History in the Remaking

1
History in the Remaking?

• Why is it important for us to know and to
  remember the past?
• Various reasons have been given you are familiar
  with some of the famous answers
• Those who cannot remember the past are condemned
  to repeat it. George Santayana
• To be ignorant of what happened before you were
  born is to remain a child always.
• Cicero
• Knowing the past can change the future.
  Historians

2
History in the Remaking?

• Sometimes everyday experiences with the young
  shock us into the reality of how important
  knowledge of the past is.
• Two summers ago, I returned home from a trip to
  Berlin with a fragment of the now vanished Berlin
  Wall as a silly tourist gift for a bright college
  student of my acquaintance. The gift brought a
  question to mind. Howd that wall get there in
  the first place? (D. J. Tice (Editorial writer
  for the St. Paul Pioneer Press), Nations
  Ignorance of History Hurts, Newspaper Column
  12/22/94

3
History in the Remaking?

• One reason is biblical.
• Take the place of remembering and its link to
  faith and obedience. You cannot have faith or
  obedience without rememberingand the principal
  example is the Lords Supper.
• In the OT, its the Passover (and the other
  festivals), the various monuments (piles of
  stones) and more.
• Deut. 82 And you shall remember the whole way
  that the Lord your God has led you these forty
  years in the wilderness, that he might humble
  you, testing you to know what was in your heart,
  whether you would keep his commandments or not.

4
History in the Remaking?

• One reason is biblical.
• It is instructive just to check a big concordance
  for remember in the OT.
• Do you remember Stephens sermon in Acts 7?
  History.
• Do you remember Pauls sermon at Antioch of
  Pisidia in Acts 13? History.
• Can you imagine?? To get the Jews to listen,
  they used history!!

5
History in the Remaking?

• Furman Kearley and the Dec. 1991 issue of the
  Gospel Advocate, The Restoration Principle
  Getting Back on Course
• The Restoration Principle as Preached by the
  ProphetsRex A. Turner, Sr.
• Jesus Use of the Restoration Principle
• As Illustrated in Early Church History
• .As Illustrated by the Reformation.

6
Division in the Church

• History in the Remaking?

7
The 1906 Census

• What division?
• The division which took place over time in the
  late 1800s but is conveniently marked by
  historians at 1906.
• The census bureau gave official recognition to
  the reality of a division between the Christian
  Churches and churches of Christ in its 1906
  religious census, which was published in 1910.

8
The 1906 Census

• On June 17, 1907, S. N. D. North, the Director of
  the Census, wrote David Lipscomb and asked
  whether there was a religious body called church
  of Christ, not identified with the Disciples of
  Christ, or any other Baptist body.
• And if there was such a church, North wanted
  information about its organization and
  principles, and how the Census Bureau could
  secure a complete list of churches.
• Replying to Norths letter, Lipscomb outlined the
  basic principles of the Restoration Movement as
  formulated in Thomas Campbells Declaration and
  Address and charged that those principles had
  been betrayed when the missionary society and the
  instrument had been introduced and that division
  had resulted.

9
David Lipscomb (1831-1917)
10
The 1906 Census

• Lipscomb explained
• The polity of the churches being purely
  congregational, the influences work slowly and
  the division comes gradually. The parties are
  distinguished as they call themselves
  conservatives and progressives, as they call
  each other antis and digressives.
• In many places the differences have not as yet
  resulted in separation. There are some in the
  conservative churches in sympathy with the
  progressives, who worship and work with the
  conservatives because they have no other church
  facilities. The reverse of this is also true.
  Many of the conservatives are trying to
  appropriate the name churches of Christ to
  distinguish themselves from Christian or
  Disciples Churches.

11
The 1906 Census

• A few months later, North visited the Advocate
  office and arranged for J. W. Shepherd, one of
  Lipscombs co-editors, to compile a list of the
  churches of Christ for the census report.
• The Shepherd count was inexact, but even so, the
  1906 census revealed two significant facts about
  the division in the Restoration Movement 1)
  The Christian Churches were the larger body
  (982,701 members for Christian Churches, 159,658
  for churches of Christ) and 2) Christian
  Churches had won the North, while churches of
  Christ found their numbers concentrated in the
  South (across the Midwest they outnumbered
  churches of Christ 19 to 1).

