
sister bodies read their Bibles carefully, that they may see their fate there determined, and
prepare for death before it is too late.” 90 There is no indication there that Stone or the
five men who signed the document with him believed that all men or all “sister bodies”
88
Stone Rogers, 51-52.
C. Leonard Allen, Things Unseen, 82.
90
Stone and Rogers, 53.
89
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will read the Bible and come to the exact same truth. Individuals or small groups will
“see their fate there determined” and not someone else’s. There is no sense of shared fate
or shared truth present in that wording. Instead, the document as a whole indicates a
unity in Christ that is based on each individual or each church seeing their own “fate” in
the scriptures. Just as the Buddha did not bring men to the truth, but merely guided them
down the path toward truth, so did Stone see his role as not the owner or arbiter of truth,
but one who simply points toward it.
This difference between Stone’s plural interpretive process and Campbell’s
singular interpretive process is a major component of what made the two men’s views
incompatible. In all these matters, it becomes hard to see a real union occurring between
Stone and Campbell in 1832. The two men stood at the helm of very different
movements all the way to the death of Stone in 1844, after which various interpretations
of Stone’s role developed according to the beliefs of different men. Indeed, the
speculation regarding Stone’s role that is seen in the writings of restoration historians
today is a continuation of a process that has been going on since the latter half of the
nineteenth century. Who was this man, Barton Stone? they ask. Whom did he influence
most? What was his role?
No matter whether one accepts Campbell’s absolute view of truth or Stone’s
relative view, all would agree that movements are made by men, and therefore can never
be completely founded upon objective truth. The human element always implies
subjectivity. The so-called “Stone-Campbell Movement” was the wishful thinking of a
few men from both sides, including Stone himself. The union of Stone and Campbell
was a myth in the sense that although it was a real event, the participants were not in
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agreement on what it meant, and they assumed many things for people not present.
These errors of understanding and perception have persisted, and still influence the
historians who study these things.
Stone never became a leader in the movement, so there never was a “StoneCampbell” movement. It has thus been a myth that any such union of Christians occurred
at all. The story of Stone and Campbell also qualifies as a myth because it contained all
the journeys and longings for truth that existed within the men who were there and tried
to make Christian unity a reality. It is just such human longing that has always been at
the root of myth.
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Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
Chapter Three
Alliance in Word Only
Stone wrote in 1827, “That we must cease to judge each other according to our
peculiar faith or opinions of truth, and learn the long-neglected precept of Jesus, to judge
according to our works.” 1 Campbell wrote in 1827, “If all christians ‘spoke the same
things’ they would doubtless be of the same mind….if they were all of one mind they
would all speak the same things.” 2 These two quotes indicate very different messages
that in some respects are opposed to each other. Stone’s message is to not judge people
by what they believe, but rather by what they do. Campbell’s message is that of cause
and effect: people who think the same things, speak the same things, which is what
Christians should do. Stone was advocating freedom of thought. Campbell was
advocating same-mindedness. You cannot have both at the same time. Therefore, the socalled union of Stone and Campbell in 1832 was never anything but an alliance in word
only. There was no logic behind the words, nor any consensus on what they meant.
Furthermore, Stone’s message of personal freedom never had a chance against
Campbell’s message of ideological cohesion. This chapter provides some further topics
for understanding this dilemma, and for seeing why Stone’s tolerance of “opinions of
truth” was not to be the signature idea of the united movement. Instead it would be
Campbell’s same-mindedness.
1
Barton Stone, “An Humble Address to the Various Denominations of Christians in America, No. II,” The
Christian Messenger, Vol. 2 No. 2 (December 1827), 25.
2
Alexander Campbell, “Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things, No. XVII,” The Christian Baptist, No.
VIII, Vol. IV (March 5, 1827), 1.
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The first thing to consider is the use of the written word, or more specifically,
written documents. In both movements, written documents replaced any governing
structures. The Presbyterian system had been replaced by Stone’s “Last Will and
Testament” document and Campbell’s “Declaration and Address” document. Centralized
power was replaced with local autonomy, loosely held together by a founding document.
Stone’s emphasis on personal freedom was at first much bolstered by this structural
change. But over time, something was needed to create an acceptable level of
cohesiveness (i.e., same-mindedness) within the movements. The continuation of written
documentation in the form of powerful editorial journals thus served this vital purpose.
Stone and Campbell both used the written word to rail against a professional
clergy and a centralized church hierarchy. “We are fully convinced that for many
centuries the christian world have been, and yet are in Babylon,” 3 said Stone, referring to
a worldly governance that had latched itself onto the church. Campbell’s Christian
Baptist was famous for its long invectives against professional clergymen, who sap the
churches of their resources and spirit with their theological jargon and meaningless
arguments. Rather than endure their speculative views, Campbell proposed a “truly
scientific mode” 4 that does not go further than what God has revealed. He wrote, “And
as in the elaboratory [sic] of the material world, every truth concerning the qualities of
matter is to be deduced from the matter itself; so in divine revelation we are to deduce
what is practical, avoiding all speculation.” 5 Note that Stone might have said exactly the
3
Barton Stone, “An Humble Address to the Various Denominations of Christians in America, No. II,” The
Christian Messenger, Vol. 2 No. 2 (December 1827), 25.
4
Alexander Campbell, “Speculation in Religion,” The Christian Baptist, Vol. 4 No. 11 (June 4, 1827),
218.
5
Alexander Campbell, “Speculation in Religion,” The Christian Baptist, Vol. 4 No. 11 (June 4, 1827),
218.
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same thing with only changing one word: he would have said “tolerating all speculation”
rather than “avoiding” it. Nevertheless, both men used such language in their editorial
journals to condemn man-made systems of bishoprics and other various clergy, who
stood above common men. In short, Stone and Campbell used man-made written
documents to acquire the authoritative unity they lacked with the absence of bishops,
clergymen, and centralized authority. Campbell’s same-mindedness became more
important than Stone’s tolerance of “opinions of truth.”
This use of documentation through the printed word, in and of itself was fairly
normal, and fit well with the “information revolution” that was occurring in the United
States at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 6 Stone and Campbell’s founding
documents and numerous editorials were printed and distributed in a way that was typical
of the time. Indeed, the whole emergence of mass media was driven not by secular
interests, but by the emergence of numerous non-profit religious organizations like the
ones led by Stone and Campbell. David Paul Nord goes as far as to assert that it was
religion in America that gave birth to mass media. 7 The drive to spread the message of
Christianity’s revival or restoration led religious men to embrace the technology of the
time. There is no question that Stone and Campbell were a part of that. Print media was
to them what the computer revolution is to us today. In both centuries these information
revolutions have been an empowering device for the common man. But for Stone and
6
Paul Starr, The Creation of Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications (New York: Basic
Books, 2004), ch. 3.
7
David Paul Nord, Faith in Reading: Religious Publishing and the Birth of Mass Media in America
(Oxford University Press, 2004). See also Candy Gunther Brown, The Word in the World: Evangelical
Writing, Publishing, and Reading in America, 1789-1880 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2004).
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Campbell, the fact that they both fit into the information revolution of their time does not
make their use of that revolution the same. Their messages were still just as conflicted.
The problem for Stone and Campbell lay in the mass media print process itself,
for they were establishing a written tradition which either rejected human traditions
(Campbell), or at least made them non-binding (Stone). Excluding canonized scripture,
all other written traditions had to be treated as human inventions in order to adhere to the
“Bible alone” axiom that Stone and Campbell insisted on. Supreme authority may have
rested only in the Bible, but Stone and Campbell’s mass-produced print documents
unified their groups in a more immediate way that scripture could not. There was no
getting around the practical authority inherent in a letter or published journal that men
read and take sides on. Claiming scripture as one’s sole authority in church matters did
not take care of every organizational situation in real life. Christian movements have
always needed some sort of organizational foundation outside of scripture in order to
function in their own unique real-world environments. The early Stone and Campbell
movements did not allow for this reality, at least not at first.
The inherent contradictions between the use of print media versus the ideal of
authority residing in the Bible alone helps to understand the problems that came later.
After 1832 the Campbell Movement had conflicts over the influence wielded by powerful
editors. Leroy Garrett coined the phrase “editor-bishops” to describe editors who
exercised significant power in the movement through their published journals. He says,
“But there was something in the chemistry of the movement that attracted printers ink,
for most all the leaders chose to be editors.” 8 That “chemistry” Garrett speaks of could
8
Leroy Garrett, The Stone-Campbell Movement: The Story of the American Restoration Movement (Joplin,
Missouri: College Press Publishing Co., 1981), 263.
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be the displacement of power caused by the rejection of all human traditions. Had
Stone’s toleration of all human traditions been the hallmark of the movement, the
problem of powerful editor-bishops would have never occurred.
Long before 1832, both movements believed that authority resided in the Bible
alone. What became a problem when the two movements began considering union was
how literally one should take that belief. Those who followed Campbell’s way of
thinking tended to take it literally. Those who followed Stone’s way of thinking tended
to allow for a broad range of interpretations. Indeed, historian Peter J. Thuesen points out
that Protestantism as a whole has had an ambiguous relationship to the written Word.
Luther’s sola scriptura was not a complete return to a Bible-only authority, as can be
seen in the way Luther accepted many aspects of the Roman Catholic Church. Therefore,
Campbell looked back to John Wycliffe as the real reformer before him because Wycliffe
came closer to the New Testament ideal, which necessitated the stripping away of all
human additions to church practices. 9 Campbell later named his son Wycliffe, after the
great reformer. 10 For Campbell, Luther had not gone nearly far enough in returning to a
Bible-alone authority. Indeed, he did not see it as a process. Either one accepted the
Bible as the only authority in all matters or one did not. It was not a matter of degree.
The inability of the Protestant world to give up its man-made names and creeds was
constantly harped upon. “I fear that there are many professing christians,” wrote
Campbell, “among what are called Protestant sects, who, rather than make this exchange,
9
Peter J. Thuesen, In Discordance with the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles over Translating the
Bible, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 19. Thuesen’s source is Campbell’s “A Restoration of
the Ancient Order of Things,” Christian Baptist (1825).
10
Robert Richardson, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, Embracing a View of the Origins, Progress and
Principles of the Religious Reformation Which He Advocated. (Delight, Arkansas: Gospel Light Publishing
Co., reprint), 573.
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would unite with the Roman Catholics in defence (sic) of human authority….” 11 No
middle ground is indicated in these words. You either accept or reject human authority
and traditions. In contrast, Stone saw Bible-alone authority as an ideal to strive for, with
the understanding that men will always have their various beliefs and traditions that need
to be considered. When Stone spoke of Christian unity it always contained tolerance for
human traditions. For instance, in 1826 he wrote,
All Christians believe, that the Bible is God’s revelation to the world, and
contains all the truth necessary for us to know in order to obtain eternal life.
From the beginning, various opinions have been formed of many of these truths.
This is a liberty, which could never be denied to any man, without denying the
liberty of thinking to all. 12
Stone was more accepting of Luther than Campbell was, because he understood the
seeking of biblical truth to be a process. The seeking of Christian truth was a journey
that all good men embarked on, knowing full well that the destination could never be
arrived at on this earth. Campbell believed that this truth was attainable now, on this
earth, by Christians willing to practice a same-mindedness that would lead them to their
destination.
Stone and Campbell differed on the importance of mass-printed documents in the
way they wrote and used those documents. Stone’s founding document was a last will
and testament. He was doing away with structure, burying it in a sense, with all the rest
of his connections to Presbyterianism. Thomas Campbell’s document was a declaration
of the start of something new. One was a burial, the other a birth. Stone’s mass-printed
documents merged him and his followers with a larger view of Christianity that
encompassed many groups. Stone’s Christian view was so broad that he would spend the
11
Alexander Campbell, “Christian Union, No. II,” The Christian Baptist, No. 1, Vol. 3 (August 1, 1825), 4.
Barton Stone, “Objections to Christian Union Calmly Considered,” The Christian Messenger, Vol. 1, No.
2 (December 26, 1826), 27.
12
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majority of his time from 1811 to 1826 as an itinerant preacher, traveling extensively,
publishing seldom. His journal, The Christian Messenger would not begin until 1826.
Thomas Campbell’s written documentation was merely the beginning of his son
Alexander’s long and illustrious career as a published writer and thinker.
Stone appealed to a wide range of churches. During this period of itinerancy,
roughly from 1811 to the early 1820’s he continued to find groups that identified with his
message of an unrestricted Christianity. Many various groups took on the word “free” in
their title to indicate their allegiance to Stone’s ideas. Thus, there were “Free
Presbyterian” churches and “Free Baptist” churches in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia,
and a few places further north, as a result of Stone’s influence. In 1815, for instance, a
group of German Baptists (Dunkards) joined the Stone Movement. They saw a
connection between their traditions and Stone’s “just Christians” approach. More
importantly, they saw no threat to their traditions by aligning themselves with Stone. 13
There was a natural affinity between the “believers” tradition of the Dunkards and these
“Christians” led by Stone. The Campbells however did not attract groups that still
wished to hang onto their earlier religious identities. The exception was the Baptists, but
that was a very distinct situation whereby Campbell’s group existed within a large Baptist
alliance. Surely, no group as distinct as the Dunkards would have wished to join the
early Campbell movement, for this would have meant giving up all of their identity as
Dunkards.
13
J.W. Roberts and R.L. Roberts, Jr., “Like Fire in Dry Stubble: The Stone Movement, 1804-1832” Vol. 7,
No. 3. (Copyright 1998-2002 Restoration Quarterly Corporation), 23-33. Part I of a 1964 lecture series at
Abilene Christian University under the direction of the McGarvey Fellowship Program. See also H.C.
Wagner, “History of the Disciples of Christ in Upper East Tennessee,” MA Thesis, University of
Tennessee, 1943, p. 8.
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Stone’s emphasis on personal freedom led to early organizational problems.
Some longed for more structure, almost immediately. By 1811 Stone was the only
original founder of the movement left. The other four signers of the Last Will and
Testament document had joined or re-joined other movements. Two returned to
Presbyterianism, and two joined the Shakers. 14 Soon after these defections, Stone’s wife,
Elizabeth, died. 15 She had given birth to a son on July 6, 1809, and he died shortly after
birth. Some unknown illness took her in August of the following year. 16 This was a
bitter time for Stone, whose wife had been a big part of his Cane Ridge experience.
Williams writes, “Elizabeth had done much to support Stone’s ministry….Stone’s log
home, located midway between Cane Ridge and Concord, had become by 1805 a center
of hospitality for the Christian churches.” 17 Now he took to a life of itinerant preaching
and travel, which lasted into the 1820’s. In 1824 he first met Campbell. In 1826 he
began his journal, The Christian Messenger. Yet Stone still made yearly trips west,
where he’d done so much of his early preaching. A restless sense of emotional urgency
seems to have guided Stone’s work, more so than a need to set to paper his ideas and
methods. That work would be left largely to Alexander Campbell.
Another aspect of mass-media that parallels the efforts made by Stone and
Campbell is the growth of newspapers. In the absence of monarchy or strong central
rule, the American political system became structured around the newspaper in much the
same way that the Stone and Campbell movements became structured around editorial
14
D. Newell Williams, ‘‘Barton Warren Stone,’’ The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004), 711.
15
Barton W. Stone and John Rogers, The Biography of Elder Barton Warren Stone (Cincinnati: J.A and
U.P James, 1847), 67.
16
D. Newell Williams, Barton Stone: A Spiritual Biography (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 2000),
132.
17
Ibid., 128.
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journals. Historian Jeffrey Pasley has shown how political newspapers in the early
nineteenth century did not merely report politics, but were actively engaged in creating it.
In an age where political candidates did little direct campaigning for themselves, the
newspapers were the “opinion-shapers” that promoted certain candidates and their
ideas. 18 Stone and Campbell both embraced the same cutting-edge communications
technologies that American politics embraced. Where this comparison ends is in the way
they applied it to very different ends. Newspaper politics created a relatively stable
political system that embraced diversity in much the same way that Stone’s views did.
But this did not become the type of homogeneity that would define the Campbell
Movement after 1832.
To further illustrate how Stone and Campbell used mass-media technology to
spread vastly different ideas, consider the opening statements of Stone’s The Christian
Messenger in November of 1826. They included much discussion of the dangers of
human creeds and opinions, but they also included an implicit understanding that they
were inevitable and to be tolerated universally. Stone quoted Martin Luther as saying,
“Every man was born with a pope in his belly.” 19 In other words, every man must see
himself as infallible in order to survive, even though he is obviously not infallible. All
men are right in and of themselves, even though obviously not all men believe exactly the
same things. Stone believed that it was the duty of Christians to realize this paradox and
reconcile it in a proper and tolerant way. That was to be the focus of his journal.
In contrast, Campbell’s opening statement for The Christian Baptist in 1823
18
Jeffrey L. Pasley, The Tyranny of Printers: Newspaper Politics in the Early American Republic
(Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 4-5.
19
Barton Stone, The Christian Messenger Vol. 1, No. 1 (November 25, 1826), 1.
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offered a very different justification for starting a new journal. Instead of advocating
universal tolerance, Campbell declared that his views were independent of any man-made
church, and therefore he spoke to a pure truth that all the other journals beholden to
sectarianism cannot touch. Campbell claimed an objectivity toward truth that adherence
to human creeds prevented. He wrote, “But when the exhibition of truth and
righteousness is proposed, neither the passions nor prejudices of men—neither the
reputation nor pecuniary interest of the writer, should be consulted.” 20 Campbell here
proposed what would famously become his “Baconian” hermeneutic, which drew from
scientific empiricism and Scottish Common Sense Philosophy to claim an objective link
between divine revelation and human rationality. Stone’s broad universalism may have
been unrealistic, especially in hindsight. The goal of uniting all Christians despite their
diverse and contradictory beliefs may seem untenable from our modern perspective. But
Campbell’s claim to a superior rational objectivity outside the corrupted churches—and
indeed, outside even himself—seems just as unrealistic at the other end of the spectrum.
The two men may have been part of the same print revolution happening in America at
that time, but the messages they conveyed through this new technology were very
different from each other.
What Stone’s movement lacked in writing during his early years of itinerant
preaching, it made up for in real growth. Setting aside the leaders who defected, and
Stone’s personal tragedies, the movement grew from the original fifteen congregations in
1804 with just a few hundred members, to 300 congregations in 1826, with 15,000
members total. 21 Stone was still a revivalist who had not forgotten his start at Cane
20
21
Alexander Campbell, “Preface to the First Edition,” The Christian Baptist Vol. 1, No. 1 (August 3, 1823)
Garrett, 82.
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Ridge. Unlike the Campbell Movement, which rejected revivalism and an emphasis on
an emotional act of conversion, the Stone Movement thrived on those things, and grew
because of them.
During these early years, the Campbell movement was much smaller. By the time
Stone and Campbell met in 1824, Campbell had only established two congregations. But
his influence was widespread, and many Baptist churches had been made “Campbellite”
and were often called “Reformed Baptists.” It was not until 1827 that Campbell’s
message got a firm evangelical boost with the preaching of Walter Scott in Ohio. 22 By
the time of the supposed union in 1832, Campbell’s movement had made significant
ground in terms of membership. Still, the numbers were not as large as those in Stone’s
movement. This would seem to shift some of the influence away from Campbell’s side,
toward Stone’s side. But this is not the case because many congregations within the
Stone movement would reject the idea of a union with Campbell. In fact, more than half
of them rejected Stone’s desire to merge with Campbell, and remained separate from it
after 1832. 23 The Stone movement was larger, but not as homogenous. The Campbell
movement had been progressing in a very different way, toward a more structural view of
ecumenicity and church governance.
We get a clear taste of things to come in 1816 with Campbell’s famous “Sermon
on the Law.” 24 By this time, the relationship between Campbell’s Brush Run Church and
the Baptists was starting to be strained, even though it would continue until the end of the
1820’s. Brush Run had joined with the Baptists, partly due to the Campbells being
22
Winfred Ernest Garrison and Alfred T. DeGroot, The Disciples of Christ: A History (St. Louis, Missouri:
The Bethany Press, nd.), 210-212.
23
Frank S. Mead. Handbook of Denominations in the United States (Nashville: Abingdon-Cokesbury
Press, nd.), 67.
24
Alexander Campbell, “Sermon on the Law” reprinted in Millennial Harbinger 17 (Sept. 1846), 493-521.
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convinced of the importance of immersive baptism of believers as opposed to infant
baptism. But Alexander went further than even the Baptists, in what is possibly his most
famous sermon. Reluctantly allowed to speak at an important Redstone Baptist
Association meeting, he delineated a radical departure from normal understandings of the
relationship between the Old and New Testaments. In Campbell’s view, the Old Law had
little or no connection to the New Law. There was no continuity between the two. In
taking this view, he not only made the stance for believer’s immersive baptism for
remission of sins as opposed to infant baptism, but established a new hermeneutic based
on a dispensational view of scripture that distinctly separated the various covenantal
periods where God dealt with humans in specific ways. Christianity was not a
continuation of the Jewish religion, but a thing separate unto itself. The implications of
this radical separation of Old and New Testaments caused most Baptists to see it as
heretical. Campbell eventually escaped excommunication by the Redstone Baptist
Association only by quitting them before they could carry it out, even though this was
several years after the infamous sermon was preached. 25 Campbell had very
successfully distinguished himself as someone different from Baptist orthodoxy.
Campbell’s movement, as it existed within the Baptist association, was predicated on
conflict and contention. Campbell saw his place as one who challenged the status quo.
He wanted to stand against orthodoxy as it was being practiced, even if he was relatively
orthodox theologically, compared to real radicals like Stone. As a result he often
savagely criticized traditional Christianity in a way that made him look like he had more
in common with deists, skeptics, and “heretics” than with Baptists.
25
Garrett, 128-131.
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Campbell as a Christian leader loathed the old skeptics like Voltaire, yet shared
some of their traits. Robert West, says of Campbell, “At heart he was an intellectual who
preferred and favored the court of the learned while he championed the rights of the
deprived multitude.” 26 Compare this to the way Voltaire and other philosophes felt more
comfortable in the elaborate royal courts, even while they professed ideas of personal
liberty and freedom. 27 This approach to evangelism was far different from the heart-felt
revivalism that the itinerant Stone was practicing at the same time. Stone and Campbell
not only had irreconcilable theological, philosophical, and world-view differences, but
they also had very different agendas and very different audiences in mind. Yet the two
would meet in 1824 and, at least on the surface, find much to agree on. That none of the
agreements were theologically or philosophically based did not deter them from
establishing an editorial alliance during the 1820’s. This is because it was an alliance that
worked for both of them. For Campbell it worked because it gave him the intellectual
breathing space he needed, so that he did not appear to be just another flavor of Baptist.
For Stone it worked because it gave him a larger platform with which to challenge the
very notion of orthodoxy. Their supposed union in 1832 occurred despite their
convenient friendship in the 1820’s, rather than because of it, as many restoration
historians have assumed. 28
The nature and purpose of the Holy Spirit was an important theological area
where Stone and Campbell stood opposed to each other. In 1831 Stone wrote, “All the
26
Robert Frederick West, Alexander Campbell and Natural Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1948), 49.
27
Harry C. Payne, The Philosophes and the People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976).
28
This is a point that must be stressed. As a rule, all of the Restoration historians who write about the
“Stone-Campbell Movement” see a link between the friendship that occurred between Stone and Campbell
in the 1820’s and the “merger” in 1832. They see no point in contesting this, because they also assume that
the 1832 merger was a legitimate union with Stone and Campbell both at the helm.
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revelations made to the Apostles, and the gifts bestowed upon them and on other
disciples, and the signs and wonders wrought by them, were in consequence of the
baptism of the Holy Ghost.” 29 Four years earlier, Campbell had written, “In all the
sermons pronounced by the apostles to unregenerated persons, of which we have so many
samples in the Acts of the Apostles, they never once spoke of the works of the Spirit in
conversion.” 30 The apparent contradiction in these two statements has to do with the
“Baptism of the Holy Spirit” in conjunction with the day of Pentecost. Stone indicated
that he believed that the Holy Spirit plays a significant and visible role in these events.
Campbell indicated that he believed the Holy Spirit plays an important role, but not a
visible one. He downplayed the role of the Holy Spirit to that of a support mechanism,
not meant to be visible and certainly not meant to take away from Christ as the focal
point.
What does this difference matter? It could be argued that both men saw the Holy
Spirit as playing an important role, but were merely stressing that role in different ways.
Whether the Holy Spirit dominates the process or simply functions in the background
does not seem to alter the reality of the day of Pentecost when the Apostles preached
Christ crucified to a diverse multitude, all hearing in their own language. But behind
these seemingly innocuous differences there are some real problems, for if the Holy Spirit
plays an active and visible role, as Stone believed, then it becomes easier to see that role
as still active and visible now. Stone said in 1832, “….according to promise, God has
formerly communicated his Holy Spirit to obedient believers, and that we have scriptural
29
Barton Stone, “The Baptism of John; and the Baptism of the Holy Ghost; and of water, as a Christian
Ordinance,” The Christian Messenger Vol. 5, No. 5 (May, 1831), 98.
30
Alexander Campbell, “To Paulinas – Letter II,” The Christian Baptist Vol. 4, No. 9 (April 2, 1827), 192.
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reasons for believing he yet does, and will to the end of time.” 31 In other words, God
still intervenes supernaturally in the world, and always will. Miracles are still possible,
and even inevitable in a world where the Holy Spirit actively intervenes in the life of men
at the point of salvation and at other points. The prevailing Enlightenment ideas of the
early nineteenth century could possibly accept a Christianity revealed solely in the word
of God, which in Campbell’s view was exactly how God is revealed to man through
Christ, The Word. This did not as harshly contradict the views of the Enlightenment,
natural religion, and deism, which could not imagine a God that interfered with the
physical world once it had been set in motion. A revelation in the form of the written
word might not be such an alarming violation of that deist idea of a hands-off God. But
Stone’s active and visible Holy Spirit did fly in the face of every conceivable defense of
the Enlightenment’s perception of God.
Miracles? A visible Holy Spirit? These things seem to contradict Stone’s earlier
view that men are convicted and brought to salvation by reading the Bible, rather than by
the intervention of the Holy Spirit. 32 But for Stone, it is simply a difference in emphasis.
During his Cane Ridge days it was important to downplay the New Light Presbyterian
emphasis on a Holy Spirit that does all the work of salvation, and advance a more
Arminian view of humans having a vital role in their salvation. By the time of the 1832
union, Stone saw need to re-emphasize the role of the Holy Spirit in a Christian’s life. In
Stone’s view, theology was a balancing act between extremes. For Campbell it was
always a fight to find one thing that was absolutely and objectively true in all
circumstances.
31
32
Barton Stone, “The Gift of the Holy Spirit,” The Christian Messenger Vol. 6, No. 4 (April, 1832), 111.
Williams, 90.
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There is a central conflict that emerges in almost all theological arguments
between Stone and Campbell: the counter-intuitive nature of any mingling of the spirit
and the material world, and the dire consequences it holds for the rationalism that the
Enlightenment had imposed on every subject, from the nature of gravity to the nature of
God. Stone’s later embrace of an active Holy Spirit (within an otherwise rational world)
was in keeping with the Romanticism which was manifesting itself fully in the work of
Ralph Waldo Emerson at the same time that Stone was attempting to balance this new
“Stone-Campbell merger” with a more active Holy Spirit. Emerson simply replaced
“Holy Spirit” with a transcendent version of Nature. Romantics rejected Enlightenment
rationality for the subjectivity of feelings that a strong belief in the active work of the
Holy Spirit naturally played into. If Campbell had similarities to Voltaire, as Robert F.
West shows us, 33 then Stone likewise had similarities to Rousseau and his love of
primitive man’s irrational impulses. Stone perceived Christianity as a not-fullyexplainable phenomenon that in large part stands above man’s relatively weak rationality.
God is powerful and great, and unexplainable to weak men. God’s Holy Spirit infused
us, and we are unable to explain it in rational terms. On the other hand, Campbell
continued to depend upon the weaker view of the Holy Spirit, which both men had more
or less agreed on in the early days. Campbell did this in order to offset miracles, which
destroyed his whole Enlightenment-based argument for a rational and fully explainable
Christianity revealed not in the form of spirits or other supernatural manifestations, but in
Christ, The Word; a natural and fully in-this-world functioning divine connection to God.
Stone embraced the irrational and Romantic while Campbell embraced the rational and
scientific through his acceptance of the Enlightenment as a tool for understanding God’s
33
West, 46.
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Texas Tech University, James M. Cook, August 2007
very close relationship to His creation. Both men were spiritual, but they get to that
spirituality in absolutely opposing ways, and with very different conclusions as to how it
was manifested in the world.
Another well-documented difference between Stone and Campbell was their
millennial beliefs. In regards to the second coming of Christ, Stone developed a
premillennial view which interpreted the New Testament book of Revelation in literal
terms, stressing the idea that Christ was soon to return and set up a millennial (one
thousand year) reign on earth with a final judgment to follow. He says, “For at the end
of the 1000 years, Satan is loosed and the wicked are raised from the dead—this is the 2d
(sic) resurrection. Satan is permitted to collect his old armies composed of all the wicked
now raised from the dead.” 34 Thus, in Stone’s version of things to come, any attempts to
improve society were deemed futile since Christ’s coming millennial reign would
supersede them. The following is a sample of Stone’s apocalyptic language regarding the
millennium:
Immediately after, at the very commencement of this period, the King of Kings
comes in his glory, and smites all the wicked nations of the earth, and treads them
in wrath, as grapes are trodden in a wine press, and sweeps them all in death. Rev.
19, 11, 21. At the same time the old Serpent, the Devil or Satan, is bound for a
thousand years, during which time he has not one subject alive on earth. Rev. 20,
1, 3. At the commencement of the 1000 years, the martyrs who were beheaded or
slain for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, shall rise from the dead-also the saints who had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had
received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands, shall rise, live and reign
with Christ 1000 years. 35
He speaks in the same language of John’s Revelation. His millennial viewpoint was
shaped by the language as much as by the content of the scriptures. He not only took
John’s words literally, but also his tone. Stone seems to not make distinctions between
34
35
Barton Stone, “The Signs of the Last Days,” The Christian Messenger Vol. 12 (1842), 313.
Barton Stone, The Christian Messenger Vol. 7, No. 10 (October, 1833), 313.
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what Revelation says and how it says it. Symbolism is ingrained into the truth of
apocalyptic scripture, just as the Old Testament writers practiced it, and just as the
Apostle John practiced it. Truth does not exist merely in a recording of facts, but also in
the visionary imagery of ancient saints, who like Jesus spoke in parables and often made
analogies his followers had a hard time interpreting. In Stone’s mind, the interpretative
process was not separate from truth, but an integral part of it. Compared to Campbell,
Stone’s premillennialism shows his more nuanced understanding of the nature of truth
that Campbell’s postmillennial view did not allow. Furthermore, Stone sees absolutely
no sense in understanding Revelation postmillennially, as Campbell did. Stone wrote,
“Some have thought that Christ would not come and reign in person on the earth; that his
coming and reign on earth are entirely spiritual. How then differs this reign in the
millennium from this present reign?” 36 For Stone, to see Christ’s reign only in a spiritual
sense—or the words of the Apostle John as mere symbolism for some other chain of
events—was tantamount to saying that the millennium was simply our present situation,
and therefore was meaningless as a millennial view. Stone saw postmillennialism as
synonymous with amillennialism.
In contrast, Campbell believed in a postmillennial view that saw the restoring of
the first century church as a sign of the last phase of the millennium, when the church
would come out of darkness and unite in strength for Christ’s second coming, which
would be the final judgment. In later years, when that Christian unity failed to
materialize in any meaningful way, and Campbell’s Disciples of Christ had become a
36
Barton Stone, “The Signs of the Last Days,” The Christian Messenger Vol. 12 (1842), 314.
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distinctive “church,” he moved toward a millennialism based on nationalism. 37 Thus,
Campbell’s later postmillennialism highlighted the uniqueness and supremacy of the
United States as the vehicle for advancement of Christian unity in these last days of the
millennium before Christ’s return. Campbell was certainly not alone in this blending of
millennialism and nationalism. As McLoughlin has pointed out, it was a mixture that
defined American revivalism. 38 By attaching Christian piety to the advancement of the
United States as a nation, Campbell and many other religious voices were creating an
evangelical Christian reality which served the U.S. the same way state-sponsored
churches had served Europe. Campbell’s mixture of postmillennialism and “Manifest
Destiny” was part of a larger Christian phenomenon, and one we shall explore in a later
chapter. In contrast, Stone was the peripheral voice, crying out in a millennial wilderness
where notions of apocalyptic destruction and societal demise were not what a young and
vital nation wanted to hear.
To bring these millennial differences into sharper focus, the language with which
each was voiced needs to be heard and understood. The following passage from
Campbell’s Millennial Harbinger contrasts his millennial language with Stone’s:
On this point I do not now amplify. My object is simply to produce Scriptural
evidence that when the Lord appears a second time these four events will
certainly follow in quick succession:--1st. All the dead saints shall be raised. 2d.
All the living saints shall be changed. 3d. All nations shall be judged and a final
separation between the good and the bad shall take place. 4th. New heavens and a
new earth shall be created, and the earth shall then be the dwelling place of
Jehovah, the centre of the universe, the throne of the Eternal, and all things shall
37
Mont Whitson, “Campbell’s Post-Protestantism and Civil Religion,” in The Stone-Campbell Movement:
An International Religious Tradition, Michael Casey and Douglas Foster, eds. (Knoxville, Tennessee:
University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 181.
