Winfred Ernest Garrison

“ But, though it is well to have unsectarian names which any Christian or any Christian church can use, it is highly convenient to have some designation which others do not generally use, so that the public will know what is meant when reference is made to the churches or members of this movement. Its objective may be the unity of all Christ’s followers, but meanwhile it is a specific group, if not a denomination then a “brotherhood”—and a brotherhood is just as distinct an entity as a denomination. ”

“ All Protestantism has been seeking ways of cooperation and dreaming of unity during the past forty years. In these efforts the Disciples have had their full share, and their hope of unity has been more than a dream. The revived conception of an ecumenical church is congenial to their best tradition and has stirred them to reconsider the ways in which they may help in its realization.
The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America has been the foremost cooperative agency since 1905. ”

“ Campbell had elaborated his position in a series of articles in 1845: slavery is not condemned in the New Testament; therefore holding slaves is not sinful per se and cannot be a ground for withdrawing Christian fellowship; masters must do their full Christian duty toward their slaves, though it is admittedly very difficult to maintain a fully Christian attitude toward a person while owning him as a slave; slavery is economically bad and morally dangerous; and the policy to be followed in any situation is a matter of “opinion” and therefore within the area of Christian liberty. ”

“ Against this, Sandeman put the doctrine that God had not only revealed his truth in terms intelligible to man and provided the means of salvation through Christ, but had also furnished in Scripture adequate evidence of the truth of his revelation, so that the natural man, just as he is, with all his sins, can weigh the evidence and accept the truth. That acceptance is faith. Saving faith, said Sandeman, is an act of man’s reason, and it differs from any other act of belief only in being belief of a saving fact. ”

“ The founders and builders of the American colonies, with a few exceptions, had not believed in the separation of church and state or in equal liberty for all religious groups. But the idea of religious liberty had been growing, and the multiplicity of churches in the new nation made the establishment of any one of them as the national church a practical impossibility. ”

“ It had begun with the idea that the churches were divided by human opinions that had been added to a perfectly adequate common core of revealed truth and duty which all accepted. But now the Reformers could no longer say, as Thomas Campbell had said, that all the churches “are agreed in the great doctrines of faith and holiness and as to the positive ordinances of the Gospel institution.” To achieve union no longer required only persuading the churches to unite upon something that they already held. ”

“ Since men are so solicitous about the true church, I would only ask them here by the way, if it be not more agreeable to the Church of Christ 17 to make the conditions of her communion consist in such things, and such things only, as the Holy Spirit has in the Holy Scriptures declared, in express words, to be necessary to salvation?
And Rupertius Meldenius made the classic statement of this principle when he said: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.” ”

“ Baptism is appropriate for penitent believers, not for innocent infants, because it is the “washing of regeneration,” designed to cleanse, not from inherited original sin, but from the guilt of actual personal sins. Yet it is not a magical “water salvation,” though he was often accused of teaching that. “The blood of Christ really cleanses us who believe.... The water of baptism formally washes away our sins.” ”

“ Episcopalians and Puritans who founded colonies in America brought with them this idea of a state church and a religious unity enforced by the police power, not because they were bigoted or cruel by preference but because they believed, as almost everybody had believed for centuries, that in no other way could a political society be strong enough to survive. ”

“ While the association itself did not espouse open membership, it did not envision union by the universal acceptance of the Disciples’ “historic plea” for the immersion of penitent believers for the remission of sins and the restoration of the pattern of the New Testament church as they had understood it. But Dr. Ainslie, who was president of the association for many years, became an outspoken advocate of open membership, which he called “recognizing the equality of all Christians before God.” ”

“ Some Disciples, without being opposed to societies on principle, had long been critical of much that the societies did and the way they did it—their “cold institutionalism” and “bureaucratic methods” and their concern with so many things other than winning converts by the simple plea of faith, repentance, and baptism and organizing churches according to the ancient order. The United Society fell heir to these hostilities and aroused more. One result was an increase in the number of “independent agencies.” These have a loose bond among themselves as the “Associated Free Agencies.” ”