12
J. W. Shepherd
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Why the Division?

• First, it should be noted that the break did not
  come about in a few months or even a few years.
• 1906 was much more a formal and symbolic date for
  the division than a literal date.
• One could argue that the division had been in
  process for nearly 60 years.
• Why the division?
• There were several symptoms but one basic root
  cause.
• First the symptoms.

17
Why the Division?

• Missionary Societies. Not very long after the
  union of the Stone and Campbell movements early
  in 1831 Alexander Campbell decided that if the
  movement was to have significant effect on the
  new nation it must be organized. In a lengthy
  series of articles in the Millennial Harbinger in
  the 1830s and again in the 1840s Campbell
  strongly urged the brotherhood to form a general
  organization among the churches. The result was
  that the American Christian Bible Society was
  formed in 1845 and the American Christian
  Missionary Society was formed in 1849.

18
Why the Division?

• The society never had the support of the entire
  brotherhood. Jacob Creath, Jr. was an early
  critic. In the 1820s when Campbell was
  publishing the Christian Baptist he had denounced
  missionary societies. He said the churches of
  the NT age were not fractured into missionary
  societies, for they knew nothing of the hobbies
  of modern times. They dared not transfer to a
  missionary society, or Bible society, or
  education society, a cent or a prayer, lest in so
  doing they should rob the church of its glory and
  exalt the inventions of men above the wisdom of
  God. In their church capacity alone they moved.

19
Jacob Creath, Jr.
20
Why the Division?

• Creath reminded Campbell of these earlier views,
  If you were right in the Christian Baptist, you
  are wrong now. If you are right now, you were
  wrong then. Churches and groups of churches
  adopted resolutions opposing the missionary
  society. The best known example of this is that
  from the church in Connelsville, PA, which said
  that the church was not a missionary society,
  but emphatically and pre-eminently the missionary
  societythe only one authorized by Jesus Christ.

21
Why the Division?

• Perhaps the most important opponent of the
  missionary society in the pre-Civil War years was
  Tolbert Fanning, probably the most influential
  preacher in the South during the 1850s and 1860s.
  When the society was formed Fanning was elected
  a vice president though he was not present. He
  supported the society through the early 1850s but
  came to question the NT authority for it. He
  founded the Gospel Advocate in 1855 with the
  chief purpose being to examine the subjects of
  church organization and Christian cooperation.
  The content of his early articles in the Advocate
  was strikingly similar to that of Campbell in the
  early Christian Baptist.

22
Tolbert Fanning (1810-1874)
23
Why the Division?

• Fanning wrote, The Church of God is the only
  divinely authorized Missionary, bible, Sunday
  School and Temperance Society the only
  institution in which the Heavenly Father will be
  honored . . . and through no other agency can man
  glorify his Maker.
• Fanning addressed the missionary society
  convention in 1859 and took advantage of the
  occasion to explain that many Southern Christians
  could not conscientiously support the society.
  Further, he explained how three Tennessee
  congregations were cooperating as churches,
  without the aid of a Missionary Society to
  support J. J. Trott in mission work among the
  Cherokee Indians.

24
Why the Division?

• Fanning went on to say, But I am happy to say,
  that from what I have heard on this floor, we are
  one people. With us all there is one faith, one
  God, one body and one spirit. Differences on a
  significant issue had not yet produced division.

25
Why the Division?

• Instrumental Music. Instrumental music was not
  used, or its use even discussed, in the early
  days of the Restoration Movement. The first
  discussion came in 1851 when a reader asked the
  editor of the Ecclesiastical Reformer if its use
  would not add solemnity to worship. The editor,
  J. B. Henshall, spoke against it, but carried
  some articles by others favoring its use. Seeing
  those articles, John Rogers wrote Campbell asking
  his opinion. Campbell replied that if churches
  had no real devotion or spirituality in them,
  instrumental music might be an essential
  prerequisite to devotion. But he added, To all
  spiritually-minded Christians, such aids would be
  as a cow bell in a concert. After that the
  question was not discussed for ten years.

