Twenty-Five Years of Restoration Scholarship: The Churches of Christ Parti

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1 Twenty-Five Years of Restoration Scholarship: The Churches of Christ Parti RICHARD T. HUGHES Southwest Missouri State University During the twenty-five years of Restoration Quarterly, a wealth of scholarly material has appeared on a wide variety of themes pertaining to the Restoration Movement. There are two striking features of this burst of scholarship. First, much of it has appeared in the form of dissertations done in a variety of institutions such as Emory, Baylor, Indiana, Tennessee, Iowa, Illinois, Southern California, Vanderbilt, and Penn State. Second, while many of these studies deal with the earlier period of the movement, and especially with Campbell, an increasing number of dissertations have focused specifically on the growth and development of Churches of Christ since the Civil War. The dissertations on Churches of Christ, along with several recent and important books and articles, constitute a growing and impressive body of secondary literature dealing with this tradition. The importance of this development cannot be overestimated for a number of reasons. First, the emergence of this literature marks the beginning of an effort on the part of an ahistorical tradition finally to take its own history seriously. Second, what little historical self-understanding Churches of Christ have had has been borrowed, for the most part, from categories worked out by Disciples historians. We have assumed, for example, that their story is precisely our story, at least for the early years of the movement an assumption that may not hold up under close historical investigation. Now, however, numerous scholars are treating Churches of Christ as a tradition with its own integrity and with an identity and history of its own. Third, our capitulation of historical work to the Disciples has resulted in Churches of Christ being treated by church historians generally as an aberration of the larger movement. Consequently, Churches of Christ often merit only a footnote in standard works on American church history. A case in point: The most profound observa- * Hughes is currently preparing a history of the Churches of Christ for series on American churches to be published by Qreenwood Press. 233

2 234 Restoration Quarterly tion regarding Churches of Christ in Winthrop Hudson's Religion in America appears on page 279, at the very end of footnote No. 22: "By 1906 the rigidly biblicistic wing of the Disciples the 'Churches of Christ' of the middle South had gone its separate way." 1 One may hope that contemporary scholarship on Churches of Christ will go far toward correcting this situation. For all these reasons, this review essay will focus on recent efforts by scholars to grapple with the meaning and identity of Churches of Christ. Important works that bear indirectly on the history and development of Churches of Christ will also be discussed. There will appear at the conclusion of the second part of this essay a list of dissertations on various aspects of the Restoration Movement completed within the last twentyfive years. Churches of Christ in the Twentieth Century Until 1963, almost nothing had been published on the history of Churches of Christ in this century. In that year, Stephen D. Eckstein's History of the Churches of Christ in Texas: (Austin: Firm Foundation Publishing House) appeared. This book is a storehouse of information on how the church began and grew in Texas. In fact, if the book has a theme, it is the growth of Churches of Christ in Texas. In addition, there are fine sections on the society and music issues in the Lone Star state, as well as a good discussion of the rebaptism issue and the origin of the Firm Foundation. However, with reference to the twentieth century, the book is disappointing. Of 330 pages of text, only 35 treat the years However, in 1965, William S. Banowsky made a major contribution to the understanding of Churches of Christ in the twentieth century in The Mirror of a Movement: Churches of Christ as Seen through the Abilene Christian College Lectureship (Dallas: Christian Publishing Co., 1965). Originating as a PhD dissertation in speech/communications at the University of Southern California, the book presents a simple but important thesis: The doctrinal life of the Churches of Christ, at least in Texas and the Southwest, has been faithfully mirrored by the Abilene Christian College Lectureships from 1918 to Though limited in scope, this book was the first serious effort to document twentieth century developments in the life of the church. Then only three years ago, Earl Irvin West brought out his third volume of The Search for the Ancient Order (Indianapolis: Religious 'Winthrop S. Hudson, Religion in America, 3d ed. (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1981), p. 279.

3 Hughes: Twenty-Five Years of Restoration Scholarship 235 Book Service, 1979), with 403 pages of text tracing history of Churches of Christ from the dawn of the twentieth century through World War I. Like Eckstein's book. West's third volume is largely lacking in systematic interpretations. Nonetheless, it is a dependable historical record and a veritable gold mine of information on early twentieth century preachers and the issues and the growth of the church during that time. Perhaps the finest of the recent books on the church in the twentieth century is William Woodson's Standing for Their Faith (A history of churches of Christ in Tennessee, ) (Henderson, Tenn.: J & W Publications, 1979). Also the product of an earlier doctoral dissertation, this book is concise but thorough, sympathetic but objective, and cogently argued. The importance of this volume, in the first place, lies in the strategic importance of Tennessee for Churches of Christ. In addition, Woodson goes beyond the mere chronicling of events to argue an important thesis, that the first half of the twentieth century was a period when Churches of Christ in Tennessee shored up their self-consciousness of a separate identity. Woodson argues that "by 1906, the churches of Christ were conscious of their identity in Tennessee" (p. 63). This sense of identity was further clarified in Ν. B. Hardeman's Tabernacle Sermons ( ), (Woodson, pp. 65,76). In his work,...the movement reached a high water mark in its consciousness of its identity. By references previously cited it was evident that his work was regarded as representative of the movement at large. Consequently, one may regard the main thoughts of the movement known as churches of Christ as having been gathered, clarified and explained in the work of this man. (PP. 74,75) Further consolidation of the church's separate identity, Woodson argues, took place during the lengthy debates over instrumental music and premillennialism. The music question was far from incidental and had a fundamental integrity in its own right. Indeed, the basic approach of the church to the Bible was capsulized in its stand on instrumental music. Consequently,...to defend their position as to music in worship had become for them a do or die defense of the rationale on which their whole movement was built. To overthrow this position was, in principle, to overthrow the whole movement. Accordingly, to stabilize the entire movement, in principle, it became necessary to defend the position taken in regard to the instrument "in" or "in connection with" the worship. (P. 93) Woodson argues that there was a basic pattern of stabilization which was generally followed and which can be seen clearly in the music and premillennial controversies:

4 236 Restoration Quarterly...writings in the various papers, a definitive book or two on the respective positions, a series of debates, a period for consideration and cessation of upholding the offensive doctrine or practice, and when this failed a severing of fraternal ties. Thus were the churches stabilized in the period studied. (p. 161) In a discussion of survey-type studies it should be noted that three major histories of the Restoration Movement, representing the perspectives of the three major wings of the movement, also appearing during the twenty-five years represented by Restoration Quarterly. Since Earl West's Search for the Ancient Order has been an ongoing project, it properly falls within the purview of this article, even though the first volume ( ) appeared in 1949 and the second volume ( ) in Representing the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ was James DeForest Murch's Christians Only (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing Co., 1962). And in 1975 Bethany Press brought out a new and updated history of the Disciples of Christ by William E. Tucker and Lester G. McAllister: Journey in Faith. This book effectively replaces the older volume by Garrison and DeGroot, The Disciples of Christ, published in A more recent history of the total movement is Leroy Garrett's The Stone-Campbell Movement (1981), which seeks to reprein some detail later in this essay. Another recent history of Churches of Christ is Marvin W. Hastings' Saga of a Movement (Manchester, Tenn: Christian Schoolmaster Publications, 1981). Of all the survey volumes available, however, perhaps the most useful for introductory purposes is B. J. Humble's The Story of the Restoration (Austin: Firm Foundation Publishing House, 1969). This book is brief (only 83 pages) but packed with basic information on the Stone movement, the Campbell movement, the significance of the Missionary Society controversy and of the Civil War, the influence of editors, and the lines of division. It is as rich in interpretive themes as it is in basic information. Humble is especially helpful here on the causes of division between Churches of Christ and Disciples of Christ. He recognizes, in the first place, a tension implicit in the theology of the movement from the outset: "So the goals of unity and restoration, complementary in theory, proved to be antagonistic in practice" (p. 22). In a balanced assessment of the causes for the division, he contends that this theological dilemma was compounded by (1) North-South sectionalism and Civil War bitterness and (2) social and economic differences between urban and rural Christians following the War. Works Relating Directly to the Division It is not at all surprising that historians whose chief interest is Churches of Christ should be concerned with the division, since a proper assessment of when and how the division occurred tells much about the

5 Hughes: Twenty-Five Years of Restoration Scholarship 237 emergence and growth of a separate identity for this particular tradition. For years, historians assumed that the movement had divided over doctrinal differences and that this doctrinal division was completed by 1906, the year Churches of Christ were first given a separate listing in the United States religious census. But in the early 1960s David Edwin Harrell, Jr., set off a bombshell when he began to argue that the division was due far more to social factors than to doctrinal differences. 2 His basic argument was largely spelled out in 1964 in an important article "The Sectional Origins of the Churches of Christ," Journal of Southern History, 30 (August 1964), There he contended:...conservative and liberal theological positions, Northern and Southern sectional feeling, urban and rural prejudices, and agricultural and middle-class economic views were all important ingredients in the nineteenth-century fracturing of the movement. (P. 277) He concluded that "the twentieth-century Churches of Christ are the spirited offspring of the religious rednecks of the postbellum South" (P. 277). Then, in 1966 and 1973 Harrell fleshed out his arguments in two books: Quest for a Christian America: The Disciples of Christ and American Society to 1866 (Nashville: The Disciples of Christ Historical Society, 1966) and The Social Sources of Division in the Disciples of Christ, (Atlanta and Athens: Publishing Systems, Inc., 1973). These books, along with the earlier article, were unsettling within certain circles of Churches of Christ because they suggested the inevitability of division in a movement that, at least rhetorically, had been committed to unity. The repercussions of HarrelPs arguments continue to be felt, and, in 1977, at a conference at Bethany College, Harrell addressed himself to the significance of the dissent from his thesis. If every other major intersectional church in the country had divided over social forces activated in the midnineteenth century, Harrell asked, then why not our movement? Early leaders had believed that the movement could not divide, but they had been seduced, Harrell suggested, by illusory assumptions: The Church of Christ, the argument ran, was not an earthly organization, linked together by creeds, organizations, councils, and other man-made ties, but rather was a spiritual body of Bible-believing people united only by their loyalty to essential Bible truth. 3 2 Harrell first broached this argument in print in "The Sectional Pattern: The Divisive Impact of Slavery on the Disciples of Christ," Discipliana 21 (March 1961), 26, David Edwin Harrell, "The Significance of Social Force in Disciples History," Integrity 9 (October 1977), 68.

6 238 Restoration Quarterly But the illusions were shattered by the church's deep involvement in the very power structures it presumed to transcend. 4 However, instead of producing realistic appraisals of the involvement of the church in society and culture, the shattered illusions produced even more strident affirmations of the church's cultural transcendence. Thus, the division was not due to social forces: It rather was predicated entirely on doctrinal deviations and unchristian attitudes. In his Bethany address, Harrell spoke pointedly to this continuing interpretation: The modern restoration unionist believes the church should not divide; he does not want it to divide; and so, presto, he declares that it has not divided, despite the fact that some misguided eccentrics think that it has. At worst, the movement is disturbed by minor, unnecessary, and solvable doctrinal issues which can be corrected by right thinking... Such liberal wishful thinking is theologically wrongheaded, logically absurd and historically blind. 3 Harrell's basic thesis that social factors were fundamental in the division was not seriously criticized by other scholars. But several reviewers charged him with imprecision in his very cursory handling of theological concepts. 6 Consequently, in this vein, Richard Hughes argued in "The Role of Theology in the Nineteenth Century Division of Disciples of Christ" (Edwin S. Gaustad, ed., American Religion, 1974 [Tallahassee: American Academy of Religion, 1974]) that there was a theological rupture implicit in the movement's theology from the outset a rupture between ecumenism and restorationism and that the effect of the social forces was not so much to cause division as it was to sectionalize an earlier theological division. A year after Harrell's "Sectional Origins" article, B. J. Humble wrote for Restoration Quarterly an article that continues to be the most complete and systematic chronology of the important War-related events that helped precipitate the division: "The Influence of the Civil War," 8 (Fourth Quarter 1965), This article is significant not only because it chronicles the sectional loyalties and the emergence of the loyaity resolutions of the Missionary Society, but also because it chronicles in some detail the pacifism that pervaded much of the movement during those years. Humble finally concludes:...the assumption that the Disciples escaped a Civil War division requires drastic revision, perhaps a complete repudiation, for the evidence proves that the Civil War did play an important role in the Disciples' schism. (P. 245) 4 Ibid., 68,69. 'Ibid., Cf. James Findlay's review of Harrell*s Quest in The American Historical Review, 72 (October 1966), 302; and William E. Tucker's review of Quest in The Journal of American History 53 (December 1966), 598.