“ Therefore, he said, no arguments can be drawn from the Old Testament about the nature or form of Christian institutions. The law of the Sabbath has nothing to do with the observance of 77 the first day of the week; baptism cannot be understood by considering it as taking the place of circumcision; paying tithes and keeping fasts are no part of a Christian’s duty; and any alliance between church and state, as in the old covenant of God with the Hebrews, is alien to the spirit and nature of Christianity. ”

“ I think it would be a good move for the president of our international convention to appoint at once a committee to study and report on the question: What changes in the way of addition or subtraction are demanded among the Disciples to make their plea more efficient, either in its substance or in the manner of its presentation to the world?
The religious world today is very different from what it was a century ago. Science has given us a different conception of nature and of the universe. ”

“ Besides the efforts of politicians and ecclesiastics in established churches to get church unity by compulsion, there were a few churchmen and independent thinkers who argued that unity might be attained by requiring agreement only upon the few saving essentials of Christianity and leaving everyone free to hold his own opinions on all the doubtful and disputatious matters of doctrine, polity, and ritual. ”

“ The position of Kentucky, as a breeding ground of pioneers who went out in steady streams to aid in laying the foundations of these states, made it a strategic point from which a new religious movement might make its influence felt throughout the Middle West. ”

“ It remains true that the pioneer beginnings must be remembered and understood if the initial motives and methods of the Disciples and the processes of their growth are to be understood. But important as the frontier is, as a fact in the history of the United States and of every phase of culture in the Middle West, an equally significant fact is that, as the frontier rolled westward, it left behind it a widening area in which pioneer conditions no longer prevailed. ”

“ In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most people believed that a nation could not be politically united unless it had only one church, of which all its people were members. Consequently, the power of the state was generally used to support one church and to suppress all others. “Dissenters” were subjected to various degrees of pressure or restraint to induce them to conform to the established church. Only gradually did dissenters gain liberty of conscience. ”

“ From that point, growth was rapid, by persistent and persuasive preaching, by propaganda in print, and by the constant movement of population to new frontiers farther and farther west carrying with it the nuclei of new churches in the new settlements. ”

“ The organ in public worship was, in truth, an “innovation.” The case against it was completely stated by J. W. McGarvey in the Millennial Harbinger for November, 1864: The organ is not merely an aid to singing, like hymnbooks or a tuning fork, or a convenient accessory to the church building, like a stove, but is a distinct and novel element in worship; no element in public worship is legitimate unless it is explicitly authorized in the New Testament; instrumental music is not so authorized ”

“ Presbyterianism in Virginia and the states south of it from colonial days, as well as the recent revival in Kentucky, gave them ground for saying: “We are not the only Presbyterians who view the doctrine of the atonement different from the Confession.”
But the Springfield Presbytery was only a transition stage. These five men might make their independent presbytery the nucleus of a new Presbyterian body, as the Seceders and others had done in Scotland long before, and as the Cumberland Presbyterians were to do a little later; or they might cease to be Presbyterians. ”

“ The organizational weakness of the Disciples became a strength in maintaining unity when the slavery issue and civil war threatened division, for there was no court to rule out any church or section and no convention empowered to set up standards or to pass any resolution that would have the force of law for the churches. ”

“ Inferences and deductions from Scripture may be true doctrine, but they are not binding on the consciences of Christians further than they perceive them to be so.
7. Creeds may be useful for instruction but must not be used as tests of fitness for membership in the church.
8. Full knowledge of all revealed truth is not necessary to entitle persons to membership, “neither should they, for this purpose, be required to make a profession more extensive than their knowledge.” Realization of their need of salvation, faith in Christ as Savior, and obedience to him are all that is necessary. ”

“ This “Gospel restored”—Scott’s five steps in conversion—and the call to union on that basis were a simple message. One had only to hear it to believe it, and almost anyone who believed it could preach it—and a great many did. Most of those who evangelized went out on their own initiative and responsibility. The frontier was open, and there was a steady flow of migration to the west. Among the migrants were many preachers, who were often farmers also. But if there was no preacher in the new community, laymen might carry the message and plant the seed of a church. ”

