Bicentennial Notes on Restoration History . . .

THE MOVEMENT AMONG THE BAPTISTS

The Restoration Movement in this country in its origin owes much to both Presbyterians and Baptists. Our original founders, the four pillars of our Movement, were all Presbyterians: Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Barton W. Stone and Walter Scott. But the masses that came into our ranks during the first generation, 1809-1830, were not Presbyterians but Baptists. Once Alexander Campbell began to debate Presbyterians on the mode of baptism, he became something of a hero among the Baptists, for they had not yet produced the learned men who could defend their cause against the more educated Presbyterians. Once he himself chose to be immersed in 1812, along with his influential father, he came to be identified more and more with the Baptists. By 1830 some 20,000 people were identified with the Movement, the majority of these being Baptists.

Up until 1823, the year of Campbell’s debate with W.L. MacCalla, there was no indication that the Movement was destined to attract hundreds of congregations. Indeed, it was hardly a Movement. There was the original Brush Run church (1811) and the Wellsburg congregation that emerged from it (1823), both near Campbell’s home in Bethany, Virginia. Walter Scott ministered to the third one in Pittsburg. These three independent congregations floundered at the outset, with nowhere to go in terms of organized fellowship. Thomas Campbell tried to associate Brush Run with a Presbyterian association of churches, but he was rejected. In 1815 the Redstone Baptist Association accepted Brush Run, while the Wellsburg church joined the Mahoning Baptist Association, and it was this group of Baptist churches that turned the Campbell effort into a viable reformation movement. Effort was made to merge the Pittsburg congregation with the Baptist Church there, pastored by Sidney Rigdon, who later was to enjoy Mormon fame, but it failed.

Rigdon is a good illustration of how the Baptists came to the rescue of the Campbell effort. Up until 1823 Alexander’s influence was meager but modestly growing. He had written no books and edited no paper. He conducted his own Buffalo Seminary, ran his farm and preached around — mostly among the Baptists since he was gradually accepted as one of them, though he never belonged to a Baptist Church as such. One turning point in these early years was his famous Sermon on the Law, delivered at the Cross Roads Baptist Church near his home in 1816, which catapulted him into a controversial role, with some Baptist leaders condemning him and others praising him. A debate, his first, with John Walker, a Presbyterian, in 1820, also built his reputation. During this time he was invited to settle as a pastor for some Baptist church and cast his lot with them completely. This he refused to do, explaining that he doubted if any of their churches would accept his reformatory views, and, besides, he had already promised the Lord that he would be self-supporting and work for the renewal of the church without being dependent on any sect. Still his influence grew among the Baptists around his home, and he did much speaking in their churches, without pay. Sidney Rigdon was one of those Baptist preachers who was very much on his side. It was through Alexander’s influence that Rigdon became pastor of the Pittsburgh church, one of the first Baptist churches, if not the first, to become a “Reformed Baptist” church, the name by which the Campbellites were soon to be known.

1823 was not only the year of the MacCalla debate, but also the year that Campbell began publishing a journal, named the Christian Baptist. Dr. Richardson, his biographer, explains that it was with some debate that he elected to give his journal a party name. Since their efforts were then principally with the Baptists he decided such a name would give it an advantage. He had copies of the first issues in his saddlebags as he journeyed to Washington, Ky. to meet Mr. MacCalla. At his side rode Sidney Rigdon who was helpful in making a record of the debate. Riding horseback together for 300 miles, the two men must have become well acquainted. Campbell was surprised, when, several years later, Rigdon took up with the Mormons. He accounted for it on the grounds that Rigdon was very ambitious for power and leadership, which never quite came his way with the Disciples.