38
William G. McLoughlin, Jr., Modern Revivalism: Charles Grandison Finney to Billy Graham (New
York: The Ronald Press Company, 1959), 5.
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be subdued to him. These points being established, not by reason or argument, but
by clear and unequivocal testimony. 39
Gone is the symbolism, and gone is the passionate language of the ancient apocalyptic
poets. Instead Campbell lays out the facts as they are to be gleaned from the scripture’s
testimony. The facts presented by the testimony are not that different from Stone’s
message: the dead are raised in both views, although with Stone only the Christians at
first. With Campbell, all souls are raised because there is but one resurrection. The
nations are judged in both views. Campbell even indicated that God will in some way
reign on earth, just as Stone did. But what that “earth” will be seems different for
Campbell. For him it is a “new earth” and the present earth is destroyed. The
Millennium for Campbell is the present time. It is a time when Christianity wins over a
large part of the world in anticipation of the final judgment. Campbell saw his own work
toward restoring the pure church as part of those final efforts toward the expanding of
Christianity in the last days of the millennium. Efforts to spread Christianity and in
extension improve the societies of men, was part of God’s plan for Campbell’s time.
Campbell’s postmillennialism was on display in 1830 when he closed The
Christian Baptist journal and started a new one called the Millennial Harbinger. The
preface for the first edition in January of 1830 said this:
This work shall be devoted to the destruction of Sectarianism, Infidelity, and
Antichristian doctrine and practice. It shall have for its object the development
and introduction of that political and religious order of society called THE
MILLENNIUM, which will be the consummation of that ultimate amelioration of
society proposed in the Christian Scriptures. 40
39
Alexander Campbell, “The Coming of the Lord,” The Millennial Harbinger Vol. 14, No. 26 (October,
1843), 445.
40
Alexander Campbell, “Preface,” The Millennial Harbinger Vol. 1, No. 1 (January, 4, 1830), 1.
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For Campbell the Millennium was now. For Stone the Millennium was after Christ’s
return. The contempt Stone showed for the world and all its cultures and societies was
the result of his belief that Christ would soon take it over and rule with his saints. The
promise Campbell saw in the world and all its cultures and societies was the result of his
belief that Christ was reigning on earth now, through Christian movements like his.
As indicated, millennialism led to fatalism about worldly affairs for Stone, since
only God can “fix” the world. Despite his rejection of Calvinism’s fatalistic view of
salvation, Stone did not escape fatalism in terms of the world itself, which in his
estimation was doomed from the Garden of Eden on. In contrast, for Campbell it led to
an urge to reform society, since God had given Christians the responsibility of “fixing”
the world in these last times. Stone’s world-view was defined by a strong pacifism and a
belief that Christians were not to be actively involved in this world’s affairs. It promoted
a view that worldly governments were necessary evils to be tolerated by Christians but
not embraced. This could be why republicanism appealed to Stone in the beginning,
because it was seen as a way of limiting the power of an authoritative government. The
problem this created for Stone by the 1820’s was how to fit this negative view of the
world and its governments into the thriving nationalism of the time. It meant that Stone’s
movement would always be for the peripheral groups in society, since his particular view
of the gospel condemned anyone within the mainstream of society. For Campbell, there
was no problem with fitting his theology into the American mainstream. His
postmillennial view would eventually fit right in with the nationalism and patriotism of
the times, and allow the Disciples of Christ to thrive in the antebellum years. As David
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E. Harrell points out, there was a very strong desire within the Disciples of Christ for
social reform, even in the early 1830’s when the movement had just started. 41
The difference in millennial beliefs also underscores another difference between
Stone and Campbell. The two men had very different attitudes toward worldly wealth.
As already pointed out, Stone had early in his life developed a strong asceticism that was
closely tied to his Christian beliefs. For instance, hear Stone’s tone in this passage:
“Time is a drop, eternity is a boundless ocean; upon this inch of time depends the eternal
happiness or misery of the human family. This brought Jesus from heaven to earth,
brought him to poverty; this led him to the cross; to the grave.” 42 Stone’s premillennial
view taught him that Christians are to suffer the poverty and discomforts of the world, in
order to show their loyalty to Christ, who also suffered poverty and an excruciating death.
In Stone’s mind, any man who lives comfortably, is not following Christ’s example. In
contrast, Campbell blasts the monastic orders of the Catholic Church: “See these poor,
gloomy, lazy set of mortals, habited in their awful black, their innocent white, or their
spiritual grey, according to their order, forsaking all the business and enjoyment of
society….” 43 Unlike Stone, he sees no good coming from a separation of Christians from
the everyday world. How could he when it was the responsibility of Christians to change
the world for the better in these last days of the Millennium?
41
David E. Harrell, The Quest for a Christian America, 1800-1865: A Social History of the Disciples of
Christ (University of Alabama Press, 2000), 22. In this book, Harrell’s thesis is that Campbell’s early
movement had a distinct social conscience. They were not outsiders in American culture. Thus, the
evolution of their thinking must be seen in the context of the changing social and economic forces of their
day.
42
Barton Stone, “The Signs of the Last Days,” The Christian Messenger Vol. 12 (1842), 314.
43
Alexander Campbell, The Millennial Harbinger Vol. 1, No. 1 (January, 4, 1830), 1.
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Yet, a romantic view of poverty may have also been Campbell’s attitude early on,
as many of his outbursts against the wealthy clergy reveal. 44 But his actual life shows
that he took a very different view of what it meant to follow Christ’s example. He did
not believe that Christians were required to take a vow of poverty, or that worldly wealth
was something inherently sinful. Campbell became a very wealthy man, owning a
sizeable estate. He was well-respected in Virginia as a scholar, preacher, writer,
legislator, and postmaster. 45 Compare that with Stone’s situation later in life, where he
embarked upon one final tour of Kentucky churches. Although crippled by a stroke two
years earlier, he was met everywhere with great affection as the most “universally loved”
preacher of his time. 46 With the support of this immense following, he held gospel
meetings and stayed in the homes of those who adored him. They recalled his many
years of itinerant preaching, and of course the initial years at Cane Ridge. 47 In Stone’s
later life, he was still depending upon the goodwill support of local churches in order to
get by, while Campbell was among Virginia’s wealthy elite.
Atonement represents another theological difference between Stone and
Campbell. Stone rejected substitutionary atonement (Christ died as a substitutionary
sacrifice for all human sinfulness) because it led to universalism. 48 If Christ was a
substitutionary sacrifice, then it must be a sacrifice that covers all sin, and therefore saves
all men. Stone also rejected the popular Methodist view of atonement, which said that
Christ died to reconcile us to the Father. For this view to be correct, God could not be an
unchangeable being as the scriptures clearly teach. “The death of Jesus is never
44
West, ch. 2.
Richardson, ch. 16-20 especially deal with Campbell’s many achievements, both religious and secular.
46
Stone and Rogers. 82.
47
Ibid., 80-92.
48
Ibid., 56-60.
45
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represented as having any effect on God, or his law,” Stone claims. 49 He goes on to
reject yet other opinions on atonement, but does not offer anything to take their place.
Indeed, why should he since he rejects the very notion of there being a Christian
orthodoxy? But he does say this: “The gift of Jesus was before his death, and this,
according to the system, must be before the satisfaction.” 50 The indication here is that
atonement has nothing to do with Christ’s death, since our reconciliation to God came
with Christ’s life and not his death. This sounds very much like what is called exemplary
atonement, later developed by nineteenth-century liberal theologians. In this view of
atonement, Christ’s life is seen as an example to all men of a sinless life. By his life and
example, Christ saves us from our sins. This is also sometimes called the “moral
influence theory” of atonement while the opposing view is called “penal substitution” 51
Stone used a story to convey his rejection of substitutionary atonement: two men
are found guilty of the same crime, and are sentenced to death. One is penitent and the
other is a “hardened villain.” But the law demands that both pay with their lives, unless
one who is innocent steps up to allow himself to die in their place. What should happen
here? Does the law allow an innocent man to die for the crimes of the guilty? Stone says
that in this situation a wise governor may spare the penitent and put to death the villain,
showing the law to contain both justice and mercy without sacrificing the life of an
innocent man. Why would we assume God’s law to not contain the same wisdom? What
kind of law allows innocence to be punished because it does not have the flexibility to
49
Stone and Rogers, 58.
Ibid.
51
Michael W. Casey and Douglas A. Foster, “The Renaissance of Stone-Campbell Studies: An Assessment
and New Directions,” in The Stone-Campbell Movement: An International Religious Tradition, Casey &
Foster, eds. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 6.
50
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contain both justice and mercy? 52 Based on this reasoning, Stone rejected substitutionary
atonement on the grounds that it shows God’s law to be imperfect (i.e., “perfect” law
would be that which contains both justice and mercy). Thus he states, “I have concluded
that the blood of Christ never made God placable, or reconciled him to sinners. This
would be to effect in him a great change.” 53 To accept penal substitution is to change the
very nature of God, in Stone’s estimation. The implications of Stone’s rejection of
substitutionary atonement or penal substitution in favor of an exemplary or moral
influence theory are immense, especially when we look at the importance of the
substitutionary model to Campbell’s theological views.
Campbell held firm to the orthodox view of substitutionary atonement because he
held to a different view of God’s law. It was not perfect because it contained God’s
justice and mercy in equal measure. It was perfect because it contained something
Campbell refers to as “sin-offering,” 54 which served as the perfect remedy to
transgression. The spilling of innocent blood is not a gross injustice as in Stone’s
analogy, but instead the perfect solution to the breaking of the law. And as that perfect
solution, it is ingrained in the law. Christ’s blood sacrifice is the fulfillment of the law.
Campbell’s analogy was the Old Testament, where blood sacrifice was part of the Jews
regular atonement with God. Christ’s blood sacrifice is necessary because it shows us
“the impossibility of escape from the just and retributive punishment of insulted and
indignant Heaven.” 55 So on the issue of atonement, Stone and Campbell could not be
further apart. Stone rejected substitutionary atonement as impossible in that it changes
52
Barton Stone, “Reply to Bro. John Curd,” The Christian Messenger Vol. 8, No. 7 (July, 1834), 207-208.
Ibid., 209.
54
Alexander Campbell, The Christian System (Cincinnati, Ohio: Standard Publishing Company, 1836), 30.
55
Ibid., 34.
53
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the nature of God. Campbell claimed substitutionary atonement to be absolutely
necessary for God’s plan to work. It is Campbell’s view that dominated the movement
after 1832. It has also dominated conservative Christian orthodoxy up to the present
time. 56
Despite their often elaborated view that theology fell squarely under matters of
opinion and should not cause division, Stone and Campbell continued to debate
theological issues throughout the 1830’s. In 1840 they conducted a written debate on
theological matters which dealt heavily with the issue of atonement. Both men indicated
that beliefs on atonement were fundamental to one’s Christian view, and therefore of
great importance. At the beginning of this friendly debate, Stone said, “All the subjects
you have proposed are but so many fractions of one common denominator, which I shall
call the atonement.” 57 In the first discourse, Stone asked, “Why does my brother
Campbell so confidently assert that ‘without shedding of blood there never was remission
of sin? Was every moral transgressor under the law, and before the law, cut off by death,
unforgiven?’” 58 Here, Stone was challenging Campbell’s assertion that all sin is atoned
for with the shedding of blood in place of the transgressor. In Old Testament terms, the
animal sacrifices atoned for sins. Stone, by showing that in certain circumstances under
the law of Moses, sin was atoned for without the shedding of blood, was rejecting
substitutionary atonement as a necessary part of the Christian faith. He went on to ask,
“Though condemned by law to certain death, could not the penitent offender find mercy
and forgiveness by the law of faith, as did Abraham the father of us all, and as did many
56
Leroy Garrett, “Occasional Essay Number 122,” found on leroygarrett.org (May 13, 2006). Despite his
progressive views theologically and otherwise within a conservative Churches of Christ, Garrett defends
the necessity of substitutional atonement.
57
Alexander Campbell, “Atonement,” The Millennial Harbinger Vol. 4, No. 6 (June, 1840), 243.
58
Ibid., 244.
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others recorded in the scriptures?” 59 Stone’s long-standing relationship with Campbell
had not changed his views on atonement, nor Campbell’s.
Campbell answered Stone’s questions by first asserting their tremendous
importance: “I most sincerely supplicate the FATHER OF LIGHTS to subdue our spirits and
to imbue them with the holy spirit of the gospel of Christ; that, with all piety,
benevolence, Christian meekness and mildness, we may examine this great subject--so
necessary to right conceptions of God, of Christ, and of ourselves.” 60 Clearly this
discussion, initiated by Campbell, had importance beyond mere opinion. He countered:
“Your view, then, is, that the law made no provision for any sins but those of ignorance
or legal defilement--that these were not mortal sins; and consequently the sin-offerings of
the law saved no one from death.” 61 He continued, “…Surely brother Stone believes
that all manner of sins, excepting one, may be forgiven, because the blood of Jesus Christ
cleanses from all sin. There is a radical mistake here: I trust it is in my misconception of
your meaning.” 62 Despite this friendly banter over possible misconceptions, it is clear in
this debate that both men held completely opposing views on what constitutes God’s law
and its process of atonement for sin. Stone’s view saw God’s law as tempered by His
mercy and grace. Therefore it was inconceivable that innocent blood be spilled for the
sins of others. God’s law, if perfect, could not allow it. In Stone’s mind, God’s
government was the shining example for how our own governments should work but
never do. In contrast, Campbell understood God’s law as perfect in and of itself and
59
Alexander Campbell, “Atonement,” The Millennial Harbinger Vol. 4, No. 6 (June, 1840), 244.
Ibid., 246-247.
61
Ibid., 247.
62
Ibid., 248.
60
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incomparable to human governments. It contained its own solution to atonement for
human sin, which was the blood sacrifice of Christ.
Many might argue that theological differences like these do not undermine
Christian unity. Stone and Campbell could believe their different versions of atonement
without undermining their united work as Christians. Indeed, they seemed to often
believe that themselves. But as their on-going debate on the importance of atonement
attests to, theological differences do matter. Theological views color the way we look at
the world. If it is Christ’s perfect life that atones for our sins, then we will declare a
different Christianity than if Christ’s sacrificial death atones for our sins. The differences
may not seem incompatible at first, but eventually they are because they lie on different
foundations of what Christianity means.
Given all these differences, what explains the editorial cooperation between Stone
and Campbell during the 1820’s? Only an understanding of the way they both met the
needs of the other can suffice. In their editorial roles, they banded together against the
entrenched denominational systems. Campbell was constantly defending Stone against
accusations of Arianism. In an on-going war with Baptist journals such as The Baptist
Recorder, Stone and Campbell defended one another despite their obvious differences.
In a letter addressed to Campbell and reprinted in The Christian Messenger, Baptist
editor, Spencer Clack criticized Campbell for not standing up to Stone’s “Arian”
heresies:
The doctrine of the Trinity they [Stone’s movement] uphored [sic]; the divinity of
Jesus Christ was denied; the atonement was rejected; the operations of the Holy
Spirit in the regeneration of the human heart were deemed useless; and in fine,
after having attempted a refutation of the fundamental truths of the gospel, the
creed of the party was developed. I call them a party; for such they are,
notwithstanding their imposing name; a sect, they are, influenced by sectarian
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views and feelings, as much as any other sect in this western country, I did hope
brother Campbell, that in your reply to Mr. Stone’s letter, you would have
contended earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. You cannot
conceive how much I felt myself disappointed. 63
Campbell was obviously not willing to strike out against Stone’s beliefs the way his
Baptists associates thought he should. Stone printed Clack’s letter in order to give his
own response. Against the charge of Arianism, he wrote, “If we are Arians, so were the
Fathers of the three first centuries.” 64 Then he goes on to defend his editorial ally,
Campbell, by claiming he is a man who tolerates many various opinions in order to
fellowship all Christians. “You express great changrin [sic] and disappointment that
Brother Campbell did not come out and boldly refute them [Stone’s views]. Do, sir,
refute them yourself.” 65 And thus does Stone lay the challenge on the Baptist editor’s
doorstep, fully allied with Campbell in a debate that must have seemed very odd to wellread Christians of that time, since it was clear that Campbell and Stone were trying to
gloss over their differences in order to attack Baptists who not only had an official
alliance with Campbell, but were closer to his theology than Stone was.
It appears that this situation was, to a large part, maneuvering by Campbell. In
attacking those he was in alliance with and defending those he had great disagreements
with, he established for himself some very important intellectual distinctiveness. By not
getting too close with his allies while at the same time not getting too far from his
opponents, Campbell created a unique space for himself on the religious landscape of his
time. Campbell’s lack of enthusiasm for the union with Stone in 1832 is more
understandable in this light. In Campbell’s mind, his “union” with Stone had already
63
Spencer Clack, The Christian Messenger Vol. 2, No. 2 (December, 1827), 20-29.
Ibid., 30.
65
Ibid., 33.
64
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taken place in the form of editorial wars against the denominations. Their union had
already run its course. Historian Mark Noll points out something unique about this
period in American religious history between 1830 and 1832. He shows how these two
years were a sort of breaking point. Before 1830 revivalism had been a uniting force in
American Christianity. After 1832 it became a dividing force. 66 Ralph Waldo Emerson
made his famous break with Unitarianism in the same short period of time. All of
American Christianity was experiencing this shift away from unity and toward the
making of clear distinctions between groups. Stone’s more universal Christian message
was at odds with that trend, while Campbell’s same-mindedness became a tool for
distinguishing and defining his movement.
The important conclusion to this is that the so-called “Stone-Campbell union”
marks not the beginning of a new ecumenical Christian America, as many of its
instigators supposed, but the end to any significant attempts to define Christianity in
broad terms during the nineteenth century. It is not a coincidence that followers of Stone
and Campbell wished for some union at the very time when the rest of American
churches were dividing over revivalism. Instead, it is an indication of that divide,
because leaders like Stone were losing their battle for a more universal Christianity while
distinguished leaders like Campbell had successfully carved out a niche for themselves
within the general atmosphere of separation and division. Therefore, the “union” was
really the very opposite of what that word usually means. It was really an attempt to
define as many people as possible within one understanding of the Christian church.
66
Mark Noll, The Old Religion in a New World: The History of North American Christianity (Grand
Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 96.
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That it succeeded is proof that Stone and his broad views and tolerance of “opinions of
truth” were never part of the formula.
Yet even though Campbell distinguished himself and his followers as a unique
movement with specific doctrines by the early 1830’s, he had also by then pulled away
from the hard rationality and iconoclastic ranting of his earlier days. Indeed this change
in Campbell began in the late 1820’s. In April of 1829 he debated the famous skepticutopianist, Robert Owen. The debate was held in Cincinnati, and was possibly one of the
most controversial religious events of that year, drawing a massive crowd on every night
of the week-long debate. As Robert West points out, the earlier Campbell had made a
career out of attacking the status quo in Christianity. He went after the clergy systems
and denominationalism in general 67 with an iconoclastic furor that no doubt made The
Christian Baptist widely read and highly offensive to many orthodox Christian thinkers.
Campbell’s combative style was legendary. But once he was faced with going head to
head with Robert Owen, the famous atheist, it was necessary to make some sort of peace
with orthodox Christianity in order to defend it against skepticism. Campbell was at an
important crux in his career as a religious leader. It was time for him to either remain on
the periphery with his combative criticisms, or step into the Christian mainstream as one
of its leaders. He chose the latter.
In the published introduction to the Campbell-Owen debate, Campbell wrote,
“Now what has dreamy skepticism or presumptuous unbelief to offer, as an apology for
itself, in vindication of its position, or as a substitute for Christianity? The light of
67
West, ch. 2-3. He shows how Campbell first attacked the clergy, and then the doctrines upon which they
rested.
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nature, the light of reason, the dictates of conscience! What flimsy sophistry!” 68
Suddenly, human reason is sophistry rather than the way in which all minds come to
God’s truth. But in fairness to Campbell’s genius, the place of human reason was more
complicated than that. Yes, it did bring men to God’s truth, but only after divine
revelation (always through the Word) had placed the truth in front of it. In other words,
in Campbell’s view, human rationality was valuable only because it was capable of
seeing what God sets before us miraculously in his Word. Therefore, when debating the
clergy or even Stone, Campbell placed human rationality on a pedestal. But when
debating an atheist like Owen, human rationality had to be put in its place lest it become
all-encompassing with no dependence on divine revelation. This is why the debate with
Robert Owen was such a turning point for Campbell. After years of railing against the
Christian status quo, he was now becoming its chief defender.
Many publishers recognized the importance of the Campbell-Owen debate. The
Western Monthly Review gave a detailed report, brimming with descriptive nuance. They
described Campbell as “The chivalrous champion of the covenant….a sparkling, bright,
and cheerful countenance….one who had words both ready and inexhausable.” 69 Owen
was described as backed into a corner from the start, relying heavily on his “twelve
fundamental laws of nature” 70 in order to steer him through the barrage of logical and
philosophical arguments Campbell was throwing at him. Indeed, they said of Campbell,
“The words logic, ratiocination, syllogism, premises, subject, predicate, conclusion,
68
Alexander Campbell, in The Evidences of Christianity: A Debate Between Robert Owen and Alexander
Campbell, Containing an Examination of the “Social System” (Nashville: McQuiddy Printing Company,
1957), iii.
69
The Western Monthly Review Vol. 2, No. 1 (April, 1829), 642.
70
Ibid., 643.
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dilemma, demonstration, axiom, ect. were uttered, perhaps too frequently.” 71 Campbell
was intent on using the logic of science and philosophy to defeat skepticism. Although
duly noted, they excused Campbell’s verbose manner. Owen’s manner and views were
not as well tolerated. As the seasoned atheist described his belief in the “everlasting
sleep of death” the review noted: “As he uttered this, a general revulsion of horror passed
across the countenance of the crowded audience.” 72 Campbell now played a new role in
American Christianity. No longer an outsider, he was the new defender of orthodoxy. It
is not insignificant that the debate with Owen was held in a large Methodist church in
Cincinnati. 73 Although he had often preached in the pulpits of the large denominations, it
had always been as a reformer who fought against them. Now he was their defender.
In 1829, while Campbell was undergoing a profound shift in his Christian
thinking (one that would lead to the publishing of The Christian System in 1836), Stone
was doing the same thing he had always done. He was still fighting for the rights of all
men to interpret Christian truth for themselves. He was still an outsider on all fronts, be
it the fight against Christian orthodoxy or the fight against unbelief. In becoming the
voice against the atheist and infidel, and defender of Christianity, Campbell’s new role in
the public eye further separated him from his editorial ally, Stone. That this happened
just a short time before talks of union between the Stone and Campbell movements
began, casts the reality of the union into further doubt. The two leaders were no longer
on the same path, even on an editorial level.
Similarities between Campbell and Robert Owen emphasize the differences
between Campbell and Stone. Just as Campbell had more in common theologically with
71
The Western Monthly Review Vol. 2, No. 1 (April, 1829), 646.
Ibid., 644.
73
Ibid., 640.
72
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his Baptist detractors than with Stone, so did he have more in common with Owen. For
instance, both men thought in utopian terms. Owen, in his opening remarks of the
debate, laid out the methods by which he had come to his conclusion that society was not
properly serving mankind. He pointed out that society imposed upon the individual the
very things that make him not function properly, such as “divine laws, indissoluble
marriages, and unnecessary private property.” 74 Owen’s New Harmony experiment
attempted to create a utopian society in America that would fight these societal evils.
Campbell, of course, greatly criticized the New Harmony experiment based on his own
foundation of Christian morality. Socially, Campbell was not utopian like Owen. But he
was utopian in the sense that his postmillennial beliefs saw American society as God’s
experiment in these last days of the millennium. Christianity would transform society in
much the same way that Owen imagined his enlightened skepticism doing the same.
Underlying their utopian similarities was their belief in human rationality. Owen
believed it to be the crux of all knowledge, happiness and success in this world, which
was the only world he believed existed. Religion had ruined the human ability to reason
itself to high levels of happiness by imposing restrictions on it. In response to this,
Campbell subjugated human reason to divine intervention (the Word), but still it played
the vital role of bringing us to the truth.
Thus, Campbell and Owen were social reformers on opposite sides of the fence.
Owen was a secular reformer, believing that getting rid of religious beliefs would allow
people to improve themselves. Campbell was a Christian reformer, believing that God’s
plan for people through Christianity, especially in these last days of the millennium,
would allow them to improve themselves. Indeed, as Edwin Harrell argues, Campbell
74
Robert Owen, in The Evidences of Christianity: A Debate Between Owen and Campbell, 2.
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believed in much of the societal reform going on in his time, and the Stone-Campbell
movement from the beginning would be very socially conscious. 75
Certainly no utopianist, Stone believed that all human societies were inherently
evil and corrupt. Christians should tolerate them until God came to establish his
millennial reign on this earth. In Stone’s world-view, efforts to improve human society
were at best a wasted effort and at worst a sign of vanity and self-deceit. In fact, Stone
had little to say about the debate, even though it was a watershed event in Campbell’s
public career. The Christian Messenger only published a short paragraph of general
praise for Campbell:
The long looked for debate between Mr. A Campbell and Mr. Owen has
eventuated, as we had anticipated, in the complete triumph of Christianity over
skepticism and infidelity in Cincinnati: Mr. Campbell deserves much from our
country. We feel thankful for so able a defender and supporter of the faith once
delivered to the saints, and we pray that his useful life may long be preserved a
blessing to the world. 76
Rather than analyze things in terms of society and faith, as we have seen him do on a
number of occasions, Stone simply stated the obvious declaration of Campbell’s triumph
over unbelief, and then moved on to other topics. There was not the slightest hint that
some fundamental shift had occurred in his on-going partnership with Campbell,
probably because he simply had no idea that such a thing could take place. He had never
been on the same level with Campbell, and any shift in Campbell’s public posture was
not likely to change their relationship to each other, at least not in Stone’s mind. But
indeed a shift was occurring, and it was one that would change both men and their
movements permanently. The demise of Stone as a leader with a large following rests
75
76
Harrell, 21-23.
Barton Stone, The Christian Messenger Vol. 3 (May 1829), 167.
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partly on Stone’s failure to see the shift that was occurring in Campbell in the years
leading up to 1832.
We have already established why Campbell was not supportive of the 1832 union.
But why did Stone support it? We have indicated that he wasn’t capable of separating
himself from other Christians over theological differences, and that he did not believe in
a Christian orthodoxy as such. But another reason for Stone’s support of the union is
found in a passage from his autobiography:
It is not wonderful that the prejudices of the old Christian church should be great
against us, and that they should so unkindly upbraid me especially, and my
brethren in Kentucky, for uniting with the Reformers (Campbell). But what else
could we do, the Bible being our directory? Should we command them to leave
the foundation on which we stood—the Bible alone—when they had come upon
the same? 77
This passage indicates that Stone felt backed into a corner, having no choice but to unite
with a group that had come to the same earth-shattering conclusion, even though he
disagreed with its leader on almost everything else. Stone was compelled to defend his
union with Campbell because many in his movement did not accept it. Although exact
statistics do not exist, most scholars believe that at least half of the Stone movement
resisted the union with Campbell. 78 Their survival as a separate group serves as evidence
that Stone would have remained an important Christian leader—perhaps as important as
Campbell—if he had stayed independent of Campbell.
These “Christian Churches” that resisted union with Campbell continued on with
the foundations Stone had helped lay for them. They became part of what was known as
the “Christian Connexion.” They continued to support Stone’s rejection of
77
Stone and Rogers, 79.
Thomas H. Olbricht, “Christian Connection,” The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004), 190-191.
78
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Trinitarianism, and indeed his rejection of any notion of Christian orthodoxy. They clung
to Stone’s very “catholic” view of Christian unity, and his notion of truth as intrinsically
relative and subjective. All of these aspects flew in the face of what Campbell stood for.
This half of the Stone movement that rejected the Stone-Campbell union
continued to call themselves simply “Christians.” The pronunciation Christ-ians was
sometimes used in order to distinguish the movement from other Christian movements. It
was made up of Stone’s churches, the New England groups led by Abner Jones and Elias
Smith, as well as remnants of the O’Kelly groups. They held to a stronger view of the
workings of the Holy Spirit, and practiced the revivalism prevalent in the North at that
time. Their staunch anti-Trinitarianism made them somewhat close to the Unitarians, and
indeed, after 1817 Elias Smith became first a Universalist and then a Unitarian. 79 Their
inclusiveness and tolerance of opinion remained one of their central characteristics,
although they were not beyond conflict among themselves over many issues.
Many in the Christian Connexion became Millerites during the 1840’s. Joshua V.
Himes, a Christian Connexion preacher, became William Miller’s Apostle Paul by
promoting his prophesies all over the United States. 80 When Miller’s prophecies did not
come true in the 1840’s, the Christian Connexion was weakened. Despite this setback,
the movement maintained its identity throughout the rest of the nineteenth century,
operating much like mainstream denominations, yet still committed to the idea of
congregational autonomy within a universal Christian unity. In 1931 it merged with the
Congregationalist Church. 81 This union created the Congregational Christian Churches,
which then in 1957 merged with the Evangelical and Reform Church to become the
79
Olbricht,190-191.
Hatch, 144-145.
81
Garrett, 173.
80
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ecumenical body known as the United Church of Christ. 82 In the century between the
1832 “Stone-Campbell union” and the Christian-Congregationalist union, this group
maintained a unique identity on the American religious landscape. Their ecumenical
views on unity, their liberal theology, their closeness to Congregationalism and
Unitarian-Universalism, all conveyed the logical development of Stone’s early ideas on
the nature of truth, anti-Trinitarianism, and the abstract “catholic” qualities of true
Christian union. Indeed, the argument can be made that Stone’s real legacy lay not in the
supposed union with Campbell, but in these “Christ-ian” groups he seems to have
abandoned in 1832. But in Stone’s mind, he never abandoned these people. As we shall
see in the next chapter, Stone continued to feel a strong affinity toward this group after
1832, and until his death in 1844. He defended his union with Campbell, but did not see
that as a repudiation of those who rejected the union. Indeed, over time, Stone rejected
the union himself.
82
Leo C. Rosten, Guide to Religions of America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959), 31.
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Chapter Four
The Christian Connexion’s Stone
There was a “unity event” in 1832 when Barton Stone met with representatives of
Campbell’s group to pledge cooperation and union. It has not been the purpose of this
study to deny that such an event took place. The purpose behind calling the StoneCampbell union a myth, is to show that Stone was never part of the leadership. The
union did indeed occur, but it is a myth that it was ever even partially Stone’s movement
to begin with. The movement was always completely under the leadership of Campbell,
with Stone’s views never really considered. Therefore, calling it a myth is not some
diversion into counter-factuals. Instead it is an attempt to put Barton Stone in a proper
religious-historical context, which means re-connecting him to those he left behind in
1832. It is the paradox of the man that his legacy lived on in the half of his movement
that avoided the proposed union with Campbell, and became a strong part of the
“Christian Connexion.” There is evidence that Stone in his later years openly rejected
much of what Campbell stood for, and hearkened back to the people he knew before his
association with Campbell. A careful analysis of events—told from a perspective outside
of the Campbell Movement—is needed in order to see how this came about.
The beginnings of what became known as the Christian Connexion occurred just a
few years before Campbell’s movement began. Around 1800, Abner Jones started
breaking away from his Baptist roots to establish churches that described themselves as
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just “Christians.” 1 Another Baptist, Elias Smith, was doing the same thing at about the
same time, and the two groups more or less made up one movement dedicated to this new
democratic view of Christianity. In these groups led by Jones and Smith, it became
common to call them “Christ-ians.” 2 This was about the same time that Stone was
holding his revivals in Cane Ridge, Kentucky. The Methodist groups first formed by
James O’Kelly in 1793 in Virginia, were also considered to be a part of this movement by
1800. 3 So the early form of the Christian Connexion came into existence at the turn of
the nineteenth century and consisted of these separate but similar groups: New England
churches led by Abner Jones and Elias Smith (primarily Baptist), Kentucky groups led by
Stone (Presbyterian), and Southern groups led by O’Kelly (Methodist). Later, it became
part of this three-prong movement’s theology that their early separateness was a sign of
God’s preordained design. 4 In other words, because three separate groups came to the
same conclusions without any knowledge of one another, this was a sign that God was
working in all three groups to bring about the true unadulterated church of Christ.
It makes sense to consider the work of Thomas and Alexander Campbell as a
fourth prong of this “Christ-ian” movement, yet they were never seen as such. Indeed,
the background of the Campbells was very different from the background of the “Christians.” For instance, Abner Jones in New England had experiences growing up in early
America that were much like Stone’s, but very different from Campbell’s. When Jones
was eight years old, his family moved to a new frontier town in Vermont called
1
Thomas Belcher, "Christ-ians" Religious Denominations in the United States (Philadelphia, PA: John E.
Potter, 1861), 779-780.
2
Robert Baird, "The Christ-ian Connection," Religion in the United States of America (Glasgow and
Edinburgh: Blackie and Son, 1844), 673.
3
E.C. Towne, et. al., eds., “Belief and History of ‘The Christians,’” Rays of Light from All Lands: The
Bible and Beliefs of Mankind (New York: Gay Brothers and Company, 1895), 626-628.
4
J. F. Burnett, The Origin and Principles of the Christians (Dayton, Ohio: The Christian Publishing
Association, 1921).
