Bicentennial Notes on Restoration History . . .

THOMAS CAMPBELL WRITES
HIS DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

He actually called it the Declaration and Address, but there is reason to believe that he was influenced by that document that gave birth to our nation in his selection of a title for the document that gave birth to our Movement. They were both a declaration of independence — freedom from tyranny and oppression and freedom to be an individual before God.

A committee led by Thomas Jefferson worked through the hot summer of 1776 to produce the first, only to have every line it wrote brutally scrutinized by the Continental Congress. Thomas Campbell toiled through the hot summer of 1809, stashed away as he was in a lonely attic, to turn out the second, only to have it tried and tested by the Christian Association of Washington that had helped to bring it to birth. Our nation would never have formed without the first; our Movement would never have emerged without the second.

They were both a declaration, with all that that term means to courageous souls; they were both for independence, with all that that word means to tired men who long to be free.

“When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary began that declaration penned by Thomas Jefferson in 1776. “From the series of events which have taken place in the churches for many years, we are persuaded that it is high time for us not only to think, but also to act.” began that declaration written by Thomas Campbell in 1809.

Both documents talked about rights. Jefferson wrote of “the right of the people” to redress wrongs against them. Campbell wrote of how “No man has a right to judge his brother.”

Both declarations burned in righteous anger over the injustices imposed upon an innocent people. Jefferson referred to the “long train of abuses and usurpations” that reduce a people to absolute despotism, and he called for their peace and security. Campbell insisted that he was “tired and sick of the bitter jarrings and janglings of a party spirit,” and he asked that the churches might have rest from it all.

The first declaration gave our nation its greatest political principle: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Jefferson originally began with: We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable.

The second declaration gave our Movement its greatest spiritual principle: “The Church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one: consisting of all those in every place that profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things according to the Scriptures, and that manifest the same by their tempers and conduct, and of none else; as none else can be truly and properly called Christians.”

Jefferson concluded the first declaration by “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions.” Campbell concluded the second declaration by noting that the unity movement he was launching would “rely upon the all-sufficiency of the Church’s Head; and, through his grace, looking with an eye of confidence to the generous liberality of the sincere friends of Christianity.”

Both documents say in essence: We do hereby declare that we are a free people!

The events leading up to the composition of the Declaration and Address show Thomas Campbell to be a man of great integrity, sound scholarship, and intense piety. Born in 1763 in Ireland of Roman Catholic parents who turned Anglican, he became a Presbyterian and after a few years of teaching school decided to enter the ministry. He spent three years studying classics at Glasgow, and then took the seminary course of his own church in nearby Whit burn. This means that while Irish by birth he was Scottish by education, and there is evidence that he was strongly influenced by the “common sense” school of philosophy, led by Thomas Reid of Glasgow, which was then dominant and which supported Scottish theologians in their struggle with David Hume, the old Scot who was known as the great infidel.

He was always a teacher as well as a pastor, conducting private schools of his own both in Ireland and America. He was teaching at a sleepy little village named Ballymena, in what is now North Ireland, when he met and married Jane Corneigle, in whose veins flowed French Huguenot blood, and it was here that his eldest son, Alexander, was born in 1788. He later taught at Market Hill in Armagh county, at which time he became the pastor at Ahorey, a few miles distant. In company with the present pastor at Ahorey, Dr. Scott, I was recently privileged to visit both Market Hill and Ahorey. The little town of Market Hill is now barricaded, due to the civil war, but it is not too different from what it was in Campbell’s day. The house where he conducted his school still stands, freshly painted and well preserved, now housing a quiet little business.

He was pastor at Ahorey from 1798 until 1807, at which time he embarked for this country. The church has always been Presbyterian (now the United Presbyterian Church of Ireland), and it has continued without interruption all these years. Dr. Scott has been pastor for 18 years and he has great interest in its Campbell heritage. The environment is still rural, with its rolling hills and white farm houses stretching in all directions, not unlike the terrain in western Pennsylvania and Bethany to which the Campbells eventually came.

The church has a Campbell Tower, built in recent years by Disciples of this country. (Perry Gresham of Bethany, who led the supscription drive, wanted me to check to make sure it was there!) The foyer, below the tower, has a brass relief of Thomas’ likeness gracing a wall, noting the years of his pastorate and acknowledging his role as founder of the Christian Church in America. The old pews, each having its own little door, will seat about 125. Here the Camp bells themselves once sat, and it was here that Alexander, then in his impressionable teens, heard his father’s scholarly and devotional presentations. A stained glass window now honors the son. The present pulpit area and additional space have since been built, but the main part of the small church is much like it was then. The cemetery around it has graves that antedate the Campbells.

