Comment on Louis Cochran’s RACCOON JOHN SMITH . . .

THE PROFILE OF A PIONEER PREACHER

In a recent letter Louis Cochran, author of Raccoon John Smith, wrote as follows to this editor:

“The great significance of John Smith, a fact largely overlooked by our Brotherhood, is that the Brotherhood (including all its divisions) probably would not have come into existence at all had it not been for him. It was ‘Raccoon John’, and none else, who took the leadership in the ‘union’ effected between the ‘Disciples’ under Campbell and the ‘Christians’ under B. W. Stone. And had that union not taken place, and had not John Smith and John Rogers ridden over the state together for the next three years preaching unity, and bringing the different congregations together, there would have been no Disciples of Christ, Christian Church, or Church of Christ. That momentous meeting at Lexington under the leadership of John Smith on January 1, 1832 was the birth date of the ‘Restoration Movement’, and as John is quoted as saying, ‘the beginning of beginning again’.”

It is probably true that the Restoration Movement would never have gotten off the ground had it not been for the work of Raccoon John Smith, and consequently the several wings of the Restoration brotherhood would not be in existence today. Not only do our various disciple groups owe much to this old pioneer in Christian unity, but the entire ecumenical movement is indebted to him. It may well be, as Cochran suggests in his book, that the union he helped to create between two disparate parties is the first instance of church unity in the history of Christianity.

All of this has historic significance in that it is the story of conflicting parties uniting into the one body of Christ, and it has practical significance in that it serves as an example of how unity can be effected. The Stoneites or New Lights, under Barton W. Stone, and the Reformed Baptists or Disciples, under Raccoon John Smith and John T. Johnson, were as divergent in their views, yea even farther apart doctrinally, than are any of our groups today. Yet they were able to create a united front that so strengthened the Restoration effort in Kentucky as to assure its survival. If they could unite their divided forces for an effective waging of peace for the Lord, why cannot we do so too? How did they do it and what was the role of Raccoon John Smith? Louis Cochran’s latest novel, Raccoon John Smith, tells the story.

This union between Reformers and Christians was very early in our history. Both of these movements in Kentucky were before the emergence of Alexander Campbell. Stone had already separated from the Presbyterians (or “put out” by them as he explained it) and Raccoon John had already begun his reformation among Baptist churches well before either of them had ever heard of Alexander Campbell, and some of this work was underway before Campbell arrived in America. By 1832 Campbell was, of course, much in the picture, and he was rapidly becoming the leader of the fragmented, unorganized, and confused Restoration efforts. It was a movement badly in need of congealment. The history of Restoration, which is almost as old as Christianity itself, is replete with noble efforts of reform that died out from lack of solidification. It is likely that the 19th century Restoration forces would likewise have fizzled had it not been for what happened in Kentucky under the guidance of this roughly-hewed, unschooled pioneer preacher.

By 1832 there were about 8,000 Stoneites and some 10,000 Reformers. Campbell had visited among these movements and had some influence with both groups, especially through his publications, but it was hardly possible that Campbell could have ever blended them into one body. After one excursion into Kentucky he could write as follows about some of the Stoneite churches:

Many of the congregations called “Christians” are just as sound in the faith of Jesus as the only begotten son of God, in the plain import of these terms, as any congregations with which I am acquainted.

With all such, I, as an individual, am united, and would rejoice in seeing all the immersed disciples of the Son of God, called “Christians,” and walking in all the commandments of the Lord and Saviour.

We plead for the union, communion, and cooperation of all such; and wherever there are in any vicinity a remnant of those who keep the commandments of Jesus, whatever may have been their former designation, they ought to rally under Jesus and the Apostles, and bury all dissensions . . . (Mill. Harb. 2, p. 558)

We have said that if these reformatory parties in Kentucky could get together, then all of our present segments should be able to unite. The Reformers disagreed with the Stoneites on what was erroneously interpreted as Arianism, one of the ancient heresies of the church regarding the person of Christ; and they also objected to the Stoneite practice of receiving the unimmersed. The Stoneites in turn thought the Reformers placed too much stress on immersion, for they seemed to believe that one could not go to heaven without baptism. The two groups differed on “baptism for the remission of sins” and on the name to be worn by Jesus’ followers. The Reformers also accused the Stoneites of believing in conversion by “the Spirit alone,” while the Stoneites pointed to the Reformers as believing in “the Word alone.”

How could such disparate parties ever get together?

They had the one essential point in common: their love for the Christ and their desire to unite on the basis of the gospel apart from any human creed. They both saw faith and baptism (immersion) as the basis of entrance into the kingdom. They were able to start here and work toward unity.