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Bridgwater. 5 In his Memoirs, Jones related a story about a hunting accident which took
the life of one of the townspeople. He described the effect this event had on them:
This solemn event, God was pleased to make use of to the awakening of the
stupid inhabitants of that town; and a glorious work of the Lord insued [sic]. This
work was general in the town; and it seemed as though every person that had
come to years of understanding, was struck with a sense of their miserable
situation, out of Christ; and many were brought out of darkness, into God's
marvelous light. 6
This incident caused Jones to think deeply about the condition of his soul at an early age.
Life on the frontier was evidence of the role men played in their salvation. God used this
hunting accident to bring the town of Bridgwater to its senses. Jones, even as a child,
was moving away from the predestination inherent in pure Calvinism, toward a radical
Arminian view that saw men as active agents in their own salvation. It is not surprising
that as a young adult he made the leap from Calivinism to the radically Arminian beliefs
also being preached by Stone. The more moderate Arminian beliefs of Campbell would
have been less appealing to him, given the nature of his frontier up-bringing.
Jones’ story of the hunting accident indicated a freedom to act independently.
“Each person” in the town “was struck with a sense of their miserable situation” 7 and
were thus compelled to act. Stone’s Cane Ridge experience indicated the same view of
what freedom was: it was something within each individual who read God’s word and
were compelled to act. That was how Stone’s Cane Ridge was different from other
Presbyterian communions from which it came. The communions of the past had been
5
Abner Jones, Memoirs of the Life and Experience, Travels and Preaching of Abner Jones (Exeter, Maine:
Norris and Sawyer,1807), 5-7.
6
Ibid., 8-9.
7
Ibid., 9.
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just that: communal affairs. 8 Stone made it an individual affair. Jones’ story about his
childhood town is similarly made into an individual affair. The townspeople dealt with
its aftermath not as a group, but as individuals who were free to chart their own salvation,
as well as free to do otherwise.
The difference between Jones and Campbell is evident in their different responses
to the Baptist Church. Jones was at one time a Baptist minister, yet later completely
rejected the church. He says this in his autobiography:
The baptists have an unscriptural name. The manner of their baptizing is
according to truth; the articles of faith and church covenant; the counsel and
constitution, is according to the traditions and doctrines of men; of which the
scripture saith (sic), touch not, taste not, handle not. The manner of dismissing the
people is the same. I did then reject them with all my heart; may the Lord ever
deliver me from them. 9
Jones’s individualized free gospel ideology led him to completely reject any association
with the Baptist Church, based mostly on a rejection of their name. Whether he actually
practiced that rejection is another matter, for he continued to preach in Baptist churches
after making that statement. 10 But ideologically he separated himself from the Baptists
by rejecting all association with the use of their name. This rejection did not include a
refusal to preach to them. He may have often preached to them just as he would to
heathens!
Campbell had a very different reaction to the Baptist Church. He joined his own
movement to a Baptist association: first the Redstone Baptist and then later the Mahoning
8
Paul Conkin, Cane Ridge: America’s Pentecost, (Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin
Press, 1990), 24-25. Conkin puts Cane Ridge within the context of the traditional Presbyterian
communions, which date back to the beginnings of Presbyterianism in Scotland.
9
Jones, Memoirs, 62-63.
10
Ibid., 90-93. In this section of his Memoirs he describes preaching engagements among various groups.
Since he often mentions Baptist leaders, it is safe to assume that he continued preaching to Baptist
congregations after condemning what he perceived as their unscriptural name.
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Baptist association. 11 He considered himself and his movement a part of theirs, yet
claimed total freedom within it. 12 Campbell never called himself a Baptist, but for all
intents and purposes was one until about 1830. In the 1820’s his famous journal was
named The Christian Baptist, even though it was often very critical of Baptist practices.
Indeed it was this internal criticism of the Baptist tradition that he saw as a selling point
for his radical writings. He says in the preface to The Christian Baptist: “Hence it is
generally presumed that a paper will soon fall into disrepute if it dare to oppose the views
or practices of the leaders of the people addressed.” 13 Then he goes on to claim this as
proof that his new paper will provide objective truth regarding scriptures, because it is
not even beholden to the church it is named after. He obviously did not have the same
aversion to names other than “Christian” as Jones did. Campbell’s free gospel
ideology—based on the freedom to do what was correct as opposed to the freedom to do
as one chose— was more in keeping with a group like the Baptists who had a well
established orthodoxy. Jones’ free gospel ideology, as well as Stone’s, was against the
very notion of orthodoxy. In short, Campbell “rejected” the Baptists because of what
they believed, yet accepted their name and worked under it. Jones agreed with much of
what the Baptists believed, but rejected their name and refused to work under it.
Campbell’s relationship to the Baptists was such that he was content to work
independent of them but under their banner for the rest of his days. On his deathbed,
Campbell would learn of talks to re-unite his movement with the Baptists, and indicated
how pleased he was with that development, although of course it never occurred. He
11
James B. North, “Redstone Baptist Association,” in The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2004), 628-629.
12
Alexander Campbell, “To an Independent Baptist,” The Christian Baptist, Vol. 3 (1825), 200-201.
13
Alexander Campbell, “Preface to the First Edition,” The Christian Baptist Vol. 1, No. 1 (August 3,
1823), 1.
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regretted his separation from the Baptists. 14 These different approaches to the Baptist
tradition indicate why Campbell’s group was never seriously considered a part of the
Christian Connexion in these early days before Stone and Campbell became allied
through their editorial work in the 1820’s. The Connexion’s anti-orthodoxy approach
was similar to Stone’s, but completely different from Campbell’s.
Campbell and his movement were also distinct from these other groups because of
Campbell’s embrace of debating. The use of the formal debate began to be an effective
tool toward advancement of Campbell’s movement as early as 1820 when he debated the
Presbyterian minister John Walker on baptism. 15 He continued debating throughout the
rest of his active leadership of the movement. If the “Sermon on the Law” had made
Campbell a controversial figure within the Baptist community, his debates on baptism
made him a hero among them. Jones and other leaders in the Christian Connexion never
used debating as a tool for advancement of their ideas. Stone was involved in debating
only after his editorial alliance with Campbell, starting in 1826. For the Christian
Connexion, the very act of debating would have indicated that they were not serious
about their belief in a free gospel that allows every man his opinions while still
communing with the larger body of Christ.
Even though there was no contact between the early New England Christ-ians and
other similar groups, there is evidence of a significant amount of contact between the
O’Kelly group and Stone. Stone wrote, “Three valuable elders who had a few years
before separated with James O’Kelly from the Methodist connection about this time
14
Leroy Garrett, The Stone-Campbell Movement (College Press Publishing Co., 1981), 542-543.
Ibid., 133-136. The Campbell-Walker debate was published in book form in 1822 under the title, A
Debate on Christian Baptism, Between Mr. John Walker, a Minister of the Secession, and Alexander
Campbell.
15
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united with us (Oct. 1804). Their names were Clement Nance, James Read and Rice
Haggard.” 16 It was the last person on that list that arguably had the most influence on
Stone’s subsequent efforts. Rice Haggard was the author of a pamphlet which would
have a tremendous impact, not only among Stoneite churches, but among Jones’s Christians in New England as well. Therefore, Rice Haggard deserves credit for being the first
author to unite the three prongs of the Christian Connexion under the name “Christians.”
Stone wrote of the time directly following his movement’s split from Presbyterianism in
1804, “We published a pamphlet on this name (Christian), written by Elder Rice
Haggard, who had lately united with us.” 17 This influential pamphlet, calling for a
renunciation of all human names in favor of “Christian,” would later be printed in The
Herald of Gospel Liberty which began being published in 1808 under the guidance of
Elias Smith. Smith would go on to be the Christian Connexion’s greatest voice of unity,
but also one of its great disappointments.
Before looking at Elias Smith and his contributions, it would help to understand
how close this early Christian Connexion came to joining the Freewill Baptist movement,
created by Benjamin Randall in the late eighteenth century. In 1770, when Randall was a
young man, he heard the elderly George Whitefield preach in Portsmouth. This started
him on his own religious journey, and he went back twice more to hear Whitefield.
When he was on his way back for a fourth time, he heard news that Whitefield had died
16
J.W. Roberts and R.L. Roberts, “Like Fire in Dry Stubble – The Stone Movement 1804-1832, Part 1 of
1964 lecture series at Abilene Christian University under the direction of the McGarvey Fellowship
Program. Refer to pages 2-5, Volume7, Number 3 for the story of Rice Haggard’s influence in Stone’s
movement. Available at Abilene Christian University Restoration Archives.
17
Barton Stone and John Rogers, The Biography of Elder Barton Warren Stone (Cincinnati: J.A. and U.P.
James, 1847), 50.
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that very day. This had a tremendous effect on Randall religiously. 18 Whitefield, the
great preacher of the First Great Awakening, in his last days had inadvertently inspired
one of the anti-Calvinist movements of the Second Great Awakening by leading young
Benjamin Randall in the direction of freewill salvation. Randall wrote of the experience,
“O, what love I felt to all mankind and wished that they all might share in that fullness
which I saw so extensive and so free for them all.” 19 But he was not yet with the
Baptists. He joined the Congregational Church instead, and began a career as a preacher.
During the American Revolution Randall left his duties as preacher for the
Congregational Church in New Castle, Maine (an island located three miles from
Portsmouth) and joined the fighting for a brief time. 20 During the war, he studied the
Bible diligently and came to believe in the Baptists’ doctrine regarding believer’s
baptism. This resulted in a successful career as a Baptist preacher. 21 But with his
success, there was also resistance to his teachings and methods, which were not always in
tune with Baptist orthodoxy. By 1780 Randall established the first Freewill Baptist
Church at the town of New Durham, not far from Portsmouth. 22 It would remain a
separate denomination until it reunited with the Baptist Church in 1911. 23 Randall
espoused the same Free Salvation doctrines that were later dominant in the Christian
Connexion. It was no surprise that the Freewill Baptists and Christian Connexion would
find a common ground upon which to meet.
18
Norman Allen Baxter, History of the Freewill Baptists: A Study in New England Separatism (Rochester,
New York: American Baptist Historical Society, 1957), 3-5.
19
Ibid., 5.
20
Ibid., 8.
21
Ibid., 9-11.
22
Ibid., 24.
23
Ibid., 180.
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In the first decade of the nineteenth century there was a strong exchange of ideas
between the Freewill Baptists and the Christian Connexion. Indeed, they almost united
as one movement. The first hint of exchange between the two groups came in 1803 at the
Gilmantown Meeting. 24 The Freewill Baptists had been having these regular meetings
for some time, and had started to move toward a more centralized structure, which was
eroding the authority of the local congregations. At this particular meeting, certain
resolutions were passed in order to curb that trend and give local congregations more
autonomy. This was evidently due to the influence of leaders from the Christian
Connexion who were preaching in Freewill Baptist Churches and attending their
conferences. It had become common for both groups to exchange preachers and share
church buildings by this time. 25 Some preachers from the Christian Connexion were
ordained in the Freewill Baptist church. 26 The two groups were very closely tied.
This situation naturally led to discussions of union, which failed for two reasons.
The first reason was sociological and geographic differences. The Freewill Baptists were
concentrated in the wealthier urban areas of New England. The Christian Connexion,
with its three-pronged existence in New England, Kentucky, and the South had a more
diverse and lower-class membership. Their preachers tended to be itinerant, such as
Stone himself was for much of his life. The Freewill Baptists came to view the Christian
Connexion as a “contemporary frontier movement” 27 which might help them spread their
churches further west. But the differences that looked like opportunities, also stood in the
way of any proposed union. The socio-economic divide was too great.
24
Baxter, 47.
I.D. Stewart, History of the Freewill Baptists (Dover, 1862), 269-270
26
Simon Clough, An Account of the Christian Denomination in the United States (Boston, 1827), 5.
27
Baxter, 134. See also Warren Hathaway, Discourse on Abner Jones and the Christian Denomination
(Newburyport, 1861), 16.
25
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The second reason the union could not work was theological. By 1803 the
Christian Connexion had expressed its distain for the doctrine of the Trinity. Almost all
Connexion preachers preached some form of an anti-Trinitarian or modified Unitarian
view. This forced Freewill Baptists to more strongly defend their orthodox stance in
favor of Trinitarianism, and this more than anything kept any union efforts with the
Christ-ians from being successful. Later, a General Conference of Freewill Baptists
would state this explicitly:
Of any professing to go under the name of Freewill Baptists, or to be in
fellowship with the Connection preach different doctrine which represents Christ
to be a mere creature, inferior to the Father, such preaching is in our opinion that
which is contrary to the doctrine of Christ as taught in the Scripture and that with
which we have no fellowship. 28
If there is one event that marks the end of any thought of union between the
Christian Connexion and the Freewill Baptists it is the publishing of Herald of Gospel
Liberty in 1808, the same year that Freewill Baptist founder Benjamin Randall died. The
publisher was Elias Smith, leader of the New England Christ-ians. In Herald of Gospel
Liberty Smith showed the movement to be united under some basic principles that
distinguished it from Freewill Baptists. These basic principles can be lumped under two
categories: 1) A rejection of Trinitarianism as unscriptural; 2) A rejection of all names
other than “Christian.” It appeared to be a simple platform, but the implications were
enormous since a vast majority of Christian churches believed in the Trinity and had
names they used other than “Christian.” With the publication of Herald of Gospel
28
Baxter, 135, from “Minutes of the General Conference of the Freewill Baptist Connection, I” (Dover,
1827).
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Liberty, the first religious newspaper in America, 29 Elias Smith was calling for no less
than the restructuring of Christ’s church, in name and belief.
Elias Smith began an itinerant preaching career in 1791. The story he tells is that
a church in Danville, Vermont, offered him a settled preaching position in that year. The
offer included a seven-hundred acre parcel of land, which Smith claims to have flatly
rejected, based on his devotion to the poor itinerant preaching life. He wanted these
people united in one large congregation, but was not willing to go against his own
idealism by accepting their generous offer. The church making the offer then split the
property in half and formed two separate churches. 30 This initial event in Smith’s
preaching career foreshadowed his legacy in the Christian Connexion: his words unified
while his deeds divided.
By 1806-1807 Smith was heavily involved in drawing Freewill Baptists further
away from the larger Baptist fold by claiming them as part of his own movement. He
says of that time,
In the year 1806, I published proposals for printing an illustration of the
prophecies yet to be fulfilled; a subject which I had been studying for about ten
years. In March, 1807, I began to write what had been proposed to be published.
The subject was great, glorious, and extensive. I wrote three weeks; and in that
time had about one half done of what was proposed. The particulars written were
so glorious, that my mind was at times overpowered by the things I wrote upon,
and my conclusion was, to drop the business awhile, and journey to preach the
everlasting gospel to the children of men. Just at this time, I received a letter from
Elder Daniel Hix, of Dartmouth, Mass. informing me, that he and the church,
excepting about four, which consisted of more than four hundred members, had
agreed to leave the baptist order, and to stand as christians only, without any other
name; owning Christ as their only Lawgiver. 31
29
Elias Smith, “Address to the Public,” Herald of Gospel Liberty, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Sept. 1, 1808), 1. Smith
wrote, “A religious newspaper is almost a new thing under the sun; I know not but that this is the first ever
published to the world.”
30
Elias Smith, Autobiography, (Portsmouth, NH: Beck and Foster, 1816), 204-205. Available through
Abilene Christian University Restoration Archives.
31
Ibid., 365.
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What this indicates is that in 1806 Smith still had close relations with Baptist and
Freewill Baptist churches. The distinction between “Christian” churches (i.e., those
churches within the emerging transcongregational Christian Connexion) and Baptist
groups was still not very clear.
In 1805 Smith had applied for official membership in the Freewill Baptist
movement, only to be turned down because of his insistence that the name “Freewill
Baptist” be replaced with “Christians.” 32 Who was joining whom? Smith’s concept of
tolerance and cooperation did not include the beliefs and ideas of others. It is almost as
if he were willing to join them if they would only renounce themselves! Yet, given the
debate over Trinitarianism and man-made names, which by 1807 was clearly in full
swing, the Freewill Baptists and Christ-ians mingled with each other, apparently tolerant
of these fundamental differences. Smith was still preaching in Freewill Baptist churches
as late as 1811. 33 All this speaks to Smith’s state of mind. As is evident in the above
quote from his autobiography, he is an impulsive man who finds it easy to abandon one
project for a new one. Even as he was trying to join the Freewill Baptists, he was also
trying to draw them to himself.
Smith reprinted the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery in his
first edition of Herald, but failed to credit Stone as an author. Instead, he gives credit to
one of the other signers, the one who had been tried for heresy by the Presbyterians,
32
Phillip G.A. Griffin-Alwood, “’To Hear a Free Gospel’: The Christian Connexion in Canada,” The
Stone-Campbell Movement: An International Religious Tradition. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee,
2002). 544-547.
33
Smith, Autobiography, 389.
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Richard McNemar. 34 Indeed in subsequent Christian Connexion history, McNemar is
the focal point of that incident in 1803, not Barton Stone. What is referred to by
Restoration historians within the so-called Stone-Campbell tradition as Stone’s “Last
Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery” is referred to by Connexion writers as
the “McNemar heresy trial.” The focus was shifted away from Stone, toward McNemar.
The question to consider is, was the emphasis shifted away from Stone by Connexion
writers because of his perceived defection to the Campbellites in 1832? If so, then the
significance of Elias Smith’s influence cannot be overstated, for he not only unified the
Christian Connexion under some basic principles, but began their particular interpretation
of their own history, which tended to exclude Barton Stone. This would not change until
the early part of the twentieth century when Christian Connexion writers such as J.F.
Burnett would make a case for Stone never joining the Campbellites. 35
Nathan Hatch paints a picture of Smith as a “notorious” 36 preacher who went all
over New England stirring up trouble with his inflammatory religious-tinged-withpolitics message against the clergy and against the powers-that-be within the New
England religious world. He shouted on street corners and disturbed the tranquility of
New England’s established churches. Hatch’s claim that there was a political side to
Smith is backed by this statement from Smith’s autobiography: “In the spring of 1808, by
the request of several republicans, I delivered a discourse in our meeting-house, upon
LIBERTY and government, which was afterwards published in the Herald of Gospel
34
Elias Smith, “Revival of Religion—And Reformation in Kentucky,” Herald of Gospel Liberty, Vol. 1,
No. 1 (Sept. 1, 1808).
35
J. F. Burnett, Rev. B. W. Stone: Did He Join the Disciples of Christ? (Dayton, Ohio: Christian Publishing
Association, 1921).
36
Nathan O. Hatch, “The Christian Movement and the Demand for a Theology of the People,” The StoneCampbell Movement: An International Religious Tradition, 121-146.
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Liberty, to the grief of the friends of monarchy religion.” 37 Smith was not averse to
mixing politics and religion. Campbell was also involved in politics, even serving as a
delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention in 1829. 38 But he never mixed
political action with theology as Smith so clearly did. For Smith there was little or no
difference between politics and religion.
Overall, the evidence suggests that Smith was not mentally stable. As his words
indicate, Smith saw himself as more than just one of many leaders in a multifaceted,
transcongregational Christian movement. He saw his role as special and above the
others, as indeed it was in many ways, but perhaps not in all the ways that he saw it. In
reading his autobiography, one is often struck by the defensive tone Smith took toward
his detractors. All those who criticized him were characterized as evil, and haters of
truth. For instance, David Benedict, a Baptist, published this passage in his History of the
Baptists:
(Smith) has propagated, at different times, calvinism, universalism, arminianism,
arianism, socinianism, and other isms too numerous to mention. He has also
advanced the doctrine of the annihilation of the wicked after death. He professes
to explode all creeds and confessions, and denominates himself and followers,
with a peculiar emphasis, Christians [long "I"]. He has published a multitude of
books to defend his opinions, or rather to oppose those of all others. 39
To which Smith responded: “To speak the most favorable of this piece, is to call it the
fruits of ignorance or partiality.” 40 Smith’s voice is that of a man constantly under attack,
and constantly defending himself against allegations he sees as attempts to thwart the
truth. To use a term from modern psychology, Smith had something resembling a
37
Smith, Autobiography, 383.
Garrett, 168.
39
Smith, Autobiography, 399. Smith quotes Benedict before launching into his own defense.
40
Ibid., 400.
38
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persecution complex. Historian Jon Butler exposes the “magical” side of Smith’s
character when he shows Smith’s belief in divine providence leading him to find
supernatural significance in everyday objects, or to have dreams that he openly compared
to those of Jacob in the Old Testament. 41 Descriptions of Smith indicate that he often
suffered from melancholy, which then gave way to periods of extreme bliss. All this
helps to understand the next phase in Smith’s life: his seemingly abrupt conversion to
Unitarianism and Universalism.
The Christian Connexion’s anti-Trinitarianism and views on atonement had much
in common with Unitarianism and Universalism, which became especially strong ideas
within the Congregational Church by 1805. 42 By this time, many Congregationalists
embraced a theology that rejected the doctrine of the Trinity. They rationalized that God
could not be divided into separate beings, and that God was not capable of experiencing
death. The atonement process thus changed from God in the form of Christ dying as a
sacrificial substitute for mankind, to one of Christ the man, leading a sinless life as
example for all of mankind. God could not have allowed Himself to be sacrificed, and
still be God, they reasoned. The Unitarian movement that grew within the
Congregational Church rejected the mystical, transcendent view of God’s nature
mingling with the material world. Universalism was the doctrine of universal salvation
for all, unconditionally. 43 It reasoned that the Calvinistic doctrine of election was
unbiblical, and that all men are “the elect,” destined to be with God for eternity. A
41
Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard
University Press, 1990), 222-223.
42
Paul K Conkin, American Originals: Homemade Varieties of Christianity (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 1997), 65.
43
Conrad Wright, Liberal Christians (Boston: Bacon Press, 1970), 113-115. See also Earl Morse Wilbur,
A History of Unitarianism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952).
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popular modification of that doctrine was one that had the wicked spending a time in Hell
(perhaps five hundred years, or some amount of time to convince them to be good), and
then joining the rest in Heaven.
In 1817, Elias Smith had been flirting with both doctrines for some time. In 1816
he had started preaching a Universalist message in his sermons, and joined an
organization called the Universalist Convention. 44 The Universalists of this period were
similar to the Christian Connexion in that they mostly came from lower-class
backgrounds and had embraced the doctrine of Free Salvation. But they took it a step
further by saying that salvation is not only free to all, but eventually guaranteed. In 1817,
Smith made a bold move and joined the Unitarian cause, having already embraced
Universalism. We can see from the following quote that he had been thinking about
these theological issues for some time. As early as 1798 he wrote:
It was at Woburn that my mind was first troubled about what is called the trinity.
Some years before, Dr. S. Shepard had told me that three persons could not be one
person, and that the text brought to prove the trinity, I John v.7, did not say, three
persons, but three, without saying what the three were. He also said, that where
Watts said, "When God the mighty maker died," it ought to have read, "When
Christ the mighty Saviour died," because said he, God never died. This I
remembered, and often after my preaching was much troubled on account of my
ignorance of that mystery or rather mistake. 45
From his early preaching days—which were simultaneous with the rise of
Unitarianism—Smith expressed doubts about the Trinity and substitutional atonement.
Those doubts were similar to those expressed by Barton Stone at roughly the same time,
but Smith over time became much more adamant in his rejection of Trinitarianism. In
1817 he was still editing the most influential journal in the Christian Connexion, the
Herald of Gospel Liberty. But he had used the journal repeatedly to defend beliefs that
44
45
Smith, Autobiography, 350.
Ibid., 250.
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leaned toward Unitarianism. We cannot say that Smith was a Unitarian during the period
1808 to 1817 when he was writing and editing Herald, because his Christology still
accepted that Christ was a divine being. His views were similar to Stone’s, but clearly
pushing the matter further along than Stone did. The difference between the two men
was that Smith had this unstable nature about him that led to radical reactions. Thus he
“jumped ship” so to speak, and joined the Unitarians. Stone, with his more stable
manner, saw no need to take a side, and stayed the course, remaining at least a peripheral
part of the Christian Connexion until 1832 when he “united” with Campbell.
His mental instability aside, Smith was the driving force in the Christian
Connexion up to his defection in 1817. But if he had stayed with them he certainly
would have driven them closer to the Unitarian view. As Thomas Olbricht points out, the
Christian Connexion remained ambivalent about the Trinitarian controversy until the late
1820’s when they solidified their stance as anti-Trinitarians. 46 But, despite attempts to do
so, they did not merge with Unitarians during the 1820’s for many of the same reasons
they had not merged with the Freewill Baptists. Primarily it was a class issue. The
Christian Connexion members tended to be from more western regions, and less wealthy
than their Unitarian counterparts further east. Unitarians, like the Freewill Baptists, saw a
chance to grow on the frontier with Christian Connexion preachers aligned with them.
But Connexion members feared they would be swallowed up by the larger Unitarian
movement, and did not favor the union. 47 Smith, by defecting to Unitarianism at an
early stage of the controversy, may have doomed any attempts at union in the 1820’s. He
caused Christ-ians to focus on their differences with the Unitarians, so that even though
46
Thomas Olbricht, “The Christian Connexion and Unitarian Relations 1800-1844,” Restoration Quarterly
Vol. 9, No. 3 (1965).
47
Ibid., 10.
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they were on their way to developing a Christology that was Unitarian, they would never
become Unitarians. In a significant way, Smith saved the Christian Connexion as a
distinct movement by being its greatest traitor. In this way he was like Barton Stone,
who helped to unify the Christian Connexion later on, by leaving them to join Campbell
in 1832.
Smith regretted his defection, and in 1823 tried to come back to the Christian
Connexion. Then he quickly changed his mind and again advocated Universalism.
Finally, in 1827 he publicly renounced Universalism in order to re-fellowship the
Christian Connexion. 48 Milo True Morrill, in his history of the Christian Connexion,
wrote about Smith’s instability: “Before a similar body at Durham, 1827, he made a
similar renouncement (of Universalism), and at sundry times thereafter he could never
recover fellowship with his old comrades, for they were always suspicious of him.” 49
Smith was to die in obscurity. His instability helped shape the direction that the Christian
Connexion would go in the 1820’s when it was finally gaining a distinct identity and
organizational structure through their General Conferences, which started in 1820. 50
Without Smith’s foray into Universalism and Unitarianism, the Connexion may have
never developed such a distinct identity apart from Unitarianism.
Nevertheless, despite Smith’s influence, it was Barton Stone who should get
credit for what became of the Connexion. Stone steered a course that always stressed
tolerance and compromise. These stability factors helped maintain a large part of the
Connexion through the turmoil of Smith’s preaching and writing career. Both men were
48
Lynn Waller, “Elias Smith,” The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 688-689.
Milo True Morrill, A History of the Christian Denomination in America (Dayton, Ohio: Christian
Publishing Association, 1912), 114.
50
Ibid., 141.
49
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traitors in different ways to the movement they helped spawn, and both men contributed
to its survival in inadvertent ways. But Stone was the more positive of these two
paradoxical leaderships.
Stone created a safe zone around the churches in his movement that allowed them
to steer clear of strong alliances with other movements. 51 This does not mean that
alliances were not sought, but only that when they were made, their terms remained
ambiguous. But despite the ambiguity of Stone’s “merger” with Campbell, those in
Stone’s movement who were anti-Campbell then worked harder to distinguish themselves
and their movement from the “Campbellites” who were seen as too dogmatic about issues
such as baptism and the works of the Holy Spirit. This forced a large number of Stone’s
movement to more closely align themselves with the Christian Connexion that had
structurally developed during the 1820’s. Thus, the Christian Connexion, with Stone’s
abandoned churches now solidly aboard, continued to understand and define itself in
relation to other movements. Although unity and ecumenism were always part of its
ideology, it would be another century before union with another Christian church could
be realized.
Despite Stone’s lifelong pursuit of Christian tolerance and understanding, the
evidence shows that in his later years he disagreed with what had become of the so-called
“Stone-Campbell” movement. Indeed, there was a tradition within the Christian
Connexion that argued that Stone never really united with Campbell, that it was a thing
blown out of proportion by those who wanted the union to happen on a grand scale. It is
from that tradition that this thesis is derived. But in order to understand this view, we
should first look at Stone’s last preaching tour in 1843, the year before he died.
51
Ulbrecht, 4-7.
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Biographer John Rogers gives a full account of the last preaching tour Stone
made. He had suffered a stroke in August of 1841, which left him partially paralyzed. 52
One of the first stops was in Ohio, where he visited with David Purviance, a leader in the
Christian Connexion, and also its first ordained minister. 53 Indeed, the whole trip would
be dominated by Stone’s contact with old friends from his early days before his union
with Campbell. An example of this is John Rogers’ description of one church service
among the Christ-ians: “As he [Stone] passed down the aisle, the preacher, recognizing
him, descends from the pulpit to greet him.—His old friends, who are about the stand,
arise. There is a gush of feeling—tears start in their aged eyes, as they rush into each
other’s arms.” 54 From this passage it is clear that Stone was still considered a part of the
Christian Connexion, and he likewise saw himself as part of it. Upon returning from his
trip, he exclaimed in the pages of the Christian Messenger, “O, that this temper and
conduct might universally prevail among Christians!” 55 Stone’s emphasis on the trip
was unity among all churches, even those he had fought against in his early days, such as
the Presbyterians. His time among the Christ-ians lifted his spirits in this sense. But not
all the news was good. Stone criticized churches that spent all their time, money, and
efforts on proselytizing. The push to increase numbers was eating into efforts to build up
in the faith those already in the churches. He almost apologized for the “StoneCampbell” emphasis on baptism for remission of sins. He wrote,
For here we differed from all the sects; and in reference to the doctrine of baptism
for the remission of sins, we were much mis-understood by them. It behooved us
to make this point prominent. Besides, the importance of this item, to a proper
understanding of the gospel scheme, and to a rational reception of Christ, as our
52
Stone and Rogers, 79.
Morrill, 97.
54
Ibid.,81
55
Stone and Rogers, 93. Quote is originally from The Christian Messenger, 1843.
53
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Saviour, required that it should be thoroughly investigated. We perceived that the
various denominations were making frames and feelings the evidence of pardon. 56
Stone sounded a bit like Campbell in this quote, but his purpose was quite different from
what Campbell’s would be in the same circumstances. Stone was excusing the early
emphasis on baptism as necessary in order to balance the way denominations made
“feelings the evidence of pardon.” Now that this balance had been achieved, the larger
goal of unity was much more important than a continuing emphasis on proper
understandings of baptism. Stone’s words were tinged with a slight regret that baptism
for remission of sins had become such a divisive point for various Christian groups. In
his last days, he condemned emphasis on these particulars. “Our teachers still harp on
first principles,” he complained, before declaring, “We must leave, measurably, the first
principles and go on to perfection.” 57 The context of Stone’s words was this: the first
generation of preachers had issues to resolve, and doctrinal matters to get straight. It had
led them to sometimes divide. O’Kelly, Jones, Smith, Stone, and Campbell had all been
the leaders in this first generation of preachers. Stone now called for the second
generation to drop the arguing over particulars and “go onto perfection.” In his mind
there should be no fundamental difference between Connexion churches and those in the
Campbell Movement. His criticism is predicated on the fact that there clearly were
differences.
Stone’s other criticism of churches after his last preaching tour had to do with
adherence to worldly things. He chastised churches for their waste and extravagance.
Christians had embraced the world too strongly in his opinion, leading to materialism and
56
57
Stone and Rogers, 94.
Ibid., 95.
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worldliness that did not belong in Christ’s church. 58 Probably he did not mean this as a
direct critique of Campbell, who by this time was a wealthy man. Stone had not been
changed by his alliance with Campbell, but instead had gone on as before, as if the 1832
merger had not really happened. In his mind, it had only been a loose agreement to
cooperate evangelically.
As mentioned earlier, others within the Christian Connexion tradition have argued
along these same lines, to the point of denying that Stone and Campbell were ever truly
united. In 1921 Christian Connexion preacher John Franklin Burnett published a series
of pamphlets which in part argued that Stone was never a “Campbellite.” Burnett
claimed,
It is certain that Mr. Stone did not meet Mr. Campbell until 1824, and that no
union of any character whatsoever was formed earlier than 1832, and then none
that bound any except those who were present and parties to it, and it originally
meant no more than co-operating in evangelization, but it resulted in great loss to
the Christians, both in numbers and influence. Elder Stone had been wearing the
name Christian to the exclusion of all others, and preaching the gospel with the
Bible as the only rule of faith and practice for full twenty years before he met Mr.
Campbell, and there is small reason for believing that he ever turned away from
his original purpose except to co-operate with the Disciples of Christ in what
promised to him a fruitful field of evangelization. 59
In Burnett’s view, Stone merely agreed to cooperate with Campbell, much like he might
agree to cooperate with any group that was striving for Christian truth. The implication is
that Stone was never really part of the “Stone-Campbell” tradition as many within the
Campbell tradition assume. The 1832 union was never a real union. But does that mean
Stone’s legacy is the Christian Connexion? In fact, Burnett goes to great lengths to show
that the Connexion does not claim Stone as a leader, since any such claim stands against
58
Stone and Rogers, 96-97.
J. F. Burnett, “The Bible Our Rule of Faith and Practice,” part of a series of pamphlets collectively titled
The Origin and Principles of the Christians (Dayton, OH: The Christian Publishing Association, 1921), 37.
