Travel Letter . . .

WINTER WANDERINGS AROUND HOME

It is always good to be home with the family, especially in the winter. It also gives me the opportunity to touch base with friends and places close at hand. I consider any place close if I can drive to it and take Ouida along. She is always a bonus. However delightful an experience might be she makes it even more delightful, for others as well as for myself. And if the experience is less than delightful, well … it is always better when she is along.

She went with me to Cleburne, Texas, which is 30 or 40 minutes south of Ft. Worth. You railroad buffs have no doubt heard or read about it, for it is famous as an old railroad town. The Sante Fe shops are still one of the main sources of employment. It is also important in the history of Churches of Christ in Texas, for some of our better known preachers gained their spurs (and used them!) there, including no less than G. C. Brewer and Reuel Lemmons. The old Central church qualifies as one of the Mother congregations in our state, and her story is sort of the history of our people as a whole.

Will Ewing, a brother who served under Gen. Andrew Jackson at New Orleans as a youth, first preached in Cleburne back in 1870, but it was not until 1890 that a congregation was formed. In another 50 years the congregation could boast of having 1,000 members. It went through it all, including the debating era and the dividing era. T. W. Caskey was Texas’ great debater in those early years. It was said of him that he had not shed a tear since his Mother first whipped him. After he had debated a Methodist preacher in Cleburne, the local paper described him: “His manner on the stand is that of a surgeon who picks and lays bare to the eye the muscles and veins and sinews and ligaments of the dissecting room.” That’s another way of saying he nailed their hides to the side of the barn with the bloody side out! In another Texas town Caskey debated a Spiritualist. Making no argument at all, he proceeded to abuse the man so severely that the man at last lost his temper and began an attack on all the preachers in town, exposing them as women-chasers, calling names and citing instances of infidelity. This was what Caskey was waiting for, not merely an exposure of the sectarian preachers, but of the Spiritualist himself. Caskey explained that the Spiritualist could summon a beautiful woman spirit, have her as his bride for the night, and then whisk her away to the Spirit world the next day —and not be burdened with supporting a mistress like the other preachers in town!

They wound it tight in Texas back in those days, and sometimes the spring broke. Places like Cleburne can still feel the backlash. The Church of Christ there has divided at least once every decade in recent generations. The “non-cooperatives” represent a recent division, and they have lately driven away some of their people for using other than the King James version. A small band of one-cup saints gather in a pleasant little building on one of the quiet streets, as they have for many years, with the world passing them by. The old Central church has spawned two other congregations through the years. The Disciples congregation is composed mostly of older people, and the minister, who is sensitive to the Restoration plea, is understandably discouraged. At one of our sessions in the Court House he could hardly believe his eyes and ears, that Church of Christ people would be reaching out as we were to him that night.

Our visit was with a “walk out” group, and, as usual, they proved to be among the most youthful, alert, prosperous, and spiritual of our people. “Walk out” is hardly the term for some of these brethren. Saints in exile might be better, for they are driven out more than they walk out. While still in their home congregation they were charged with being Ketchersideites because of their more open and libertarian views that they did not make instrumental music a test of fellowship was one of the weightier charges. Who is Ketcherside?, they began to ask, for they had never even heard of him or her. An older brother who was sympathetic, and who had been around a little more than the rest, quietly passed along some of his old copies of Mission Messenger and Restoration Review. That is when they called me and asked if I’d come down for a visit. They seemed surprised at my response. So long had they been badgered and browbeaten by insecure preachers that they could hardly believe that one would treat them with love and tenderness.

I do not attempt any longer to tell such people what to do, whether to leave the oppressive situation in which they find themselves (if they haven’t already), or to go back into it (if they have already left), or to seek out a more compatible congregation. No one answer applies to all situations, and besides, I’m just not wise enough to know what is best. I urge them to be a community of love, whatever they do, and not to be sectarian. If they will be people for Jesus and not be people of a party, all will be well, whatever distinction they may take, accepting all God’s children as their brothers and sisters.

As for now they assemble in a room at the bank, and it is all low key. They issue no proclamations about Cleburne now having a loyal church! They simply want to be free, spiritual and loving, without being scolded and castigated. But low key or not, a few other of our wandering sheep have begun to hear of them, and some of them are coming for miles —to be loved! It is just that shamefully simple.