“ About 1850 there arose a great zeal for founding colleges. In several states the Disciples had become strong enough, or felt sure that they soon would be strong enough, to support a college. Schools were needed to train ministers, to provide an educated laity, to hold the loyalty of the young people of their own families and win others, and to make their fair contribution to the culture of new communities in which there was little provision for tax-supported education. ”

“ Methodism in America began when two or three lay preachers came in the 1760’s, and when John Wesley sent two preachers from England in 1769. But the revival of 1740, known as the Great Awakening, had prepared the way for it. Through the Revolution and until 1784, Methodism remained nominally a movement in the Anglican Church, but it had its societies, preachers, classes, and circuits, and its evangelists converted thousands of the religiously indifferent. Formal organization began with the Christmas conference, 1784. ”

“ This kind of unity without liberty, or compulsory religious unity conceived as an instrument of social control and as essential to political stability, was the expression of a social philosophy which was carried over from medieval Roman Catholic Europe to the modern European nations, both Catholic and Protestant. The idea of unity as an important characteristic of the church did not need to be invented 16 or even discovered in modern times. ”

“ Other Haldanean churches sprang up, both in Great Britain and in America. There were never many of them. No organization bound them together, they had no cooperative work, and they took no distinctive name. But they swelled the number of those scattered and independent “Churches of Christ” which were attempting, with somewhat differing results, to restore the primitive order. The tendency of all these churches was toward a rather literalistic and legalistic interpretation of Scripture, with special emphasis upon exact conformity to a pattern of ordinances, organization, and worship. ”

“ It never pulled a wire to get one of its members into a position of honor or leadership. Still, it was and is of some significance as an incentive to untrammeled thinking, an organization liberal enough to be equally hospitable to liberal and conservative opinion.
The Christian Century, immediately after C. C. Morrison became its proprietor and editor in 1908, became the exponent of a more liberal theology than had ever been voiced by any Disciples’ paper, an equally liberal social outlook, and the strongest possible emphasis upon the unity of all Christians. ”

“ Presbyterians, Methodists, and “Christians” in the Southern states east of the mountains. Under frontier conditions it developed some bizarre and sensational features which have drawn attention away from its real values. It began gradually with the preaching of four or five men—especially James McGready and the brothers William and John McGee—who had come west about the time Stone came, and who itinerated in Tennessee, near and north of Nashville, and the adjacent part of Kentucky. For three or four years the revival spirit grew and spread until the countryside was in a fever of excitement. ”

“ The Centennial Convention of 1909 appointed a standing committee to consider unifying all missionary and philanthropic work under one or two boards. The committee’s intimation that it would recommend a strictly delegate convention to which all societies should report touched off a long and heated discussion. “Delegate convention” became, for the more conservative element, a symbol of apostasy, as “higher criticism” and “federation” had been a few years earlier. ”

“ This convention, repeated annually, has continued to be the rallying place of the opponents of the United Society.
While open membership has been thrust into the foreground in the controversy between the United Society and its critics, the society does not avow sympathy with that practice and refuses to admit that this is the real issue. But it cannot be doubted that there are two contrasting views as to the basis of the Christian unity which Disciples seek and the nature and scope of the restoration at which they aim. ”

“ Replying to a correspondent who asked why the Christians should not unite with the “New Testament Baptists” (meaning Campbell’s Reformers) , Stone wrote in 1828: “If there is a difference between us, we know it not. We have nothing in us to prevent a union; and if they have nothing in them in opposition to it, we are in spirit one. May God strengthen the cords of Christian union.”
But there were some differences of emphasis and practice. The chief differences were these:
1. The Christians did not make immersion a condition of membership. ”

“ In Ewing’s conversation and Glas’s and Sandeman’s books, Alexander Campbell found not only the general concept of a needed restoration of primitive Christianity but such specific ideas as these: the independence of the local congregation; weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper; a plurality of elders; the denial of clerical privileges and dignities; the right and duty of laymen to have a part in the edification and discipline of the church ”