26
Why the Division?

• As far as is known, the first congregation to
  introduce instrumental music (a small melodeon)
  into the worship was the Midway, KY church around
  1860. Dr. L. L. Pinkerton, the preacher, writing
  in 1860 claimed to be the only preacher in KY to
  advocate it and Midway the only congregation to
  introduce it. The reason was poor singing which
  was so bad it would scare even the rats from
  worship.

27
Dr. L. L. (Lewis Lettig) Pinkerton (1812-1875)
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29
Why the Division?

• The first extended discussion of the music
  question came in 1864-65. W. K. Pendleton,
  editor of the Millennial Harbinger after Campbell
  and also Campbells son-in-law, conceded that
  instrumental music was not used in the early
  centuries of Christian history, but nevertheless
  said it was a matter of mere expediency.
• Isaac Errett, editor of the Christian Standard,
  in 1870 counseled the churches against
  introducing the instrument on the basis of the
  law of lovethat its use would disrupt the unity
  of the church. He said, We have no
  conscientious scruples against the use of
  instruments.

30
W. K. Pendleton
31
Isaac Errett (1820-1888)
32
Why the Division?

• (One cant help but note that already in our own
  city brothers have indicated that they would not
  introduce instruments though they did not believe
  the use of them to be wrong.)
• Benjamin Franklin realized that when brotherhood
  attitudes changed, Erretts advice would also
  change.

33
Benjamin Franklin (1812-1878)
34
Why the Division?

• Central Christian Church. In Feb. 1872 the
  Central Christian Church in Cincinnati, OH
  dedicated a new building. (The Central church
  building had been the meeting place of the
  missionary society.) It was the largest church
  building in Cincinnati (seating over 2000), had
  the largest stained glass window in the country,
  cost of 140,000 and had an 8,000 organ.
  Benjamin Franklin called it a temple of folly
  and pride and said he would blush to speak of
  the ancient order or the gospel restored in
  such a place. In a week of preaching that opened
  the building, Baptist, Methodist and
  Congregationalist preachers had been used. (I
  cant help but note that similar things again
  have been done in our own city, to so say nothing
  of joint worship services with various
  denominations in other cities.)

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Central Christian Church Cincinnati, Ohio
37
Why the Division?

• Liberalism in the Christian Church. While it was
  still in the process of dividing from the
  churches of Christ, the Christian Church began to
  feel the strain of serious internal tensions.
  The root of the problem was theological
  liberalism. The new liberal theology and higher
  Biblical criticism, which had arisen in Germany
  and moved to England and then the U.S., was
  widely accepted by American Protestants in the
  1880s and 1890s and the Christian Churches did
  not escape its influence.
• While not the first to accept conclusions of
  Biblical criticism, Dr. R. C. Cave shocked the
  brotherhood in 1889 with a sermon which openly
  denied the biblical story of creation, the
  account of the flood and such fundamental
  doctrines as the virgin birth and bodily
  resurrection.

38
R. C. Cave
39
Why the Division?

• Cave said, He who brings himself, according to
  his measure of knowledge and ability, into
  obedience to the will of Christ and into oneness
  of life and character, with Christ, is a
  Christian.
• David Lipscomb responded to such events as this
  and it is interesting to note in this period that
  he wrote many articles in the Advocate on the
  role of women.
• Ahead of his time, Cave soon left the church, but
  after the Disciples Divinity House was
  established at the U. of Chicago in 1894, many
  young men from the Christian Churches began doing
  graduate work in religion at Chicago and Yale.

40
Why the Division?

• As a result, theological liberalism was soon
  widespread among the Disciples. The liberals had
  a strong editorial champion after 1908 when
  Charles Clayton Morrison became editor of the
  Christian Century. Later this publication
  severed its ties with the Disciples and became
  the voice of liberal Protestantism in America and
  it still is today97 years and counting.

