The May 7 issue of a Birmingham metro newspaper had an ad of the Cahaba Valley Church of Christ, 5199 Caldwell Mill Rd. which read FREE IN CHRIST — CAN TRUTH EXIST IN CENSORSHIP? This was followed by three pungent lines: Free to think — Free to question — Free to hear. Then came the invitation: "Cahaba Valley Church of Christ offers you an opportunity to decide for yourself who you shall hear and what you can scripturally accept." The speaker was Leroy Garrett, editor of Restoration Review and lecturer on Christian unity. As you might suppose, there is a story behind this, a story that reminds me of Hegel's observation that history is the story of man's struggle to be free.

The elders and others in the Cahaba Valley congregation have been readers of this journal for sometime. Some-time back they invited me to spend a few days with them, but as the time drew near for me to come they called and postponed it, explaining that some of the preachers in the area were giving them a hard time and they wanted me to come under as peaceful a circumstance as possible. I told them that I understood and that it might be just as well to cancel the engagement. But they were insistent that I should come sooner or later, so the affair was eventually set for May.

The two elders met me at the plane upon my arrival and we spent a couple of hours talking and praying about our work together They showed a real, shepherd-like concern for their flock, and they wanted to know what I planned to feed the sheep. I appreciated this very much, and explained that I was convinced that most of our problems stem from a lack of spiritual depth and so I had planned to present lessons that would encourage a closer walk with Jesus. I specifically named prayer as one study that I had planned. They thought this would be fine, doubting if their congregation would have any interest in lectures on unity and fellowship. I pointed out that these questions would likely be touched upon in passing, but that I was not intending to dwell at length on them.

I was surprised as to what became of these plans. Sunday a.m. and p.m. I presented lessons in keeping with what I had told the elders. We also had an afternoon session in one of the elders' homes, enhanced by the presence of Joe Black, a very able minister for the Lord who was visiting from Conway, Ark. So the spiritual feast that Lord's day ran for something like 12 hours with hardly a break. But at day's end I was informed that, while my teaching was edifying, it was not what people were expecting from Leroy Garrett. As one bright young deacon put it, "If we're going to be withdrawn from for having this guy with us, we want to hear about those things that make him so controversial." It doesn't make sense for Leroy Garrett to be lecturing on prayer!

So the elders were now having second thoughts. Maybe I had better do my thing after all. They were being asked, "Why is this guy so controversial?" that they now thought that I should present some of my views that have made me such a notorious character, though they didn't put it just that way. Now I was going to have to disobey Ouida. She heard me recently in a series on prayer at our Denton congregation on several Sunday evenings and she urged me to present some of the same material in Birmingham. It would be such a blessing to them, she insisted.

There was something strangely unlikely about all this, a circumstance that would be puzzling to my unfriendly brethren. Here I was at a mainline, bona fide, non-instrument Church of Christ doing my best to present lessons of a deep spiritual sort, rooted in some of the great scriptures of both Testaments, and with no particular compulsion to talk on unity and fellowship. But the elders wanted me to "ride my hobbies," as my critics might put it. Things are surely changing!

All this amused me, and I told the elders, not altogether in jest, that I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't. But I had no objections to telling the congregation — young, bright, affluent, growing — why I am such a bad guy and why some of our preachers quit talking about Jesus (!) and start talking about me when a congregation dares to be free enough to ask me to come. But I chose to do it by the exploration of one passage, Acts 2:42: "And they continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine, in fellowship . . ." That is as far as we got during the next two days. I distinguished between the gospel that Peter had just preached and the doctrine that the disciples continued to be schooled in. I pointed out that the Jerusalem Bible, in a footnote on this verse, makes this distinction very clear, and that if those Catholic scholars can see it, and that if Alexander Campbell and J. W. McGarvey could see it, then our Church of Christ preachers ought to see it. I showed how this whole problem of unity and fellowship is resolved by recognizing this distinction that is made by the Spirit in the scriptures. I observed that fellowship is that "shared life" into which God calls us through the gospel, and that we have not one thing to do with a person's entering that fellowship or continuing in it, except to love and accept him. We can no more "with-draw fellowship" from someone than we can put one into the fellowship, and for one congregation to talk about withdrawing fellowship from another one is both anti-scriptural and asinine. I showed that organs, classes, cups, literature, millennial views, women teachers, TV programs, and all the rest have not one thing in this world to do with fellowship, but that they are simply different impressions that we draw from the apostles' doctrine, what it says or doesn't say about a thousand things.