Alexander chose Jeremiah Vardeman, the leading Baptist minister in Kentucky, to be his moderator, who was, by the way, kin to Sidney Rigdon. They had married sisters. Vardeman was an ox of a man, towering over most all those around him, a fact that proved relevant to one dramatic moment in the debate. MacCalla was insisting that immersion was bad for one’s health, exposing him to the elements as it does, and that therefore sprinkling should be chosen for health reasons. As fate would have it, MacCalla’s moderator, an older man who had sprinkled babies all his life, was small and frail, especially alongside a giant like Vardeman, with whom he shared the moderators’ platform. And MacCalla himself was small of stature. It was all that Campbell could ask for. He reminded the audience of the occasion in France when a Frenchman of diminutive size attacked the new American colonies in the presence of Benjamin Franklin as being debilitating to one’s health, whereupon Mr. Franklin had all the Americans present at the affair to stand apart from the Frenchmen, demonstrating their marked physical superiority over their French counterparts. Alexander only needed to point out that Jeremiah Vardeman had immersed more people than any man in America and that his health seemed to be good!

It was with this debate that Campbell’s movement really began to make inroads among the Baptists: MacCalla had long been a thorn in their side, infuriating them with attacks and challenges that they could not handle. Now that Campbell had crushed his ego as well as his arguments, they were profuse in both praise and acceptance. This made Alexander uneasy, for he was suspicious that his overall appeal to the primitive order would be no more acceptable to the Baptists than to any sect. Since the Walker debate he had further studied the design of immersion, having discussed it many times with his father and Walter Scott, and it was here in the MacCalla debate that he first set forth publicly his position on immersion for the remission of sins. He knew this to be contrary to Baptist doctrine, and it was now a question as to how they would respond to that part of his presentation.

Alexander, now a man of 35, proved to be a wise strategist in handling the Baptist leaders assembled for the MacCalla Debate. Though the Christian Baptist had been issued several months before the debate, he deliberately withheld any copies that might go into Kentucky, thinking they might prejudice the leadership against him. He knew they would agree with him on immersion, but he wanted a fair hearing on the subject of baptism for the remission of sins. This shows that Campbell’s real interest in that debate was not so much converting the Presbyterians to immersion, but in converting the Baptists to his plea for reformation. The response was most favorable, and from all indications the Baptists stood with him on all he set forth in the debate.

Near the end of the debate he had a nocturnal session with the Baptist leadership for the purpose of further explaining his views on reformation and to warn them about himself! “Brethren,” he said to them, with the likes of Jeremiah Vardeman filling the parlor of the home where he was staying, “I fear that if you knew me better you would esteem and love me less. For let me tell you that I have almost as much against you Baptists as I have against the Presbyterians. They err in one thing and you in another; and probably you are each nearly equidistant from original apostolic Christianity.”

A long silence filled the room. Elder Vardeman at last spoke up, wanting to know what he had against Baptists. “We want to know our errors or your heterodoxy,” he insisted. The candidness of this new champion that they had come to admire so greatly must have overwhelmed them. “Keep nothing back,” he went on protesting, trying to get Campbell to layout his grievances. Campbell explained that the hour was too late for him to undertake an extended statement, but he told them of the publication he had begun, suggesting that it would set forth his views in detail. Excusing himself, he went to his room upstairs and took from his portmanteau the first copies of the Christian Baptist ever to see light in Kentucky — 30 copies, 10 each of his first three issues. He proceeded to read excerpts from these — on the call to the ministry, the kingdom of the clergy, modern missionaries. He then distributed them to the ten senior ministers present, asking them to give him their reaction before the debate concluded. As he passed out the goodies, with each pastor looking upon the paper for the first time, it surely must have helped the cause along that it bore the title, The Christian Baptist.

The Baptist leaders responded so favorably to both the debate and the new journal that they assured Campbell that they would help circulate the journal, and they requested that he allow them to set up an itinerary for him to visit the Baptist churches of Kentucky. That came the. next year — 1824, a great year in our history — the year that he spent three months in Kentucky among the Baptists, and the year he first met Barton W. Stone and Raccoon John Smith. And who else would one need who wants to launch a movement?