41
Why the Division?

• But the above items are symptoms, not the root
  cause.
• The root cause, to which Lipscomb had alluded in
  his letter to S. N. D. North, was that the basic
  NT principles of unity through restoration had
  been abandoned. The long controversy had
  focused on the missionary society and
  instrumental music, but the basic problem
  underlying these two issues was the rise of two
  antagonistic interpretations of the restoration
  principle.

42
Why the Division?

• Alexander Campbell had formulated the strict view
  in the Christian Baptist when he insisted that
  the NT was a blueprint for the church and that
  any practice not specified in this pattern was
  forbidden.
• Later, as the movement grew and the first traces
  of a denominational mentality began to appear,
  many interpreted the restoration principle less
  rigidly by allowing many practices as
  expedients.

43
Why the Division?

• The basic issue was the same whether the practice
  in question was the society or the organ.
• They were defended as expedients, and opposed
  by others as unauthorized by the NT pattern.
• Moses Lard proved to be correct when he warned in
  1869 that expediency might be the rock on which
  the Restoration Movement went to pieces.

44
Moses Lard (1818-1880)
45
Why the Division?

• Open Membership.
• When division was recognized in the 1906 census,
  it was a division with the churches of Christ on
  one side and Christian Churches/Disciples of
  Christ on the other.
• But there was already turmoil on the
  Christian/Disciple side.
• In just two decades, with the increasingly
  liberal direction taken by the Disciples (and
  specifically the practice of open membership
  (accepting the unimmersed to church membership)
  by liberal missionaries on the foreign mission
  fields, Christian Churches/Disciples of Christ
  divided.

46
Why the Division?

• The Conservative or Independent Christian
  churches broke away in 1927 and formed the North
  American Christian Convention.
• By 1955 the North American Convention had its own
  yearbook of loyal ministers, churches and
  agencies.
• With the culmination of the Disciples
  restructure in 1968 and the formation of a
  full-fledged denomination (Christian
  Church/Disciples of Christ) the separation was
  complete and official.

47
Disciples of Christ

• Osborn one of editors of 3-vol. restudy of the
  Disciples (1963).
• Many of the papers constituting this volume and
  the two succeeding volumes in this series
  explicitly repudiate restorationism, as do
  numerous other studies recently written by
  Disciple scholars. as an interpretation of
  apostolicity, restoration is no longer feasible.
  The Reformation of Tradition, p. 318.

48
Disciples of Christ

• Ralph Wilburn, Dean of Lexington Theological
  Seminary, wrote in the same volume, The
  restoration idea is basically a false concept. .
  . . It would seem wise to abandon the use of the
  term altogether.

49
Why the Division?

• No Place for Compromise
• There is also a lesson to be learned about the
  ultimate futility of trying to work with both
  extremes.
• J. W. McGarvey, one of the great Biblical
  scholars of the 19th c., head of the College of
  the Bible and preacher for the Broadway
  congregation in Lexington, KY, left the Broadway
  congregation in 1902 when it brought in the
  organ.
• At about the same time he shared his
  disillusionment with Jesse P. Sewell.

50
J. W. McGarvey (1829-1911)
51
Jesse P. Sewell
52
Why the Division?

• McGarvey told Sewell, You are on the right road,
  and whatever you do, dont let anybody persuade
  you that you can successfully combat error by
  fellowshipping it and going along with it. I
  have tried. I believed at the start that was the
  only way to do it. Ive never held membership in
  a congregation that uses instrumental music. I
  have, however, accepted invitations to preach
  without distinctions between churches that used
  it and churches that didnt. Ive gone along
  with their papers and magazines and things of
  that sort. During all these years I have

53
Why the Division?

• taught the truth as the New Testament teaches to
  every young preacher who has passed through the
  College of the Bible. Yet, I do not know of more
  than six of those men who are preaching the truth
  today. It wont work.
• (J. P. Sewell, Biographical Sketches of
  Restoration Preachers, Harding College
  Lectures, 1950, p. 75).

54
Why Bother With History?

• Why look at these lessons?
• Because todays church culture is shockingly
  similar to that of the last part of the 19th
  century.
• As they did, we face churches that practice open
  membership, fellowship with error and employ
  worship styles that are producing dissension and
  divisions.
• Once more biblical authority is minimized or
  disregarded.