While Cochran’s novel does not go beyond the time of the Lexington unity meeting, the history of our movement reveals how difficult it was for them to carry out the decisions agreed upon at the meeting. The leaders of both groups were bitterly attacked by their own people as betrayers and compromisers. The two churches in Lexington got together at first, but within a few months they were split again, and it was another three years before they were able to effect the union in that city on permanent basis. Such was the threat throughout the state. As Cochran says in the above letter, it was only when Raccoon John and John Rogers (on the Stone side) got into their saddles and visited every church in the state of both groups, urging unity, that the first Christian union in history was made certain.

Cochran thrills his readers in telling this part of the Raccoon story, all of which is true to history. He recounts the private meeting between Raccoon John, John T. Johnson, and John Rogers which led to the public unity conclave between the two churches. Decision was also made that Johnson and Stone would become co-editors as a further effort to congeal their two parties.

Then Cochran describes the four-day union meeting between brethren that had hardly ever dreamed that their churches could be one great Restoration Movement. The novelist puts his finger on the very attitude that must also prevail among us if we are to unite our warring factions: “Their very frankness revealed a burning, passionate longing for understanding, for tolerance of their views, a tolerance they would in turn give to those of differing opinions.”

It was a precious moment in our history when Raccoon John Smith stood before that unity meeting and said, “Let us then, my brethren, be no longer Campbellites or Stoneites, New Lights or Old Lights, or any other kind of lights. But let us come to the Bible and to the Bible alone, as the only book in creation which can give us all the Light we need! Let us stand together united in the Church of Christ as his disciples and as Christians only.”

From the audience there were shouts of “Hallelujah” and “Amen! Amen!” mingled with cries and utterances of emotion too deep for words. There stood Smith and Stone together, with hands clasped in gesture of the new spirit of brotherhood that prevailed, while the audience sang “All hail the power of Jesus’ name.” It was indeed a great hour!

As Cochran puts it: “Here at last was that unity for which Christ had prayed, the first voluntary union of two entirely separate religious communions in the history of the world as known to man.”

Raccoon said to his wife, “It’s the end of the struggle, Nancy. The perfect church! January 1, 1832, will be a great day in history. Nothing can stop the sweep of victory.”

“At least, it’s a beginning,” Nancy replied. “But perfection’s mighty hard to come by. Somehow we never quite make it.”

John looked at her a moment, and then he sobered. Nancy was right. The complete victory was a long way off. “It was the beginning of beginning again,” he said.

And so Louis Cochran concludes the fabulous story of Raccoon John, the pioneer preacher who had a passion for the unity of God’s people.

Yet this book is much more than the story of a unity effort. It is even more than a portrait of a lovable back-woods preacher on the American frontier. It is a story of a search for freedom, which Hegel says all history is. It is a story of an honest man’s struggles with his own conscience and soul against imponderable prejudice and hate. It is another thrilling chapter in the story of America’s frontier life with all its triumph and tragedy.

Pioneer life breathes from every page with references to corn-husking bees, squirrel soup, bear-oil lamps, clapboard roofs, pole beds, and corn shuck mattresses. Raccoon bought a farm with “forty assorted skins and fifty dollars of hard money.” You watch them make soap, shoes, bullets, clothes, and even silver spoons. The neighbors gather for “cabin raisin’” and up goes the log cabin, with minute descriptions of how they did it. Since this story goes back nearly 200 years in American history there are meaningful references to Franklin and Washington, Paine and Monroe, Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson. In the streets of Lexington, Raccoon on one occasion sees General Jackson and President Monroe. In the same group of celebrities was Col. Richard M. Johnson, who later became vice-president and who was a brother of John T. Johnson, the evangelist and co-laborer with Raccoon. Cochran does not neglect to make a point of the enmity that existed between “Old Hickory” Jackson and Henry Clay. On another day even General Lafayette was coming to town.

And the author makes it clear that the pioneers of early nineteenth century America had a lingo all their own. Ma Smith says to her son Raccoon as he begins to waver in the family’s Calvinistic Baptist faith: “Some day, please God, you’ll know that, John, or you’ll stick your horn in a bog.” Her son accuses her of mixing Scotch and Irish, suggesting that she talk “plain American.” Well, their “plain American” gets interesting. You find them busy with the sang hoe, honing a knife on the whetstone, tightening the horse’s cinch belt, drinking “stout usquebaugh ladled out at the shivaree” and even giving “a wallop on a woman’s behind after the preacher said the binding words” and raising a passel of youn’uns.

The story begins with Raccoon as a teenager having a hard time getting a religious experience satisfactory to himself and the rock-ribbed Calvinistic church of his family. Finally he has an experience that seems to be all right, though not as sensational as the usual ones, and from there he becomes a preacher for the Baptists, though hardly ever an orthodox one. It is amidst his misgivings about the Philadelphia Confession of Faith that he first hears of Alexander Campbell, who is four years his junior. “Who is Alexander Campbell?”, he asks, and from then on the Raccoon-Campbell angle of the story is most fascinating, especially the accounts of the Christian Baptist first falling into Raccoon’s hands and the first meeting between the two men.