7 Hughes: Twenty-Five Years of Restoration Scholarship 239 In a recent festschrift in honor of Dean E. Walker, Essays on New Testament Christianity (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing Co., 1978), Henry E. Webb of Milligan College writes on "Sectional Conflict and Schism within the Disciples of Christ Following the Civil War." The first section of the essay (pp ) is an extremely helpful analysis of the disparity between social and economic conditions in the North and the South during and following the War. Webb makes it clear that industrial expansion in the North hastened the passing of the frontier in that region, while the devastation wrought by the War doomed the South to continued decades of a frontier existence. Thus, while "the old frontier format [in religion] was no longer acceptable" in the North (p. 120), it continued to be operative in the South. The second half of the essay is not so helpful and is, at best, a caricature of HarrelPs thesis. Webb argues that sectional conflicts clearly were responsible for the Churches of Christ/Disciples of Christ schism, but that perpetuation of the schism was due to bitter southerners who sought an "excuse" (p. 124) for the division and found it in the instrument. Webb contends:...to serve its purpose the new issue had to be one that reflected the sectional difference without betraying sectional motivation as such. Furthermore, it must be one that could tie in with the theme of "the true faith" so that this animosity might be endowed with religious significance and be augmented with religious dedication. Several possibilities existed at the time, but none was so admirably suited to the demands as the musical instrument issue. (P. 125) One wonders if there is no room at all for the power and integrity of ideas. Further, in this harsh judgment Webb has totally missed the genius of the predominantly southern wing of the movement. In the first place, leaders like Fanning and Lipscomb clearly stood in the classic free church tradition and held to the primacy of the church over governments, nations, secular societies, and ecclesiastical societies. This also was the position of the early Campbell. But when Campbell, in the 1840s and 1850s, began extolling the American nation as the ark of God's work in history 7 and turned to the Missionary Society to do what the church, admittedly, had been unable to do, leaders associated with the Gospel Advocate reluctantly, but nonetheless surely, recoiled. All of this, it should be noted, took place before the War. In the second place, as William Woodson has pointed out, the instrument was not the principal 7 Cf. Richard T. Hughes, "From Primitive Church to Civil Religion: the Millennial Odyssey of Alexander Campbell," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44 (March 1976),

8 240 Restoration Quarterly means for division, but rather the means for stabilizing the separate identity of Churches of Christ long after the rupture was implicit and operative. In the third place, whether one agrees with the position of the southerners on the instrument or not, it nevertheless remains true that Thomas Campbell had articulated a standard in 1809 when he wrote, "Where the Scriptures speak, we speak; where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent." Surely, there is far more evidence that southerners objected to the instrument in a effort to be true to this dictum than that they did so in an effort to find an "excuse" for division. Webb is entirely correct in pointing to a largely regional distribution of Churches of Christ. But his preoccupation with Churches of Christ as "southern" leads him to several errors. First, he suggests that Harrell fixed responsibility for the division on the radical abolitionist, northern wing of the movement, in 1859, and accuses Harrell of "failing to recognize the deep frustrations of the South" (p. 122). Harwell's placing the blame on the North, Webb contends, "simply reflects Mr. Harrell's own Southern orientation" (ibid.). Actually, Harrell writes that the abolitionist wing of the movement "unquestionably was a minority movement even among Northern Disciples" (Quest, p. 134), and he has clearly underscored what he views as the profound sectionalism of the southern churches ("Sectional Origins"). Further, in his effort to isolate Churches of Christ as "southern," Webb states that "the major colleges, publications, and the preponderance of membership of this body centers in Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, and South Carolina" (p. 124). In point of fact, the most recent figures show the Churches of Christ with only 95 congregations and less than 7,000 members in South Carolina. But the same figures show Oklahoma with 638 congregations and over 70,000 members, and Arkansas with 763 congregations and over 70,000 members, 8 though these are two states that Webb leaves entirely out of the picture. There is an important point to be made here, namely, that in speaking of Churches of Christ as southern, one must be very careful to specify which "south" one has in mind. This is a criticism that could be levelled at Harrell as well as at Webb. Churches of Christ have never had strength in the old plantation South, and there are both theological and sociological reasons that this is true. However, these reasons have yet to be thoroughly explored by any historian. "Mac Lynn, "The Church in America," Missions Bulletin (October 1981) 3.

9 Hughes: Twenty-Five Years of Restoration Scholarship 241 In an argument radically different from that of Harrell, William Banowsky contends in The Mirror of a Movement that the Restoration Movement did not escape the ravages of the fundamentalist/modernist controversy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and that "the scientific and theological issues which drove the wedge through the heart of American Christianity...created the tensions which severed the Restoration movement into two distinct camps" (p. 50). As Banowsky reads the evidence, while Churches of Christ were never directly related to the Fundamentalist movement proper, the two groups marched to the same drum beat the cadence of biblical literalism. Banowsky contends that he is on "very virgin but very solid ground in maintaining that the founding of the Fundamentalist movement was related causally to the events which gave birth to churches of Christ as an independent body" (p. 51). Since the division in the Restoration Movement was in process long before the emergence of fundamentalism, it is clear that Banowsky overstated his case. However, he put his finger on something that deserves serious investigation: the possible relationship between Churches of Christ and fundamentalism. As Banowsky notes, it is clear that Churches of Christ stood aloof from the Fundamentalist movement because the movement was dominated by "the denominations" (p. 57). On the other hand, Banowsky is no doubt right in suggesting that "it would be a rare naivete, indeed,...to assume that it [Churches of Christ] was totally unaffected by the stirring environmental forces of the era" (P. 50). If the fundamentalist/modernist controversy was the root cause of any division in the Restoration Movement, it was the later division between the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ and the Disciples. This point is well argued in a dissertation by James Brownlee North, "The Fundamentalist Controversy among the Disciples of Christ, " (University of Illinois, history, 1973). But North argues that as fundamentalism became an issue among Disciples, it did so "only as it dealt with peculiarly Disciples precepts" (p. 282). Thus the battles were fought not over evolution or premillennialism, as in the Fundamentalist movement at large, but rather over immersion and open membership as symbolic of biblical integrity and inerrancy. The immediate backdrop to this battle, he contends, was the emergence of scientific/critical studies in the Disciples Divinity House and the Campbell Institute at the University of Chicago. North explains: The battle could not be fought over the validity of higher criticism, for the absence of a Disciples creed precluded any authoritative Disciples pronouncement on how to study the Scriptures. Open membership was but the symptom of the more significant issue of biblical interpretation... (pp. 282,283)

