Travel Letter …

FROM TENNESSEE TO ABILENE

The gracious hospitality of Prof. Norman and Ella Rae Parks enabled me to share with a house church in Murfreesboro, Tennessee on a Sunday evening after addressing our Upper Room congregation here in Denton that morning. That put me with free and happy brethren in both Texas and Tennessee on the same day. Our incredible modes of transportation made part of that possible, and our incredible change as a people in recent years made the other part possible. At the Murfreesboro gathering were folk educated in Tennessee’s most orthodox Church of Christ institutions who were nonetheless turned on to broader views of unity and fellowship.

The visit to the Nashville area enabled me to spend some needed time in research at the Disciples of Christ Historical Society. My purpose was to check on materials not available in my own library and at nearby TCU on our Movement’s history, and of course the DCHS is the richest source of such data in the world. I have a rather impossible goal set for myself: to make sure there is no important document or book written by or about our Movement that I do not know about. So I go from stack to stack, checking every book and pamphlet in the lineup. My most interesting find on this trip was a book entitled Christian Union, by one Abraham Van Dyck, published in New York in 1835. Mr. Van Dyck was a lawyer who apparently knew nothing of the budding Stone-Campbell Movement and was in no way influenced by it, but who nonetheless had a passion for the unity of all believers and wrote things that were strikingly similar to what our early leaders said. Considering that men can be influenced by the same Book and be engrossed in solving the same problem, this is not so unusual.

But I fell in love with Abraham Van Dyck, who died the year his book on unity was published, and I look forward to meeting him when He who sits upon the throne makes all things new. Some anonymous writer included a few pages in the book on Van Dyke’s life as a member of the bar and as a humble servant of Jesus. He is described as a Calvinist but no church affiliation was mentioned, only that he was “a Bible Christian” and an avid student of the word. He lived and died in Coxsackie, N. Y., and he “delighted in prayer, had a child-like simplicity, looked to the Spirit to aid him in study.”

He began his book, which he subtitled An Argument for the Abolition of Sects, by saying, “The divisions in the church of Christ have long been to me, as they have been to many of the friends of religion, the cause of much anxious solicitude.” He said he looked to the time when people could associate with each other on the ground of moral worth rather than theological distinction. He talked like the Campbells when he spoke of love as the only bond of union. One would suppose he was influenced by the Declaration and Address in two principles he set forth, “God has constituted the church one and indivisible” and “The division of the church into sects is a violation of its constitutional unity.” And he certainly sounded like our folk when he said, “This vital principle was deeply engraved on the minds of the primitive Christians, no such thing being known as the separating of the one body of believers from another on the ground of differences in matters of opinion or on points of practice.”

Doesn’t that blow your mind, a small-town lawyer with a passion for the unity of believers, publishing a book on his own in which he challenges the denominations “to return to where the apostles left off,” taking it upon himself, if but single-handed, to do something about the divided church? Far back in 1835 he was trying to start his own unity movement. His story bears witness to what history tells us now and again: there were always those here and there who tried to do something for the unity of the church. But ours is the first movement within the church for that purpose, where a religious group made this concern its plea.

All of our people owe a debt to the DCHS and to Charles Spencer who is especially responsible for giving it birth nearly 40 years ago. Beginning at a Disciples college, it was established in Nashville so that it could better serve all our people, and its constitution states that it is to serve impartially the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ as well as Disciples of Christ, though the latter provide 90% of its support. Church of Christ folk use it the most! Roland Huff is the president; David McWhirter is the director; Kitty Huff is director of research. They are a great team, wonderfully in love with our Lord and our history.

A highlight of my stay in Nashville was a visit with Charles Spencer and his dear wife. When he retired from the DCHS after a lifetime of service, he knew virtually every title among the thousands of books and pamphlets and could go directly to whatever item he wanted without consulting the card catalogue. He knows more about our historical resources than any person living, and this knowledge is born of love for our Lord, our people, and our history. He told me a sweet, intimate story that I will not here reveal, but it had to do with the Lord answering his prayer after he had promised that he would devote his life to the preservation of our great history.