Even in Ireland, where there was both political and religious unrest, Thomas worked for church union. He was sent by his own Anti-Burgher Presbyterian Church to Glasgow for unity consultation with the Burgher Presbyterian Church (the difference was political rather than doctrinal). The Haldane reformation, which so much influenced Alexander in Glasgow, also reached into Ireland and touched Thomas’ life. The church still stands in Market Hall where the reformers often spoke, particularly Rowland Hill, whom Thomas heard and met. Before he left the Old World he was acquainted with the views of Glas, Sandeman, and James Haldane.

It is noteworthy that both Thomas and Alexander found turning points in reference to the Lord’s Supper. We saw in our last how Alexander walked out of a communion service in Glasgow in protest of its sectarian character, leaving the Presbyterians forever. His father, about the same time, had a similar experience in reference to the Supper, which led to his separation from the same sect.

Once in this country, he was received into the Associate Synod of North America, which represented all Seceder Presbyterians, the “Burgher” dispute not having been imported. He was assigned to the Presbytery of Chartiers in western Pennsylvania, which appointed him to an itinerant ministry among Irish immigrants in what was then frontier country. He was among many of his own people, some having immigrated from his own part of Ireland. His views. already expanding back in Europe, became even more open in the New World. He was not prepared for the narrow sectarian restrictions that his presbytery placed upon him: to minister to and serve communion to Seceder Presbyterians only. He was soon under their judgment for behaving otherwise.

The minutes of the presbytery, which tell the story of his trial, reveal that there was eventually more involved than his liberal practices as a preacher on horseback. It was not simply that he had ecumenical tendencies, but that he had serious misgivings about the theology of his church. Seven charges were brought against him, and these were debated in various hearings for two years, but about mid-way through the dispute Mr. Campbell withdrew from the presbytery and left the Presbyterian ministry, becoming an independent. The charges had to do with his opposition to creeds as terms of communion, his sympathy for the lay ministry, his desire to fellowship other churches, his idea that men can preach without being called, and his belief that a believer can live in this world without sinning. He more or less admitted guilt to all of these except the last one, and argued with his peers on scriptural grounds. The presbytery suspended him. He appealed to the Synod in Philadelphia, which was a higher court. After a week or so of hearings his suspension was rescinded, but he was rebuked for his aberrations. The presbytery resented his reinstatement and it was apparent that they were out to get him, first by giving him no appointments, and finally by suspending him again, this time for not submitting to their authority. But by this time he was already out on his own anyway.

The break with the Presbyterian Church was complete. As a final act of protest he returned to them the 50.00 they gave him upon his arrival in America. By the time the presbytery deposed him from “the office of Holy Ministry” he had already written the Declaration and Address and had organized the Christian Association of Washington. The association was to help “unite the Christians in all the sects,” and it was not to be another church. He hoped that many such societies would arise across the land, dedicated to the task of reforming the church and restoring its unity. The document was its Magna Charta and its slogan was “Where the Scriptures speak, we speak: where the Scriptures are silent, we are silent.” Thomas had it with him in galley proofs when he met his son Alexander and the family on a road in western Pennsylvania, Oct. 19, 1809, 20 days after their arrival in New York, following 54 days on the high seas. Now that they had had similar confrontations with sectarianism, which left them both “free agents” of the Lord, and now had their principles of reform worked out in that memorable document, they were now ready to be further honed for the launching of a unity movement.

And this is what was distinctive about the Declaration and Address. It called for reform through unity. This is what made the Campbell-Stone movement unique; it pled for a unity of all believers as well as a restoration of the primitive faith. The idea of restoration goes far back into efforts of reform, whether to Glas and Sandeman, the Haldanes, or the Anabaptists. But restoration and unity awaited the Restoration Movement in this country.

Thomas’ great document set forth unity principles. The church, he insisted, is by its very nature one, and cannot help but be one, if it be God’s church. Nothing can be made the basis of unity except what is expressly taught by Christ and his apostles. Nothing can be made a term of communion that is not as old as the New Testament. Inferences from scripture may be true doctrine, but they cannot be made binding upon others further than they perceive them to be so. Doctrinal systems may have value, but they cannot be made essential to the faith since they are beyond the understanding of many. Full knowledge of the Bible is not necessary to fellowship, and no one should be required to make a profession more extensive than his understanding. Division by its very nature is sinful. Opinions cannot be made tests of fellowship. The primitive faith as revealed in the New Testament should determine the ordinances of the church, not the creeds of men.

The Christian Association of Washington eventually became a congregation in spite of its original intention. The Brush Run church, as it was called, tried to work within a denominational framework. It applied for membership in a Presbyterian presbytery that Thomas thought would be friendly and was turned down. Once it became “baptist” in that it was now immersed, it joined a Baptist association, which did not work out. Then it joined another Baptist association. That one it converted! That is, that Baptist association gradually evolved into the Campbell wing of the Movement (the Stone movement had begun down in Kentucky a few years earlier).

That part of the story we will tell in our next —the Movement among the Baptists. —the Editor