My friend and brother (and fellow editor), J. D. Tant, was in the audience one night. This same church has also invited him to speak sometime soon, and I am glad. Yater told me he thought I was completely wrong, which came as no great surprise. He wanted to know if I made only the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord the gospel or if, as some of our old pioneers put it, there were commands to be obeyed and promises to be enjoyed as well as facts to be believed. Staying with Peter's presentation on Pentecost and Paul's definition in 1 Cor. 15, I replied that strictly speaking only the facts are the gospel and that the commands and promises are related to the gospel, but that I have no objection to the gospel being set forth in terms of facts, commands and promises. My objection is to making everything in the New Testament, and every deduction drawn therefrom, the gospel!

Well, those handsome young deacons (there are nine of them) got the point. As one of them put it, "Whether we agree or not, now we know why you are controversial!" They also know, just as Yater knows, that they do not have to agree with me for me to love and appreciate them. It is just as well, for I might not have all that many to love in the Church of Christ, if they had to agree with me. I have an awful hard time convincing my people that instrumental music, pro or con, is not part of the gospel.

Despite the postponement my visit was not graciously received by some of the Birmingham preachers. Though the congregation was agreed, perhaps unanimously, that I should come, pressure was applied to keep me out, all claims to church autonomy not-withstanding. The elders sought to be conciliatory, but it became a matter of their own responsibility as shepherds over against dictation from without. Many of our leaders are tiring of this sort of ecclesiasticism and are rebelling against it. It is for the sake of the saints' freedom in Christ. As their ad read, the freedom to think, to question, and to hear is the issue. It is not important that I speak to them, but it is important that they be free (and even encouraged) to hear varying points of view.

In this case Cahaba Valley's own minister, a fine young man, objected to my coming. He explained to me that he deemed it unwise, that it would prejudice other congregations against a vital ministry that Cahaba Valley could otherwise have. He indicated that other preachers would refuse to visit with them, tainted as the congregation would be by my visit. It seems that other preachers were putting pressure on him to keep me out of his congregation just as they were able to keep me out of theirs. This led him to do a reckless thing. He laid his job on the line. If I came, he would leave, he told the assembled officers. The elders warned him not to press his case, to leave the decision in their hands and to stay out of it. He played roulette with his job, and lost. I did not know, of course, that anything like this was going on or I would have excused myself for the sake of peace. But it is now evident that congregational freedom and autonomy are the issues in this case, not Leroy Garrett. The elders saw the pressure and interference on the part of certain preachers as censorship and blackmail, and they had no intention of being intimidated. By the time I arrived the preacher was out laying carpet for a living, which impressed me most favor-ably. Ouida and I have done a lot of that kind of work ourselves, and I see it as a most honorable way for a preacher to make a living. It is just possible that a preacher is more like Jesus and Paul when he works like that than when he takes a job with a church as its minister, if being like Jesus and Paul is still important.

That a preacher would resign his job in protest to my coming to his congregation impressed me as so monstrously unnecessary that I wanted to talk with him about it privately. He was kind enough to bear me to the airport on the morning I left, so we had time for a good talk. He is a delightful brother, intelligent and well educated and with a great capacity for good in this world. Why?, I asked him, did he think it necessary to stick his neck out like that. Why couldn't he tell the preachers that he was not the pastor at Cahaba Valley, but a servant for Jesus' sake, and that it was not his role to make such decisions? I pointed out that my coming was not really all that big a deal, so why all the excitement? After all, I explained, I have spoken to numerous Churches of Christ in recent years, and while there may have been some flak there were no grievous aftereffects. The churches are still in business!