The important thing about our meeting, however, was the idea that surfaced in our conversation (I am not sure which of us first suggested it) that we should have a sesquicentennial celebration in 1981 in honor of the union of the Stone and Campbell movements in Lexington back in 1831. I have already mentioned this idea twice publicly, and to numerous people privately and by letter, and everyone thinks it is a great idea. I plan to visit some leading Disciple educators in Lexington soon and will lay it on them. Plans for such a gathering of all our people in Lexington three years from now would give us a great opportunity to discover the significance of what then happened and what it means to us.

I flew from Nashville to Knoxville to serve as the visiting Homecoming speaker at Johnson Bible College, where I gave addresses on the power of preaching and the power of love. In the first I called for turbulence in the pulpit and in the second I pointed to the loving forbearance that preserves unity, the Spirit’s gift to the church. As impressed as I am with President David Eubanks and his wife Margaret, the faculty, and a notable alumni that already has its niche in our history over the past three quarters of a century, it is the present crop of students that wins first prize. Many of them have an eagerness both to learn and to serve. We all lose when our partyism hinders our youth in Church of Christ and Christian Church schools from having more contact with each other.

I was home less than a day when Ouida joined me for a drive out to Abilene where I was to speak at the Southwest Park Christian Church, and, hopefully, to look in on the Abilene Christian University Lectureship, which my series overlapped by one day. When even a Texan starts driving west in his native state, he is reminded of its vast barrenness. When one leaves Fort Worth, which is “where the west begins,” he encounters a sign that reads El Paso 530 miles. If he entered the state at Texarkana coming from the east, he has already driven a day before reaching Fort Worth, and now he has over 500 miles more of the state, most of which is little more than far-reaching nothingness. We can understand why “foreigners” get discouraged in their efforts to pass us by. In Abilene we stayed at the Royal Inn, which is at the very edge of the west side of Abilene, next door to all this barrenness. One morning a large tumbleweed, so typical of the Plains, came tumbling right through the grounds of the motel, out of nowhere. That hardly happens anywhere else in the world. Ouida doesn’t like west Texas (too windy) and it is about to rub off on me, one committed to all of Texas, which is quite a commitment. We are east Texans, and when we venture very far to the west it seems as if we are in a different state.

Abilene must, however, remain an exception, for almost certainly it is here that the millennium will first appear, if indeed there is to be a millennium. There is a larger percentage of Church of Christ people living in this city of 100,000 than any other city in the world, but being in Texas, where the Baptists are the state church, it is still a Baptist town. Just under 50% profess to be Baptists, 17% Church of Christ, and 12% Methodists. The Church of Christ folk gather into 27 churches, though not all are in the same fellowship; there are two Disciples of Christ churches, one being among the largest in the city; and one small Christian Church. There is a Methodist college and a Baptist university, but the Church of Christ university is larger and perhaps richer than both of them put together. Baptists aside, we feel with some justification that Abilene is ours. But a brother who carries the mail told me he now delivers more copies of the Baptist Standard even on the Hill, where ACU and family reside, than of the Firm Foundation. It only shows that our folk and the Baptists make good neighbors. Abilene still belongs to the Church of Christ!

What is significant about Abilene insofar as the Church of Christ world is concerned, apart from ACU itself, is that the churches are far more liberal than those almost anywhere else. If Nashville (or perhaps Dallas) is our Jerusalem, then Abilene is our Antioch. It is common knowledge that when a Church of Christ family moves from Abilene to almost anywhere else, it undergoes something of a shock in adjusting itself once more to the old-line Church of Christ mentality. California would be an exception. Go west, young man, go west!

The lectureship is a phenomenon, attracting upwards of 10,000 from year to year, depending on the weather, which more often than not is bad. Many, if not most, attend, not so much for the lectures, but to see and be seen, to visit, and to find out what’s going on. A large tent is erected, which is half as long as a city block, that houses displays both commercial and promotional. The tent is the nearest thing we have to a convention center, and it is the place to see everybody. A sign urges the visitors to attend the lectures and to do their visiting between lectures! In one stroll around the tent I saw Jimmie Lovell, Joe Malone, John Banister, Hulen Jackson, Ron Durham, Ralph Sweet, Norvell and Helen Young, LeMoine Lewis, Everett Ferguson, names widely known among our people, and a score or more of delightful brethren who are known more locally.