This interesting novel, rooted in historical facts, will move you to both tears and laughter. Raccoon was a man who learned the meaning of loneliness as he worked among brethren who did not understand. He learned to bear the agonizing cross of losing two of his babies in a cruel cabin fire, and then had to sit by and watch his beloved wife die of grief. Following all this he himself was stricken to the point of death. Even more cruel than all this were the broken promises of his own brethren who were willing to see him suffer because he was different.

But your sorrow turns to laughter when the lovable Raccoon pulls off some of his antics, the kind of humor that made his kind of life bearable. Once while in a tavern with two Methodist preachers who were making a public display of their piety by a long prayer over their cherry bounce, Raccoon picked up the man’s glass and in one swallow emptied it. When reproached for his sin by the preacher who had lost his drink, ole Raccoon’s eyes widened in innocence as he said: “It’s a lesson in biblical discipline. You two Methodist preachers forgot that the Good Book says ye must watch as well as pray!”

He gave Methodist ministers a hard time of it. On another occasion after witnessing a Methodist preacher sprinkle a crying infant, Raccoon took the preacher by the arm and proceeded to immerse him in a nearby creek. When the minister rebelled, Raccoon reminded him that he had baptized the baby against its will and so it was only fair that he should have the same thing done to him! As for Methodist ministers, Cochran tells of several contacts that Raccoon had with the famous circuit-rider, Peter Cartwright.

The incident that got the chuckles out of our family was Raccoon’s reaction to a preacher named Bitt, who showed how much religion he had by all sorts of gymnastics in the pulpit: “He skipped and kicked and spun about on the narrow platform, and then leaped over its low railing and ran up and down among the people, jumping over benches and stools, at times singing, pushing a hesitating sinner to his knees, jerking erect a saved one, slain before the Lord.” Raccoon watched all this in wild-eyed wonder, realizing that it was this kind of religion that the folks expected him to get. Turning away in disgust he remarked to one of his friends: “Brother Bitt had a fit, a spasm. If I hadn’t of knowed the reason, I would have tied him up. I’d a roped him like a bucking steer to keep him from hurting himself.”

There is a reason why the rugged lad named John Smith was called Raccoon. He looked the part, so much so that three mischievous boys once greeted him with one of them crying out, “Good morning, Father Abraham.” After scampering about and circling him as he walked, another shouted, “Good morning, Father Isaac.” The third lad got his turn at the strange. looking preacher with a “Good morning, Father Jacob.”

After twice returning the greeting with some air of solemnity, Raccoon finally turned on the boys with: “Good morning, boys. But you are mistaken. I am not Father Abraham, nor am I Father Isaac nor Father Jacob. My name is Saul, son of Kish, and I was sent to search for my father’s three lost jackasses. And lo, I have found them.” And then he grabbed at them, but the boys, startled for a moment, wheeled and raced away as though pursued.

You will come to love and admire Louis Cochran’s Raccoon John Smith, who is indeed the real Raccoon John in our Disciple history. You will share in his triumphs and his sorrows. You will respect him for his determination to get a few months of schooling in the raw frontier life of the Kentucky hills, even when it meant sitting in a one-room cabin school with kids half his size. You will admire his keen mind and ready wit, and especially will you love him for his loyalty to his own convictions and his courage to think for himself. He was always plain ole Raccoon who dared to be different. He admired Alexander Campbell as much as he did anybody, but even the Sage of Bethany had to prove his points before Raccoon would accept them.

One of his noblest traits is one that Cochran characterizes so well: his love for those who opposed him and his patience with the church folk with whom he grew up. “If separation comes,” Raccoon said of his Baptist brethren, “they”ll do the leaving; it won’t be me.” He always thought of himself as a good Baptist — a reforming Baptist perhaps. The practice of some present-day brethren of treating Baptists as outsiders, insisting that they must be re-immersed in order to be Christians and part of the Restoration Movement would cause a Raccoon John Smith to shudder in horror.

The truth is that our fractured brotherhood that even demands the rebaptism of those from different segments of the Restoration Movement can hardly claim kinship to Raccoon John Smith. Cochran’s novel serves to show how a man, overwhelmed by the evil of partyism, can work for unity and brotherhood within the framework of a party by rising above sectarianism by way of loyalty to his own conscience and devotion to the will of God. If the Baptists in Kentucky needed Raccoon John Smith 150 years ago, the Restoration Movement of our day certainly needs him, and for the same reasons.

His wife Nancy had a way of saying to her husband a word of wisdom that might well be considered the watchword of Raccoon’s life, for he found himself thinking about it at critical moments.

“You don’t have to be a great man, John, to be used of God. You just have to be willing.”

Raccoon was willing. — The Editor

(Raccoon John Smith can be purchased from Restoration Review, 1201 Windsor Dr., Denton, Texas at $4.95).