10 242 Restoration Quarterly Since neither Banowsky nor North finds premillennialism to be of consequence in the "fundamentalist" movements of the Restoration heritage, one wonders if both may be guilty of stretching the meaning of fundamentalism to fit the arguments they want to make. 9 On the other hand, a potentially fruitful line of research that has not yet been pursued is the possible relationship borne to fundamentalism by the premillennial movement in the Churches of Christ in the early twentieth century. One strongly suspects that the last word on fundamentalist/restorationist relations is not yet in. Another recent work that locates the source of the division between Churches of Christ and Disciples in ideas rather than in social factors is a dissertation by Arthur V. Murrell, "The Effects of Exclusivism in the Separation of the Churches of Christ from the Christian Church" (Vanderbilt University, religion, 1972). Murrell thoroughly discounts the social arguments advanced by Harrell, claiming that the chief contribution of the Civil War was to isolate the South so that the Gospel Advocate had a virtual monopoly in that region. The real factor that divided the movement, Murrell contends, was a spirit of exclusivism. One of the real problems of Murrell's work is that the term "exclusivism," like "conservative," "liberal," or "radical," is a weasel word whose meaning is never quite clear. Nor is it clear in this dissertation. At one point Murrell defines the term as "the belief that your group alone makes up the only body acceptable to God" (p. 11). Elsewhere, he argues that to be exclusive means "accept our position or be lost," which is to be distinguished from "accept our position or worship in error" (p.81). Later he ties exclusivism to McGary's insistence that baptism was for remission of sins (p. 106), but still later he suggests that the term should be tied to the notion that those who are not baptized are not Christians (p. 183). Thus the methodological basis on which the dissertation rests is weak, at best. The basic argument of the dissertation is that exclusivism was simply not present in the early years of the movement, but came to fullflowerin the 1890s in the thinking of David Lipscomb, who finally "felt compelled to do what he thought he would never do, divide the church of God" (p. 167). Baptism, Murrell contends, was the issue around which exclusivism revolved. Stone had practiced "open membership," Murrell For Fundamentalism, see especially Ernest Sandeen, The Roots of Fundamentalism: British and American Millenarianism, (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978); and George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980).

11 Hughes: Twenty-Five Years of Restoration Scholarship 243 argues, wherein the mode of baptism was not vitally important; Campbell practiced "closed membership" wherein baptism was essential for church membership but not for salvation; but Lipscomb espoused "exclusive membership," wherein baptism was essential for both church membership and salvation (pp. 100,101). Murrell, however, is simply mistaken in arguing that exclusivism was not present in the early years of the movement. The truth is that the early years of the movement had a dual emphasis on restoration and unity. Consequently, one finds, for example, a great deal of vascillation on the part of Alexander Campbell on the subject of baptism and its significance for the remission of sins and salvation. Just as surely as Campbell could sometimes argue that "the Holy Spirit dwells in the heart of a Christian Baptist and a Christian Paidobaptist," 10 he could also argue that without both belief and baptism, a person was "not in the kingdom of Jesus Christ" and was "worthy of condemnation." 11 In the next year, 1828, he emphatically stated that a person could not enter "the kingdom of Jesus" without immersion. Furthermore, "no prayers, songs of praise, no acts of devotion, in the new economy, are enjoined on the unbaptized." 12 In addition, many subscribers to the Millennial Harbinger also had adopted an exclusivist position on baptism, and when Campbell replied to the lady from Lunenburg, Ohio (1837), making immersion of less importance than Christian character and good works, he received, as he put it, "numerous letters" objecting to what he had written, leading him to quip that "there are but few 'Campbellites* in the country." 13 Some two years after the Lunenburg episode, however, Campbell revised his Christian System and pointedly stated: But one thing we do know, that none can rationally and with certainty enjoy the peace of God, and the hope of heaven, but they who intelligently and in full faith are born of water, or immersed for the remission of their sins Alexander Campbell, "Miscellaneous Letters No. I," Christian Baptist 5 (October 1, 1827), 73 "Alexander Campbell, "To 'Paulinus.' Letter II," Christian Baptist 4 (April 2, 1827), 188,189. "Alexander Campbell, "Ancient Gospel No. V," Christian Baptist 5 (May 5, 1828), 'Alexander Campbell, "Any Christians Among the Sects?" Millennial Harbinger, New Series, 1 (December 1837) 561.,4 Alexander Campbell, The Christian System, 3d ed. (Bethany, Va., 1840), p. 234.

12 244 Restoration Quarterly Similar statements also can be found from Barton W. Stone. In July 1832 Stone argued that people are forgiven "whenever they believe, repent, and are immersed..." Though some may place forgiveness before baptism, "proof is hard to be obtained proof direct I mean; proof from the Holy Scriptures. It is easier to cavil and object, than to prove. To God's commands let all submit." 15 Again, in 1844 Stone raised the question whether those who "are sincerely engaged in obedience to all God's commandments but one, which is immersion," can be called Christians. Stone's response: I certainly do admit them to be good men; but whether such can be properly called Christians, admits of doubt; or whether they can be said to be members of Christ's church of his family or of the body of Christ, requires stronger faith, than the scriptures warrant Then he carried his argument further:...it would appear to be improper to recieve any unbaptized person into the church, and consequently into its peculiar privileges. They cannot legally exercise any office in the Lord's house, because they have not entered it by the door, baptism. 17 Clearly, while the fathers of the movement could be ecumenical, they also could be exclusive as they took their stand on what to them were plain biblical precepts. Therefore, to attempt to portray late nineteenth century leaders of Churches of Christ as "radical legalists" and "exclusivists" who had departed from the paths of the fathers and therefore proceeded to "divide the church of God" is simply without documentary justification. 18 Garrett: The Stone-Campbell Movement As mentioned earlier, a recent book, with a thesis similar to Murrell's, is Leroy Garrett's The Stone-Campbell Movement: An Anecdotal History of Three Churches (Joplin, Mo.: College Press Publishing Co., "Barton W. Stone, "Query by J. McGilliard of Ohio," Christian Messenger 6 (July 1832), B.W. Stone, "The Sixth Interview between an Old and Young Preacher," Christian Messenger 14 (September 1844), 129.,7 Ibid., 133. l8 It is interesting to note that John Allen Gano, writing in 1841, rejected the label * 'exclusive.' ' "Would it prove immersion not christian baptism to call its advocates exclusives?" he asked. Letter from John Allen Gano to Arthur Crihfield, Christian Messenger, 11 (February 1841), 198, 199 (repr. from the Heretic Detector).