An interesting question in all this is how those brethren became Ketchersidites. They had never heard of the man and had not read one word of anything he ever wrote! I take it that if you grow tired of the sectarian mess and want to be free, it makes you some kind of ite. That being the case, let’s honor them with a little more antiquity and just call them Campbellites. That’s why Thomas Campbell started this unity-love Movement. He said he was sick and tired of the whole sectarian mess, and declared himself a free man, writing his own declaration of independence. That’s what we have in Cleburne, a bunch of Campbellites! However, I am not sure that they ever heard of him either!

Ouida also went with me to the Park Row Church of Christ in Arlington, mid-way between Dallas and Ft, Worth, one of the older congregations in the area, where I presented a Sunday morning lesson on The Betrayal of a Heritage, which has appeared in this journal, and an evening lesson on A Recovery of Pentecost, in which I related immersion to the remission of sins and to a Spirit-filled life.

I was testing something in the first lesson. If you read it, you will see that it summarizes what the Restoration Movement really stood for from the outset. I read the presentation so that I would be sure to include all I wanted to say in the time allowed. Would an old, main-line congregation respond to such a plea, now that they were giving it a fair hearing? That was the test. I mingled amongst them all day, asking old and young alike about my lesson, including the elders and rank and file members. Without exception there was a positive response, even an enthusiastic response on the part of many. One sister who has been around all these years assured me, with a touch of pathos, that her life in the church would have been happy if she had been brought up on that kind of teaching. She agreed, as I charged in my address, that we have all been ripped off and have therefore betrayed a glorious heritage. It was generally agreed that most Church of Christ folk would agree with what I said if they were allowed to hear it under favorable circumstances.

Park Row has been under fire of late for being … let’s just say different. That’s what poisoned Socrates and crucified Jesus, being different, and so a congregation might well get flak. if not faggots, for being unlike the party churches. They do such awful things as bear with divorced people rather than drive them away with impossible (and unchristian) demands. They are sympathetic toward brethren who have “charismatic” experiences. And they talk responsibly about “unity in diversity,” and even practice it. They are sensitive to human suffering, which causes them to reach out to others. Sins like that.

One of the Dallas papers gave top billing to a story about Park Row, which I thought was rather well done, even if it overemphasized the church’s position on “charismatic” gifts. Jim Reynolds, a loving soul who put together one of our unity meetings when ministering in California, ministers to the church. He was quoted in the writeup as saying he had been ostracized by other Churches of Christ and that he was no longer invited to speak at the ACC lectureship. Jim was a star athlete during his days at ACC and continued to be a star on various programs through the years. While in California he took his Ph.D. and was until recently part of the Biblical Studies Center in Austin. All I can say is that you lose a lot when you cut off a guy like Jim. But I have found that many of our leaders (not the masses) could not care less about quality. They’ll poison a Socrates or ostracize a Jim Reynolds —and, yes, crucify Jesus afresh —for the sake of loyalty to the party.

Anyway, the elders at Park Row got bombarded by the other churches (preachers, of course) about the writeup. (We are autonomous, you know, with no congregation minding the business of any other!) This included a writeup in the same Dallas paper by our brother Johnny Ramsey. The editor explained that Johnny took exceptions to some of the things said by Jim Reynolds the week before, and so he was having his say. Jim, in tracing the history of the Church of Christ, referred to Alexander Campbell as one of the founders. Johnny assured all of us that Alexander Campbell had nothing at all to do with it, that he came along 1800 years too late, and that the Church of Christ began in 33 A.D. on the day of Pentecost. He also set us straight about ACC. It has no ties at all with the Church of Christ! He conceded that churches are to be autonomous, but quoted Rom. 16:17 as a proof-text that an erring church might be marked and disfellowshipped, which some at Park Row took as a threat.

Well, I don’t know what he owes Park Row, but I think Johnny should apologize to Alexander Campbell. He wouldn’t have that lucrative preaching job over there in Garland and would never have heard of the “Church of Christ” had it not been for the old uncle. That isn’t to say that Uncle Alex planned it exactly that way!

Park Row, and all other such congregations, will survive gloriously, for they are courageously living for Jesus in the now. The stuff dished out by the Old Guard has had its day.