Hundreds of these Baptist churches came into the Movement, as if by osmosis. They gradually imbibed “Campbellism”, as it was called, until they were no longer considered orthodox Baptist churches, and so they were dubbed “Reformed Baptists.” These “Reformed Baptists” finally lost all identification as Baptists and became known as “Disciples of Christ,” the name preferred by Alexander Campbell, but also as “Church of Christ” and “Christian Church.” Eventually such names adorned their buildings, and their preachers were identified as “Elder of the Church of Christ.” Many of the Baptist leaders strongly opposed “Campbellism,” such as J. B. Jeter, who published a book entitled Campbellism Examined, and kept some congregations from being lost to Campbell. But thousands of Baptists became Campbellites. In deed, in this first generation the Campbellites were Baptists, almost altogether.

We see this early picture more clearly if we realize that up until 1824 the Campbells had immersed very few people. They were busy infiltrating the Baptists, whom of course they did not re-immerse. Entire Baptist congregations came into the Movement, pastor and all, with no one being re-baptized. Our great preachers of that generation — Raccoon John Smith, Jacob Creath, Jr., and Sr., William Hayden, John T. Johnson, Jeremiah Vardeman, and scores of others — were all Baptists who became reformers. While they went on to immerse tens of thousands (Johnson alone immersed 15,000 after leaving Congress at age 42), they themselves were not re-immersed. I have never found the first case of our pioneers ever immersing a Baptist up to and beyond the Civil War. It was indeed a Texas innovation to re-baptize Baptists, and it came along two generations later and was considered as factious by the older heads of the Movement. And it was not until then that Baptist and “Church of Christ,” as the new reactionary wing came to be called exclusively, began to have their big debates. The early Disciples and Baptists did not have debates for they had too much in common.

This means, of course, that the Movement, drawing its nucleus from the Baptists, went on in the decades following 1824 to immerse into Christ thousands of those that moved across the frontier, so that by 1860 the Disciples numbered around 200,000. But they always baptized unimmersed believers, many of whom belonged to no church.

The year 1824 remains pivotal to all this, not only because that was the year of Campbell’s foray into Kentucky Baptist country, but also the year that the Mahoning Baptist Association sent Walter Scott out as an evangelist. The “golden oracle” put into practice what Campbell had set forth in the MacCalla debate the year before, which he had helped to work out, the doctrine of immersion for the remission of sins. Inventing the “five finger exercise,” he made the plan of salvation so plain that sinners responded in groves. So successful was he that Alexander back in Bethany was suspicious of the reports, and sent his father over into Ohio to look in on what “the Evangelist” was up to. That is a story all its own, Walter Scott as the Golden Oracle, which we will recount in an installment all its own.

But we want you to get the picture for the first 15 years of our history. Following the publication of the Declaration and Address (1809) the Campbells started the Brush Run church, though it was not their original intention to start even a congregation, they wanted it to be a part of some association of churches. Failing with the Presbyterians (they were not an immersed church when they applied), they joined the Redstone Baptist Association, which became unfriendly toward the reformation effort and to Alexander in particular. Learning that they planned to do away with him, Alexander arranged with his father for some 30 members of Brush Run to be dismissed for the purpose of starting “a church of Christ at Wellsburg,” which in turn joined the Mahoning Baptist Association, while Brush Run remained with Redstone. The list for the new church not only had the names of Alexander and Margaret Campbell, but Selina Bakewell also, who was destined to become the second Mrs. Campbell 15 years later.

The Mahoning association eventually became the “Reformed Baptists” that gave impetus to a movement that might otherwise have failed. Indeed, Dr. Richardson describes the young Campbell as disheartened that so little response came from their renewal efforts based on the principles of the Declaration and Address, and he was resigned to a quiet life of ministry in his own neighborhood. Then came the Walker debate, which was pressed upon him. Then the MacCalla debate, which completely redirected his destiny. At the same time he became an editor and publisher, and in the next seven years he was to issue 46,000 volumes from his press in Bethany. Life was never again the same! This early history shows that the Campbells were not exclusivists, but sought fellowship with the denominations around them. They considered it appropriate for “a church of Christ” to belong to a Baptist fellowship of churches with out compromising any truth it had found. And it was within such cooperative efforts that they got the Movement off the ground. The notion that we are to be separatists, enjoying no fellowship with other believers, is a repudiation of the noble spirit of cooperation that gave birth to the Restoration Movement. — the Editor