13 Hughes: Twenty-Five Years of Restoration Scholarship ). But if for Murrell the culprit is exclusivism, for Garrett the culprit is restorationism. This book is a storehouse of information on the Restoration Movement and, in addition, boasts 33 original, full-page portraits of various Restoration leaders. Further, it is especially helpful in the relatively full treatment it gives to all three major wings of the movement. However, it is clear that Garrett's principal concern is with Churches of Christ, and this review will be restricted to his interpretation of that phase of the movement. The first thing to be said about this book is that it is a paradox. On the one hand, much about it suggests that it is not a serious history. It is constructed largely from reliance on secondary sources rather than primary sources, and even the author himself admits that he sees his "role more as that of a reporter or journalist than as a professional historian" (p.xi). But on the other hand, the author offers serious historical interpretations with reference to Churches of Christ, the kinds of interpretations that cannot be sustained either by journalistic reporting or by anecdotes. Consequently, in spite of the reliance on secondary sources and the author's personal disclaimers, one is forced to view this book as a serious attempt to do history, and it will be treated as such in this review. This book deserves a fuller review than do the other books, dissertations, and articles dealing with the division, simply because its interpretations, if correct, are of such far-reaching importance. Early in the book Garrett lays out his thesis: Our thesis is clearly set forth in this study: Restorationism, as herein defined, has always been divisive and always will be, and when it gained sufficient influence within the Movement it divided it. (p. 11) This thesis, by its very wording, represents as much a philosophical judgment on an ideal as it does an historical appraisal of the ideal. Further, as one reads through the book, it becomes clear that the philosophical judgment takes precedence over historical analysis. A number of subthemes flow from the basic thesis: (1) the restoration motif was of little consequence in the early years of the movement and when the early fathers occasionally spoke of restoration, they did not mean "restoration," but meant "reformation" instead; (2) social forces revolving around the Civil War played no role in dividing the movement; and (3) the Church of Christ was born with the Sand Creek "Address and Declaration" of We shall look at each of these subthemes in turn.

14 246 Restoration Quarterly Restoration/Reformation. Garrett notes that the conservative historians are the ones who describe the movement with "the dubious description of the Restoration Movement." In point of fact, Garrett claims, the fathers were not out to restore but to reform (pp. 8,9) and viewed themselves as simply completing the Reformation begun by Luther. Their concern with restoration, Garrett contends, was actually only a concern "to restore to the church (that did exist) values that they believed had been lost, unity being the most important of these" pp.47,48). Thus, according to Garrett, the restoration theme was simply lost and eclipsed by the fathers' passion for unity. If this is the case, one can only wonder what Thomas Campbell meant when he wrote that divisions could be remedied "by simply returning to the original standard of Christianity, the profession and practice of the primitive Church, as expressly exhibited upon the sacred page of New Testament scripture" or that we should "profess and practice as therein expressly enjoined by precept and precedent, in every possible instance, after their approved example." 19 But to Garrett, Thomas just did not really mean what he said:...we must conclude that Campbell is here overstating his case in his appeal to primitive Christianity, that it is the essentials of the primitive faith that he intends to point to as the bond of union, not the myriad of details that may or may not be rele- One must also wonder what Alexander Campbell had in mind, if not restoration, when he wrote his lengthy series in the Christian Baptist on "The Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things." 20 Garrett admits that the fathers "occasionally used the word restoration" but insists that what they really meant by the term was reformation (pp. 7-9). He claims that "the great and the small alike always referred to their unity movement as this reformation, not restoration, and they were pleased to be called Reformers, as they were especially in the first generation." 21 It is "Thomas Campbell, Declaration and Address, Centennial ed. (Pittsburgh: Centennial Bureau, 1908), p. 35. "This series ran for almost five years and was published in 30 separate installments February 1825-September 'Garrett, p. 7. Later leaders of Churches of Christ, such as David Lipscomb, also described their work by the term "reformation." (Cf., e.g., Lipscomb, "The Advocate against Rationalism," Gospel Advocate 32 [February 19, 1890], 118). Would Garrett also want to argue that Lipscomb thought of himself as a reformer, not as a restorer?

15 Hughes: Twenty-Five Years of Restoration Scholarship 247 certainly true that the fathers styled themselves "reformers," but there is far more evidence for suggesting that by "reformation" they meant "restoration" rather than the other way around. To be sure, Garrett can make these claims only by ignoring some fundamental aspects of the early years of the movement. First, Garrett largely ignores the early Alexander Campbell and the Christian Baptist. Anyone familiar with Campbell recognizes that he became increasingly ecumenical as he grew older. But to argue on the basis of the older Campbell that he was not interested in restoration is simply to miss the genius of the early years of the movement. Put another way, there were really two Campbells (see discussion of Murrell thesis): an exclusivist Campbell and an ecumenical Campbell. Garrett, however, ignores this dialectic in the thought of Alexander Campbell and builds his interpretations only on the ecumenical dimensions of the man and the movement. Second, nowhere in this book does Garrett deal with the millennial expectations of the restorers, a theme fundamental to the movement and intimately related to the motif of restoration. To Alexander Campbell, for example, the millennium would dawn as Christian unity was acheived, and unity would come only through the restoration of the primitive church. Thus he wrote in 1825 that "just insofar as the ancient order of things, or the religion of the New Testament, is restored, just so far has the millennium commenced..." 22 In 1829, in the Owen debate, he described the coming millennium in some detail, then argued:...there wants nothing...but a restoration of ancient Christianity, and a cordial reception of it, to fill the world with all the happiness, physical, intellectual, and moral, which beings like us in this state of trial could endure Similarly, Stone also, at least prior to 1830, linked the millennium and Christian unity to the recovery of the apostolic order. He wrote, for example, in 1829: We have long believed that God would overturn, and overturn, and overturn, till Messiah shall reign alone, and all submit to his government. This cannot be, while popular establishments of long duration stand in opposition to the government of the King of Kings; in opposition to one another, and to religious liberty. These establishments must fall in order to prepare the way of the Lord. 24 Third, to argue that restoration was not fundamentally present in the early years of the movement, Garrett must ignore the pervasiveness of "Alexander Campbell, "A Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things. No. 1.," Christian Baptist 2 (February 7, 1825), 136. "Alexander Campbell and Robert Owen, The Evidences of Christianity: A Debate (St. Louis: Christian Board of Publication, n.d.), p "Barton W. Stone, Christian Messenger 3 (February 1829), 91