But the tent convulsed like a giant monster taking in air, and one had the feeling it might take off anytime, with a fierce cold wind blowing in under it, the side curtains having little effect. The several tall poles holding up the canvas would rise and fall like sledge hammers, sometimes going two or three feet into the air. Things began to fall, one object striking a visitor in the forehead, leaving him bloody and dizzy. Ouida wanted to go home, but I felt that we were surely safe with all those preachers around, especially the ones from Dallas.

Jimmy Lovell, our dear editor friend from California, was pleased to meet Ouida. He readily agreed with us that “the church” is much more than what we call “The Church of Christ” and that we need a more open view of unity and fellowship. He said that our leadership is “afraid to be honest,” while graciously conceding that that does not mean they are deliberately dishonest. He said he thought that Reuel Lemmons, editor of Firm Foundation, is about the only one that has the courage to speak out against our sectarianism.

We heard Reuel in a dinner meeting, and he did speak out against the “vicious asp-like [I think he said asp-like, not ass-like] poison” that further divides our people. Such are “congealed in a sectarian rut” and they “feed on buzzard meat.” He said such talk of being “the only loyal church” nauseated him, and he called on us to displace hate with love and suspicion with trust. It is our task to unite the Body, and he insisted that our standard is “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.” Four times he said Jesus, not doctrine. He is our standard in uniting the Body. He extolled our Restoration heritage referring to it as “a diamond in the pages of history.” But he wants a new look, new directions.

Perhaps it is my own dullness, but whether in his editorials or his public comments I find something important missing in Reuel’s pronouncements. I never hear a Such as. “We are to unite the Body,” he says. Does this mean that we are to accept the 130 Churches of Christ that are premillennial and that we have been sectarian in refusing them fellowship? Are we wrong in making instrumental music a test of fellowship and thus rejecting our two million brothers and sisters in the Christian Churches? Were we wrong in kicking Pat and Shirley Boone out of the church because of their position on glossolalia and a lot of others like them? I get the impression that the ones that are “congealed in a sectarian rut” and that “feed on buzzard’s meat” are not the folk that frequent the ACU campus and write for the Firm Foundation, but the church’s far right wing, Editor Ira Rice in particular. A person does not really speak plainly until he comes up with a “This is what I mean.” Those in Reuel’s audience would not apply his condemnation of sectarianism to themselves, but to the dissidents in the church that are calling Abilene and the like “liberals” and “false teachers.”

What amazes Ouida in all this is how many really believe what Carl Ketcherside and I are urging upon our people, but will not speak up. Those in the mission school at Abilene tell how the missionaries in the field enjoy a beautiful fellowship with Christian Church folk, but they clam up when they return to the states. Students tell us what their profs, who have to be careful about what they say, really believe. Elders tell us what certain preachers would like to say if they were freer. We kept hearing, They don’t want to lose their jobs.

You would think that if they really believe that Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus is our answer, a job wouldn’t make all that much difference. Or popularity. Or acceptance. Or a place on the lectureship circuit. “Afraid to be honest,” says our beloved California prophet. What kind of discipleship is that?

We met some beautiful people at the little Christian Church, and we had several visitors from the Church of Christ, including a number of sharp and committed students from ACU. The preacher, Paul Tabor, young and able, is a credit to us all. The Bryant-Shank ministry, whose mission is to convert denominational preachers, is after him, seeking to “reach” him for the Church of Christ. They have offered to fly him to Nashville and assure him that they have a job waiting for him, if he will leave the Christian Church and join the true church. When I met with Marvin Bryant and his elders in Dallas, I was told that I should repent for making that charge, for they never offer anybody a job. Well, here’s another case of it. I wonder if it is this kind of partyism that nauseates Reuel Lemmons.

But Abilene is beyond that kind of stuff. Christian Church fellows come from afar for schooling there and are fully accepted, even to receiving financial aid, and they report that no lines at all are drawn on them and no effort to “convert” them. And my “preaching for a Christian Church” wasn’t all that far out in Abilene, for a professor at ACU had done the same at the same place not long since, and they played the organ!

We’ll make it yet—with Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus putting it together for useven if we are scared to be honest. - the Editor