59
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their ideological belief in having only Christ as their leader. Burnett wrote, “The
Presbyterians have had their Calvin, the Lutherans their Luther, the Methodists their
Wesley, the Disciples their Campbell, etc., etc., but a simultaneous rising of men and
sentiment, as was the Christian Church, never before was known since the creation of
man.” 60 Indeed, the claim that Burnett made for the Christian Connexion tradition was
that with this “simultaneous rising of men and sentiment,” God was showing Himself to
be the creator of the Christian Church, and its only leader. Burnett wrote,
The Bible our rule of faith and practice, like the other three, came into existence
not by legislation, but by birth, born of God, born of the times and conditions of
men, and it is worthy of note that by a strange coincidence unexplainable except
from the direct interposition of God, the Christians of the west came out from
their so-called orthodox friends about the same time as those of the south and
east; and what adds to the beauty of the coincidence is that they adopted precisely
the same name, asserted the same right, established the same test, and added the
much needed rule of faith and practice, and that, too, when they were entirely
unacquainted with the fact that others in the different parts of the United States
had been moved by the same spirit and engaged in the same work. 61
In other words, the very fact that no single man can lay claim to have started the Christian
Connexion movement proves that it came directly from God, who organized many men
in different places at the same time. Still, Burnett obviously wanted to claim Stone as
one of those “many men” who God used to revive the Christian Church. That was why
Burnett went to great lengths to prove that Stone was never a “Campbellite.”
To make his case, Burnett went back to the 1832 union, which occurred on
January 1 at Stone’s Lexington, Kentucky congregation. He analyzed what Stone wrote
about the meeting, coming to this conclusion: “It is evident that it was not Stone's desire,
nor intention, to join the Disciples of Christ as an individual would join a church, but to
60
61
Burnett, “The Bible our Rule of Faith and Practice,” 39.
Ibid., 37-38.
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make effective the union spirit…” That matches this present analysis of Stone. He was
not one who would say no to a union, but he also would never consider that union as
binding or as an exclusive membership in some particular group. To further bolster his
claim, Burnett turned to Alexander Campbell. Restoration historians say that although
Campbell was reluctant at first to support the union, he eventually accepted it. Yet, listen
to Campbell’s words in the Millennial Harbinger:
Or does he (Stone) think that one or two individuals, of and for themselves,
should propose and effect a formal union among the hundred of congregations
scattered over this continent, called Christians or Disciples, without calling upon
the different congregations to express an opinion or a wish upon the subject? 62
These words were reprinted in The Christian Messenger in 1834, two years after the
formal union. Campbell was still doubtful about the union. The debate over what the
union meant and entailed was still raging. For both Stone and Campbell, perhaps it was
never fully resolved. It was just such evidence that gave later Connexion preachers like
Burnett the ammunition they needed to claim that there never was a real union between
Stone and Campbell in 1832.
Not everyone accepted Campbell’s autocratic leadership role unquestioningly.
Perhaps the most famous “factionist” was John Thomas, a physician from London who
immigrated to the United States in 1832. He joined the movement after being converted
and baptized by Walter Scott, the energetic preacher who had spread Campbell’s message
throughout Ohio territory in the years before union with Stone. At first Thomas was a
welcome addition to the movement. He spent time in Virginia with Campbell, and was
encouraged to start preaching. In 1834 he started his own journal, the Apostolic
62
Burnett, “The Bible Our Rule of Faith and Practice,” The quote is taken from the November issue of The
Christian Messenger, 1834.
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Advocate. Using the journal as a sounding board for his own religious and theological
speculations, he began writing pieces that went directly against some of the teachings
within Campbell’s movement. 63
Thomas quickly came under criticism for his views. In an early edition of the
Apostolic Advocate, he defended himself against accusations that he was causing division
in a Virginia congregation he had attended. The critique came from another fledgling
journal in the movement, The Gospel Advocate. An anonymous letter had been printed,
criticizing Thomas and asking, “Will the friends of this Reformation sustain an individual
who is striking at the very foundation of our religion—a factionalist?” 64 To which
Thomas responded,
I was not immersed into “this reformation” or that denomination, but into Christ.
“The Reformation” may disclaim me as soon as it pleases; but how is the
reformation to speak? There are many churches fellowshipped by “the
reformation” that will not disclaim me till they are convinced by something more
weighty than assertion from evidence that I have denied the [his italics] faith, and
thus become worse than an infidel! Will “the reformation” disclaim those
Churches with me? [his emphasis]. 65
Even if Thomas’ doctrinal views were directly against those believed within the
Campbell movement, he made a valid point here. How can they disclaim him when they
do not believe in having a centralized orthodoxy? Who would carry out such a thing?
Would all churches within Campbell’s Disciples of Christ take a vote to remove Thomas?
Or would Campbell make the decision himself? Apparently neither, for Campbell
continued to try to reconcile Thomas back into the fold for several years, and Thomas did
63
Terry Cowan, “John Thomas,” Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 741-742.
Anonymous, “(From the Gospel Advocate) Dr. John Thomas of the Apostolic Advocate, a Factionalist,”
Apostolic Advocate (October 1, 1836), 3.
65
John Thomas, “(From the Gospel Advocate) Dr. John Thomas of the Apostolic Advocate, a Factionalist,”
Apostolic Advocate (October 1, 1836), 5.
64
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not decide to completely separate from the Disciples until 1844. His new movement
eventually called themselves the Brethren in Christ, or Christadelphians.
There were four areas where Thomas’ doctrinal views threatened Campbell’s
“orthodoxy.” First, Thomas believed that baptism for the remission of sins should be
required of all new converts. This brought up the question of re-baptism. If someone left
the Baptist church and joined Campbell’s Disciples of Christ, must he be re-baptized?
Campbell said absolutely not. 66 But Thomas argued that someone baptized in the Baptist
Church was baptized for the wrong reason, i.e., not for the remission of sins. Therefore
his baptism was not valid. Second, Thomas believed that Christ was only a man until
after his death and resurrection, upon which time he was made immortal by God. Third,
Thomas held a premillennial view of Christ’s second coming, which went beyond mere
opinion. In 1854, Thomas went as far as to predict the second coming of Christ based on
his own superior understanding of apocalyptic scripture. On his interpretation of Daniel
12:13, he wrote, “But in a few years, that is, about 1866, when the 1335 years terminate,
he (Christ) will arise to his inheritance in the Kingdom of God.” 67 To what extent this
prophecy was taken seriously is hard to discern. That it proved false was certainly not a
death blow to Thomas’ movement, which still exists today. 68 Fourth—and most
important in terms of making Thomas irreconcilable to Campbell—he believed that the
wicked will not be raised from the dead in the final judgment, but will cease to exist.
This doctrine of annihilation was certainly opposed to Campbell’s views, as well as those
66
Alexander Campbell, “Re-Immersion and Brother Thomas,” Millennial Harbinger (1835), 565-567.
John Thomas, Anatolia, a pamphlet published in 1854, dealing with the last days before Christ’s second
coming, 97. Available at http://www.mun.ca/rels/restmov/texts. Accessed on Sept. 23, 2006.
68
For more information on Christadelphians today see Charles H. Lippy, The Christadelphians in North
America (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1989). Also, the website http://www.christadelphia.org/.
Accessed on Sept. 23, 2006.
67
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of all other major Christian churches. In Thomas’ most famous writing, Elpis Israel, he
declares, “The dogma of an immortal soul in mortal sinful flesh has eaten out the marrow
and fatness, the flesh and sinew of the doctrine of Christ; and has left behind only an illconditioned and ulcerated skeleton of Christianity.” 69
The delicate balance between personal liberty and a unified belief system would
be at the root of all of the Campbell movement’s controversies. The differences between
Stone and Campbell can be seen clearly in the Thomas heresy. But because of Stone’s
rejection of the very notion of orthodoxy, the problems that developed between Campbell
and Thomas did not develop between Campbell and Stone. Stone’s anti-Trinitarianism
and near-Arianism could not be marked as heresy when Stone did not force it upon others
the way Dr. Thomas did. Campbell did not have as much conflict with Stone because
Stone’s opinions were not presented as doctrine the way Thomas presented his
“opinions.”
Stone’s rejection of the very notion of orthodoxy was part of the belief system of
the Christian Connexion. Despite the problems that Jones’s and Smith’s absolutist views
caused, Stone’s model of personal liberty prevailed, in stark contrast to the Campbell
movement with its editor-bishop system that controlled what most of the congregations
believed. 70 Under Stone’s influence, the Connexion replaced a unified belief system
with a modified form of centralized control. Their General Conferences, which started in
1820, became a model for many vastly different congregations to have unity without
giving up congregational autonomy. As Campbell’s brilliant career advanced, he moved
69
70
John Thomas, Elpis Israel, Part 1, Chapter 2. Available through ACU Restoration Archives.
Garrett, 263.
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more and more toward denominationalism while struggling to maintain the locally
autonomous ideal. The Christian Connexion moved toward denominationalism without
struggling with the fear of losing local autonomy. Their answer to personal freedom
versus Christian unity was their General Conferences. The trick was that the General
Conference was never a central authority, but only functioned in an advisory capacity.
This was enough structure to keep the Christ-ians together as one body in a way that
eluded the Campbell and Christadelphian traditions.
At first the General Conference within the Connexion was very loosely structured,
and mostly considered a mere gathering of members of various churches for much the
same reason that congregations met regularly. Milo Morrill wrote this about the early
conferences:
Even this body was loosely organized. It had no continuous life between
sessions….There were no committees or executive boards acting ad interim. The
secretary might hold office from year to year, was responsible for keeping a few
records, and warned the brotherhood when the next session approached. Usually
the so-called general meetings preceded the General Conference sessions. Such
was the birth of the highest organized advisory body of the Christian
denomination. 71
But the loose structure that Morrill described was deceiving if we take into account the
earlier belief in strict local autonomy. But Stone’s influence, made even that strong ideal
non-binding. The Christian Connexion could be practical without violating the principle
of congregational autonomy.
Indeed, in light of the early Connexion’s refusal to pay homage to any authority
between the individual and God, the first General Conferences in 1820 marked a major
71
Morrill, 141.
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step in a new direction. The debacle over Elias Smith’s departure into Universalism and
Unitarianism caused Christ-ians to take unity more seriously. By 1832, the Christian
Connexion was structuring their conference talks as defenses against the threats they
perceived as coming from the new “Stone-Campbell” movement. In 1832 the
Conference was held in New Jersey. The delegates there stated that “We freely
acknowledge that close organization would produce a stronger denomination: but
freedom is more highly prized than growth and powerful organizations.” 72 The shift
toward unity, which started in the 1820’s, was being softened with a healthy dose of
Christian freedom, perhaps in large part because of the supposed Stone-Campbell union
of that same year. Christ-ians were not going to allow their conference to become a
despotic tool to keep people in line. In their minds, they did not want to become
Campbellites by allowing certain leaders to maintain strong authority. Over time they
would develop the belief that Stone never wanted to be a Campbellite either, and
therefore did not become one. The whole 1832 union scenario, as it was perceived by
members of the Campbell Movement, was a myth.
It should be stated that other sources indicate an earlier date for the beginning of
the conference tradition. For instance, Restoration historian Phillip Griffin-Allwood goes
back to 1810 when a yearly meeting of Christ-ians and Freewill Baptists first started
developing separate identitites. 73 But this does not refute the strong evidence that the
Christ-ians of the Connexion grappled with having a distinct identity throughout the first
72
Morrill, 180.
Philip G.A. Griffin-Allwood, “To Hear a Free Gospel: The Christian Connexion in Canada,” in The
Stone-Campbell Movement: An International Religious Tradition, 544-562.
73
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two decades of the nineteenth century, or that the 1820 conference was the beginning of a
Christian Connexion thoroughly distinct from other groups.
The Christian Connexion’s tightrope walk between unity and freedom ran into a
serious conflict over Millerism. The millennial prophecies of William Miller swept
through the Connexion like a brush fire. While Miller’s ideas made inroads into the
Campbell movement, the Connexion’s unique blend of unity and freedom made them
particularly susceptible to millenarian prophecy. Miller was a Baptist preacher who
worked out a rather complex interpretation of apocalyptic scripture in the 1830’s, which
predicted Christ’s Second Coming in 1843. When Christ did not return in 1843, further
calculations changed the date to October 22, 1844. When Christ failed to come in 1844,
the “Millerites” as they were by then called, disbanded. 74 Miller fell ill and soon retired,
never wavering from his beliefs in a second coming, but thinking it only a further error in
calculation. 75 Some followers formed a group called the Adventist Christians, who
continued believing in an imminent Second Coming without predicting exact dates. A
second group, the Spiritualists, insisted that the Second Coming had actually occurred as
prophesied, but it had happened only in a spiritual sense that humans could not see. A
third group believed that Christ had entered a heavenly sanctuary on October 22, 1844,
and would soon return. 76
74
David L. Rowe, Thunder and Trumpets: Millerites and Dissenting Religion in Upstate New York, 18001850 (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985).
75
Francis D. Nichol, The Midnight Cry: A Defense of William Miller and the Millerites (Washington D.C.:
Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1944), 290-304.
76
Jonathan M. Butler and Ronald L. Numbers, “Introduction,” The Disappointed: Millerism and
Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993), xv.
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Joshua V. Himes, a Christian Connexion preacher from Boston, became the
central leader of the Millerite cause in the 1830’s and 1840’s. Many historians consider
Himes to be William Miller’s Apostle Paul because he took upon himself the
management and leadership of the movement from the start. William Miller was not a
great communicator, and Himes’ work in that area made the Millerite movement what it
was. The reason that a Connexion preacher could take on such a role in the Miller
movement was that the Connexion stressed freedom in Christian thinking. During the
early part of the 1830’s, partly in response to the supposed union of Stone and Campbell,
they encouraged new ideas from other groups. Also, the Millerite movement was against
the forming of separate “Millerite” churches. As David L. Rowe says, “The movement
lacked the impulse toward separatism that impelled other groups. Millerites for the most
part stayed within their churches until 1844, when come-outerism did produce separated,
self-consciously Millerite meetings.” 77 Therefore, it was possible to be a leader within
the Christian Connexion or some other group, and still be a devotee of William Miller. It
was the “Great Disappointment” of 1844 that finally caused Millerites to start seeing
themselves as separate from other Christian groups.
Himes became obsessed with his Millerite convictions by 1840. He organized the
“General Conference of Christians Expecting the Advent of Our Lord Jesus Christ,”
which was held in Boston. 78 This conference, obviously modeled after the Connexion
conferences, did not call for a separate movement or church, but still did much to
consolidate the premillennial thinking of Millerites, and inadvertently prepare them for a
more distinct identity. Himes saw Millerism as the special cause that fit well with the
77
78
David L. Rowe, “Millerites: A Shadow Portrait,” The Disappointed, 2.
Rowe, “Millerites: A Shadow Portrait,” 3.
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strongly premillennial message of the Christ-ians, and therefore felt compelled to make
Miller’s teachings as accessible to the world as was possible. 79 Evidence of Himes’s
devotion to the Millerite cause is found in what he wrote to Miller in 1844, just before the
date Miller had set for the second coming. “I am reigned up to the Judgment,” he
declared, “I never felt it so before. God is now testing us. Do we believe what we have
preached—We have got to answer it—on the answer, yea, or nay, depends our
Salvation.” 80
Conservative estimates are that there were 50,000 Millerites in the early 1840’s. 81
Complicating this statistic is the fact that there were two types of Millerites: the first was
the committed Millerite, who molded his life around the prophet’s work and prepared
diligently for the Second Coming in 1843. This committed Millerite would still be an
active member in whatever Christian church he associated with. The second was the
aloof Millerite, who was very interested in the teachings of William Miller, perhaps went
to hear him speak at one of the great tent revivals that Himes often organized, but was not
quite willing to go all the way with Millerism. Himes was the best example of the
committed Millerite. He immediately saw special significance in Miller’s predictions,
and acted accordingly. 82
Walter Scott, the famous preacher from the Campbell movement, often
considered one of its founding leaders because of his evangelistic work in the western
territories, was an example of the second type of Millerite. He followed early Millerism
79
David T. Arthur, “Joshua V. Himes and the Cause of Adventism,” The Disappointed, 36-58.
Nichol, 502.
81
Conkin, American Originals, 121.
82
Conkin, American Originals, 120.
80
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and wrote about it in his journal, The Evangelist. But he never became a true advocate
like Himes did. In 1844 Scott moved to Pittsburg and changed the direction of his
leadership away from theological issues and toward political issues with a new journal
called The Protestant Unionist. 83 The example of Scott shows Millerism to be a minor
interest to those in the Campbell movement. Campbell’s postmillennial views were
predominant, but not completely representative of all Disciples of Christ members.
Important leaders like Scott could hold premillennial beliefs that made the Miller
phenomenon very interesting to them, but not an all-pervasive issue. In contrast, within
the Christian Connexion, where premillenialism was predominant, leaders like Himes
were free to pursue Millerism and even become its most prized advocate. Eight percent
of all Millerite preachers were from the Christian Connexion. 84
The “Great Disappointment” of 1844 had serious repercussions within the
Christian Connexion, while having no measurable effect on the Campbell movement. Of
course, after 1844 it was impossible to be either a casual or devoted Millerite from
another church, and a separate identity was necessary for those who wanted to continue
their interest in Miller’s movement. What Joshua Himes’s role in Millerism tells us
about the Christian Connexion is that by the 1830’s it was going in a direction that
allowed for a large measure of freedom in religious thinking, partially as a response to the
perceived embrace of orthodoxy that they saw as leading to the creation of union between
Stone and Campbell. Feeling abandoned by Stone, Connexion members pursued a large
measure of liberty theologically, even as they moved toward structured, denominational
83
Mark G. Toulouse, “Walter Scott,” The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement , 673-679.
Rowe, “Millerites: A Shadow Portrait.” See also Everett N. Dick, “The Adventist Crisis of 1843-1844,”
(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1930), 232-234.
84
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governance through their General Conferences. Himes was proof that in the Christian
Connexion, the door was always open to new ways of Christian thinking and action,
without any abandonment of the Connexion. Stone’s early rejection of anything that
could be called Christian orthodoxy was alive and well.
Two years after the 1832 “union” of Stone and Campbell, even as doubts about it
prevailed, there was an attempt to merge Canada’s Christian Connexion churches with
the Campbell movement. At the forefront of this effort was a man named Joseph Ash.
He fits into our story because his efforts to bring Christ-ians into the Campbell fold were
much like Stone’s efforts, but ultimately not as successful. Ash avidly read Stone’s
Christian Messenger and Campbell’s Christian Baptist. He joined a Christian Connexion
church in Ontario, which had been established by Christ-ians who had migrated out of
upstate New York. 85 Ash saw the Stone-Campbell union in 1832 as something that could
be enacted in Ontario, where Christian Connexion churches had recently grown. Reuben
Butchart, in his account of Ash’s work, says, “The effort at union between the two
Ontario bodies was keenly debated and the decision for union was given by the
chairman's casting vote; but no union ever occurred.” 86 What is described here is a
conference of Connexion churches in Ontario, organized to support local efforts and
prepare Connexion churches for the general conferences, which they were part of. This
conference had been called in order to vote on a proposal to join the Campbell
85
Reuben Butchart, The Disciples of Christ in Canada Since 1830 (Owen Sound, Ontario: Richardson,
Bond & Wright, Limited, 1949), 142-143.
86
Butchart, 143.
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movement. The proposal had been made by the acting clerk of the conference, Joseph
Ash. The deciding vote had been in the negative. 87
What is interesting about this situation in Canada is that the Christian Connexion
conference tradition prevented union with Campbell. Keep in mind that in the supposed
union between Stone and Campbell in 1832, no such conference was involved. Stone had
never fully cooperated with the conferences that had begun in the 1820’s. Stone’s
Christian churches maintained a safe distance from Connexion churches in New England,
even if they shared a common bond. 88 Herein lies the great misconception about Stone:
his alliances were always ambiguous, always hard to define. In the case of the 1832
union, Campbell did not even have to be in attendance when Stone and John Smith shook
hands in Lexington, Kentucky, sealing their union. For Christ-ians who were already
deeply committed to the conference tradition, such a union could never be seriously
considered binding or real. Thus, the Connexion churches in Canada had no basis for
seeing the union between Stone and Campbell as legitimate. How could it be legitimate
if no vote was taken by delegates from a conference? What makes it binding on any
particular group? Canada’s Connexion churches voiced the same doubt about the union
as Campbell himself did.
Ash was an interesting agent of union because he was so influenced by his intense
reading of both Stone and Campbell. This separated him from his Christ-ian brothers in
Ontario, who were entrenched in the Christian Connexion conference tradition and
87
Griffin-Allwood, 548.
Ronald A. Fraser, Stewart J. Lewis, and Claude Cox, “The Movement in Canada,” The Encyclopedia of
the Stone-Campbell Movement, 154.
88
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fearful of the lack of centralized organization found in Campbell’s movement. 89
Although believing in local autonomy, the Connexion considered some sort of central
planning as necessary. Ash and a few other members eventually joined the Campbell
movement, but none of the Connexion churches from Ontario followed. They distrusted
the Campbellites because of their insistence on baptism for the remission of sin and for
their excessive local church independence. 90 In the Connexion, local autonomy was one
thing, but it was another thing to let autonomy reign over Christian unity. Unlike Stone,
who in 1832 had acted both autocratically (assuming his handshake would seal the union
for the thousands in his group) and democratically (never really accepting anything but
an individualized Christianity that superseded all forms of organization), Ash had to work
within the conference structure, which voted against him. Certainly the same would have
happened to Stone had he been faced with working within the structure of the conference
tradition. The Canada example thus offers an alternative outcome to the “StoneCampbell” union, whereby Connexion traditions were strong enough to have prevented
Stone’s union with Campbell, had he allowed himself to exist within those traditions as
they had developed by 1832. But this does not make Stone an anomaly, because his view
of affiliations as always vague and unstructured was a fundamental part of the Christian
Connexion from its very beginnings. Stone, rather than doing a clever dodge around the
Christian Connexion’s conference tradition, was following its very earliest definitions.
What defined the later Christian Connexion was its contributions to the
ecumenical urge in early twentieth-century American Christianity. The Connexion’s
strong conference tradition eventually led to the establishment of the American Christian
89
90
Griffin-Allwood, 548.
Ibid., 547-551.
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Convention, 91 which took to heart the plea toward Christian unity, and union between
competing churches. By the beginning of the twentieth century it was on an ecumenical
journey that would unite them with the Congregational Church, which had once been the
home of Unitarians. If only the Connexion’s old problematic founder, Elias Smith could
have been alive to see that union! Even later, the Congregational Christian Churches
would unite with the Evangelical-Reformed Church to create the ecumenical movement
called the United Church of Christ. Over the same period of time, the Campbell
movement found itself split into three distinct movements. As the Campbell tradition
divided, the Christian Connexion tradition merged with other groups, eventually losing
its distinct identity.
The patternism that developed in Campbell’s thinking during the 1820’s had
influenced various factions toward different interpretations of what constitutes scriptural
truth. By 1906 this had created a separate group called the Churches of Christ, distinct
from Campbell’s original Disciples of Christ. Later, another group called the Christian
Church (Independent) separated from the Disciples of Christ over some of these
interpretational issues that are derived from the conflict between Campbell’s early
patternism and his later denominationalism. Regarding this interpretational divide, Henry
Web wrote,
It is correct to note that Disciples’ Biblical scholars see the message and authority
of the Bible from a very different perspective than is the case with scholars from
Christian Churches and Churches of Christ. Disciples view the Bible as a
91
Morrill, 142.
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reflection of the faith of the early church but not necessarily as a pattern for what
the church ought to be in the culture of contemporary society. 92
Because of this interpretational divide, the early twentieth century was a time of further
honing of doctrinal stances within the Campbell tradition. The Disciples of Christ would
continue to preach unity, but with the movement split three ways, it was difficult for them
to achieve much, until they finally established themselves as an ecumenical denomination
in the 1960’s. The point is, ecumenicity is difficult given these types of divisions that are
based on conflicting interpretations of scriptural truth. True Christian unity is very
difficult to accomplish, even when these interpretational divisions are not present. The
twentieth-century Christian Connexion with its Stone-like rejection of all orthodoxy
would achieve it, but it was not always an easy process.
The union of the Christian Connexion with the Congregational Church, complete
by 1932, was relatively easy. By this time, the two church traditions were deeply
committed to ecumenicity and had so much in common theologically and otherwise, that
union happened quickly. Serious talks began around 1927, resulting in the 1932 union as
the Congregational Christian Churches. Congregational autonomy was their guiding
principle. But this was merely a step in the direction of even more Christian unity. Louis
Gunnemann, a minister within the tradition, wrote,
It [Christian unity] was a vision that called for abandonment of the archaisms of
organizational life, denominational and sectarian division, and the pietistic
moralism inherited from the nineteenth-century church expansion. Hence, the
92
Henry E. Webb, In Search of Christian Unity: A History of the Restoration Movement (Cincinnati, Ohio:
Standard Publishing Co., 1990), 395-396.
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feeling of being under a mandate from the Christian world was a prominent
element in early union efforts. 93
Of special interest is Gunneman’s use of the word “mandate.” The Christian Connexion
tradition never lost Stone’s emphasis on cooperation and theological liberty that was
clouded by patternism within the Campbell tradition. Christian unity was a mandate, a
“must-do” that superseded all differences on doctrinal and interpretational matters.
According to Stone, what people believed to be true was always to be subjugated to the
higher good of unity among all Christians. Gunneman’s words indicate the same sort of
view being dominant within the later Connexion tradition.
After the union with the Congregational Church, it was only a few years before
another union was enacted. In 1937 informal talks began between leaders within the
Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical-Reformed Church. But this
union would be harder to achieve. At issue were the very different governing styles:
Congregationalism and its local church autonomy versus the more authoritative structures
in the Evangelical-Reformed tradition. Old world European traditions were coming
together with the American ideal of autonomy, and it was not an easy conflict to resolve.
Gunneman says, “Much of the confusion throughout the debate within the
Congregational Christian fellowship was rooted in the failure to distinguish between
authority and power with respect to the principle of autonomy. 94 Autonomy does give a
local congregation power over itself, but it also limits power in that they “cannot do to
others what it will not permit to be done to it.” 95 Thus power over itself (a church) limits
93
Louis H. Gunnemann, The Shaping of the United Church of Christ: An Essay in the History of American
Christianity (Cleveland, OH: United Church Press, 1977), 25.
94
Ibid., 42.
95
Ibid.
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its authority. This was an important distinction that was not well understood within the
Christian Connexion tradition, going all the way back to Stone. Local autonomy is not
just about freedom. It is also about the boundaries of freedom. Local churches that run
their own affairs are in turn restricted from running the affairs of other churches. Thus,
power and authority are two different things. It is a distinction that Stone did not
understand well when he took it upon himself to enact a union with Campbell in 1832.
By 1937, ecumenically-minded people were starting to understand it better. The
Evangelical-Reformed Church had to give up some of its central authority, which they
were willing to do. The Congregational Christian Churches had to give up some of its
autonomy, which some were reluctant to do. 96
By 1947, a full ten years after informal talks began, the two churches worked out
a “Basis of Union Statement,” 97 sent to all the local congregations for approval. This
resulted in the adoption of a set of “Interpretations” which all local churches presumably
could agree with. In 1949 both groups approved a “Basis of Union with Interpretations”
document, causing an anti-union group within the Congregational Christian Churches to
file a civil law suit. In 1950 the civil court ruled in favor of the anti-union group. This
was appealed by the Congregational-Christian Church’s General Council, and in 1952
another court reversed the earlier court’s decision. Thus the way was paved to enact the
merger with the Evangelical Reformed Church. In 1954 both groups began meeting
together to consummate the union. In June of 1957 the two groups finally merged as one
church, operating under a General Synod. 98 A long and arduous journey toward
96
Gunnemann, 3.
Ibid., 26.
98
Ibid., 39-56.
97
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Christian union had been achieved, although not without a considerable amount of
dissent, which even resulted in Christians going into the civil courts against each other.
The Canadian Christian Connexion—the group that had so long ago rejected Joseph
Ash’s proposal to unite with the Campbell movement in 1834—was the only hold-out in
the ecumenical battles of the 1950’s. To this day, this group of Canadian churches insists
on remaining part of the Congregational Christian Church, rejecting the merger that
created the United Church of Christ. 99
The crisis caused by the civil court battle in the 1950’s did have some positive
results. Never before had anyone carefully defined congregationalism in clear terms that
everyone could more or less agree on. What exactly did congregationalism mean? The
arguments heard in court really defined this term for the first time. 100 In what could have
been a very destructive event (Christian suing Christians), some important definitions and
identities were clarified for the two groups trying to find a common ground upon which
to unite.
It is reasonable to claim that the Campbell tradition, with its heavy emphasis on
Campbell’s patternistic conclusions (ones he abandoned later in life) was not as prepared
to face the challenges of the twentieth century as well as the Stone-derived Christian
Connexion was. Thus, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, the branches of the
Campbell tradition are just now starting to deal with the ecumenical mandate that is at the
foundation of the movement’s creation. We see this in the conflict at the Abilene
Christian University Lectureships discussed earlier. The exception to this is the Disciples
of Christ who resolved the ecumenical issue by entering a modified form of
99
Griffin-Allwood, 549.
Gunneman, 39.
100
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denominationalism in the 1960’s. In contrast, the Christian Connexion has merged to the
point of losing its distinct identity as a group. Such a loss of identity would certainly
have been in keeping with Stone’s view of the Christian church in the world.
Finally, when the Christian Connexion merged with Congregationalism and then
with the Evangelical-Reformed tradition, the points of conflict were always over
structure, not doctrine or theology. There are no essential or salvation issues, but just
how best to operate Christ’s church in this world. Within the branches of the Campbell
tradition, the debates are often over essentials, which make reconciliation difficult. For
instance, the Churches of Christ, the most conservative of the present-day Campbell
groups, cannot compromise on issues that are of this essential nature, because their very
souls are at stake if they do! By eliminating essentials (orthodoxy), compromise and
unity become reality. The Free Gospel as it was originally preached by Elias Smith,
Abner Jones, and especially Barton Stone has prevailed as a theology open to all views
equally. Unity thus supersedes the desire for a distinct identity.
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Chapter Five
Stone’s Universalism, Campbell’s Particularism, and a Restoration Nostalgia at Home
and Abroad
After 1832 the conflicts that occurred within the Stone-Campbell Movement were
partially the result of this myth about Stone’s leadership. There was a tendency to apply
Stone’s boundless Christian message, but within the confines of Cambpell’s particular
views. Rather than prove some nominal form of leadership on Stone’s part, this actually
undermined all attempts to see him as such. To capture his universal message within
Campbell’s particular views was the same as rejecting it. When Stone, in his final years,
expressed doubts about the direction of the movement, 1 he was really speaking to the fact
that his view of Christianity was not part of it. When the Connexion preacher, J.F.
Burnett wrote in the 1920’s about Stone never being a “Campbellite” he was showing
how Stone’s universal message had become a symbol to the Christian Connexion of what
should be, 2 while in the Campbell Movement, no such symbol survived. This chapter
will provide examples of how Stone’s universal understanding of Christianity was
destroyed within the Campbell movement by the particulars of restorationism,
millennialism, nationalism, and specific concerns of Western Enlightenment thought.
1
Barton Stone and John Rogers, The Biography of ElderBarton Warren Stone (Cincinnati, Ohio: J.A. &
U.P. James, 1847), 79.
2
J.F. Burnett, The Origin and Principles of the Christians (Dayton, Ohio: The Christian Publishing
Association, 1921), 37.
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Of first concern is the concept of restoration. To restore something is to bring it
back to “a former or normal condition.” 3 The problem was that within the Campbell
movement, the concept of restoration developed some difficult implications. It often
came to mean to bring back something that had been completely lost. Such an act of
restoration is undermined by its own reasoning, for the very act implies an original purity
that can never be regained. The “restorer” is not acting, but re-acting. His re-action can
never be authentic in a purely original way, and his.essentialism does not allow him to
take into account the whole history of the thing he is re-acting to. In other words, it
cannot be original in the way that words like restoration came to imply within the
movement. That same ahistorical approach to the concept of restoration is still seen in
the Churches of Christ branch of the movement today. The restored church seems to just
drop into place in the twentieth century, direct from the first century. All the centuries
between are ignored. 4
Campbell himself used the word restoration reservedly, often choosing words like
reformation or regeneration in its place. He does just that in the following passage:
In the preceding definitions of words and ideas, it would appear that we have a
literal and unfigurative representation of the whole process of what is figuratively
called regeneration. For, as we shall soon see, the term regeneration is a figure of
speech which very appropriately, though analogically, represents the reformation
or renovation of life of which we have now spoken. 5
Campbell avoided the word restoration in this passage because it had so many meanings
which would have stood in the way of his point. To reform, to renovate, and even to
regenerate, helped Campbell express his belief that his movement was not only interested
3
Webster’s New World Dictionary (1984), s.v. “restore.”
C. Leonard Allen, Things Unseen: Churches of Christ In (and After) the Modern Age (Siloam Springs,
Arkansas: Leafwood Publishers, 2004), 18-20.
5
Alexander Campbell, “Reformation,” The Millennial Harbinger 4 (August 1833), 349-351.