16 248 Restoration Quarterly the restoration theme in early nineteenth century America. The fact is that primitivism was almost a common denominator of American culture during that period and had been born of the radical optimism engendered by the birth of the new nation. While Thomas Paine, for example, was not a Christian primitivist, he clearly was an American primitivist who had been inspired by the Revolution of Of the birth of the American Republic, he exulted:...the case and circumstances of America present themselves as in the beginning of the world...we are brought at once to the point of seeing government begin, as if we lived in the beginning of time. The real volume, not of history, but of facts, is directly before us, unmutilated by contrivance, or the errors of tradition." The extent to which primitivism permeated even American literature in antebellum America is documented at length in R.W.B. Lewis's The American Adam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955). Thus it is hardly surprising that primitivism was a fundamental feature of much popular religion in America during that period. Not only did it crop up in the geographically diverse groups that fed the Restoration Movement such as the Campbells, Stone, O'Kelly, and Smith-Jones, there also is simply no way to understand Mormonism, for example, apart from the restoration ideal. 26 In fact, Sidney Rigdon left Campbell for the Mormons partly because he felt he saw in Joseph Smith's thinking a more thoroughgoing restorationism than he had ever detected in Campbell. 27 Professor David Holmes even describes a restoration movement among southern Episcopalians in the first half of the nineteenth century. 28 Fourth, to argue that restorationism was not central to the fathers of the movement, Garrett must also ignore the centrality of restorationism "Moncure Daniel Conway, ed., The Writings of Thomas Paine 2 (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1894), pp.428, Cf. Marvin S. Hill, "The Role of Christian Primitivism in the Origin and Development of the Mormon Kingdom, ,' ' unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, "Rigdon broke with Campbell over two issues. First was the issue of millennialism: Rigdon was premillennial while Campbell was postmillennial. Second was the issue of restorationism: To Rigdon, the New Testament mandated a community in which all property was held in common. (Cf. F. Mark McKiernen, The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness: Sidney Rigdon, Religious Reformer, [Lawrence, Ks.: Coronado Press, 1971], p. 27). When Rigdon finally met Smith and read the book of Mormon, he was impressed that Mormonism not only had restored believers' baptism, but also miracles, gifts of the spirit, and prophecies concerning the return of the Jews to their homeland. Ibid., p. 35. "David L. Holmes, "Restorationist Ideology among Antebellum Episcopal Evangelicals," unpublished paper.

17 Hughes: Twenty-Five Years of Restoration Scholarship 249 in the Puritan tradition, 29 which gave birth to virtually all the restoration leaders of the early years. Truly, given their intellectual heritage and the cultural and religious milieu in which the fathers lived and moved and had their being, it would have been a marvel had Campbell, Stone, and the others been able to avoid embracing restorationism or had they understood their work principally in terms of a sixteenth century European perspective: reform. The way of the Old World was to reform; the way of the New World was to make all things new: novus ordo seclorum. And one way to make all things new was to restore the primal forms which, for Christians, meant the apostolic traditions. Whatever else the Restoration fathers may have been, they were fundamentally children of the New World, and this was critical to their perspective. Beyond all of this, to claim that the movement's fathers viewed themselves as standing in the tradition of the Reformation is to totally ignore the early Campbell's views of his own movement in relation to the Reformation. Campbell clearly believed in 1825:...[that] no attempt "to reform the doctrine, discipline and government of the church" (a phrase too long in use) can promise a better result that [sic] those which have been attempted and languished unto death. We are glad to see...that the thing proposed, is to bring the Christianity and the church of the present day up to the standard of the New Testament...and this is to restore the ancient order of things. Celebrated as the era of Reformation is, we doubt not but that the era of Restoration [italics his] will as far transcend it in importance and fame, through the long and blissful Millennium, as the New Testament transcends...the creed of Westminster and the canons of the Assembly's Digest. 30 It is interesting that Garrett's principal proof for his contention that "restoration" meant "reformation" is an article, not by Campbell, but by Robert Richardson in But even here, Richardson echoes the earlier Campbell: The proposition, then,...is, not to disparage or neglect the labors and learning of the eminent and pious of any age, or to renounce the leading doctrines of Protestantism, established as they are upon the incontrovertible evidence of Holy Writ; but to... cooperate in...restoring a pure primitive Christianity in form and spirit, in principle and practice. No one who is familiar with the New Testament can for a moment be persuaded that any religious body does now present to the world such an exhibition of Christianity...' 1 "Cf. Richard T. Hughes, "From Civil Dissent to Civil Religion and Beyond," Religion in Life, 49 (Autumn 1980), ; and James C. Spalding, "Restitution as a Normative Factor for Puritan Dissent," Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44 (March 1976), "Alexander Campbell, "A Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things. No. 1.," Christian Baptist 2 (February 7, 1825), 'Robert Richardson, "Reformation. No. I.," Millennial Harbinger, Series III., 4 (May 1847), 279.

18 250 Restoration Quarterly One of the problems of this book is the lack of systematic definitions of key terms, especially "restoration" and "reformation." However, it is nonetheless clear that by "reformation" Garrett means, at the very least, an effort that builds upon, rather than repudiates, Christian history. Garrett is altogether correct in claiming the fathers were reformers in this sense, but he errs in assuming that the concept of "restoration" was no more radical in the thinking of the fathers than was the concept of "reform." Social Forces. Garrett rejects Harrell's arguments concerning the role of social forces in the Churches of Christ/Disciples of Christ schism, preferring instead to ascribe the division to exclusivism born of restorationism. If Harrell is right, "then the schism was determined by forces beyond the moral responsibility of those involved," a conclusion Garrett is not prepared to accept. To Garrett, the division is the result of sin, and he urges the historian to "treat the facts in such a way that people may learn from the mistakes of their forebears and 'Go and sin no more"' (pp. 528,529). For this reason, Garrett takes pains to debunk Harrell's thesis. In an argument based on faulty premises, Garrett contends that the movement did not divide until long after the War since "restorationism had not gained dominance in the movement by the time of the Civil War" (p. 524). Further, borrowing a page from Murrell's dissertation, Garrett argues that sectional factors cannot account for the Churches of Christ/Disciples schism since they "cannot account for such factional disputes as the re-baptism controversy which raged in Texas and the 'college question' which was hotly debated in Indiana" (p. 528). One may as well argue that sectional factors did not cause a division in Manchuria or Timbuktu as to argue that they were not pertinent to the rebaptism controversy or the college question, for all the difference it makes to the issue under consideration. Garrett forgets that Harrell was never attempting to explain all divisions in the movement but only the major rupture between Disciples and Churches of Christ. Garrett finally concludes that the concentration of Churches of Christ in the South was due to "the incredible influence of its editor bishops. There is no way to minimize the strong conservative influence of...tolbert Fanning and his protege David Lipscomb. They were the southern church and gave it its vigorous conservative character" (pp. 522,523). But this explanation obviously begs the question of why these southern "editor bishops" were able to evoke such a strong response in the South and not elsewhere. The Sand Creek Origins of Churches of Christ. On August 18, 1889, an "Address and Declaration" was presented to 5,000 Christians attending a mass meeting at Sand Creek, Illinois. This document, written by