55
Why Bother With History?

• Accepting the Unimmersed (Open Membership).
• Today some in churches of Christ advocate that
  pious, unimmersed people are saved, brothers in
  Christ, and fully members of the church.
• Rubel Shelly and John York in The Jesus Proposal
  argue that churches of Christ ought to give up
  rigid judgmentalism and embrace a generous spirit
  toward those in various denominations (pp.
  171-179).
• John Mark Hicks in his book, Down in the River to
  Pray, holds that salvation is a process rather
  than an event and the transformed unimmersed
  ought to be included in the grace of God (pp.
  179-199).

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Why Bother With History?

• All these authors admit that baptism is
  immersion.
• They claim that they teach immersion for the
  remission of sins, but in practice they
  fellowship the sprinkled and those who believe
  they are saved before immersion.
• We wonder by what principle of interpretation one
  can substitute a human practice for a biblical
  one.
• What commandment of God may any person ignore,
  dismiss or disobey and still remain pleasing to
  God?
• By what authority can we dismiss immersion for
  general obedience?
• If a person believes and is baptized, can we
  propose an alternative to repentance?

59
Why Bother With History?

• Instruments of Music in Worship.
• Just as the Disciples a century ago believed they
  could embrace instruments of music in worship, so
  some today are embracing them.
• Weary arguments on psallo and psalmos have spread
  widely, as if they had never been answered.
• Christian concerts with instrumentation appear on
  our college campuses and at large youth rallies.
  
• The desire for instruments arose in the 1800s
  when proponents introduced them to our Sunday
  schools so that our youth could learn to sing
  better in time they reasoned that if they could
  do it in class, they could also do it in the
  worship assembly.

60
Why Bother With History?

• Today our youth are desensitized by contemporary
  Christian music.
• The distinctions between entertainment and
  worship have become so blurred that many of the
  naïve hardly know the difference.
• Teachers and youth leaders quietly tell their
  students that Jesus did not die over instrumental
  music, so whether we use it or not is not a
  salvation issue.

61
Why Bother With History?

• Other Practices.
• In the last year, the number of congregations
  overtly preaching and practicing unbiblical
  doctrines has increased dramatically.
• An increasing number of churches, both large and
  small, urban and rural, are practicing doctrines
  such as

62
Why Bother With History?

• Worshipping with instruments
• Encouraging women to lead publicly in worship and
  teaching
• Substituting Saturday worship as an acceptable
  replacement for worship on the
  Lords
  Day
• Observing the Lords Supper at any time the time
  seems right
• Aligning themselves with denominational
  congregations in work and worship with the
  implication being that their differences in
  doctrine are inconsequential preferences
• Changing the name of their congregation because
  of the baggage associated with the name church
  of Christ

63
Why Bother With History?

• Just as the symptom doctrines and practices in
  the late 1800s were signs of a fundamental
  causethe differing views regarding the authority
  of Scripture--so, contemporary differences in
  doctrine and practice grow out of conflicting
  understandings of the authority of Scripture.

64
Why Bother With History?

• It is now 2005, but the same issues confront us
  that confronted our brethren a century earlier.
• How will we respond?
• Will we claim we want unity, but sacrifice our
  brethren to follow after our personal preferences
  and desires?
• Will we seek unity with other groups by
  compromising our beliefs or convincing ourselves
  that they arent salvation issues?
• Will we cave in to the culture of the day and
  change the teaching of Scripture so that we can
  be more effective in reaching the unchurched?

65
Why Bother With History?

• What Are We To Do?
• The story of the differing and antagonistic
  interpretations of the restoration principle is
  clear and the story of the resulting consequences
  in the three bodies that share a common history
  in the American Restoration Movement are just as
  clear.
• While the circumstances in which we seek to
  shepherd may be complex, challenging and
  downright dangerous, the question, I think, is
  simple.
• Do we want to see history repeat itself in the
  congregations we lead?
• I hope you will give it serious consideration.
• My answer is absolutely not!!