4
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in saving individual souls, but also in saving the true church of Christ from the corruption
of men. Campbell wrote, “Other church covenants have been formed; other authorities
have been acknowledged….and other apostles than those sent by Jesus have been
enthroned in our hearts. Therefore we are in Babylon.” 6 But for modern Christians to be
in “Babylon” is not the same as saying that the church has declined to the point where it
no longer exists, as an ahistorical approach assumes. Unlike his nemesis, the Mormon
prophet Joseph Smith, Campbell was not willing to make the claim of restoring the true
church which had been lost to time. Indeed, a comparison between Campbell’s
movement and Smith’s Latter Day Saints movement shows the difference between an
attempt to restore the church versus an attempt to reform it. 7 In order to reconcile all his
other theological beliefs, Campbell had to believe that the true church of Christ had
always existed since the first century. His movement was not a re-birth of something that
had hence died, but a reforming or regenerating of something that had been weighed
down and corrupted by man-made creeds.
Yet for some in the Campbell movement, the notion of an ahistorical restoration
of the true church stuck, and resounded in their theology from that time on. Like the
earlier iconoclastic Campbell, they longed to be “restorers” of the true church. They
longed to do away with the present systems of corruption and vice. They longed not only
to be the saved, but also be the ones who saved the church from the destruction that their
own biblical interpretation told them could never happen. It was, in a sense, a restoration
nostalgia, a longing to restore something that could not possibly exist in the first place (a
6
Alexander Campbell, “Outlines of an Oration,” The Christian Baptist No. 6, Vol. 4 (Jan., 1827), 148.
Richard T. Hughes, “Two Restoration Traditions: Mormons and Churches of Christ in the Nineteenth
Century,” in Michael W. Casey and Douglas A Foster, eds., The Stone-Campbell Movement: An
International Religious Tradition (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 348-363.
7
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first-century church, but with a Western face), and could never have completely gone
away and need such a “restoring.” The act of being nostalgic for something is
reactionary in the same way that restorationism is. The very notion of nostalgia
undermines its implications of genuineness and purity.
Svetlana Boym uses her book The Future of Nostalgia to trace the history of
nostalgia from its beginnings as a curable disease contracted by Swiss soldiers who
longed for their homeland, to its current definition as an incurable modern condition of
the mind. 8 Nostalgia is a longing for things as we imagine they used to be. Writers like
Boym show us that although nostalgia started as a nineteenth century condition once
treated with leeches, opium and a brisk journey through one’s homeland, it has come to
be a psychological longing for an imagined past. As the Campbell movement matured,
the use of the idea of restoration became something of a psychological condition for
them. They seemed to experience nostalgia for a pure and primitive church that they had
no way of knowing themselves, except through their own imaginations. Campbell’s
earlier biblical patternism could only take them so far down the road to restoration, for
mimicking the worship rituals and customs of the first century church only fulfilled part
of their desire for a restored church. Their own creative minds would have to take them
the rest of the way.
Even Campbell could not avoid falling into this trap of nostalgia, especially when
he was dealing with his views on millennialism. He mixed nostalgic restorationism with
millennial interpretations in 1850: “This is, emphatically, an age of revolutions—an age
of progress. The conflict between truth and error—whether theoretic or practical;
whether religious, ethical, political or ecclesiastical—has never before been waged with
8
Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (New York: Basic Books, 2001).
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more determination.” 9 This was the language of one who saw an idealized past reflected
in the present and near future. The present “age of progress” was a duplication of an
idealized primitive church which saw the “conflict between truth and error” at its height
during this pure-but-lost early stage of the church. Later restorationists would concede
this point, in that they understood that it was not the first century church that was lost and
needs to be restored, but the purity of that church. This indicated that it was not a real
thing that was being restored, but an ideal as it exists in the minds of the would-be
restorer. The reality of the first century church was that it had at least as many problems
and flaws as the church at any other time. In Campbell’s time, using millennial language
made the present and near future, models for an imagined past draped in the illusion of
purity. In the counter-intuitive language of nostalgia, Campbell and others were
remembering the future by using this idealized past.
In speaking of this “restoration ideology” historians Richard T. Hughes and C.
Leonard Allen show a close correlation between desires to restore the pure church and
millennial beliefs often tied to patriotic feelings. 10 Campbell was one of their cases in
point. He began with a view of America as part of the end of the millennium, when men
would prepare the way for Christ’s return. Over time he became disenchanted with that
view, as America proved not to be the promised vehicle of the world’s salvation. Hughes
and Allen also show how restoration ideologies “undergirded claims to freedom and
innocence.” 11 The very structure of restorationism is such that once a group makes it part
of their ideological foundation, the group must exclude all others. They become the
9
Alexander Campbell, “Prefatory Remarks,” The Millennial Harbinger, series III, vol. VII (1850), 1.
Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen, Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America,
1630-1875 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 170-171.
11
Ibid.
10
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“chosen people,” free to practice God’s truth, while innocent of adding their own
humanness to it. They become a group who must then look to others as lost in terms of
God’s scheme for mankind, which they alone have “restored” to the world.
An example of Campbell coming into conflict with the implications of his early
patternism and restorationism was the Lunenburg Letter. On July 8, 1837, Campbell
received the following letter, presumably from a female member of the Disciples of
Christ congregation in Lunenburg, Virginia:
Dear Brother Campbell – I was much surprised to-day, while reading the
Harbinger, to see, that you recognize the Protestant parties as Christian. You say,
you “find in all Protestant parties Christians.” Dear brother, my surprise, and
ardent desire to do what is right, prompt me to write to you at this time. I feel
well assured, from the estimate you place on the female character, that you will
attend to my feeble questions in search of knowledge. Will you be so good as to
let me know how any one becomes a Christian? What act of yours gave you the
name Christian? At what time had Paul the name of Christ called on him? At
what time did Cornelius have Christ, or Christian, belong to any but those who
believe the gospel, repent, and are buried by baptism into the death of Christ? 12
There was some speculation that the author of this letter was not a conscientious
woman from the Disciples of Christ congregation in Lunenburg, but that it was written by
Dr. John Thomas, the “heretic” within the movement, who would eventually break away
and form the Christadelphians. 13 Nevertheless, Campbell was forced to answer this letter
with numerous writings that attempted to further clarify his stance on the subject. He
began with this statement:
In reply to this conscientious sister, I observe, that if there be no Christians in the
Protestant sects, there are certainly none among the Romanists, none among the
Jews, Turks, Pagans; and therefore no Christians in the world except ourselves, or
such of us as keep, or strive to keep, all the commandments of Jesus. Therefore,
for many centuries there has been no church of Christ, no Christians in the world;
12
Sister from Lunenburg, “Any Christians among Protestant Parties,” Millennial Harbinger 8 (September
1837), 411.
13
Leroy Garrett, “The Lunenburg Letter,” Douglas Foster, et.al.,eds., The Encyclopedia of the StoneCampbell Movement (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2004), 499.
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and the, promises concerning the everlasting kingdom of Messiah have failed, and
the gates of hell have prevailed against his church! This cannot be; and therefore
there are Christians among the sects. 14
One can only wonder if Campbell was thinking of his old friend from Kentucky, Barton
Stone when he began answering this letter. Stone had always warned against a definition
of “Christian” that would become so strict as to exclude many who seemed for all
practical purposes to be practicing Christians. Stone’s rejection of the very notion of a
Christian orthodoxy made him the perfect foil for this use of restoration ideology to
exclude others. For instance, Stone had accepted Campbell’s view of baptism as being
for remission of sins, yet he failed to take that belief to its ultimate extreme because it
would have forced him to reject all other views of baptism. To his credit, Campbell
never professed to carry views on baptism to such an extreme, but his earlier writings in
the Christian Baptist allowed others to do so. Ironically, the Lunenburg Letter shows us
a point at which Campbell ascended to unquestioning leadership in the movement, while
at the same time having to battle the results of his earlier teachings by applying a broader
view of Christianity to the Protestant groups who had once been fodder for his relentless
attacks. Campbell’s attempts to avoid the extreme implications of his earlier views
would ultimately contribute to divisions within his movement.
In 1848, more than a decade after the Lunenburg Letter controversy began,
Campbell spoke before the Virginia State Legislature on the subject of one Christian
nation waging war against another Christian nation. The context of the speech was
regarding the right of the United States to wage war against Mexico, as it did that year.
Campbell not only rejected the idea of waging war against Mexico (despite some
14
Alexander Campbell, “Any Christians among Protestant Parties,” The Millennial Harbinger 8
(September 1837), 411.
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affinities he had with Jacksonian idealism), but he also rejected the very idea that the
United States or any other nation for that matter, is a Christian nation. He concluded:
Now, a Christian is not one born where he lives; he is born from above, as all
Christians of all parties admit. Therefore, no nation, as such, as respects either its
natural birth or its constitution, can with any show of truth or reason be called a
Christian nation….Having then no Christian nation to wage war against another
Christian nation, the question is reduced to a more rational and simple form, and I
trust it will be still more intelligible and acceptable in this form, viz.: Can Christ’s
kingdom or church in one nation wage war against His kingdom or church in
another nation? With this simple view of the subject, where is the man so
ignorant of the letter and spirit of Christianity as to answer the question in the
affirmative? 15
Campbell’s journey out of his own earlier particularism seems complete with this
rejection of war, and emphasis on the universal nature of Christianity. He still spoke of
millennial progress tied to America, but more and more he was distancing that notion
from any notion of what constitutes Christ’s kingdom on earth. Yet there were those in
his movement who were not experiencing the same development. Many had come to
depend on the restoration ideal that had developed out of Campbell’s attacks on the
denominations during his Christian Baptist days. They saw the concept of restoration as
a way of creating a unique identity apart from Christians in other places and in other
churches. Campbell’s attempt to create a more universal “Stone-like” view of
Christianity was failing because it was still encased in his own particular ideas and
beliefs.
The same volume of The Millennial Harbinger in 1850 where Campbell spoke of
his age being one of millennial progress, contained an article by John C. Rankin, a
15
Alexander Campbell. “Address on War,” Popular Lectures and Addresses (Nashville, Tennessee:
Harbinger Book Club, 1861), 345-347. This was an address delivered before the Virginia State
Legistlature in Wheeling, Virginia in 1848. Interestingly, it was again published in the Congressional
Records in Washington, D.C. in November of 1937, as congress was debating the issues related to conflict
in Europe over the actions of Hitler.
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regular contributor. The article was titled, “Manner of Conducting Missionary
Operations.” 16 In this fascinating but purely fictional article, Rankin imagined a mission
work in India—which did not happen for Campbell’s movement until the 1870’s. The
article gives us a clear example of restoration nostalgia. Rankin was being homesick
forward, to a time that not only embodied a wished-for future, but also clearly indulged in
memories of a past that he imagined through his desire for a complete restoration of the
New Testament church.
Rankin started out by alluding to a previous article he had submitted describing
the “religions of India.” Then he made the claim that there was a basic formula for
furthering the gospel that works in any culture. This smacked of the scientific methods
that many in the Campbell Movement were applying to ecclesiastical concerns. The apex
of this scientific view of Christianity came with the publishing of James S. Lamar’s book
in 1859 called The Organon of Scripture: Or, the Inductive Method of Biblical
Interpretation. Historian C. Leonard Allen has shown how Lamar blended
“Baconianism” with biblical hermeneutics to create a supposedly flawless scientific
method for gleaning truth from the Bible.17 Calculated formulas for success were a big
part of the new nationalism and religious identity of antebellum America. This
“scientific Christianity” was partially an outgrowth of Campbell’s early attempts to
establish a more objective biblical hermeneutic. Rankin’s formula was based on the use
of “preaching, education, and the press.” This was a mixture of universal Christian
values (preaching) and universal Enlightenment values (education and the press). The
16
John C. Rankin, “Manner of Conducting Missionary Operations,” The Millennial Harbinger, series III,
vol. VII (1850), 147-152. All subsequent short quotes from Rankin are from this same article.
17
C. Leonard Allen, “Baconianism and the Bible in the Disciples of Christ: James S. Lamar and ‘The
Organon of Scripture,’” Church History, Vol. 55, No. 1 (March, 1986), 65-80.
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problem with this mixture was that there was Enlightenment values were so specific to
Western culture that their universality was lost. By mixing these particular
Enlightenment ideas with Christian universalism, Rankin was left with a flawed
universalism. It was flawed because it was so thoroughly predicated on standards unique
to Western culture. Rankin described how the use of these fundamentals would lead to
the “nucleus of a regular congregation, around which people can assemble.” A “regular”
congregation was of course, an Americanized congregation.
Next on Rankin’s list was the procuring of a church building, for as he imagined
this work, “the people listen with much greater respect and attention than in the public
streets.” So first there was a “regular” congregation brought together by preaching,
education, and the press, and then Rankin added a church building. But nothing he
imagined has anything at all to do with India. One can imagine that he was transposing a
church building he saw in America, onto the streets of India. What else could a church
building look like? His subject was India, but his goal was America. Distinctly
American desires have been placed within the context of this imaginary mission work in
India, yet India was not even present in “formula for success.” This seems very close to
the nostalgia that Boym speaks of, where one longs for things that never were, and even
geographically shifts that longing to foreign places where they do not belong. This sort
of nostalgia creates juxtapositions such as the soldier who imagines his homeland
transposed onto some distant, alien place, or Rankin imagining his American church
building in India. Such were the results of Stone’s imagined leadership in the movement.
In trying to capture Stone’s broad universal view, they lost it.
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Cultural issues played a role in Rankin’s imaginary conquest of India. The
missionary entered a village with his highly Westernized entourage, and began to preach.
The people of the village appeared, but not the women, who were veiled and confined to
their homes. Rankin then took the opportunity to chastise Hindu culture by describing
the way it keeps its women from hearing the missionary’s words:
Muzzled and chained by iron-hearted custom, they [the women] are beyond his
reach. Should any have occasion to pass near his stand, the step is quickened, and
the veil, used as a screen from the ordinary public gaze, is drawn still lower. With
bleeding heart, he addresses those present, opens the fountain of Scripture truth,
exhibits its pure, simple, but sublime account of the Divine Being of
creation…Astonished and delighted, they often say as he proceeds, (such bat,)
“true word,” (bahut achkee bat.) “most excellent word,” or other words of similar
import. 18
Rankin discussed the veil issue without distinguishing between Hindu and Muslim
practices. They are the same in his estimation. He also understood Hinduism to be a
belief system easily integrated into others, which is true. A Hindu has no problem
accepting Christ as another god to add to his collection of gods, which number in the
thousands. But this was used by Rankin to suggest that Hinduism is a non-system,
anarchic in its embrace of systems outside itself. Yet we know that by Rankin’s time,
there was an established dogma within the loose structure of Hinduism. Recent studies of
Sanskrit culture indicate that the ancient Hindu “system” was less dogmatic than it was
after Western intrusion, but not in an anarchic or self-menacing way. 19 Thus Rankin
paradoxically maligns Hindu/Muslim culture for its embrace of everything, while
expounding a Christianity of finely-reasoned particulars which can be taken universally
by anyone. Needless to say, when one is in the imaginary world of nostalgic
18
Rankin, 148.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” from Marxism and the Interpretation of
Culture (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271-307.
19
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restorationism, such paradoxes are not a problem. As one noted psychiatrist has said,
nostalgia is “a confusing emotion, full of paradoxes. It is painful and yet in the pain there
may be a peculiar sweetness defying description.” 20 One sees this kind of half-pleasurehalf-pain wistfulness in Rankin’s words.
In a fine study on nostalgia, Janelle L. Wilson tries to not only pin down some
very specific understandings of the phenomenon, but also argues that it is not necessarily
a bad thing. She says, “My position is that whether nostalgic claims about previous times
are objectively true or accurate is not as important as why and how those nostalgic claims
emerge.” 21 She believes that nostalgia is a natural way for humans to establish a
meaningful identity for themselves. We idealize some past in order to better understand
who we are in the present. Nostalgia is “myth-making.” 22 In the case of Rankin, perhaps
it does not matter whether he was telling the truth or not, since his article was clearly a
process by which the idealized past was being used to construct a desired future. The
restorationism now ingrained into the thinking of at least some of Campbell’s followers,
was a valuable tool for projecting their movement onto other places and cultures. The
real issue was whether Rankin thought he was telling the truth, or not. In other words,
did Rankin know he was being nostalgic?
Boym’s study distinguishes between two types of nostalgia. The first type is
“reflective nostalgia,” while the second type is “restorative nostalgia.” 23 These
distinctions fit very well with our understanding of restoration nostalgia. Boym describes
reflective nostalgia as being aware of itself. She says of it, “focus here is not on what is
20
Elihu Howland, “Nostalgia,” Journal of Existential Psychiatry 3, no. 10 (1962), 198.
Janelle L. Wilson, Nostalgia: Sanctuary of Meaning (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005), 8.
22
Ibid., 25.
23
Boym, 41.
21
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perceived to be an absolute truth but on the meditation on history and passage of time.” 24
Reflective nostalgia would be something like postmodernism at the end of the twentieth
century, where parody replaces absolute truth. We know that we are being irrational and
nostalgic, but we see value in the process. We learn from it, and perhaps we even glean
some “truths” from it. This was clearly not the type of nostalgia Rankin was indulging
in. He instead belongs under the second type that Boym describes, which is restorative
nostalgia. With this type, the person does not know he is being nostalgic. He believes
that he is pursuing the objective Truth. Restorationism, as it existed in the Campbell
movement (and as it exists today in Churches of Christ) depended upon this very
particularized approach to truth. Campbell’s early patternism also depended upon it in
order to function as a “formula for success” in the real world. One sees this in Rankin’s
words.
Rankin claims that Christian missionaries were being accused of murder for
killing animals, which the Hindu says are sacred things. The Brahmins are described as
having taken to the use of the West’s microscopes to identify “fellow-creatures” in the
water, and strain them out accordingly, to “avoid their injury.” Alas, it seems to Rankin
that the Hindus have taken their anarchic universalism too far, embracing all life equally
in a somewhat comic extreme. Yet, despite all this criticism of Hindu excess, Rankin at
least partially understands the fundamental flaw in his embrace of this nostalgic
imagining of mission work. In a shocking reversal, casting his entire article in a new
light, he says, “The greatest difficulties in this department of labor are, first, that the
conscience of the people is not with us.” It was as if he has suddenly realized that Hindus
do not hear the missionary the way he wishes to be heard. Even as Rankin functions fully
24
Boym, 49.
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within this false-universalism caused by the mixing Western particulars with Christian
universals, he realized the futility of trying to change Hindus into Westerners. It is as if
he understood the lesson that missionaries after him learned the hard way: Christianity
will only succeed in India if it goes there without all the Western presuppositions. It
must go there as India’s Christianity, not Rankin’s. Unfortunately, this was only a brief
moment in the article, and he quickly moved on to the other duties of the Christian
missionary in India, describing what can only be called the complete transformation of
Indian society into something strongly resembling America. Thus, Rankin continues as
our shining example of restoration nostalgia.
One final point that Boym makes about nostalgia is that it is the product of the
nineteenth-century idea of progress. She says of the early nineteenth century, “Progress
became a new global narrative as a secular counterpart to the universal aspirations of the
Christian eschatology.” 25 Without this ideology of progress, ingrained into the thinking
of the time, missionaries and imaginative writers like Rankin would not have been able to
be nostalgic for an idealized mission work. They would not have been able to attach their
Christian aspirations to the rising star of Progress as Campbell and his followers often
did.
By 1849 Campbell’s movement had grown to the point that many felt the need to
organize for foreign missions by creating a missionary society. There is no doubt that
Campbell supported those ideas, despite the growing number within his movement who
hearkened back to his days in the Christian Baptist where he soundly condemned such
organizations outside the local church. Back in 1823, while describing the churches of
25
Boym, 10.
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the first century, Campbell wrote this condemnation of “societies” outside the local
churches:
Their churches were not fractured into missionary societies, Bible societies,
education societies; nor did they dream of organizing such in the world…. They
knew nothing of the hobbies of modern times. In their church capacity alone they
moved. They neither transformed themselves into any other kind of association,
nor did they fracture and sever themselves into diverse societies. 26
Yet in his later writings in The Millennial Harbinger, he supported missionary
societies. During the 1840’s he produced several articles defending such practices. In
1841 he defended missionary societies:
From my spiritual observatory, I am so deeply penetrated with the necessity of a
more intimate union, and co-operation than at present existing among us, that I
feel myself in duty bound again to invite the attention of the brotherhood,
especially of those who are in heart and life devoted to the honor, dignity and
influence of Christianity in the world, to a more thorough and profound
consideration of the subject than they have ever yet given to it. 27
Although it is common among restoration historians to imply that the negative reaction to
missionary societies was born of an embrace of Stone’s apocalyptic view of the world
and its man-made institutions, this is hard to defend in light of Stone’s thoroughly
universalist attitudes. Richard T. Hughes makes a case for rejection of the movement’s
later institutionalization being the result of those who adhered to Stone’s apocalyptic
descriptions of his millennial beliefs. 28 Certainly Stone’s negative view of the world and
its institutions could have caused people to reject extra-church societies. But because of
his rejection of any notion of a Christian orthodoxy, Stone could never have been
dogmatic enough to claim that organizing outside the local church was against God’s
26
Alexander Campbell, “The Christian Religion,” Christian Baptist (August 3, 1823), 6-7.
Alexander Campbell, “The Nature of the Christian Organization—No. 1,” The Millennial Harbinger 12
(November 1841), 533-535.
28
Richard T. Hughes, “The Apocalyptic Origins of the Churches of Christ and the Triumph of
Modernism,” from American Origins of Churches of Christ: Three Essays on Restoration History (Abilene,
Texas: ACU Press), 65-107.
27
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plan. Even if he indicated that he did not like the idea of extra-church organizations, this
was a far cry from condemning them. All opinions on scripture—which this surely was,
whether sound or not—were to be equally set aside in favor of the unity that comes with
practical religion. Stone says in his autobiography:
That real Christians would be united, if human creeds were laid aside, is evident;
because we find, that such do agree on practical religion, when they enjoy the
Spirit of Christ. And wherever this revival is going on with life and power, as in
Cumberland, and some other places, there Christians of different societies, losing
sight of their creeds, confessions, standards, helps, and all those speculations
which enter not into the religion of the heart, flock together, as members of one
body, knit by one spirit. 29
Although Stone died before the missionary society became a large issue, his very
practical view of truth and doctrine permeated all his writings. In this way he protected
himself from ever being the cause of doctrinal division. The divisions over extra-church
societies were Campbell’s responsibility because of the sectarian nature of his early
writings on the subject. Instead of a situation where Stone’s ideas were informing those
who were in conflict with Campbell’s pro-society views in the 1840’s, people in the
Campbell Movement were divided over two versions of Campbell: his earlier Christian
Baptist views and his later Millennial Harbinger views. To the later, more practical
Campbell, missionary societies just made sense in terms of taking the gospel message to
other places.
This is where restoration nostalgia became an important factor. The movement
had spread steadily west in the 1840’s. By 1855 there was a Disciples of Christ
congregation in the California gold rush town of Stockton. 30 Campbell’s work had also
29
Barton Stone and John Rogers, The Biography of Barton Warren Stone (Cincinnati: J.A. & U.P. James,
1847), 234.
30
Winfred E. Garrison and Alfred T. DeGroot, The Disciples of Christ: A History (St. Louis, Missouri: The
Bethany Press, 1948), 241.
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found an enthusiastic audience in both Australia and England. 31 But somehow, this was
not enough. Their nostalgia for an idealized past they had no cultural connection to, yet
longed for anyway, led them to a desire to reach out to “heathen” nations, and this was
the main motivation for wanting to form a missionary society. It was simply not an issue
until the movement was faced with the daunting task of reaching out to non-white, nonEuropean cultures.
Campbell’s movement was ripe for expansion outside the United States. So in
1849, with the idea adequately defended by Campbell, about a hundred congregations
met at a general convention (the first of its kind within the movement) and formed the
American Christian Missionary Society (ACMS). It is not surprising that their first
choice for a foreign mission field was the city most attached to their nostalgic yearnings:
Jerusalem. Campbell proclaimed that Jerusalem’s “future rise and glory occupy a large
space in the visions of the future.” 32 A wealthy Southern physician and slaveholder, Dr.
James T. Barclay, offered to lead a missionary effort in the holy city. As a result, he and
his family initially spent three years there from 1850 to1853. Upon returning, Barclay
complained bitterly about the lack of results, noting that the people had hardened their
hearts to the gospel message, and that many in Jerusalem “sell themselves to the highest
bidder in the ecclesiastical market.” 33 The implication was that it was a crowded
mission field, as indeed it was. Campbell’s Disciples of Christ were by no means the
only Christians looking to preach in Jerusalem. Instead, they were part of a second
generation of American missionaries there. Historian Paul M. Blowers describes a
31
A.C. Watter, History of the British Churches of Christ (Indianapolis, 1948); see Garrett, 229.
Alexander Campbell, “Address to the Christian Misssionary Society,” Popular Lectures and Addresses
(Nashville, Tennessee: Harbinger Book Club, 1861), 525-526.
33
Garrett, 289.
32
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situation wherein Jerusalem, with a population of about six thousand Jews, was a
“bastion of Jewish orthodoxy” 34 which would have been hardened to the efforts of
foreign Christian missionaries. As Blowers points out, the few converts Dr. Barclay had
in Jerusalem were not Jews, but were from other Christian communities or Muslims. In a
letter to Campbell, Barclay admits that the number of those non-Jewish converts was only
twenty-two. 35 These were clearly not the results the ACMS had expected.
As Ussama Makdisi points out, American Christians from all denominations had
been eyeing the Holy Land for some time, and had taken advantage of the changing
politics in Palestine. The Ottoman Empire, which controlled the region, had been
attempting to modernize. In edicts passed in 1836 and 1856, all subjects of the empire
were treated as equal, regardless of religious affiliation. 36 This opened the door to
evangelistic efforts by Christians from Europe and the United States, who had not had
easy access to the area before. Barclay’s efforts in Jerusalem may have failed partly
because of the presence of a strong Jewish orthodoxy, but it was an intensive evangelical
competition within an atmosphere of political modernization that was his real undoing.
In supporting this idea, Makdisi notes that all these American missionaries, although
seeing themselves a part of a benevolent universal cause, were really in the middle of a
clash between evangelism and secular imperialism at a time when European dominance
was starting to increase around the world. 37
34
Paul M. Blowers, “Living in the Land of Prophets: James T. Barclay and an Early Disciples of Christ
Mission to Jews in the Holy Land,” in Casey and Foster, 277.
35
Ibid., 277-279.
36
Ussama Makdisi, “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible: Missionaries, Secularism, and Evangelical
Modernity,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 102.3 (June 1997), 681.
37
Ussama Makdisi, “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible,” 681.
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Makdisi’s work also focuses on the reasons for violent outbreaks that occurred in
1860 in and around Mount Lebanon. Most historians have concluded that they were the
result of this clash between Western intrusion and indigenous groups who resisted it, thus
implying that it was a situation where old traditions and beliefs fought against change. In
his book, The Culture of Sectarianism, Makdisi argues that these violent conflicts were
not the result of non-Western resistance to modernization, but rather, a complicated clash
between competing versions of modernity. He says of the violence that erupted in 1860:
The war of 1860 was an attempt to resolve the contradictions of and the fears
engendered by the conflicting sectarian imaginations let loose on the land since
the restoration of Ottoman rule in 1840. The violence indicated not a resurfacing
of old hatreds but a historical development of new ones.” 38
Thus, Dr. Barclay and other missionaries were caught in a global battle for
economic and political control, which not only dwarfed their well-meaning evangelical
aims, but made them inadvertent players in the game of imperialism. In a sense, their
enemy was not old despotic Islam or recalcitrant Judaism as much as it was other
competing Christianities from within, so to speak. Yet, we cannot excuse them so easily.
Indoctrinated into the viewpoint of the European Enlightenment, they took for granted
the superiority of Western culture and mixed that inexorably with a universal Christian
message. When the mixture did not result in anything resembling evangelical success,
they consoled themselves nostalgically with their biblical images of Jerusalem that had
been with them all their lives, but now did not reflect the reality of nineteenth-century
Palestine.
Barclay went as far as to take his nostalgic biblical image of Jerusalem and see it
as a sign to all mankind of the restoration of pure Christianity. He says in one appeal to
38
Ussama Makdisi, The Culture of Sectarianism: Community, History, and Violence in Nineteenth-Century
Ottoman Lebanon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 119.
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the ACMS: “Would not the establishment of a mission at the Holy City also have a strong
tendency to attract the eyes of all men to that holy hill, as the place whence the Law of
the Lord went forth in all its purity…and thus accomplish more for the restoration of
primeval Christianity than the same amount of labor bestowed elsewhere?” 39 For
Barclay, and many others, Jerusalem held special significance in terms of the restoration
of true Christianity. Seeing the work of restoration being done in Jerusalem would
inspire the whole world.
This special significance given to the birthplace of Christianity was not just in the
minds of premillennialists like Barclay and Dr. Thomas, both of whom held to a literal
interpretation of events described in Revelation. It was equally important to
postmillennialists like Campbell. Indeed, the Jews’ inevitable conversion to Christianity
was an important part of Campbell’s millennial view. In 1853 he defended the efforts of
Barclay in Jerusalem, even while partially acknowledging that they have not seen much
success. In an address to the ACMS Campbell enumerated all the difficulties Barclay
faced, then stated, “But, as it is a settled point with us that Jerusalem is, and ought to be,
our first choice, we presume not to argue her special claims upon our Christian
benevolence.” 40 According to Campbell, the Jews and their city deserved more attention
than anywhere else because of their significance in terms of millennial beliefs about the
second coming of Christ, and the Jews being brought back into the fold in these last days
before the end of the world. “All who receive the word of God hold that Israel will be
brought back to him from whom they have revolted,” Campbell said in the Millennial
39
D.S. Burnet, ed. The Jerusalem Mission under the Direction of the American Christian Missionary
Society (Cincinnati, 1853), 22.
40
Alexander Campbell, “Address to the Christian Missionary Society,” 525.
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Harbinger in 1850 as Barclay was preparing to go to Jerusalem. 41 He easily mixed
nationalism (a particular) with the idea of a universal Christian message. Millennial
theories often included the conversion of the Jews as an entire nation, but how was this to
be reconciled to the Apostle Paul’s message that made Christianity God’s mandate for all
men individually? That such questions did not occur to Campbell at the time shows how
deeply ingrained particularism (American or European nationalism as espoused in the
Enlightenment) was in his universal message of Christ. If a great thinker and religious
leader such as Campbell did not think of these things, all the more so for lesser writers
like Rankin. Moving toward a universal view within a particular view was how
Campbell dealt with the John Thomas controversy and the Lunenburg Letter. In foreign
missions he did the same, applying the universal nature of the Christian religion to a
heady American nationalism.
Boym shows that nostalgia is always a blending of the universal with the
particular. 42 It never occurs for people who stay put. It is created by going abroad, away
from one’s home, and coming face to face with a strangeness you expected to have
something in common with. In the case of Dr. Barclay in Jerusalem and Rankin in his
imaginary India, this constitutes a merger of conflicting identities, one as a universal
Christian and the other as a particular type of Christian based on the European
Enlightenment model of rationality, progress, and science. The effect was no doubt
disconcerting for a man like Dr. Barclay, who was used to his Southern aristocratic role,
and suddenly found himself as one among many Christian proponents working the same
small area.
41
Alexander Campbell, “Notices of the Jews, Their Land and Destiny,” The Millennial Harbinger, Series
III, Vol. VII (1850), 146.
42
Boym, 12-13.
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Western superiority was taken for granted by Campbell and others in the
movement. Makdisi writes of this Ottoman attempt at modernization as an “Ottoman
Orientalism,” which embraced the West as “the home of progress” while the East was
seen as a “theater of backwardness.” 43 American missionaries like Barclay, and even
imaginary missionaries like Rankin, were entering a familiar atmosphere of unquestioned
Western superiority. Yet they could never be truly at home in such a situation since
Ottoman motives for embracing the West were quite different from theirs. Again, the
idea of competing modernities prevails over the idea of old versus new. Although
Ottomans and Western missionaries were both trying to “improve” Palestine based on
Western standards, they had different understandings of what those standards were.
Missionaries such as Barclay and Rankin did not perceive of themselves in a political
struggle for power. They did not see how their own universal Christian message existed
in subordination to the particulars of colonial politics. All the other forces in Palestine—
the British, the French, the Ottomans—kept politics front and center based on their
nineteenth-century imperial ideology. Dr. Barclay (and Rankin, at least in his own mind)
had the unfortunate disadvantage of playing by imperial rules without an understanding
of the imperialism embedded in their Christian message. Although striving for a
universal ideal, Dr. Barclay, Rankin, and even Campbell himself were caught in the
Western imperial consciousness of their age. There was no escaping it.
Campbell’s adherence to the intellectual trends of his time, such as the Common
Sense philosophers from Scotland, could be one reason for this inadvertent mix of the
gospel and imperial politics. Certainly one of the great influential thinkers of the time
was John Stuart Mill, who in his famous essay On Liberty, stated his principle of
43
Ussama Makdisi, “Ottoman Orientalism,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 107.3 (March, 1998), 2.
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exclusion, upon which Western ideas about “backward” societies was founded. He
wrote,
Those who are still in a state to require being taken care of by others must be
protected against their own actions as well as against external injury. For the
same reason, we may leave out of consideration those backwards states of society
in which the race itself may be considered in its nonage. 44
By “nonage” he meant they lack a history of development, and therefore are like children
and were to be excluded from considerations of liberty. Since Rankin never even went to
India as far as we know, and Campbell never functioned as a foreign missionary, Dr.