19 Hughes: Twenty-Five Years of Restoration Scholarship 251 Peter P. Warren, condemned the preaching and practicing of "things not taught nor found in the New Testament" and specifically mentioned illegitimate money-raising schemes, church festivals and choirs, the Missionary Society, and the one-man preacher system. It concluded by admonishing the progressives that "if they do not turn away from such abominations, that we can not and wïïtnot regard them as brethren." 32 The document was signed by thirteen people claiming to represent five congregations. Daniel Sommer, editor of the Octographic Review, had been invited by the churches to deliver a lengthy sermon exposing "Modern Schoolism" in the morning, prior to presentation of the document, and another in the afternoon. 33 Then in the Octographic Review of August 29, 1889, Sommer reported at length on the meeting, and in the issue of September 5, 1889, he presented the text of his morning address, along with the text of remarks by Peter Warren and the text of the "Address and Declaration." It was long assumed that Sommer was the author, or at least the inspirer, of the "Address and Declaration," 34 though Sommer made it clear in 1894 that Peter P. Warren wrote the document. 35 Reflecting on the Sand Creek episode, Garrett comments that "while it is not all that easy to pinpoint the origin of churches, this would be a suitable date for the beginning of the Church of Christ" (p. 592). Garrett buttresses his case with a statement he attributes to Sommer from 1892: The Sand Creek Declaration is being adopted, and those who will not do right are purged out as old leaven. In course of a few years the Church of Christ will be entirely separated from the Christian Church as any other branch of sectarianism. Hallelujah." Garrett concludes that "those who look for southern origins for the Church of Christ are to note that it had its beginning in the North, not the South" (p. 597). ""Address and Declaration,' Octographic Review 32 (September 5, 1889), 8. "Daniel Sommer, "A Grand Occasion," Octographic Review 32 (August 29, 1889), Cf. Nathaniel S. Haynes, History of the Disciples of Christ in Illinois (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing Co., 1915), pp. 652,653. "Daniel Sommer, Octographic Review 37 (September 11, 1894), 1. "Garrett, p In light of the significance Garrett attributes to the Sand Creek episode, it may be observed that this quotation from Sommer does not appear in the reference Garrett cites. His reference is Sommer, "To Whom It May Concern," Christian Standard 25 (October 15,1892), 874. Not only is this article not by Sommer; the article condemns Sommer for slandering a fellow preacher. Further, the 1892 Standard is not Volume 25 at all, but rather Volume 28.

20 252 Restoration Quarterly Given the eventual concentration of Churches of Christ in the mid- South, Garrett cannot make this argument stick without showing that the Sand Creek "Declaration" influenced the Advocate and its southern constituency. At the very least, it would be important to show that the Advocate approved of the "Address and Declaration." Garrett attempted to make this point in the Restoration Review, 1975, where he argued that the document was "sanctioned by...david Lipscomb, editor of the Gospel Advocate, in the south..." 37 Later that year R. L. Roberts pointed out in the Firm Foundation that this claim is unfounded. 38 Now, in his book, Garrett no longer claims that Lipscomb sanctioned the document. Instead, he leaves the impression that Lipscomb either passively ignored it or implicitly sanctioned it by refusing to condemn it. Noting that "Russell Errett, owner of the Christian Standard, called upon the church's editors, including David Lipscomb in the South, to renounce Daniel Sommer and Sand Creekism," Garrett then tells us: James H. Garrison of the Christian-Evangelist in St. Louis was among those who unequivocally condemned what happened at Sand Creek. Errett waited in vain for a similar judgment from Lipscomb in Nashville, insisting that "silence is shame." (p. 596) The facts of the matter are as follows. First, if the Sand Creek "Declaration" had the influence Garrett ascribes to it, it is curious that no one on the Advocate staff other than William Lipscomb, Jr., indicated he had either read or seen the document prior to October 11, 1982 more than three years after the Sand Creek meeting when Sommer published the document a second time solely for the Advocate's benefit. David Lipscomb made his ignorance of the document clear when he wrote on November 17, 1892, "We never saw it before." 39 William Lipscomb, Jr., was the first to see the document, and he responded in June 1892 in unequivocal terms to Russell Errett's call for the Advocate to declare itself on Sand Creekism: Well, for our part, the Advocate needs no second call to express its sentiments on this momentous matter. The Sand Creek manifesto was manifest folly, and the "Leroy Garrett, "Is August 17, 1889, the Birthday of the Church of Christ?" Restoration Review 17 (January 1975), 6-9. "R. L. Roberts, "Sand Creek, Cincinnati and the Church," Firm Foundation 92 (October 14, 1975), 644, 651. "David Lipscomb, "Sand Creek Address and Declaration," Gospel Advocate 34 (November 17, 1892), 725.

21 Hughes: Twenty-Five Years of Restoration Scholarship 253 Advocate emphatically denies any sympathy with Sommerism whatever that is Sand Creekism, Sand Lotism, Sans-Culottism, Standardism, or any other partyism in religion. 40 The next month, F. D. Srygley criticized the Standard's jibes at the "creed in the deed" propositions of the Sand Creek document, though Srygley apparently had not read the document for himself. But Srygley did make it clear that he did not approve of the behavior of either Sommer or the Standard and noted that "each of them is evidently laboring under the hallucination that he turns the crank which moves 'this movement."' 41 The next month August 1892 the Advocate ran a scathing criticism of the Sand Creek "Declaration" by Mississippi contributors Lee Jackson and C. Netterville. They contended that "nobody but a man with strictly denominational conceptions of what constitutes a church would have formulated the Sand Creek resolutions" and went on to inform both Sommer and the Standard that neither was representative of "a very large class of Christians..." 42 However, at this late dateprecisely three years after the initial appearance of the "Address and Declaration" neither Sewell, Srygley, McQuiddy, nor David Lipscomb had seen the document. 43 In September, William Lipscomb, Jr., again attacked the Sand Creek deliberations. A California periodical, the Harbinger, apparently had implied that Sand Creekism and the Advocate were of the same cut of cloth. William Lipscomb, Jr., objected that this implication was an "insinuation, which is little short of a direct lie...the Advocate has never approved the Sand Creek procedure, but has steadily spoken against it..." William Lipscomb, "Miscellany," Gospel Advocate, 34 (June 30, 1892), 408, 409. Many have attributed this statement to McQuiddy, as did Sommer ("Octographic Admonitions,'' Octographic Review, 35 [October 11,1892], 1) and as does, e.g., William Woodson (cf. Standing for Their Faith, p. 41). We know William Lipscomb was the author because, to satisfy Sommer* s curiosity, he wrote in December 1892, in effect, "I did it.,, Cf. William Lipscomb, Jr., ''Miscellany,'' Gospel Advocate, 34 (December 8, 1892), F. D. Srygley, "Concerning Tests of Fellowship," Gospel Advocate 34 (July 21,1892), 449, Lee Jackson and C. Netterville, "Mississippi Column," Gospel Advocate 34 (August 4, 1892), David Lipscomb, "Sand Creek Address and Declaration," Gospel Advocate 34 (November 17, 1892), 725. "William Lipscomb, Jr., "Miscellany," Gospel Advocate 34 (September 15,1892), 584.