Besides, the hierarchy has reduced its complaints against them to only two things, according to the most recent reports. Allowing a sister to go to the Christian Church with her husband without withdrawing from her, and allowing Leroy Garrett in the pulpit. As to the latter complaint one brother said it well: “He’s a no-no, you know.” But still there is hope for the future, even for a church with two unpardonable sins.

I have long wanted to visit Ernest and Flossie Garrett in Shreveport. The chance came this winter. Since Ouida and I were a part of their surprise golden wedding anniversary in Ft. Worth last summer, beautifully executed by their six daughters and their families, Ouida was pleased that she could go along on this trip also. They gathered 30 or 40 from our divided ranks, curious ones if not concerned ones, and we had several hours of fruitful exchange.

I wish Ernest was my kinsman in the flesh as well as in the Spirit, but I’m afraid we have no one as smart as he hanging on my family tree, certainly no one as diligent. That’s how I first began to hear of him years ago, brethren telling me of that free spirit in Shreveport that has a great library that he knows like a hound dog knows coon’s tracks. But only the half had been told. Now that I know him better I know a man humbled by the great ideas that have challenged his thinking all these years.

Here is a man cut from common cloth, who has lived the simple life, and worked his way to financial independence as an inventor and mechanical engineer, and one who has garnered for himself a fine education, though he never went to college. He has facility in both Greek and Hebrew, all self-taught, and he handles the Septuagint in the original, along with Hatch and Redpath’s lexicon; also Strack and Billerbeck, the Mishnah, the Talmud, Arndt and Gingrich, Kittel, and I don’t know what all, stuff I studied when I was a doctoral student at Harvard. As he drew from his well-used library, he raised such issues as how it was that the Apocrypha came to be separated from the Old Testament, a question he’s been working on for some years. He realizes the church drew its canon from the Jewish scriptures, which omit those books, rather than from the Septuagint, which includes them, but he wants to know how it happened.

He told me of purchasing a copy of the Septuagint from one of our preachers who is in the book business. With that book in hand, just purchased from the preacher, he raised the question as to whether the modern church might not be denied something of value by not having the same Old Testament that Jesus used (the one in hand, which includes the disputed books). The preacher simply went bananas and began to challenge him for a debate! Ernest, realizing the man had a heart condition, hastened to leave lest he have another attack.

That brought up another question from still another field that intrigues him, psychology. Why, we wondered, is a man threatened like that by a rather innocent historical question? And why, we asked, will one rare up and want to debate, but not sit down quietly and talk about it which our brother invited him to do? Why must our people suppose that they are guardians over all truth, all history, all every thing? Why couldn’t he say, “Ernest, you’ve raised a weighty question there, suppose its one I can’t answer just now.”

But the question I was asking myself was the hardest of all. What happens to all this talk about the necessity of seminaries, Bible colleges, preacher schools, Bible departments, and all the rest when someone like Ernest Garrett gets what they offer, and even more, on his own out of books available to all?

In our Shreveport meetings we had two preachers that had been to schools of preaching. One of them, a delightful black brother, wanted to know if I knew about 1 Cor. 1:10, which clearly shows that we must be in doctrinal agreement on everything if we are to be in fellowship —we must all speak the same thing! I explained that I had considered the passage, but that if it meant what he had learned at the preacher school, then nobody in the entire history of the church has been able to obey it, including those at his school and even; the apostle himself, for no one speaks exactly the same thing on all points of doctrine as the others within the fellowship. A man and his wife could not even be in fellowship!

The other brother, from the Christian Church, had graduated from the Sunset School of Preaching in Lubbock, Texas. I got a bang out of his story. The faculty made one last effort to “convert” him before graduation, but the music question wasn’t the deal to him that it was to them. Finally giving up on him as a lost cause, they told him that he would have to receive his diploma in a back room in private, for he could not walk across the stage and receive their blessings along with the faithful. He thought that a bit puerile for a Christian educational institution, but I have a more descriptive term for it: plain ole bigotry! But the brother is better off than he thinks. If the Sunset folk keep it a secret that he is a graduate, and if he won’t tell anybody, then nobody will ever have to know that he went there! —the Editor
 

Driven from every other corner of the earth, freedom of thought and the right of private judgment in matters of conscience direct their course to this happy country as their last asylum. —Samuel Adams (1776)