Barclay’s example is the best of the three. He actually went to Jerusalem, and even
returned again after the initial stay. 45 Despite Palestine having centuries of historical
development, Barclay would have categorized them as backward. He would see
Palestinians as children in a candy store, unable to make sound decisions when faced
with so many appealing Christian choices. The “heathens” of Palestine needed the pure
gospel, unadorned by the doctrines of men. They could not decide intelligently for
themselves, and therefore always went to “the highest bidder in the ecclesiastical
market.” This fit Campbell’s early views on the doctrines of men. Stone also
condemned the doctrines of men, but he condemned them as mere opinion, to be treated
as such. Campbell treated the doctrines of men as falsehoods or heresies which meant
that his movement’s place in the world’s “ecclesiastical markets” had to act exclusive of
other efforts. And finally, with Mill’s principle of exclusion guiding them, Palestine’s
people had not earned the freedom to choose correctly for themselves yet. They were in
their “nonage.”
44
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, On Liberty, Considerations on Representative Government, ed. Geraint
Williams (London: J.M. Dent, 1993), 69.
45
Blowers, “Living in the Land of the Prophets,” in Casey and Foster, 271-291.
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To an extent, this problem of universalism versus particularism is one that has
always existed in Christianity. In the first century, there was a conflict between those
who viewed Christianity as a particular sect of Judaism and those who saw it in more
universal terms, such as the Apostle Paul, who eventually won his struggle against the
“particularists.” 46 But he did not defeat particularism in general, which has always
caused conflict within Christian groups. Maurice Halbwachs points out that,
“Christianity, mainly through the preaching of the apostles and of the early Christians,
early on took the form of a universalistic religion.” 47 Halbwachs goes on to show how
important holy sites such as Jerusalem were to the development of that universality. As
an iconic image for early Christianity, Jerusalem homogenized the various cultures in
which Christianity thrived. Dr. Barclay relied on that universal iconic image in going to
Jerusalem, yet particularized it in terms of the West and his “Campbellite” doctrines once
he got there. One need only look at the name of the mission society that sent him to
understand this. The American Christian Missionary Society was not only “American”
geographically, but ideologically. Their message was not just Christian, but also
American.
In two very good antebellum studies, Daniel Feller and Harry Watson point to a
distinct American nationalist message that runs through every aspect of antebellum
America, often without any apparent awareness of the participants. They show how
Christianity was an integral part of all nineteenth-century understandings of Western
46
Acts 10: 34-48 and Romans 3: 9-20.
Maurice Halbwachs, The Legendary Topography of the Gospels, trans. Francis J. Ditter, Jr. and Vida
Yazdi Ditter (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), 203.
47
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culture. 48 Science, Hegel’s theory of Progress, rationality, and Christianity were
interchangeable ideas to antebellum Americans. Any proper notion of universal
Christianity was bound to be hopelessly lost in such a mix of very particular Western
ideas. For the Campbell Movement, this was doubly so because their restoration
nostalgia supported the larger tendency to hide universals within a particular view.
Another factor in Dr. Barclay’s obvious frustration over the “ecclesiastical
market” of Jerusalem is what Johannes Fabian calls the Enlightenment’s “shift” in our
understanding of space and time. Fabian distinguishes between “religious time” and
“secular time,” with each focusing on different starting points. Religious time starts in
some periphery and moves toward a center of religion (i.e., Jerusalem, the holy city).
Secular time starts in some center of learning or power (i.e., the Metropole) and moves
toward peripheries (i.e., the Colony). 49 Missionaries like Dr. Barclay were operating in
religious time, moving toward some perceived center of religion. The Ottoman Empire
in its shift toward modernization was operating in secular time, moving away from
centers of power toward places such as Palestine where that power could be applied in
more modern ways. It is as if Dr. Barclay were experiencing some sort of socio-political
jet lag, his mind operating on a different clock than Palestinians and their rulers were.
There was also the problem for Dr. Barclay, Rankin, Campbell, and others, as to
what exactly constituted the Christian tradition. Makdisi refers to this as the concept of
“nominal Christians” 50 who fall outside the traditions of Western Christianity. There
48
Daniel Feller, The Jacksonian Promise: America 1815-1840 (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press,
1995) and Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power: the Politics of Jacksonian America (New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 1990).
49
Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Colombia
University Press, 1983), 6.
50
Makdisi, “Reclaiming the Land of the Bible,” 684.
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were groups in Palestine and beyond who had been practicing Christianity for centuries,
but not in the context of Western Christianity. How were these people to be dealt with?
Do you treat them like other Christian groups such as the Baptists or the Methodists?
Mill’s principle of exclusion would of necessity put them outside the boundaries of
Christianity. For example, how would they identify with the Maronites, who were
descended from a fifth-century Eastern Christian sect? Due to Ottoman modernization
policies, they were thriving in Palestine during the time of Barclay’s mission. The
Maronites tended to side with the Catholic-oriented French in the region, so Dr. Barclay
could not consider them to be “real Christians.” Other indigenous Christian groups, such
as the Druzes were aligned with Protestant Britain, but even these groups were far outside
the Western idea of Christianity. Yet, as hard as it may be to empathize with a Southern
aristocrat like Barclay, his personal, racial, and cultural beliefs were not the reason for his
failure in Jerusalem. The same failure would have occurred if the ACMS had sent an
abolitionist to Jerusalem, because it was the adherence to Western Progress and Mill’s
principle of exclusion that led to failure, not personal bias.
Also playing a role in Campbell’s particularism was the American political scene
at that time. The “Age of Jackson” as it is labeled by historians, had a primitivism
attached to it in the form of a romanticizing of the common man. There was a strong
wish to return to what was perceived of as a Jeffersonian ideal. Even as Jacksonian
politics drifted away from true Jeffersonian republicanism, it stayed true, at least
idealistically, to the “absolute observance of majority will.” 51 Jefferson’s simpler, more
agrarian view of America was seen as a golden age for which they should long for. Of
51
Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845, Volume 3 (New
York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1984), 136.
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course the reality of Jefferson was that he lived in a time when America was on a quick
road to industrialization and market-driven capitalism, and Jefferson did not realize it.
Therefore, Jackson, and those presidents who followed him often were nostalgic for an
imagined Jeffersonian simplicity. They longed for the return of something which had
never been. Campbell fit into this mold. Politically he leaned toward the Jacksonians.
He was involved in Virginia politics, and spoke before the U.S. Senate. He looked back
to a simpler, purer time in American politics just as he looked back to a simpler, purer
time in Christianity. Both were predicated on an image of the past that was at least
partially imagined by him. There was no question that this imagining went abroad in
these early years of the movement’s going out to the heathen nations and to Jerusalem,
the birthplace of Christianity.
After Dr. Barclay returned from Jerusalem with his tales of woe, the ACMS
decided to turn its efforts in a new direction. Accepting at least temporary defeat in
Jerusalem, the ACMS turned to Liberia, the newly-declared independent state in Africa
for free blacks who wished to return to their supposed homeland. As popular an idea as
black migration to Africa was at the time, the U.S. was one of the few significant powers
that did not yet recognize Liberian independence. 52 Stone and Campbell looked
favorably on such solutions. They both supported the American Colonization Society,
which bought black slaves and helped them migrate to Liberia. 53 In the same article
where Stone condemned slavery as “wrong, according to the New Testament,” 54 he also
52
Winfred Ernest Garrison, An American Religious Movement: A Brief History of the Disciples of Christ
(St. Louis, Missouri: Bethany Press, 1945), 111.
53
Paul Blowers and Robert Fife, “The Movement and Slavery,” The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell
Movement, 686.
54
Barton W. Stone, “Queries Proposed for Investigation by a Worthy Brother,” The Christian Messenger,
Vol. 2, No. 2 (Dec., 1827), 37.
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endorsed colonization. Many within the Campbell movement also looked favorably on
the colonization solution for free blacks in America. As a result, Alexander Cross, a
slave who had joined the Campbell movement, was trained as a missionary after
purchasing his freedom. Unfortunately, Cross died soon after arriving in Liberia. The
Liberian mission was abandoned and soon forgotten. Subsequently, not much was
written about it. The ACMS moved on to another project.
Here is what we have so far: the ACMS was formed, and almost immediately
dispatched an aristocratic Southern slave-owner to Jerusalem on a mission to the Jews to
take back the Holy Land for Christ. It failed, so they then purchased the freedom of a
black slave and sent him on a mission to Liberia, to preach to free blacks. These
seemingly disparate events have significance when we return to the differences between
Stone and Campbell. Stone was always against slavery, often to the point of sounding
like an abolitionist. He published William Lloyd Garrison’s abolitionist literature in the
Christian Messenger. 55 Campbell also fought against slavery when he served in the
Virginia senate, but by the 1840’s he had taken an anti-abolitionist approach, because,
“Christians can never be reformers in any system which uses violence, or recommends or
expects it.” 56 As these words indicate, there were many times when Campbell’s
moderate approach was stronger at taking abolitionists to task than to taking slave owners
to task for their wrongs.
Stone’s universalism was a natural foil to any beliefs about the superiority or
inferiority of various people. Stone did not have to speak out against racism because his
universalism eliminated nationalisms, racisms, or any type of particularism naturally.
55
Blowers and Fife, “The Movement and Slavery,” The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement,
686.
56
Alexander Campbell, “View of Slavery,” Millennial Harbinger, Vol. 2 (1845), 238.
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Equality takes precedent over particular “truths” in Stone’s ideology, and this was easily
applied to racial as well as religious discussions. For instance, in 1835 Stone used The
Christian Messenger to describe the state of Protestantism as being every bit as decadent
as Roman Catholicism in that creeds take the place of papal authority. He concluded,
The Pope certainly has acted more wisely than Protestants in keeping his church
together. He forbade his people to read the scriptures, rightly judging that if they
had this privilege, they might dissent from his explanation or opinion, and disturb
the repose of his church. He had power to enforce his laws. But Protestants of
the various sects have not forbidden the people to read scriptures. They are
allowed that privilege; but must understand them according to their standards.
Wo (sic) to the man that understands them differently, and has moral courage
enough to speak his sentiments openly! 57
This raising of individual understanding of scripture above all creeds or human authority
was at the root of Stone’s rejection of any notion of Christian orthodoxy. Universal
individualism was the only legitimate authority, and every individual, regardless of race
or nationality, can have that authority as they are courageous enough to reject adherence
to human creeds.
On the other hand, Campbell’s “universal” view treated particulars as valid and
therefore binding upon others. In Campbell’s mind there was an orthodoxy to which all
within his group must adhere to. By legitimizing the Southern right to slavery under the
law, Campbell tied the hands of abolitionists in his movement. His fence-sitting tactic,
designed to keep the movement united, led Campbell away from an anti-slavery ideology
which as an individual he embraced. Even though the Campbell Movement was not
officially split the way the large denominations already were, ideologically a wedge was
driven between two ways of thinking within the group. One way of thinking belonged to
57
Barton W. Stone, “Opinion, not fact, the foundation of the popular religious sects of the day,” Christian
Messenger, Vol. IX, No. 1 (Jan., 1835), 4.
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an early Campbell who harped on particulars, the other to a later Campbell who tried to
be more universal, but could not escape the consequences of his earlier particularism.
In another sense, Campbell mixed aspects of both Northern and Southern versions
of anti-slavery arguments in order to create a neutral zone for himself that he felt would
not completely offend either side. The Presbyterian split over slavery was a good
example of this mix of Northern and Southern anti-slavery sentiments. The Presbyterian
General Assembly in 1818, including their Southern commissioners, unanimously
denounced slavery. This occurred because in the South, a common stance was that the
Bible condoned slavery as a normal condition. Therefore, one could be against it, yet not
deny its legal right to exist. Since Thomas Campbell from the very beginning of the
movement had declared, “Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; and where the
Scriptures are silent, we are silent,” 58 so must we leave slavery as God left it. This view
taught that slavery was a necessary evil, temporarily endured to keep society intact. As
Southern members of Campbell’s movement declared at this time, “Don’t tear the social
fabric.” 59 In the Millennial Harbinger, Campbell concluded, “that the relation of master
and servant is not in itself sinful or immoral….” thus defending the Southern view, or at
least indicating that it was not a problem for religious people to solve, but one that should
be solved by the government. Stone would have been less accepting of such an answer
since governments in his view were inherently corrupt and cannot be counted upon to do
good things in the world. Slavery, according the Stone, was a moral issue that falls
squarely within the realm of spiritual-minded Christians. Stone wrote, “It (slavery) is
58
Robert Richardson, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell (Delight, Arkansas: Gospel Light Publishing Co.),
236. Richardson gives the quote as being Thomas Campbell’s famous dictum, declared upon his decision
to separate himself from his Presbyterian roots.
59
Robert T. Handy, ed., Religion in the American Experience: The Pluralistic Style (Columbia, South
Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), 159.
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settled in the nation, that it is wrong, both politically and morally.” 60 In contrast,
Campbell offered this condemnation of slavery based on the Northern or “Free Soil”
view: “That, nevertheless, slavery as practiced in any part of the civilized world is
inexpedient.…not in harmony with the spirit of the age….not favorable to individual and
national prosperity….” 61 Slavery was inexpedient, said Campbell. It made no sense in
the modern world. But that did not make it morally wrong. It was simply bad business.
By so mixing the Northern and Southern views on slavery, he clearly hoped to keep his
movement from dividing over slavery.
Campbell was choosing the most prudent path when one considers attitudes in the
North. Abolitionists were a small minority. Most Northerners believed in a more
moderate form of anti-slavery that based its reasoning not on religious issues but on
economic ones. Campbell could have reasonably seen his position as safe as long as he
stayed in the middle-ground between extremes. Yet, there is evidence that the Campbell
Movement was much more polarized than it may have seemed at the time. Historian
David Harrell, Jr. says, “Historians of the Disciples of Christ have seriously
underestimated the impact of these sectional pressures on the movement.” 62 Harrell’s
work shows the situation to be much worse than Campbell might have understood, as
well as much worse than subsequent accounts made it out to be. By adhering to the
cautious “hands-off” approach, Campbell was forestalling the inevitable.
He was not alone. The Presbyterians were also taking a “hands-off” approach.
Historian A. Mervyn Davies says, “The majority (of Northern Presbyterians), taking
60
Barton W. Stone, “An Humble Address to Christians, on the Colonization of Free People of Color,” The
Christian Messenger, Vol. 3, No. 8 (June, 1829), 198.
61
Alexander Campbell, “View of Slavery,” Millennial Harbinger, Vol. 2 (1845), 236.
62
David Edwin Harrell, Jr., “The Sectional Origins of the Church of Christ,” The Journal of Southern
History, Vol. 30, Issue 3 (August, 1964), 264-265.
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refuge in the fact that slavery was a legal institution, held to the view that the church had
no business interfering with this or any other legal institution.” 63 So it made sense for
Campbell to try to stay neutral, and ride this conflict out as his Presbyterian brothers were
trying to do. The problem was that this cautious approach came up against a Stone-like
egalitarian view of humankind whereby it was unacceptable to ever condone a
master/slave relationship. Stone had clearly spoken out against slavery in an
abolititionist way, calling it sin against mankind and God. Campbell staying neutral on
slavery simply pushed him in the opposite direction of abolitionism, which was implicit
in Stone’s egalitarian view.
Why would Campbell need to take a stance that came so dangerously close to
defending slavery? Statistics from the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society of
1851 record members of Campbell’s Disciples of Christ owned 101,000 slaves, making
it, per capita, the largest slave-owning religious body. 64 The desire to keep his movement
united, despite this tremendous North-South disparity must have weighed heavily on
Campbell’s mind. Yet the price of such a stance cost him dearly. In 1847 he had toured
Great Britain, speaking at dozens of churches, spending time with those who were active
in the movement there. He stayed for a time with James Wallis, editor of the British
Millennial Harbinger. 65 But when he ventured into Scotland, he ran afoul of their strong
abolitionist sentiments, which landed him in jail for a short time on charges of libel.
Tragically, during the trip, Campbell’s son, Wycliffe died in a drowning accident.
63
A. Mervyn Davies, Presbyterian Heritage: Switzerland, Great Britain, America, (Richmond, Virginia:
John Knox Press, 1965), 123.
64
Louis Cochran and Bess White Cochran, Captives of the Word (Garden City, New York: Doubleday &
Company, 1969), 131.
65
Garrett, 240.
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Campbell would not find out about the death until he arrived back in the states. 66 The
whole experience was devastating for Campbell. Yet, he did not change his position. He
tried to remain squarely in the center between two polarized views.
The best example of Campbell’s neutrality on an issue that was dividing the entire
nation was his controversial stance on the Fugitive Slave Laws of the 1850’s. Part of the
1850 Compromise, the newly strengthened Fugitive Slave Laws, allowed Southerners to
force all citizens to be active in the pursuit of fugitive slaves, and to work for their return
to slavery. Abolitionists rightly saw it as the federalizing of slavery, wherein no matter
what a man’s beliefs were, he was forced to defend the rights of slaveowners. Campbell
insisted that the laws were constitutional and therefore to be followed. All of his students
at Bethany College walked out on him when they heard his position, moving as a group
to a rival college with abolitionist tendencies. 67 No matter how logical Campbell’s
stance was, no matter how consistent it was with the neutral stance he had devoted
himself to, it clearly put him closer to the pro-slavery camp. He had distanced himself
from those he most agreed with personally. Before his death in 1844, Stone had spoken
against slavery and urged Christians to choose their conscience over adherence to the
law. Campbell was choosing the opposite.
All this brings us back to the ACMS. After the failure of the Liberian mission,
Campbell’s missionary society sent an abolitionist missionary, J.O. Beardslee, to Jamaica
in 1858. Beardslee had worked as a missionary earlier in Jamaica with a different group.
This time there was some success at first, but it soon dwindled to nothing and the mission
was shut down. Thus ended the only three missionary efforts fully sponsored by the
66
67
Garrett, 242-243.
Cochran and Cochran, 132.
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ACMS. The organization continued to exist for another fifteen years, but was never a
viable missionary organization. 68 We can conclude from the failure of the ACMS that it
fell into the same category as many other early nineteenth century attempts to spread an
“Americanized” Christianity abroad. Caught in the web of the West’s particularized
theories of progress, it could not separate its nationalism or even its ethnicity from the
universal message of Christianity.
Despite the utter failure of the society to successfully work in foreign places, it
continued to be involved in the internal politics of the Campbell movement. In 1861 the
ACMS met in Cincinnati for its annual convention. J.P. Robinson, a state senator from
Ohio, made an unexpectedly strong speech arguing for a pledge of support for the Union.
His resolution passed. With the Civil War already started, the southern delegates to the
conference had not been able to attend. When word finally reached them that their own
organization had voted to side with the Union in their absence, they understandably felt
betrayed by their own brothers in the movement. 69 Campbell’s delicate balancing act
was over. The movement was now divided, even if there was not a centralized body of
authority to legitimize the division. This unofficial division would last until 1906 when it
was finally acknowledged.
If Stone had truly been a leader in the movement any time after 1832, this
dangerous mix of universalism and particularism would have been avoided. If Stone’s
view had been strongly asserted after 1832 rather than cast aside, there would have been a
serious struggle between both views, and one would have come out on top. Because
68
69
Garrett, 111-112.
Cochran and Cochran, 146.
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Stone was relegated to a non-leadership role, that struggle never occurred. Instead,
individuals in the movement were free to mix the two views in any way that suited them.
One final example of this universalism-particularism trap that existed for
Campbell and his movement was the controversy between Robert Richardson and Tolbert
Fanning. Here, as in the case of foreign missions, universalized interpretations of
scripture came into conflict with a particularized interpretation borne of Campbell’s early
views. This controversy, like others, makes it hard to see any of Stone’s influence among
the groups who took an “anti-society” stance and eventually split away from the main
group in 1906. They were influenced solely by Campbell’s earlier iconoclastic stance
against the entrenched denominations.
Robert Richardson was a close associate of Campbell, his personal physician, and
his first biographer. Tolbert Fanning was a significant leader in the movement in
Tennessee who became influential as the editor of The Gospel Advocate. No two men
better represent the division between Campbell’s later more universal outlook, and his
earlier ideas based on rationalism and empirical approaches to scriptural interpretation
(i.e., particularism). Together, they show that Stone’s influence had never existed within
the Campbell Movement, making Stone’s legacy that of the Christian Connexion.
First, we should further explain the conflict over “societies.” We have already
given examples of how Campbell condemned them in his early writings. But these early
condemnations did not include a rejection of cooperation among churches. A few in the
movement took that extreme stance, but most understood that cooperation among local
congregations was necessary in order to do good work. The thing that Campbell’s early
writings condemned were organizations created to exist outside the local church, such as
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missionary societies. In the General Conference of 1849, when the ACMS was formed,
many attended that conference unaware that it was to be a stage upon which to create a
missionary society. Many, such as Tolbert Fanning, supported the conference with the
idea that church cooperation was the goal. 70 When the proposal was pushed through to
begin a missionary society, Fanning and those who still held to Campbell’s early
condemnations were alarmed. Over the next few years the conflict festered. As a result,
Fanning began using his position as editor of The Gospel Advocate to offer an alternative
to the increased institutionalization and denominationalism of the movement. It was, in
some respects, a restoration of the restoration ideal within a movement that had outgrown
its early radical sectarian ways.
After Campbell died in 1866, Robert Richardson would be given the task of
writing the great man’s biography. In many respects, Richardson’s biography stands as
the central work in studies of Campbell’s life, simply because Richardson was so close to
Campbell and had access to so much. But in the 1850’s when Campbell was still active
and the issue of societies was so intense, Richardson took the view that much of what
Campbell had earlier written was necessary for that particular time (i.e., Campbell was
establishing an identity separate from the large denominations) but not valid now. The
“present reformation,” 71 as Richardson called it, started by Campbell, was not meant to
be held captive by rationalism and the philosophy of John Locke. Campbell’s earlier
writings regarding a rational and empirical approach to interpreting scripture were a
necessary corrective for their time. Now it was time to step back from that view and hold
70
James R. Wilburn, The Hazard of the Die: Tolbert Fanning and the Restoration Movement (Austin, Tex.:
Sweet Publishing Co., 1969), 171-173.
71
Robert Richardson, Principles of the Reformation, Carson E. Reed, ed. (Orange, Calif.: New Leaf Books,
2002), 8. In an introduction the editor sketches briefly the conflict between Richardson and Fanning.
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a more moderate view of scriptural interpretation. Richardson saw a threat to the
movement in applying Campbell’s earlier views to a time they had no application to. He
saw Fanning and his eventual rejection of missionary societies and other practices as the
embodiment of that threat.
Fanning, for his part, saw himself as the moderate voice in the conflict. Part of
his motivation for using The Gospel Advocate as a corrective to what was happening to
the Campbell Movement was his negative reaction to the extreme views of men like Jesse
Ferguson from Nashville. Ferguson was a Disciples preacher who was dabbling in the
popular spiritualism of the day, claiming that salvation came directly through the Holy
Spirit, separate from the scriptures. Campbell chastised Ferguson for his views and
actions, 72 but the conflict remained within the movement during the 1850’s. Much of
Ferguson’s excesses resulted from Campbell’s drift toward a more denominational
approach that did not claim any strictly empirical understanding of scripture. Fanning
and other Southerners were alarmed, and felt the more rational, scripture-centered
approach needed to be defended.
Fanning visited Campbell at Bethany to find out why he had not spoken out
against Richardson the way he had against Ferguson. When he arrived in Bethany, he
was shocked to find Campbell in what can only be described as early stages of senility.
Fanning was convinced that he would have to stand up to Richardson alone. 73
Interestingly, restoration historians even today debate the extent of Campbell’s mental
decline in the late 1850’s. Some charge that by claiming Campbell had become senile,
those who adhere to his earlier writings can claim that he never changed his mind toward
72
73
Wilburn, 199.
Ibid.
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a more liberal interpretational approach, as the evidence indicates he did. By overstating
Campbell’s supposed mental decline they give his early views more grounds for
legitimacy in the movement’s development. Defenders of this view contend that it was
clearly apparent that the great man, Campbell, had a very severe mental decline in the
1850’s, perhaps starting with the ill-fated trip to England and Scotland and the death of
his son, Wycliffe. It seems apparent that Fanning saw the need to defend an earlier
understanding of the movement, as espoused by Campbell in his days writing the
Christian Baptist, against the view of these younger men like Richardson who now
huddled around the aging Campbell, pushing the movement in a very different direction.
The direction Richardson was going seems very much in tune with Stone’s
universalism, but it is important to note that it did not come from Stone himself, who had
died a decade before. The universal and liberal direction Richardson favored came from
Campbell, who had moved toward a more ecumenical understanding of all Christian
groups. Notice what Richardson says in his book, Principles of the Reformation:
What the present Reformation proposes is an immediate return to the broad and
original platform of Christianity, as well as of true Protestantism. It urges,
accordingly, the claims of the Bible alone, as the source of Divine truth for all
mankind. It pleads for the exercise of man’s inalienable right to read and interpret
the Sacred Volume. It seeks to establish a unity of faith, instead of that diversity
of opinion that has distracted religious society. It desires to restore the gospel and
its institutions, in all their original simplicity, to the world. In brief, its great
purpose is to establish CHRISTIAN UNION upon the basis of a SIMPLE
EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY. 74
Richardson’s words expressed a true Christian universalism, devoid of division over
opinion, just as Stone had always done. Yet, the words still contain elements that belong
to Campbell, such as “the Bible alone, as the source of Divine truth.” What really seems
to hurt the view that Campbell never gave up his earlier views was the fact that his
74
Richardson, Principles of the Reformation, 26.
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writings as early as the late 1830’s reflect the change. The Lunenberg Letter controversy
reflects the change. This was long before any claims to senility could be valid. Despite
Fanning and his defender’s attempts to claim to be protecting the true identity of the
movement as one founded on restorationism and rational hermeneutics, it seems that
Campbell saw the true identity of his movement as based on a more universal and
ecumenical view. Or did he?
As the conflict between Richardson and Fanning continued, Campbell did finally
intervene. He lightly chastised Richardson for his views, giving Fanning the necessary
boost he needed to continue his campaign to defend the particularist views of Campbell’s
early days. Richardson immediately resigned from his duties at the Millennial
Harbinger. This caused Campbell to reconsider his stance, and he reversed it in 1858
when he energetically defended Richardson and attacked Fanning. Now Fanning was the
prominent leader subdued by the authority that Campbell’s voice still had in the
movement. The long-term result of this battle in which Campbell waffled from one side
to the other was that Southern churches under Fanning’s influence went one direction
while Northern churches went another direction. Many years later, in 1906, the two sides
would finally officially recognize that they were not of the same group. The twentieth
century would see the movement split into three different groups: the Churches of Christ,
the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and the Christian Churches (Independent).
How do we explain Campbell’s behavior? Leroy Garrett places the blame
squarely on the “editor bishop” system that had developed, which gave individuals a
corrupting amount of power within the movement. 75 That appears to be a factor in this
and other conflicts, but it does not explain Campbell’s back-pedaling. The Fanning75
Garrett, 216-217.
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Richardson conflict is similar to the problems Campbell faced over slavery, where he
tried in vain to sit on the fence between two opposing viewpoints in order to keep them
all together under one roof. Yet, in another way, he was practicing the same moderate
and universal view that Stone had often employed, by trying to keep persons of differing
opinions together. As historian John L. Morrison says, “Although highly opinionated,
Campbell was not an inflexible dogmatist. He could and did bend with the times.” 76
Morrison aptly quotes Campbell as saying,
Let not one hence infer that we are opposed to feeling. God forbid! A religion
without feeling is a body without a spirit. A religion that does not reach the heart
and rouse all our feelings into admiration, gratitude, love, and praise, is a mere
phantom. But we make feelings the effect, not the cause of faith and of true
religion. We begin not with feelings but with understanding: we call upon men
first to believe, then to feel and then to act. The gospel takes the whole man—the
head, the heart, the hand.” 77
To Campbell, Christianity included all man’s faculties, and therefore he could not
completely side with either Fanning or Richardson in such a dilemma as faced in the late
1850’s. Despite his rationalism and intellectual strength, he could not help but
understand the truth of the situation in these counter-intuitive terms where truth
encompassed both extremes. But in all these situations, from foreign missions to debates
over slavery and extra-church societies, this inclusive approach which blended a
Christian universalism with a doctrinal or national or intellectual particularism, always
led to failure. Nor did their restoration nostalgia for an imagined past ever give them the
answers they sought. Given the atmosphere of heady Americanism that Campbell lived
in during the 1840’s and 1850’s, Stone’s purely universal view was never allowed to take
root in the movement. As a pragmatic leader, Campbell had to merge the particularist
76
John L. Morrison, “A Rational Voice Crying in an Emotional Wilderness,” Casey and Foster, eds. The
Stone-Campbell Movement: An International Religious Tradition, 166.
77
Ibid., 170.
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views of nationalism and intellectual racism with the universalist implications of “pure”
Christianity. Whether at home or abroad, Campbell was in a no-win situation.
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Chapter Six
Pacifism, Poverty, and Exclusion
When Campbell died in 1866 he left an ideological division to develop within his
growing movement. Those who admired the earlier, more contentious Campbell saw
things differently than those who admired the later, conciliatory Campbell. The main
distinction between these two groups was their answer to the following questions: how
should Christians live in the world? Should they exclude themselves from its activities?
The popular arguments over the support of missionary societies or instrumental music in
worship were not as important as the central question of how a Christian interacts with
the larger society that surrounds him. An “official” division of the Campbell Movement
would not come until 1906, but already divisions over the issues of pacifism, poverty,
and exclusion thrived by the time of the Civil War. Campbell’s ideological and
theological influence by now had completely shouldered Stone’s legacy aside, and only
Campbell’s ideas played a role in these controversies. Opponents would appeal to
Campbell’s works on opposite sides of the questions by drawing from either Campbell’s
earlier or later writings. If Stone’s influence had truly been present, these divisions
would have at least been less pronounced.
Up to the Civil War, most within the movement were devoted to pacifism. A
notable exception to this was a group of southern members who embraced the Mexican
War in 1846 as a righteous struggle against Catholic despotism. But even this significant
display of nationalism was soon cooled by the objections of Gospel Advocate editor
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Tolbert Fanning. 1 His pacifism helped to establish a strong anti-war tradition, especially
in the southern branch of the movement. Another early pacifist voice in the movement,
Bible scholar and Southern preacher J.W. McGarvey, expressed a strong pacifist
sentiment at the beginning of the Civil War:
In the meantime, if the demon of war is let loose in the land, I shall proclaim to
my brethren the peaceable commandments of my Savior, and strain every nerve to
prevent them from joining any sort of military company, or making any war-like
preparations at all. I know that this course will be unpopular with men of the
world, and especially with political and military leaders; and there are some who
might style it treason. But I would rather, ten thousand times, be killed for
refusing to fight, then to fall in battle, or to come home victorious with the blood
of brothers on my hands. 2
McGarvey and Fanning pushed the southern churches away from the general pacifist
consensus within the early movement, toward a stronger view of pacifism as a
contentious issue that went beyond the personal conscience of individuals. Before the
influence of these two men in the South, the Campbell Movement remained united under
a moderate pacifist view that allowed each man to act in times of war according to his
own conscience. Pacifism was not a dogma. And although it never fully became one,
these two men pushed it in that direction under the influence of the earlier, more
contentious Campbell.
Restoration historian David Harrell has shown that this issue divided the
movement between North and South: the northern voices tended to be pro-war, while
Southern voices grew more dogmatic about a strong pacifism. 3 He also notes the
1
David Edwin Harrell, Jr. “Disciples of Christ Pacifism in Nineteenth-Century Tennessee,” Michael W.
Casey and Douglas A. Foster, eds., The Stone-Campbell Movement: An International Religious Tradition
(Knoxville, Tenn.: The University of Tennessee Press, 2002), 457.
2
J.W. McGarvey, “Shall Christians Go To War?” The Evangelist, XII (June, 1861), 317.
3
David E. Harrell, Jr., Quest for a Christian America: The Disciples of Christ and American Society to
1866 (Nashville, Tenn.: The Disciples of Christ Historical Society, 1966), 150-151.
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attempts by the aging Campbell to move back toward a view that was less friendly to
worldly societies. In 1864, two years before his death, Campbell wrote:
Many seem to have passed, we trust but for a time, under the “power of the
world,” and to have forgotten the spirit and service of the gospel. The times are
full of corruption, and the church is contaminated by the times. We all need to be
reminded, in tones of tenderness, coming as from the world-renouncing agonies
of the cross, that we, the people of the living God, are not of the world.… 4
Campbell showed concern over the secularism that seemed to be creeping into the
movement in the North. He continued to the very end to write things that sympathized
with the southern view that the Disciples of Christ needed to remain separate from
worldly things. Even though the older and more mature Campbell of the 1840’s and
1850’s had gone in the direction of being in alignment with the larger society, his view
right before he died tended to support those who longed for the earlier, contentious
Campbell. To claim that Stone’s pacifism was instructing these southern voices to
embrace a dogmatic form of pacifism is out of alignment with the evidence, which
clearly suggests that Campbell was the real influence on these men.