But he knew and I knew what it all boils down to: party politics. He wanted to be "in," to be accepted by the gang at the preachers' luncheons, and all that. You can't rate top drawer status with fellows like me coming around. They pressed him to keep me out, and he felt that he had to do so to win their approval, when in fact he probably agrees with me more than with them. So, he rolled his dice — and lost. Like a center fielder who errs by taking his eye off the ball, our dear brother, too conscious of party approval, took his eye off Jesus. We had a beautiful conversation together, free and brotherly, and we departed amidst embraces and tears. I love him for Jesus' sake and I believe he is going to be all right. As I boarded the plane I found myself hating all the more our stinking partyism and all the chicanery and littleness that goes along with it — and what it does to men who would otherwise be magnanimous souls. I pondered Thomas Campbell's words, "It is a horrid evil, fraught with many evils." But I love our dear brothers who get caught in its net.

Once on the plane I found myself saying to the Lord, "Have we all lost our cockeyed minds? With the world aflame we limp along with problems like this!" I buckled up and settled down to reading the last issue of Mission, which I think is good for our insanity. Shortly after take off, the young lady sitting next to me asked if I were a Church of Christ preacher. I replied, Sort of, and we had a delightful visit all the way to New Orleans, where she deplaned. She revealed that she had a burning desire to be an airline hostess, but could not for conscience' sake since she had to serve drinks. I tried to show her that it was Delta that served the drinks, not the hostess, and that she would be serving as an agent of the airline, but she didn't buy it, and I had to agree that she couldn't be a hostess. Too bad, for Delta lost a good one in her. I had a little more success in assuring her that she could go to a "liberal" Church of Christ (that con-tributes to Herald of Truth) with her roommate without personally approving of what she thought was wrong.

We had a good time talking about Jesus and what is really important about our faith, and I think we were relating to each other real well. "By the way, what is your name?" she asked as we neared New Orleans. I don't know why she had to spoil things with a loaded question like that. To reveal my name in some circumstances is sort of like confessing my sins. "You are Leroy Garrett!" she kept saying. The daughter of a "conservative" Church of Christ minister, she explained that she had heard of me all her life. But I think we departed with our relationship still in good repair.

When Ouida met me at D-FW shortly afterwards, I dared not venture a kiss, but shook her hand formally and said, "My name is Leroy Garrett and I'm sorry!" Her laughter warmed my heart.

But the story does not end here, and you are not going to believe the rest, if indeed you have been credulous thus far. I was not at home long when the county sheriff called: Are you Leroy Garrett? I affirmed boldly that I was, now being in something of a fighting mood. He had a citation for me and he had to serve it. I was being sued, he explained. What for? He read to me from the petition which is now on my desk beside me: "That on or about Nov. 5, 1976, the plaintiff, George Landin, was a customer in the Freeman's Grocery Store in Caldwell, Texas and while there the plaintiff purchased a package of Levi Garrett chewing tobacco. The plaintiff put some of the tobacco in his mouth and when he started chewing it the inside of his mouth began to burn and his face started swelling. He had to seek medical attention and was hospitalized for several days as a result of the injuries to his mouth and face which he received after chewing the tobacco." The petition went on to say that at the trial they would prove that the tobacco was defective and that they wanted $150,000 in damages. In the petition the name of the defendant would alternate from Levi Garrett to Leroy Garrett.

Now I realized it was a joke, so I laughed in the sheriff's face and wanted to know who he really was. I had been visiting a congregation in the county from which the petition originated, and finding them the smokingest as well as the lovingest church you'd ever meet, I had told them the last time I was there that I was going to start praying that they'd quit smoking — especially in the assembly room, men and women alike! I thought sure some of the more playful ones were getting back at me in this way, so I wanted who-ever it was to quit spoofing and come on out to the house.

But the sheriff let me know in no uncertain terms that he was the sheriff and that it was no joke. So now I am being sued for $150,000 for selling Garrett's plug tobacco in Caldwell, Texas.

I wrote the lawyer that prepared this wild document and explained to him that I am not Levi Garrett, that I was in the fried chicken business and am now in the book business, and that I am not, thank God, in the tobacco business. I added that he might find Levi Garrett and Co. somewhere in the Carolinas!

Ouida keeps telling me that I need to change my name, that if I did so I would enter upon an era of popularity beyond my imagination, for she is convinced that most folk in our churches really believe like I do. Nor would I get sued for selling tobacco! I tell her that the Lord is going to take care of that. More and more I look to that promise in Rev. 3:12: "I will also write on him my new name."

But damned as I might be for being Leroy, I am not Levi Garrett. That I can prove even in court. Maybe!  — the Editor