22 254 Restoration Quarterly Then on September 6, 1892, Sommer's Octographic Review got into the act and took exception to Jackson and Netterville's condemnation of the Sand Creek resolutions. 45 Now the editors of the Advocate were forced to look into the Sand Creek matter a bit more carefully. On September 22, 1892, an unidentified Advocate writer (perhaps McQuiddy) admitted that "we have never had a very clear conception of what was done, or proposed to be done, at Sand Creek," but he went on to condemn what he thought had been done, namely, the forming of an "organization with judicial or executive powers to suppress error or maintain truth." 46 The Advocate's admission that it had never had a "clear conception" of the Sand Creek episode was too much for Daniel Sommer. On the front page of the Octographic Review, October 11, 1892, Sommer took the Advocate to task for condemning the Sand Creek "Declaration" when they now admitted they never really knew what it was all about. It is clear that Sommer was hurt. He could hardly believe the Advocate editors were so ignorant of the Sand Creek affair when the Octographic Review had run a copy of the "Address and Declaration" and a complete description of what went on at Sand Creek, and when "we printed an account of the procedure in pamphlet form and had it advertised for several years." Sommer suspected that perhaps the editors of the Advocate were not paying sufficient attention to the Review and that these various accounts were either "never received or never noticed." 47 But Sommer remedied the situation. He again published the full text of the "Address and Declaration," 48 specifically for the Advocate's benefit, and called "the special attention of the entire editorial company of the Advocate thereunto." Further, he urged the Advocate editors to declare themselves "whether they do or do not endorse the Sand Creek procedure." 49 At last, after more than three long years, the "Address and Declaration" got David Lipscomb's attention. On November 17 he warned against those who engage in "fighting without building," claiming that "to root out the briers [sic] and not sow the wheat will leave a barren 45 L. F. Bittle, "A Misrepresentation," Octographic Review 35 (September 6,1892), "A Misrepresentation," Gospel Advocate 34 (September 22, 1892), 597. "Daniel Sommer, "Octographic Admonitions," Octographic Review 35 (October 11, 1892), 1. ""Miscellaneous," Octographic Review 35 (October 11, 1892), 2. "Daniel Sommer, "Octographic Admonitions," Octographic Review 35 (October 11, 1892), 1.

23 Hughes: Twenty-Five Years of Restoration Scholarship 255 waste, that can never produce a fruitful field." 50 That he had Sommer in mind is suggested by the title of the very next article: "Sand Creek Address and Declaration." There, Lipscomb made it clear that he opposed the errors Sommer opposed, but he also reminded Sommer that "his taste and his opinions are not part of the law of God [and] he must allow others to exercise their own taste and judgment." Further, like William Lipscomb, Jr., Lee Jackson, and C. Netterville, David Lipscomb condemned the Sand Creek affair as looking "very much like a convention unknown to the New Testament exercising judicial and executive functions..." He claimed that no one on the Advocate staff had see the "Address and Declaration" earlier, but thundered, "1 now have seen it, and do oppose all such unauthorized conventions..." 5 The fact is that, according to Sommer himself, the Octographic Review "was the only journal that fully endorsed" the Sand Creek "Declaration." 52 A postscript to the whole affair came in the Advocate for December 8, 1892, where William Lipscomb, Jr., corrected his editor-in-chief. He informed Sommer: "I had read the Sand Creek manifesto," and he acknowledged that it was he who had fired the Advocate's first shot against Sand Creekism in June He knew, he said, that he was on solid ground in doing so, for "I was positive that loyalty to the New Testament policy of local independency and organic isolation of the churches of Christ would impel the editors of the Advocate to promptly decide against Sand Creekism, whenever occasion arose, if they had not already done so." 53 What emerges from this exchange is the inescapable conclusion that for over three years the Advocate editors had not really taken Sand Creekism seriously, and when they finally did, they roundly condemned it. Garrett's contention, then, that the Churches of Christ were born at 50 David Lipscomb, "A Danger That Needs to be Guarded Against," Gospel Advocate 34 (November 17, 1892), »David Lipscomb, "Sand Creek Address and Declaration," Gospel Advocate 34 (November 17, 1892), 725. "Daniel Sommer, "Developments," Octographic Review, 37 (September 18, 1894), 1. Writers in the Octographic Review frequently lamented the fact that other papers were simply not supporting, the Sand Creek "Declaration." Sommer complained that "even journalists claiming to be apostolic were disposed to censure" the excommunication dictum of the "Declaration" (ibid.), and W. N. Littell simply could not understand "why any brother or paper should hesitate to endorse the Sand Creek Declaration when it plainly calls upon these innovators and gives them time to cease their divisive work and return to apostolic simplicity..." Octographic Review 35 (December 13, 1892), 3. "William Lipscomb, Jr., "Miscellany," Gospel Advocate 34 (December 8, 1892), 776.

24 256 Restoration Quarterly Sand Creek, Illinois, in 1889 is simply without foundation. Thus, Garrett's efforts to equate the Sommer movement with the total number of 159,658 members of Churches of Christ, as listed in the United States religious census of 1906, is simply inexcusable (Garrett, pp. 593, 594). Garrett's concern to locate the origins of Churches of Christ at Sand Creek, Illinois, is not unrelated to the book's other major themes related to Churches of Christ. If he can make that claim stick, then he supposes he can argue that Churches of Christ originated in the North rather than in the South (p. 597; Sand Creek, however, was "northern" only by technical boundary definitions and not by cultural definitions); and if he can make his claim to northern origins stick, then he can easily discount Harrell's sectional arguments; and if he can discount sectionalism as contributing to the division, then the way is cleared to blame a johnny-comelately restorationism for the Disciples/Churches of Christ schism. But the claims do not stick. When all is said and done, one must finally conclude that the interpretations of this volume pertaining to Churches of Christ have been built on a priori judgments rather than on the foundation of the historical record.

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