John Thomas and his faction within the Campbell Movement held to a dogmatic
pacifism. They were the only pre-Civil War division within the movement, and
embraced a very strong and specific pacifism. Indeed, they did not choose the name
Christadelphians until the Civil War came and they were forced to give themselves an
official name in order to establish their status as a peace church. 5 But pacifism was not
one of the reasons the Christadelphians split from the larger body of Campbell’s
Disciples of Christ. Their reason for breaking away was mostly over the nature of
baptism. So before the Civil War, pacifism was not a divisive issue. Only during and
4
5
Alexander Campbell, “Preface,” Millennial Harbinger (January 1864), 4, quoted in Harrell, 149.
Charles Lippy, Christadelphians in North America (Lewiston, Me.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989).
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after the Civil War, would this very general embrace of pacifism undergo some
significant changes, and become a more contentious issue within the divisions that finally
emerge in the twentieth century.
The first post-Civil-War division, the Churches of Christ, became more or less
official in 1906 when David Lipscomb, long-time editor of The Gospel Advocate and
early collaborator with Tolbert Fanning, reported to the census bureau that they were
indeed a separate group from the Disciples of Christ.6 It was not a proud announcement
made by Lipscomb, but rather a bit of reality forced upon him. The southern-dominated
churches within the movement had long been at odds with their more progressive
northern brethren. The churches in the North had moved with the times, introducing
modern improvements such as expensive church buildings with organs, and preachers
with high salaries. Thanks to the strong viewpoints of some of the movement’s Civil
War era leaders such as Robert Richardson, the northern theology had gone the way of
emphasizing the spirit of the scriptures rather than the word of the scriptures. In his
book, Principles of the Reformation, Richardson wrote,
The Christian faith is not a trust in definitions, doctrines, church order, apostolic
succession or official grace. Nor does the Christian faith rest in opinions or
dogmas, whether true or false. Rather the Christian faith rests in a sincere belief
of the testimony concerning facts in the personal history of the Lord Messiah,
accompanied by a cordial reception of him in his true character as thus revealed to
us and an entire personal reliance upon him for our salvation. 7
Richardson emphasized the spirit of scriptures over specific meanings and definitions,
and this was one of the reasons why that view prevailed in the North. He was very much
in alignment with Campbell’s writing from 1864 (quoted above) where he indicated that
6
David E. Harrell, Jr. The Churches of Christ in the 20th Century: Homer Hailey’s Personal Journey of
Faith (Tuscaloosa, Ala.: The University of Alabama Press, 2000), 6-7.
7
Robert Richardson, Principles of the Reformation (Orange, Calif.: New Leaf Books, 2002), 48.
Originally published in 1854.
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members of his movement had “forgotten the spirit and service of the gospel.” 8 In the
same stroke of the pen that Campbell defended the exclusionary views of the South, he
also defended the emphasis on the spirit in the North. Campbell was supporting both
sides in the growing division. He was inadvertently promoting the formation of two
separate branches of his movement, even though he had spent many years of toil and
strife trying to keep them together.
The relatively high level of wealth among the northern churches also played a
significant role in their embrace of late nineteenth-century progressive religion with its
emphasis on a more social and less theologically strict gospel message. Impoverished
from the ravages of war and reconstruction, the southern churches reacted to these
northern “innovations” with contempt. Out of this situation, pacifism and attitudes
toward wealth and the secular world became central issues within the unofficially divided
postbellum movement.
Indeed, pacifism was much more of an issue after the war than during it. During
the war, United States law did not allow for a conscientious objector status on religious
grounds. The Federal Conscription Law of 1863 only provided two options for
exemption from the draft: 1) to provide an acceptable substitute; 2) pay the War
Department three hundred dollars to be used in securing a substitute. 9 Such historic
peace churches as the Quakers and Mennonites objected to the law, and protested
accordingly. But no organized protests are recorded for any churches within Campbell’s
movement. Nor was there any involvement in the American Peace Society, which had
8
Harrell, Quest for a Christian America, 149.
Christopher Clark, “Conscription,” Paul S. Boyer, ed. The Oxford Companion to United States History
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 154.
9
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formed in 1828. 10 Wealthy northern churches within the Campbell Movement supported
their government while impoverished southern churches in the movement wrestled with
themselves as to how to react to a war that was often on their doorstep. McGarvey was
the preacher for the Main Street Church in Lexington, Kentucky in 1862, and saw his
church taken over as an army hospital. 11 As dogmatic as southern churches became
about pacifism and separation from the secular world, the reality of the war often clashed
with those aims.
As ardent a defender of pacifism as Stone was, he never allowed it to be more
than his personal opinion on the matter. In fact, he had a son who fought for the
Confederacy and attained the rank of colonel. 12 We cannot be certain how Stone may
have responded to the Civil War had he lived to see it. As shown earlier, he certainly
sympathized with the abolitionist cause, which was the core of northern support of the
war against the South. Stone might have supported the Civil War in some way. Yet
Stone often gets credit for contributing to the South’s radically doctrinized pacifism.
Many consider him a primary influence on Southern leaders like Fanning, McGarvey,
and especially David Lipscomb. 13 As shown in the previous analysis of Stone’s
theology, he was against any kind of doctrine or orthodoxy whatsoever. His pacifism, no
matter how strong, never went beyond personal choice. Men such as Lipscomb did not
10
Peter Brock, Freedom From War: Nonsectarian Pacifism, 1814-1914 (Toronto, Canada: University of
Toronto Press, 1991), 46-57. Brock points out that the American Peace Society eventually split over two of
the versions of pacifism that would help divide Campbell’s movement. One side embraced a Universal
peace message while the other embraced a traditional “just-war” theory.
11
Dayton Keesee, Churches of Christ During the Civil War (Fort Worth, Tex.: Star Bible Publications,
2006), 17.
12
Harrell, “The Civil War,” The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 222. See also Harrell,
Quest for a Christian America, 155.
13
Richard T. Hughes, “The Apocalyptic Origins of Churches of Christ and the Triumph of Modernism,”
Casey and Foster, eds., 85-115. Hughes’ seminal article is probably the most persuasive argument for a
strong connection between Stone and southern Churches of Christ. Although often contested, it has
become the foundation for an orthodox understanding of the Stone-Campbell Movement.
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learn to move beyond personal choice toward doctrinization from Stone. They learned it
from an earlier, more contentious Campbell who had gained a reputation for taking the
denominations to task.
It is only after the Civil War that these men, who so adamantly embraced
pacifism, clearly delineated their viewpoints in a dogmatic way. In David Lipscomb’s
case, it was in his famous work Civil Government. In it he says,
The man who votes to put another in a place or position, is in honor, bound to
maintain him in that position, and is responsible for all the actions, courses or
results that logically and necessarily flow from the occupancy and maintenance of
that position. A man who votes to bring about a war, or that votes for that which
logically and necessarily brings about war is responsible for that war and all the
necessary and usual attendants and results of that war. 14
In this passage, Lipscomb took for granted the pacifist position that Christians should not
support war. Then he took his pacifist argument to another level, showing that Christians
should not participate in earthly governments at all, not even to vote. To participate on
any level, left a Christian in the unwanted position of supporting war when it came. This
extreme pacifist position was an attempt to doctrinize what had been a matter of personal
belief before and during the Civil War, and thus it was greatly divorced from any of
Stone’s anti-doctrine ideas. Lipscomb’s book had tremendous influence on Southern
churches because of his position as editor of the Gospel Advocate after his mentor,
Tolbert Fanning. But Lipscomb, much more than Fanning, drew a line in the sand,
challenging those who support earthly governments to defend themselves in terms of
their identity as Christians. It might be true that the Civil War did not split the Disciples
14
David Lipscomb, Civil Government: Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny, and the Christian’s Relation to It
(Nashville, Tenn.: McQuiddy Printing Co., 1913), iv. Originally published in Gospel Advocate (1866).
Lipscomb shows how worldly governments have always been allowed by God, but not ordained by him.
Their creation has always ended in punishment for mankind. On this basis he believed Christians should
not vote, hold public office or benefit in any way from worldly governments. Nor should they wage war.
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of Christ into clearly separated factions. Perhaps the issues of slavery and secession
existed far enough into the realm of politics to not make them issues that could break
apart a primarily religious, apolitical group such as the Campbell Movement. That is
certainly what Campbell had hoped for. But the attempted doctrinization of pacifism and
the Christian’s relationship to civil government was a primary factor in the eventual
tribalization of the movement in the twentieth century, in no small part due to
Lipscomb’s influential book.
The Churches of Christ faction continued to revere the work of Lipscomb, well
into the twentieth century. As late as 1944, during the crisis of World War II, the Gospel
Advocate praised Lipscomb and his book:
One may not agree with all of his conclusions and teachings on this subject, yet
no thoughtful mind can read this book without being impressed with the clear and
definite position that its author sets forth. Only a very shallow and ignorant mind
would ridicule the profound treatment of this lofty theme (pacifism) by such a
wise, thoughtful, and good man. 15
Lipscomb was still admired, but not because they agreed with him. His doctrinization of
pacifism was eventually abandoned by the conservative Churches of Christ, as they dealt
with the issues of modernity and world war in the twentieth century.
The Civil War produced four strong positions within the Campbell Movement on
the Christian’s relationship to earthly governments and warfare: 1) The moderate pacifist
position, which said that Christians should not participate directly in war, as a soldier in
combat, but could support the government by serving in a non-combat role; 2) The
stronger pacifist position, which said that Christians should not participate in war, or
support a government in any way toward the advancement of war, or serve in non-combat
roles; 3) The radical pacifist position, which said that it was all but impossible for a
15
H. Leo Boles, “David Lipscomb,” Gospel Advocate, LXXXVI (January 20, 1944), 53.
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Christian to participate in earthly governments, let alone warfare, thus doctrinizing the
issue; 4) The total subjection position which said that Christians had a duty to their
earthly governments, to be in subjection to them, even in times of war. The Bible was
used to defend all four of these positions.
The various pacifists generally pointed to the teachings and actions of Christ,
especially his message of peace and non-resistance in the Sermon on the Mount: “But I
say unto you, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek,
turn to him the other also.” 16 The defenders of total subjection pointed to the Apostle
Paul’s admonition, “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no
power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God.” 17 Campbell translated that
same verse in his Living Oracles translation of the New Testament: “Let every soul be
subject to the higher powers. For there is no power but from God; and those that exist are
placed under God.” 18 In both translations (Campbell’s and King James) the wording is
slightly ambiguous. What are these higher powers? Are they world governments or
something else? Furthermore, the second part of the passage as translated by Campbell,
did not clearly state that the powers in question were authorized or instituted by God.
They were simply under as opposed to being ordained of God. Whether God approved
of them or not was left for the reader to infer. For those who hearkened back to the early
works of Campbell, where he described the Bible as a book of facts, from which all can
glean the exact same truth through rational study, this debate over pacifism must have
been worrisome. If biblical truth is so objective, then why was Campbell’s translation so
16
Matthew 5: 39. All Biblical quotations from King James Version.
Romans 13:1.
18
Alexander Campbell, trans., The Living Oracles (1826; reprint, Nashville, Tennessee: Gospel Advocate
Co., 1974) Romans 13:1, in.
17
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obviously subjective in this key passage from Romans? Most modern translations in use
today are clear as to what those higher powers are, as well as their relationship to God. It
is the governments under which we live, and they are ordained of God. Therefore, they
reject Campbell’s ambiguity. 19 He was obviously trying to undermine the total
subjection point of view. This was lost on many in Campbell’s movement, who
continued seeing pacifism as a personal choice. But it does not appear to be lost on
careful thinkers such as Lipscomb, who gravitated toward a more severe pacifist stance.
Stone and Campbell disagreed on so many issues, yet both were avowed pacifists
who took a strong stance against the involvement of Christians in war. As we have
already seen, Stone’s negative attitude toward war and earthly governments in general
came from his experience as a youth in the American Revolution. War was seen as the
cause of all evil manifested in men on this earth. Men themselves were not evil, but war
and the governments that waged them made men do evil things. 20 Thus the evils of war
come not from the men on either side of the conflict, but from the worldly governments
that control them. Stone remained staunchly against all involvement in war for the rest of
his life, yet resisted as always the tendency to dogmatize. This was easy for Stone since
war was never a real issue in the years that he was writing and editing his journal.
Campbell, on the other hand, saw war as a real issue twice during his writing and
editorial years. He expressed a strong anti-war sentiment during the Mexican War, 18461848, and then again during the Civil War. His 1848 “Address on War,” given before the
19
The King James Version and the American Standard Version both say “higher powers” while other
translations (New Living Translation, New International Version, New King James Version, The Living
Bible, Revised Standard Version) refer to actual world governments. These same versions also point out
that these governments are appointed or authorized by God, rather than just under God as in Campbell’s
version.
20
Barton Warren Stone and John Rogers, Biography of Elder Barton Warren Stone (Cincinnati: J.A. and
U.P. James, 1847), 2-3.
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Virginia State Legislature was one of the most eloquent anti-war statements ever made.
In it he argued against the idea of any nation ever being able to claim the title “Christian
nation,” for this allowed it to use Christianity in the name of aggression and violence. 21
Campbell rejected the idea of “just war.” When war between North and South looked
certain, Campbell rallied against it:
Of all the monstrosities on which our sun has ever shone, that of professedly
Christian nations, glutting their wrath and vengeance on one another, with all the
instruments of murder and slaughter, caps the climax of human folly and
gratuitous wickedness. Alas! Alas! man’s inhumanity to man has made, and is
still intent on making countless millions mourn!! Civilized America! civilized
United States! Boasting of a humane and Christian paternity and fraternity,
unsheathing your swords, discharging your cannon, boasting of your heathen
brutality, gluttonously satiating your furious appetites for fraternal blood, caps the
climax of all human inconsistencies inscribed on the blurred and moth-eaten
pages of time in all its records. 22
In a style reminiscent of his earlier days in The Christian Baptist, Campbell spoke out
against the stupidity and brutality of war, yet it is not exactly clear what stance he took in
regards to actions Christians should take. Therefore, he is vague in terms of a specific
pacifist stance in times of war. Should Christians refuse to be in combat, but work in
non-combat roles? Or should they abstain from ever being involved in any support of
war? Should they carry pacifism to the point of not being involved in politics or public
affairs? Campbell was a public figure most of his life, and had served the government in
political positions. He had no objections to being involved in public and political affairs.
But his anti-war statements left many questions unanswered.
In short, Campbell’s general rejection of war and acknowledgment of its horrors
did not constitute a specific pacifist stance. In the end, Campbell failed to offer anything
21
Alexander Campbell, “Address on War,” Popular Lectures and Addresses (Nashville, Tenn.: Harbinger
Book Club, 1861), 342-366.
22
Alexander Campbell, “War and Rumors of War,” Millennial Harbinger, Series V, Vol. 4 (June 1861),
347.
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but a general condemnation of war, leaving it to individuals to determine what exactly
they should do about it. Individuals could accept Campbell’s eloquent condemnation of
war, and still see it as their duty to obey the government that wages war against a serious
enemy, either by engaging in combat or accepting a non-combat role. They could
certainly not derive any beliefs in a righteous or just war from Campbell’s writings, but
they could act in a number of ways that would not directly conflict with Campbell’s
stated views. Many in the movement would choose various options for dealing with
involvement in the Civil War, while still seeing themselves in compliance with
Campbell’s anti-war stance. One of those options was to do their duty and fight for their
government while still rejecting war as evil. War was a necessary evil, fought against an
enemy that consisted of men who had embraced evil. In other words, they teased out a
version of the traditional “just war” theory from Campbell’s anti-war view, even though
Campbell rejected the notion of a “just war.” Therefore, Stone’s view of all humans as
victims of war was not an influence on anyone in movement. As early as 1827, Stone
had grouped slavery and war as the “greatest evils in the world.” 23 It would have been
impossible to glean support of war from Stone’s writings, but it was equally impossible
to derive from him any notion that a person’s involvement in war was a sin. War was an
evil that happened to essentially good men, in his view.
Campbell sometimes spoke of earthly governments in extremely negative terms,
just as Stone did. In 1833 Campbell said, “The best government on earth, be it English or
American, has within it the seeds of its own destruction.” 24 He goes on to show how the
23
Barton Stone, “Queries Proposed for Investigation by a Worthy Brother,” Christian Messenger, Vol. II
(December, 1827), 36.
24
Alexander Campbell, “The Regeneration of the World,” The Millennial Harbinger, Extra 4 (August,
1833), 376.
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governments of this world who “wear the sword” 25 will be destroyed as Christ’s kingdom
reigns supreme. This hardly fits the pro-nationalist, post-millennial social optimism often
attributed to Campbell. He clearly separated earthly governments from any attainment of
righteousness, instead showing how Christian virtue and righteousness are attained only
through Christ’s kingdom. Those within the movement who interpreted Campbell as an
early “social-gospeler” must have been dismayed by his denouncements of earthly
governments as inherently ungodly and corrupt. How could they move forward, toward
the total subjection point of view that allowed Christians to support a governmentsanctioned war? This was possible because Campbell spoke glowingly of America and
its special place in the millennium more often than he spoke ill of earthly governments in
general. Historian Mont Whitson, writing about Campbell’s embrace of an early form of
civil religion, points this out:
There is an ebb and flow in Campbell’s conceptualization of civil religion. At
times he seems to envision himself as an almost solitary prophet proclaiming a
spiritual kingdom separate and apart from the social and political environment in
which he was a temporary hostage. At other times, more representative of his
total experience, he speaks in glowing terms of the nation and its social, political,
and religious institutions, seeing them as a collectivity of God’s chosen people. 26
Whitson shows that Campbell held a very idealistic view of the United States as an
integral part of the advance of Christianity in the last years of the millennium. Yet he
also held a pessimistic view of governments in general. This was not necessarily a
contradiction, since the United States’ uniqueness in the world was a very popular
sentiment at that time. Many saw America as the great example of a near perfect
25
Campbell, “The Regeneration of the World,” 376.
Mont Whitson, “Campbell’s Post-Protestantism and Civil Religion,” Casey and Foster, 177-188;
quotation on 185.
26
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governmental order to come. Indeed, many still hold this opinion. 27 So even though
Stone and Campbell held similar pacifist views, Stone did not create an ambiguous
situation in terms of what individuals should do about their pacifist or non-pacifist
beliefs. Stone never espoused a patriotic or righteous view of America as Campbell often
did. Stone never got involved in politics as Campbell did. Stone’s pre-millennial view
saw the United States as simply one of many necessary evils in the world. America held
no special place in his millennial imaginings. Campbell, not Stone, created an
environment for a mixture of various pacifist beliefs along with a “just-war” belief in
total subjection to the government.
As noted earlier, Lipscomb’s radicalization and doctrinization of the pacifist
argument did not completely take hold in the South as he would have wanted it to. His
book, Civil Government, first published in the Gospel Advocate in 1866, 28 caused a
general embrace of pacifism, but not Lipscomb’s particular brand of it. Most members,
still clinging to sectional loyalties, rejected complete non-involvement as impractical. As
historian Ben Brewster wrote, “The true importance of pacifism was seen not before or
during the War, but in the years following this great conflict, for that is where Lipscomb
first publicly voiced his opinions.” 29 In general terms, for doctrinization to be effective, a
group has to embrace it, either through coercive measures taken by a strong leadership or
by a general acceptance of it as rational and therefore correct. As influential as Lipscomb
was, his extreme views simply did not take hold. Nor did any general rationalization of
27
Jules Tygiel, Ronald Reagan and the Triumph of American Conservatism (New York: Pearson Longman,
2006), 145-185. One need only look back to Ronald Reagan’s rise to power in the 1980’s where political
rhetoric, meant to re-ignite the Cold War, preached an American uniqueness and superiority much like
what was widely believed in Campbell’s time.
28
Lipscomb, iii.
29
Ben Brewster, Torn Asunder: The Civil War and the 1906 Division of the Disciples (Joplin, Missouri:
College Press Publishing Co., 2006), 55.
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Lipscomb’s pacifism take place. 30 Lipscomb’s leadership role within the Southern
faction regarding pacifism, was taken with a grain of salt.
What became a deeper influence of Lipscomb’s was his embrace of poverty,
which would define the Churches of Christ faction well into the twentieth century. In
many ways, his idealization of poverty was part of his radical exclusionary view of
pacifism that did not allow a Christian to be involved in worldly affairs. A rejection of
war and participation in worldly governments was closely tied to a rejection of those who
became wealthy through their involvement in the world. Historian Anthony Dunnavant
compares Lipscomb’s embrace of poverty to modern versions of it such as exist in Latin
America’s Catholic liberation theology. The “preferential option of the poor” found in
this modern blend of Marxist socialism and Christianity was in Lipscomb’s work to a
certain extent. Dunnavant sees the emergence of the Churches of Christ faction as a
result of this embrace of poverty, and exclusion from worldly affairs which included a
strong pacifism. He says, “It was the southern strand of the Campbell-Stone movement
that came closer to being identified with the ‘disinherited’ than the other strands.” 31 Of
all the attempts to connect the emergence of the Churches of Christ faction with Stone,
this one makes the most sense, although still falls short of establishing a strong link
between Stone and Lipscomb. To connect this faction with Stone’s broad and often
apocalyptic theology is wrought with difficulty because dissidents such as Lipscomb
were taking their theological cues from Campbell’s early work in The Christian Baptist
regarding a rejection of denominations and their unbiblical traditions. “The Protestant
clergy have, when it suited their interest, laughed at the arrogant pretensions of the Papist
30
Brewster, 105-112.
Anthony L. Dunnavant, “David Lipscomb and the ‘Preferential Option for the Poor’ among Postbellum
Churches of Christ,” Casey and Foster, 435-454.
31
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clergy in infallibility. We view their pretensions to authority just in the same light,” said
Campbell in 1824. 32 If Lipscomb and other conservative voices used Stone’s often
apocalyptic language, it was always in an attempt to prove Campbell’s early views. But
connecting Lipscomb with Stone’s view of society as an evil force which the Christian
must always reject by embracing poverty, is consistent with what we know of Stone and
his life.
Stone suffered as a youth when the American Revolution wreaked havoc on his
family’s stable way of life. Stone says of those days, “The manners and customs of the
people, among whom we resided, were exceedingly simple—no aspirations for wealth or
preferment—contentment appeared to be the lot of all.” 33 As Dunnavant shows,
Lipscomb also grew up in a simple rural setting. He suffered during the Civil War
because of his pacifism, and because of the devastating physical affects of the war, which
reduced him and his family to starvation. 34 So an embrace of poverty as the correct way
for Christians to live in a world that has “disinherited” them fits both Stone’s and
Lipscomb’s experience in life. For both men, poverty and pacifism were spiritual
concerns. This led Lipscomb to see Christian advantages to poverty and exclusion from
larger society. The poor and excluded (disinherited) had a clear advantage in terms of
being Christians. So in this limited sense, Stone and Lipscomb did share similar views
on the role of poverty in the Christian life.
The difference between Stone and Lispscomb had to do with doctrinization.
Stone rejected all notions of doctrine while Lipscomb, in claiming that the rich are all but
excluded from God’s people, doctrinized poverty as well as pacifism. That tendency to
32
Alexander Campbell, “Prefatory Remarks,” The Christian Baptist, No. 1, Vol. 1 (August 2, 1824), 4.
Stone and Rogers, 1.
34
Dunnavant, 437.
33
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exclude and doctrinize came from Lipscomb’s embrace of early Campbell writings. In
1830, Campbell said that he had “no liking for a church after the similitude of Noah’s
Ark,” 35 which in his view would be harder to deal with than the “tempest which beats
upon the outside.” 36 Campbell found diversity within the church as more of a threat than
the numerous diversities and horrors that await it on the outside. It was just such a view
that led Lipscomb to embrace exclusionary doctrines. If Stone was his influence, he
would have rejected any type of exclusionary doctrines and left views on pacifism and
poverty to individuals to decide for themselves.
Upon further analysis, other differences between Stone and Lipscomb emerge. In
comparing Lipscomb’s message to modern liberation theology, Anthony Dunnavant says,
“Although it lacks an explicitly sociopolitical liberation context, Lipscomb’s language is
in accordance with the general idea of a greater ‘epistemological’ and ‘obediential’
capacity of the poor…to understand and conform to the gospel.” 37 Even if one conceded
to Stone having an influence on Lipscomb in regard to an idealized poverty, it would lie
outside the experience of the Campbell movement until Lipscomb himself makes it a part
of the movement’s experience. Stone’s rejection of material wealth had no effect on the
movement during his lifetime. On the other hand, Lipscomb’s rejection of material
wealth had a tremendous effect on the Southern faction of the Campbell Movement in the
years after the Civil War.
Given that Dunnavant’s comparison of Lipscomb and modern liberation theology
is valid, there are some important things that Dunnavant hints at. When he says that
35
Alexander Campbell, Millennial Harbinger, Vol. 1 (August, 1830), 372.
Ibid.
37
Dunnavant, 441.
36
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Lipscomb’s message “lacks an explicitly sociopolitical liberation context” 38 he is
referring to its lack of global import. Lipscomb argued more for the embrace of poverty
by Christians than an embrace of the rights of the poor all over the world, the principle
concern of socio-theologians today. Sociologist Marie August Neal states this modern
concern explicitly at the beginning of her collection of essays on the role of religion in
combating poverty: “The world’s poor are reaching out to take what is rightfully theirs.
How to respond to that fact is a major challenge facing Christians in the late twentieth
century.” 39 Lipscomb was more concerned about the detrimental effect wealth has on a
Christian rather than the detrimental effect poverty has on the world’s populations. For
him to be concerned about the latter would put him in the category of social gospelism,
which was the direction those within the movement he criticized were going. The point
is that an idealization of poverty does not lead to a desire to help the poor. Being proud
of one’s poverty does not lead one to try to eliminate poverty. Stone spoke in terms of
Christians sharing with Christians rather than some ideal poverty. In his biography he
speaks of his thankfulness to churches in the west that supported him during his life’s
work. 40 He idealized sharing more than he idealized poverty, and that difference with
Lipscomb is relevant. Lipscomb believed in Christians sharing with each other, but his
idealization was of some romantic view of poverty itself. Stone never romanticized
poverty. For him it was just the bleak reality for those who truly followed Christ. To
romanticize it would be to indirectly glean some worldly good from it. To use it as a
38
Dunnavant, 441.
Marie Augusta Neal, The Just Demands of the Poor: Essays in Socio-Theology (New York: Paulist Press,
1987), 7.
40
Stone and Rogers, 93-97.
39
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badge against fellow Christians who had much wealth would have been unthinkable for
Stone. For instance, he never used his poverty as a tool against a wealthy Campbell.
Lipscomb’s romanticized and idealized embrace of poverty and exclusionism
were very different from the attitudes normally associated with late nineteenth-century
America. This was a time when religion was increasingly transformed by Darwinism,
higher criticism, and social gospelism. In 1859 Charles Darwin published his Origin of
the Species. The challenge to religious leaders was to either reject Darwin’s theory or
find some way to incorporate it into their theology. Historian Jon H. Roberts provides a
thorough analysis of this issue, showing how in the years before Darwin’s bombshell
book, religious thinkers valued a strong connection to science (this would certainly
include Campbell) and tried to accommodate science with scripture. Darwin’s theory of
organic evolution was not so easy to accommodate, but by the end of the nineteenth
century a significant portion of Protestant America had done just that. Roberts says,
“Many of these thinkers valued evolutionary rhetoric in lending credibility to their
theological revisions.” 41 Southern Disciples who followed the guidelines of men such as
Lipscomb and their editorial viewpoints in The Gospel Advocate were part of a minority
who rejected assimilation of Darwinism because it undermined their strict hermeneutic
they had inherited from Campbell’s early writings. The same mentality that rejected
Darwinism also rejected political involvement, material wealth, and any involvement
whatsoever in war. The larger Campbell movement, primarily in the North, followed the
broader American society quite naturally, while Lipscomb and his southern faction
remained separate and apart from the progressive direction of religion in America.
41
Jon H. Roberts, Darwinism and the Divine in America: Protestant Intellectuals and Organic Evolution,
1859-1900 (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), xv.
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In his book, Science and Religion in America, Herbert Hovenkamp explains the
distinction between higher criticism and lower criticism of the Bible. 42 Higher criticism
grew out of the early nineteenth-century study of philology, 43 but also in part it grew out
of Darwin’s influence in the middle of the century. Higher criticism assumed that a
textual analysis of scripture could determine things about their authors. In a sense, higher
criticism read between the lines, trying to glean hidden intentions of biblical authors.
Higher criticism also attempted to historically verify scriptural passages. All of this was
in direct opposition to the older method called lower criticism, which entailed a more or
less literal exegesis of scripture and its meanings. The Campbell Movement generally
accepted lower criticism as rational and valid, while remaining wary of higher criticism
because it was seen as not scientific enough. It supposed many things before doing any
analysis, and therefore was speculative. Yet, in order to maintain their progressive stance
as a part of vital American Protestantism, the northern faction of Campbell’s movement
had to at least partially embrace this new “science of religion.” 44 The inclusive view that
prevailed in the North demanded it. In the South, they were free to distance themselves
from such things based on their exclusive view of the Campbell Movement.
No man better exemplifies the move toward religious, social, and scientific
progressivism within the northern movement than James Garfield, whose association
with the Campbell Movement began in 1850. Garfield was baptized and began studies at
a local Disciples of Christ college in Hiram, Ohio. Dayton Keesee states, “By 1858 he
42
Herbert Hovenkamp, Science and Religion in America, 1800-1860 (University of Pennsylvania Press,
1978), 57-62.
43
Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 73.
44
Hovenkamp, 57.
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was recognized as a promising young man in the field of evangelism.” 45 But by 1859 the
promising young preacher had entered politics, winning a seat in Congress as a senator
from Ohio. His early experience preaching served him well in politics, and he soon
became an important leader within the Republican Party. Recalling his school days at
Hiram, biographer Allan Peskin notes Garfield’s penchant for modern things:
In their [the student’s] correspondence, rather than discuss trivial gossip, they
grappled with such serious matters as The Progress of the Soul, the Path of Duty,
and the Higher Meaning of Life. In doing so they were trying to prove to each
other (and to themselves) that they had escaped from a society “where there is no
topic for conversation but raising hogs and cattle.” 46
As a Disciples student, Garfield and his classmates longed for new advancements. They
read popular literature and tried to be in tune with the progress of American society, even
though the original purpose of the Hiram school location was to protect students from all
the modern temptations of the more urban areas. 47 Yet such isolation could not stop
young Disciples students from gravitating toward modern advancements. Despite the
conservative intentions of local Disciples in Ohio, the new leaders of the movement, such
as Robert Richardson and Isaac Errett 48 tended to promote such thinking.
Keesee suggests that before his political career, Garfield held a pacifist view
much like that of Campbell. 49 Yet after entering politics, Garfield became a strong
advocate of war against the rebellious South. What led him in that direction? One early
pro-war influence on Garfield was the famous Disciples preacher Walter Scott, who had
preached widely in the Western Reserve that included Ohio. Campbell’s early movement
45
Keesee, 55.
Allan Peskin, Garfield: Biography (Kent State University Press, 1978), 24.
47
Ibid., 21.
48
Garrett, 315. See also Brewster, 57. All restoration historians identify Isaac Errett as one of the leading
progressives from the North.
49
Keesee, 55.
46
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was spread in large part by the efforts of Scott in the West. Ohio Disciples would have
been greatly influenced by him, and his long-established journal The Evangelist. But
Scott was a rarity in the movement when it came to the subject of pacifism. He was
adamantly against all forms of pacifism, and declared this at the beginning of the Civil
War. Indeed, Scott’s justification of war caused a rift in his long and friendly association
with Campbell. In the early stages of the Civil War, Scott wrote an article advocating the
use of force in order to save the Union from division. Campbell refused to publish the
article in the Millennial Harbinger. 50 Although Garfield never mentions this incident in
any of his writings, it must have impacted his view of war.
Historian Timothy L. Smith, in an article concerning the importance of the Ohio
Valley in the development of American Christianity tells us that one of the key factors in
that development was the strong presence of pacifist denominations such as Quakers,
Mennonites, and Amish. 51 This great variety of influences had an affect on Campbell’s
Disciples of Christ congregations in the region, causing them to take either a pacifist or
pro-war stance per each congregation.
It was the secession of South Carolina in December, 1860 that reversed Garfield’s
embrace of pacifism, if indeed he ever fully embraced it. He now supported a full-scale
war against the Southern rebel states. As historian Ira Rutkow points out, “The
previously conciliatory Garfield, who had traveled to Louisville only a few months
before to woo his neighboring states’ legislators, returned to Columbus a full-blown
50
Brewster, 56.
Timothy L. Smith, “The Ohio Valley: Testing Ground for America’s Experiment in Religious
Pluralism,” in Henry Warner Bowden and P.C. Kemeny, eds., American Church History: A Reader
(Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 111.
51
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hawk. Sectional compromise was no longer possible in his mind.” 52 Proving that he was
willing to back up his pro-war stance with action, Garfield temporarily left his duties as
senator to lead men into battle in the Union army. Despite having no military experience,
he was commissioned a colonel after recruiting many young men from his alma mater in
Hiram, Ohio. 53 Many of these young men recruited by Garfield were from families
within the Disciples congregation in Hiram. Parents made a point to have their sons sign
up to be under Garfield’s leadership. 54 However much this may indicate Garfield’s broad
support in his recruitment efforts among Ohio Disciples, such was not the case. In a
letter to his wife, Garfield indicated much resistance during his recruitment campaign
throughout Ohio. Reporting from Ashland County, Ohio, he wrote, “Commencing
Wednesday evening I have made eight speeches and have raised 36 volunteers. They all
refused me their churches for last evening except the heretic J.N. Carman, who has been
ostracized by the Disciples of this place.” 55 The Disciples of Ohio were divided over the
war. It had gone from being a matter of personal choice to being a matter that pitted one
congregation against another.
Garfield went on to lead regiments in successful battles for the North in the Sandy
Valley River campaign in Kentucky before becoming ill and subsequently returning to
his role in government. 56 But it was enough to earn him a reputation as a war hero that
would serve him well during his many years as one of the “radical Republicans” who
dominated Congress during and after the war. His story of successful military and
52
Ira Rutkow, James A. Garfield (New York: Times Books, 2006), 13.
Ibid., 15.
54
Keesee, 57.
55
Theodore Clarke Smith, The Life and Letters of James Abram Garfield, Volume One (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1925), 176.
56
Rutkow, 16.
53
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political exploits would also be a factor in his eventual climb to the presidency in 1880.
Garfield was the embodiment of the great American rags to riches story: the last log
cabin president. Historian Irwin G. Wylie has written about Garfield as a president who
took the Jeffersonian agrarian myth and adapted it to the Lincolnian log cabin myth. 57
Horatio Alger Jr., the famous writer of rags to riches stories for boys, used Garfield as his
example in the 1881 publication, Canal Boy to President. 58 He was a great American
success story for the nineteenth century. This was not what men such as Lipscomb from
the South believed to be the role of Christians in this world.
How does Garfield’s life fit into the development of Campbell’s movement? Was
he an anomaly or an indication of the direction the movement was going? The latter is
most true, but not completely true. There were many who, having experienced the Civil
War, became avid supporters of the government and its divinely ordained place in the
world. Garfield was far from alone in this respect. But neither was he an indication of a
general trend in thinking, and this is why exclusionary pacifism was the one central issue
that officially divided the Campbell Movement in the twentieth century. Too many, both
North and South, clung to various pacifist beliefs no matter how they or their Disciples
brothers acted during the Civil War. More precisely, Garfield was an example of the
clear division between a part of the movement that rejected society and all its trappings of
wealth, and another part that embraced it. The division over supporting carnal warfare
was a platform for debating a much larger issue, which was whether or not a Christian
should be an active part of the larger society he lived in, and accumulate the material
wealth that such involvement leads to. This was seen in terms of the government and
57
Irvin G. Wylie, The Self-Made Man in America: The Myth of Rags to Riches (New York: Free Press,
1954), 8.
58
Rutkow, 10.
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military, or in terms of Christianity at large. Those like Garfield, who embraced the
larger society, also embraced the larger denominational world of Christian churches.
They had an inclusive view of the world. Those like Lipscomb who rejected the larger
society, also came to reject the larger denominational world of Christian churches. They
had an exclusive view of the world. Lipscomb’s words in the following passage could
have been aimed at Garfield or just as effectively at many other men in the movement as
it developed toward a more progressive social and theological view:
The rich seldom profess Christianity, and when they do, ninety-nine times out
of every hundred their influence is to corrupt the church, lower the standard
of morality, and relax all discipline in a church.…My memory now fails me
of a single preacher that either was rich or set his heart upon being rich, that
his usefulness as a preacher was not thereby destroyed. 59
Lipscomb of course was critical of Garfield as he campaigned for the presidency, and
saw the whole situation as proof that the Northern brethren had slipped into worldliness
and apostasy. 60 Pacifism was the language by which Southerners and those who
hearkened back to Campbell’s early Christian Baptist days spoke out against the general
trends of late nineteenth century America and the changes they imposed on its Protestant
churches. But the underlying issue that this language of pacifism addressed was whether
or not Christians were to function as a vital part of this world. In the world, but not of it
counterbalanced the urge toward a social gospel that had been building in American
society for some time. One side of the Campbell movement idealized poverty and
exclusion while the other side idealized social progress and inclusion. Garfield
contributed greatly to the latter.
59
David Lipscomb, “Our Educational Prospects and Difficulties,” Gospel Advocate 8, no. 15 (April 10,
1866), 233-234.
60
Harrell, The Churches of Christ in the 20th Century, 52.
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Neither of these idealizations came from Stone. In the 1820’s Campbell had
allied himself editorially with Stone in order to distance himself from the Baptists and
more uniquely define his movement. The urge toward exclusion, and the embrace of
poverty by Lipscomb, comes from Campbell’s iconoclastic attacks on the denominations,
not from Stone’s premillennial apocalyptic writings, which always concentrated on
spiritual subjects, rejecting the world as insignificant. For instance: “At the coming of
the Saviour, he will send his messengers to collect his elect (the Jews) from the four
winds of heaven, where they have long been scattered. This will be an awful period.
There shall the Jews be redeemed, and the millennium commence.” 61 In this and dozens
of other passages on the millennium, Stone never concerned himself with material things.
That it was an “awful period” may indicate physical hardships, but these are not the real
concern of Stone’s writing. He does not impose his own experiences with poverty and
want upon his understandings of Christ’s immanent return. Only the spiritual condition
matters. Lipscomb implicitly stressed the physical or material condition of the Christian
by focusing on how difficult it was to mix wealth and Christian piety.
One more person deserves mention in regards to pacifism, poverty and exclusion
in the nineteenth-century Campbell Movement. Thomas M. Allen was a pacifist within
the movement who came to those conclusions from a very different history than
Campbell or Stone. Allen was a war veteran who volunteered for military service during
the War of 1812. After the war he became a lawyer with a promising political career. 62
Baptized by Stone in 1823, he eventually gave up a belief in warfare and involvement in
61
Barton W. Stone, “Queries by J.M. Apollus, of Tenn.” The Christian Messenger, Vol. VII, No. 2
(Georgetown Kentucky, February, 1833), 38.
62
James Challen, ed. “Biographical Sketch of Thomas M. Allen,” Ladies’ Christian Annual, Vol. 6, No. 7
(1857), 209-212.
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the government and took on Stone’s very strong pacifist view. Like Stone, he expressed
his pacifism as a personal conviction rather than one he felt compelled to enforce upon
others. Also like Stone, he gave up caring about earthly prosperity by ditching a lucrative
political career for preaching in the West.
For years, Allen corresponded with Campbell, reporting on the progress of
churches throughout the West. Historian Leroy Garrett observes that, “More than any
other reporter from the field, Allen made reference to the ‘political excitement and
feeling in the country’ and its effect upon the reformation.” 63 Allen’s story helps to
understand divisions within the movement in regards to war. His reports from the West
were quantitative, recording exact numbers of conversions and baptisms, and other
details, as this biographical sketch suggests,
The characteristic of Mr. Allen's mind, we think, is highly practical. It has to do
with facts, not with theories; with settled principles, not abstractions. He is an
observant man. He enters into details, and is fond of order. His reports of stated
meetings, and the labors of his brethren in the district in which he lives, are full of
details, and are models for their minuteness and order. We should think that
nothing escapes him; and, in all matters connected with the object and interest of
the work in which he is engaged, he has his own plans, and carries them out; and,
therefore is a most reliable man. 64
Coming from Stone’s side of the 1832 merger, Allen worked to forge some kind of united
identity between “Campbellites” and “Stoneites” that would place Stone in a prominent
position. Needless to say, this failed. Unlike Fanning and Lipscomb, Allen was firmly in
the Northern camp with leaders such as Robert Richardson and Isaac Errett, who
embraced a more liberal and progressive view of the movement. But unlike Richardson
and Errett, Allen’s liberal approach came from Stone.
63
64
Garrett, 346.
Challen, 212.
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Allen represented a hybrid of Southern and Northern ideologies, which if
embraced, could have led to more unity between the two very different groups. But this
is where we see the problem caused by Campbell’s dualistic nature. Allen’s history as
part of Stone’s early movement in the 1820’s distinguishes him from Campbell’s early
views. Allen’s life seems to skip from Stone’s 1820’s movement, past all the sectarian
conflict of Campbell’s early days, and right into the middle of Campbell’s late period
where he embraced a more inclusive and progressive view. The influence of the early
Campbell—seen so clearly in the men of the South, such as Fanning and Lipscomb—is
not present in Allen. The patternism and restorationism found in the southern wing of the
Disciples movement after the Civil War was not present in Allen’s strongly exclusionary
pacifist view. Indeed, Allen was proof that the movement that grew and matured after
1832 was always one split between the early views of Campbell and the later views of
Campbell. Stone was always the outsider voice, not really a part of the movement at all,
but rather a critical shaper of other groups like the Christian Connexion.
Many restoration historians identify the Sand Creek Declaration as the real point
of division between the northern Disciples of Christ and the southern Churches of Christ.
But there is reason to question the significance of this event. In 1889, Daniel Sommer, a
preacher from Sand Creek, Illinois, brought together several local congregations to agree
upon a general rejection of “innovations” in the Campbell Movement. Specifically, they
were rejecting instrumental music and extra-church organizations such as general
conferences and missionary societies. In front of a crowd of perhaps 6,000 Disciples,
Sommer called for a division between those who rejected such innovations and those who
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accepted them. 65 As significant as this may sound, it was actually a small number of
Disciples compared to the total membership of over one million. 66 The gathering at Sand
Creek would have represented less than one percent of the movement’s total membership,
hardly a mandate for division. The fact that Lipscomb reluctantly admitted to the census
bureau in 1906 that there was a division, tells us that Sand Creek, which had occurred
seventeen years earlier, had a minimal impact on the movement as a whole. Lipscomb
himself ignored the Sand Creek incident at first, only commenting on it three years later.
He wrote in the Gospel Advocate, “This looks very much like a convention unknown to
the New Testament exercising judicial and executive functions to oppose error and
maintain truth, and it looks very much like doing the thing they condemn.” 67 Lipscomb
was pointing out that Sand Creek was calling a general conference in order to condemn
general conferences. This was a paradox that still haunts the modern branches of the
movement, who desire better organization and communication but often reject the means
to that as unbiblical. Even if Sand Creek was an indication of division to come, it was
not substantial enough to be the division itself.
So if Sand Creek was not the division point, then the reluctant 1906 admission by
Lipscomb was the true division point. Additionally, the famously divisive innovations—
instrumental music, conferences, and missionary societies—were not the real issues at
stake. Pacifism (or at least the language of pacifism), and an ideological and
exclusionary embrace of poverty were the key issues that were actually the foundation for
conflicts over these so-called “innovations.” The fact that the Churches of Christ in the
65
Brewster, 107.
Lindy Adams and Scott LaMascus, eds. Decades of Destiny: A History of the Churches of Christ from
1900-2000 (Abilene, Texas: ACU Press, 2004), 36.
67
David Lipscomb, “Sand Creek Address and Declaration,” Gospel Advocate (November 7, 1892), 725.
66
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twentieth century eventually rejected pacifism and an embrace of poverty, did not
diminish the role of those issues in 1906. Furthermore, even after they rejected pacifism,
the conservative Churches of Christ did not reject the exclusionism that came with it.
Churches of Christ in the post-war era from 1945 to 1965 embraced the larger society,
and supported the government in times of war, but still practiced the exclusivity that went
with those views on poverty and pacifism earlier on. After World War II the exclusivity
was only practiced in relation to other Christian groups, and not against society as a
whole. That is what makes the exclusionism that exists today in this group so hard to
defend. It began as exclusion from the world, and ended as exclusion from other
Christians.
All this leads to the conclusion that Stone was never an influence within the
Campbell Movement. The men that restoration historians consider to be influenced by
Stone (Fanning, Lipscomb, Sommer) are not in agreement with the ways Stone would
have handled the problems that occurred from the Civil War on. Lipscomb’s radical
views grew out of early Campbell iconoclasm, as does his exclusivity. Certainly the
legalism seen in leaders like Daniel Sommer comes from early Campbell. The embrace
of larger society and denominational innovations and even the support of the government
in war, all come from later Campbell, even though he was a strong pacifist. Stone’s
unique views are nowhere to be found, unless one turns to the Christian Connexion
which, despite attempts to merge with the Northern Disciples of Christ in the latter part of
the nineteenth century, 68 remained quite separate from the Disciples and their growing
conflicts. The Connexion did not grow significantly, but it did cling to Stone’s great
68
Milo True Morrill, A History of the Christian Denomination in America, (Dayton, Ohio: Christian
Publishing Association, 1912), 152.
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unity message. Its attempt to merge with Disciples in the 1890’s had much to do with the
Stoneite idealism toward Christianity as a single entity that men cannot divide. Therefore
all mergers are justified, no matter what the differences may be. In other words, the thing
that drove Stone to claim unity with Campbell’s movement in 1832 (despite all their
obvious differences) was the same thing that drove the Christian Connexion to try to
unite with Campbell’s movement in the late nineteenth century: the belief that Christian
unity came before all differences, no matter how profound they might be. Stone was
capable of making all kinds of unions with people he did not agree with, all in the name
of Christian unity. It was a concept lost to many within both the Stone churches and the
Campbell churches at the time. Thus, Stone was a solitary figure, at odds with almost all
Christians, yet in his own way in union with all of them. Stone responded to Campbell in
1831, “that we have always, from the beginning, declared our willingness, and desire to
be united with the whole family of God on earth, irrespective of the diversity of opinion
among them.” 69 Such a broad understanding of unity was irreconcilable to most of
Campbell’s views.
The 1906 admission of Lipscomb to the census bureau takes on a new sort of
significance in light of the above. It was the central flash point whereby two versions of
Campbell are no longer able to live with each other, in word or in deed. The suggestion
here is that the most visible conflicts over instrumental music and missionary societies
were not the underlying reasons for the split. More fundamental to what drove the two
versions of Campbell completely away from each other was the different world- views
each side had: Southern Churches of Christ had Lipscomb’s negative view of society as
something evil that must be resisted by exclusionary practices such as pacifism and an
69
Barton Stone, The Christian Messenger, Vol. 5 (August, 1831), 180.
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ideological embrace of poverty. This comes from an early Campbell, who fought to
distinguish his movement from the entrenched denominations of that time. Northern
Disciples of Christ had a more positive view of society, born of Campbell’s later writings
and experiences. Campbell’s later attempts to create a sort of denominational legitimacy
for his movement, led to leaders in the North who embraced the total subjection idea of
Christians who must serve their government in times of need, and Christians who must
work to make their whole society a better place. As a whole, the Campbell movement
fought throughout the late nineteenth century to keep those two separate ideologies
together under one roof. The 1906 incident was proof that those efforts had ultimately
failed.
In addition to these clear North/South distinctions, another demographic reality
that deserves consideration is the move westward. After the 1906 split, the statistics
indicate a significant demographic shift among Disciples of Christ both North and South,
toward the West. The Disciples of Christ reported having over 982,000 members with
almost 600,000 of those being in Kentucky, Indiana, Missouri, Illinois, and Ohio. The
Churches of Christ reported having over 159,000 members with about 110,000 of those
in Tennessee, Texas, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Indiana. 70 The movement as a whole had
grown from an original population of approximately 25,000 in 1832, to 195,000 in 1860,
and then over a million in 1906. As significant as those increases are, the western
demographic shift tells us most about the changing nature of the movement. Even the
well-off northern Disciples were not the dominant force on the denominationally
entrenched eastern coastal regions. Their strength was in the western regions where
wealth was relatively new. The Churches of Christ in the South became significantly
70
Adams and LaMascus, 36.
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strong in Texas, the epitome of the frontier at this time. As early as 1872 the Campbellite
churches in Texas were making a name for themselves in the movement. Lipscomb had
predicted that Texas would become dominant in the movement when he toured there, and
stated that there are “more men who sometimes preach, in proportion to population, than
in any other state.” 71 At the time of the 1906 split, the Disciples of Christ were best
identified with commercial boom towns in the West, while the Churches of Christ were
best identified with the smaller agricultural communities. Neither group was truly an
eastern-based phenomenon. Both groups identified with the West, but in different ways.
The Disciples of Christ identified with the West as opportunity for growth and expansion.
The Churches of Christ identified with the West as an escape from a larger society they
rejected as too worldly.
With the divisions now official and the distinctions clearly stated, it became clear
that the two groups would face very different problems in the twentieth century. The
Disciples of Christ would not be in conflict with the U.S. government when involvement
in World War I became a reality. For the Churches of Christ, World War I would be a
formidable challenge.
Amazingly, the practice of hiring a substitute to take one’s place as a soldier in
war—a practice hotly contested during the Civil War—lasted up to the point of U.S.
involvement in World War I. It was at that point that a new policy was enacted for
conscientious objectors. The Selective Service Act of 1917 provided for noncombatant
options for members of historic peace churches. The act stated:
Nothing in this act contained shall be construed to require or compel a person to
serve in any of the forces herein provided for who is found to be a member of any
well-recognized religious sect or organization at present organized and existing
71
Stephen D. Eckstein, Jr., History of the Churches of Christ in Texas, 1824-1950 (1963), 115.
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and whose existing creed or principles forbid its members to participate in war in
any form and whose religious convictions are against war or participation therein
in accordance with the creed or principles of said religious organizations. 72
The act applied to churches that had traditionally objected to war, such as the Quakers.
But the Churches of Christ were not in that category since, first of all, they were a new
division of the Disciples of Christ, and therefore had no historic status as pacifists.
Furthermore, despite their doctrinization tactics, they had no clear set of shared doctrines,
since this would have conflicted with their strong belief in local autonomous
congregations with no central authority. Yet it was very clear to anyone who knew the
history of these southern churches who had just broken away from the well-established
Disciples of Christ, that they were indeed devout pacifists. The ambiguity of the situation
put the Churches of Christ in a difficult situation once the United States committed itself
to the war effort in Europe.
The Gospel Advocate remained the moderating voice within the groups who
identified with the Churches of Christ. Lipscomb remained a strong influence until his
death in 1917, the same year that the United States entered World War I. So obviously,
a strong pacifist view prevailed up to that time. Some within the Churches of Christ
printed helpful instructions for young men to attain conscientious objector status. But
with the Espionage Act of 1917, 73 the Gospel Advocate changed its tune. The journal’s
editors were called before the Attorney General in order to prove they were loyal citizens
of the United States. After that, the Gospel Advocate became supporters of the war.
Some in the Churches of Christ resisted this change and continued preaching against
72
Statutes of the United States of America, 65 Congress, I session (Washington: Government Printing
Office, 1917), 78.
73
Paul L. Murphy, World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties in the United States (New York: Norton
Publishers, 1979).
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involvement in the war and in the government. Some of these were jailed along with the
socialists and anarchists who made up the bulk of the anti-war movement imprisoned
under the oppressive Espionage Act, even as U.S. troops began fighting in Europe. 74 It
is at this point that Lipscomb’s influence recedes, mostly out of a necessity to end this
sudden conflict with the U.S. government. Lipscomb’s strong pacifism, coupled with a
negative view of society, was replaced with a more positive or “modern” view of things.
The very foundation of their long-standing argument against their “innovator” brothers in
the North was disintegrating. Pacifism was waning, as was the tradition of viewing
society negatively. But the exclusivism that had carried these beliefs remained. In fact,
the class differences that Lipscomb had emphasized were still quite prominent. The
Churches of Christ were still primarily in rural and poor regions while Disciples of Christ
were in urban and wealthy regions. As a result, a certain amount of revisionism occurred,
whereby Churches of Christ looked back to 1906 with a renewed interest in the “music”
and “societies” issues. They also searched for other issues that would clearly
differentiate themselves from the still larger and more prominent Disciples of Christ
churches. David Harrell says, “Even during the ‘golden age’ of the 1920’s and 1930’s,
the periodicals read by the members of the churches of Christ teemed with impassioned
debates about a bewildering array of issues.” 75 The Churches of Christ were trying to
define themselves as distinct from other groups, just as Campbell had done in the 1820’s.
Meanwhile, within the Disciples of Christ, a division occurred in the early
decades of the twentieth century over, of all things, the question of missionary
74
75
Harrell, The Churches of Christ in the 20th Century, 51-54.
Ibid., 41.
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societies. 76 The more progressive branch believed in organizations outside the church for
the cooperative effort of supporting missionaries abroad. The other branch rejected any
such centralized authority as denominational, and proposed an independent church
system for supporting missionaries. The “Independents” eventually separated themselves
from the larger body and became The Christian Churches (Independent). The
Independent branch believed they had found a solution to the problem of church
cooperation that had long plagued the Campbell tradition. This was the problem
Alexander Campbell faced: the autonomy of individual churches needed protection, but
cooperation was essential to carrying out the necessary works of the church. According
to the Independents, the problem was solved by allowing individual churches to choose
their own type of cooperation without adhering to a central authority. This rejection of
central authority was at the crux of the Independent movement in the Christian Churches,
and eventually caused a rift large enough to call the two groups separate churches.
Although very conservative, the “independent” tradition was more cooperative than the
Churches of Christ tradition. But the cause of division remained very much the same:
conflicting views of what Campbell stood for, one based on his early work, another based
on his later work. The Independents also took a much broader view of restorationism
than the Churches of Christ. They claimed that restorationism was a theological concept
that encompassed all of human history and its relationship to God. 77 They too were
uncomfortable with the strict restoration concept of having “restored the first-century
church,” which is still prevalent in Churches of Christ.
76
77
Garrett, 469-474.
Garrett, 485.
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After shedding most of their pacifism, the Churches of Christ in the 1930’s rid
themselves of yet one more remnant of the old Lipscomb tradition: premillennialism. In
doing so, they moved cautiously toward a more positive view of the world. The one great
champion of this final purging was the enigmatic preacher named Foy Wallace. His
constant witch-hunt tactics were aimed at weeding out all premillennial ideas by labeling
them unbiblical (and therefore sinful stains on the brotherhood). To a certain extent, this
was in keeping with the Churches of Christ temperament at the time. Having been raised
within the legalism that was indicated at Sand Creek by those who followed Daniel
Sommer, coupled with a strong spirit of independence, its members thus approached
conflict and debate with what might be described as a perverse delight. Foy Wallace was
the epitome of this mind-set. In an editorial war reminiscent of Campbell’s Christian
Baptist days he ran the premillennialists out of the movement and united it in a more
positive world-view. 78
But Foy Wallace was not done yet. Still clinging to a mild pacifist position
throughout the 1930’s, he did an about-face when the U.S. entered World War II, almost
overnight denouncing his movement’s remnants of pacifism in favor of a patriotic zeal
that bordered on fanatic militarism. At one point he called conscientious objectors “freak
specimens of humanity.” 79 Wallace’s actions forged the way for another major division
within the Churches of Christ over positive and negative world views. Pacifism,
idealized poverty, and a general attitude of exclusion from society would continue to be
the polarizing issues for twentieth-century members of this Campbell tradition. A new
division would emerge within Churches of Christ, and would be complete by the early
78
79
Harrell, The Churches of Christ in the 20th Century, 62.
Ibid., 55.
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1960’s. It centered on the debate over the use of institutions outside the church, but the
foundation of it was still different versions of a Christian’s place in the world. The “noninstitution” Churches of Christ became separate from the mainline Churches of Christ,
based on competing negative and positive world-views. 80
In the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) another incredible change was
afoot in the early 1960’s. The rift between liberal and conservative theologies, always an
underlying theme during the debates over missionary cooperation, led to a decision by the
liberal Disciples to denominationalize. Clearly, for some time this branch of the
Campbell tradition had been struggling to reconcile its ecumenical needs and desires with
the traditional primitivist-restorationism of Campbell. A partial repudiation of one in
favor of the other was inevitable.
For these liberal Disciples, they simply could not live
with the traditional restorationist concept any longer, even in the less strict form
embraced by the Independents. Instead, they chose to emphasize the later Campbell’s
plea for Christian unity by joining the rest of Protestantism as a denomination in 1968. In
a sense, they were following Campbell’s own personal journey from being antidenominational to being one who embraced much of what denominationalism stood for.
Like him, the Disciples of the 1960’s were coming full circle, back to their beginnings as
Scottish Presbyterians.
The last four decades have been times of change for all divisions of the Campbell
tradition. The pacifism and premillennialism debates are largely a thing of the past.
Premillennialism has a home in other more charismatic and Pentecostal movements, as
well as within the Southern Baptists. An idealized embrace of poverty exists firmly
within the world of Latin American Catholicism and the ecumenism of the Christian
80
Harrell, The Churches of Christ in the 20th Century, 115-148.
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Connexion tradition, which turned to Marxist political theories by the time they became
part of the United Church of Christ in 1957. Their journal, Social Action, 81 is partly an
attempt to reach out to the poor and disinherited in third world countries, as well as
criticizing conservative governments in the industrialized world. None of these
ideologies are by many in the Campbell tradition. Their approach to the world remains
largely apolitical. The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has faced an internal
conflict between their general membership and the very liberal and centralized leadership
that came with denominationalism. The Christian Churches (Independent) face similar
divisions between a conservative majority and a liberal minority that wants to impose
drastic changes.
The Churches of Christ found that they too had a liberal element, which has
gained strength in recent years after being on the periphery since the 1950’s. The recent
events at the Abilene Christian University Lectureships (discussed in the Introduction)
are proof of this new trend. Indeed, each branch of the Campbell movement has a
capacity for accommodating a variety of views within the context of a shared set of
values. The great example of this is historian and church activist, Leroy Garrett, who has
held many so-called liberal and controversial views within the Churches of Christ for
many years. But despite his often radical and controversial views, his personal values
reflect those of the great majority of Churches of Christ members, and he is today a
revered leader. 82
81
Social Action is a periodical published by the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the Council for
Christian Social Action, based in New York.
82
Leroy Garrett, A Lover’s Quarrel (An Autobiography): My Pilgrimage of Freedom in Churches of Christ
(Abilene, Tx.: ACU Press, 2003). This highly personal account of Garrett’s struggles within the Churches
of Christ is not only an inspirational story, but is also instructional in the way ideas are debated within this
branch of the Campbell tradition.
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Finally, Alexander Campbell must be seen as a religious and intellectual enigma.
At times one almost sees a counterintuitive logic at work in his ideas and theology. He
was against man-made theology, yet a great theologian. He was anti-denominational, yet
later embraced many denominational ideas about church structure. He was against
emotion-driven revivalism, yet acknowledged and understood all the irrational powers
that lay behind human conduct. Barton Stone, although never a true leader in the
movement, had a universal consistency that Campbell lacked. He truly was a “primitive”
who reached back into the ancient past for truths that were then evading the enlightened
men of his time. The Campbell tradition continues to cling to its many paradoxes for the
same reason that it never accepted Stone as a leader: they are afraid of the universal
implications that Stone’s anti-doctrinal view of Christianity implies. It will hold hands
with Campbell on many occasions and fling itself off whatever cliff he wants them to.
But to jump into the void with Stone is something none of them have ever been willing to
do. Yet, it is exactly what the Christian Connexion did by first merging with
Congregationalism and then with the Reformed tradition, seeing its own identity merge
and disappear into another larger identity called the United Church of Christ. The
Campbell tradition has never been able to do that, nor have they much wanted to. This
fact, more than anything else, proves that the “Stone-Campbell” movement has always
been a myth. It has always been the sole property and responsibility of its brilliant yet
conflicted leader, Alexander Campbell.
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Chapter Seven
Conclusion
Barton Stone has been described in this work as having a universal view of
Christianity. This means he believed that all conflict over religious opinions was to be
subordinated to the overriding ideal of Christian unity. Stone’s writings repeatedly bear
this message: Christians must stay together no matter how much they disagree. He
believed in a single Christian church that included all existing churches, no matter what
their particular beliefs were. Any union agreement Stone made, has to be seen within the
context of that message. Alexander Campbell has been described in this work as having
a somewhat dualistic approach which sometimes idealized Stone’s universal view but
then particularized that view when necessary. In other words, certain things had to be
agreed upon as doctrine or orthodoxy in order to viably maintain the movement. As a
leader, Campbell had to act in accordance with particulars. In this scenario, Stone
appeared to be the visionary while Campbell was the pragmatic leader who made it all
work. But this is exactly the misconception that has always plagued the Stone-Campbell
tradition: erroneously seeing Stone as a standard by which the movement is judged.
Stone was never the movement’s standard, even though he was used by various people
within the movement to defend particular ideas they had. The hope is that this work has
at least pointed out the irony of using someone such as Stone to defend particular ideas.
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Beyond that, the hope is that Stone can now be re-cast in a more historically correct role
in the nineteenth century restoration movement. Restoration historians, as well as others
who study this chapter in American religion, can see Barton Stone as a man who
functioned outside of the movement that bears his name. The “Stone-Campbell
Movement” was a myth in that Stone was never really part of it.
With Stone in his proper historical context it is possible to understand his
influence upon groups such as the Christian Connexion in the nineteenth century, and the
United Church of Christ in the twentieth century. This alternate understanding of Stone
also helps to understand why he could not have been an influence on branches like the
Churches of Christ, even though they have often invoked his name on behalf of their
particular views. By getting rid of assumptions about Stone that do not match the
evidence, our picture of him and his message becomes clearer. Stone’s many years of
writing and editing The Christian Messenger give evidence that his definition of true
Christianity was of an open system that rejects all attempts by men to impose orthodoxy
upon it. His anti-orthodoxy beliefs are evident throughout these writings. By boiling
Christianity down to its bare essentials, Stone opened it up to everyone, which was the
basis for his concept of unity. Christians were not defined by particular beliefs, but by
their tenacious clinging to each other despite all beliefs. In a nineteenth-century religious
culture defined by American pluralism, this could not have been a concept easily grasped
by most Christians. It was in no way grasped by Campbell’s movement in its formative
years.
The subsequent divisions that occurred on and after 1906 were thus the result not
of a “Stone versus Campbell” conflict, but of differing versions of who Campbell was.
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The universalist-particularist conflict, which has existed since the beginning of
Christianity, played itself out in the movement because Campbell was an intellectual, a
complex thinker, who was torn between those two views of Christianity. Campbell’s
biblical hermeneutics, his ties to the Enlightenment, his millennial and nationalist views,
all led him away from the ideal Christian universal message, and toward particularism.
Because Stone did not have these same ties, there was nothing to move him toward
particulars.
Most Christian movements divide when two leaders or factions have this
universalist-particularist conflict and go their separate ways. What is distinctive about
the Campbell tradition is that the conflict originated in Campbell’s dualistic intellectual
struggle. Factions led by contentious leaders were there, but were really only arguing
over Campbell’s inner conflict. It is not possible to fully see this without first placing
Stone in his correct historical context, as an outsider in his own movement. A good
example of how this normally plays out between factions is the same conflict as it has
occurred over the past few decades within the Southern Baptist Convention, where
progressives have battled fundamentalists for the very soul of the group. The progressive
faction wants a broad interpretational approach that includes conflicting beliefs. The
fundamentalist faction wants a particular interpretation of biblical truth that excludes
conflicting beliefs. 1 The same conflict happened differently in the Stone-Campbell
Movement, predicated as it was on a single leader’s struggle for an answer. Perhaps this
points to a deeper psychological understanding of the movement as one man’s duality.
These ideas could be developed with further research. How does the normal group
1
David T. Morgan, The New Crusades, the New Holy Land: Conflict in the Southern Baptist Convention,
1969-1991 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1996).
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dynamic alter the way the conflict is played out? How is the conflict different when it
originates in the mind of a single leader like Alexander Campbell? Answers to these
questions would certainly be worth further study.
In developing this thesis of Stone’s non-influence I have also gone back to writers
in the Christian Connexion tradition in the 1920’s and shown how they too made a case
for Stone never being a “Campbellite.” 2 That their motives for doing so might be
different from mine does not diminish the strong evidence that Stone could not possibly
have thought of his union with Campbell in the same way that Campbell thought of it. If
two people agree to unite on some grounds, but have very different understandings of
what those grounds are, then no real unity has occurred. This was the point made by
Christian Connexion writers such as J.F. Burnett in the 1920’s as the Connexion moved
toward ecumenical union with other groups. It is also part of the dilemma that all
branches of Campbell’s movement have struggled with for the past two centuries.
There may also be some practical applications of this corrected understanding of
Stone’s role. The various branches of what continues to be called the Stone-Campbell
Movement have tried to come closer together, as in the experience at Abilene Christian
University in 2006 (see Introduction). Even more recently, on January 20, 2007 the
newspaper The Indianapolis Star reported on the meeting of several historians within
“what is known as the Stone-Campbell movement” for the purpose of coming up with a
single history of the movement that all could agree on. Restoration historian Paul
Blowers was quoted as saying: “We are not just throwing it out there as another piece of
history writing. We do have an agenda. We want our churches to get to know each other
2
J.F. Burnett, The Origin and Principles of the Christians (Dayton, Ohio: The Christian Publishing
Association, 1921).
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across the divisions. We want people to begin to own responsibility again for Christian
reconciliation.” 3 This attempt at reconciliation between historians within the various
branches of the Campbell tradition is perhaps a sign that the churches themselves are
moving in that direction. Could a unified church history lead to real Christian unity?
What possible role could alternate understandings of Barton Stone play in that unified
history? There might soon be some answers to those questions as these groups continue
to work together, pooling their understandings of their own complex history. Throughout
this process, Stone’s universal Christian ideal might remain elusive. But at least a better
understanding and appreciation for difference could be attained within groups such as the
Churches of Christ who have for a long time lacked those things. The hope is that this
work will be considered in an on-going effort by historians and church leaders to interpret
and clarify the history of the Campbell tradition, and give Barton Stone his rightful place
on the outside of it.
3
The Indianapolis Star, January 20, 2007, “Historians Convene to Rewrite Church History,”
http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/34495.html. Accessed on Feb. 3, 2007.
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