Travel Letter …

MISSION TO CANADA

In May of this year I ventured as far north as Toronto and as far east as Princeton. In between I had assignments in Pittsburgh and Lancaster, Pa., and on the way home from New Jersey I was able to spend two days in the library at the Disciples of Christ Historical Society in Nashville. In this installment I will tell you of the first part of that journey, and in the next issue I will share with you my “Pilgrimage to Princeton,” the occasion of which was the reunion of my graduating class.

In Pittsburgh I was privileged to be in the home of Frank and Undine Wiegand, people that I had known of for many years but had not yet met. Undine is the daughter of the late B. D. Phillips, a man that I much admired for his devotion to our history and heritage and for sharing his wealth with all three branches of the Restoration Movement. Impressive edifices bear his name at Bethany, Lincoln, Johnson, Milligan, Emmanuel, and Pepperdine, but even all these do not measure the reach of his philanthropy. I have been privileged to give the Restoration Lectures that are in his honor at two of the aforementioned institutions, and I like to tell the story of how Ben Phillips called my hand during a unity meeting at Bethany. In referring to his loyalty to the Bible, I said: “B. D. Phillips tells me he would not give a thin dime to an institution that does not honor the Bible in its teaching.” In his crusty, candid way he called my hand right there. “That isn’t what I said!” I studied him for a moment, wondering if I had revealed more than I should have from our private conversations, for I knew very well he had said that. He finally drawled out, “I said I wouldn’t give a plug nickel to such an institution!”

I really think it was a thin dime. but who was I to question a millionaire over a five cent piece, plugged or otherwise?

But the Wiegands are illustrious in their own right, and that is the correct adjective, for they are beautiful, spiritual people, really turned on to the Lord, and I enjoyed the weekend with them immensely. They are both busy being a blessing to the world and to the church. After a career with United Steel, he is now in private law practice in Pittsburgh. He is a teaching elder in the Mt. Lebanon Christian Church (Disciples), a church that started in their living-room some thirty years ago. He has also shared in the responsibility of giving the family fortune away. I was surprised to hear him say that it is more difficult to give money away intelligently than it is to make the money. He indicated that philanthropists sometimes err in supposing they can buy the values for others that they themselves cherish. You can’t make an institution what you want it to be by giving money to it!

I really got a bang out of my visit with the Mt. Lebanon Christian Church. Its minister, Vernon Bowers, was away watching his son take a degree from Milligan, so they asked me to speak in his place. I spoke on “Our Living Hope,” based on 1 Pet. 1:3-8, which was graciously received by a surprisingly diverse congregation. I got warm handshakes from “typical Disciples” (Is there such?) and bear hugs from “charismatics,” and there were Praise the Lords all over the place. We must be cautious about categorizing folk, for the categories just don’t work any more. For example, I am finding a lot of believers among non-instrument Churches of Christ in Texas. And what a blessing it is for a congregation to have even one real believer in its midst.

My purpose in Pittsburgh was to give two talks on our “Roots and Fruits” to a gathering of sisters and brothers from all three wings of our Movement at the Hospitality Inn, called Restoration Sunday. I told them that if the Protestants generally could have Reformation Sunday, celebrating the occasion that Luther did his thing to that cathedral door, then we could have our Restoration Sunday, especially since the two words mean about the same thing, or at least our pioneers so intended. A good date for Restoration Sunday would be the nearest first day to June 12, for on that day in 1812 the Campbells were immersed in Buffalo creek, strictly upon their profession that Jesus is the Christ. Robert Richardson surmised that that was the first time anyone had been immersed like that since apostolic times. So perhaps we should celebrate the occasion. Well, on that Restoration Sunday we all had a good time together. At dinner I sat with George and Shelbia Yates, lately from Alabama where George was a Church of Christ minister, and where Shelbia’s father is also. They are now liberated enough to enjoy the broader fellowship that they had that day. I enjoyed his telling of trying to “straighten out” Carl Ketcherside all one afternoon during one of his visits to Alabama. Things have changed dramatically for George since those days, and for Shelbia and the children as well. They still hang in, lovingly, in the Church of Christ. When one learns that “love suffers long” it can make a big difference, not only for her, but for others as well.

Dan Griggs, formerly with the Church of Christ and now a Disciples minister, bore me to the Pittsburgh airport for the flight to Toronto. On the way he took me by his home to meet his handsome family and to see his church, where Campbell once preached. Dan explains that when he was having his difficulties with the Church of Christ, in the same Pittsburgh area, that I was about the only one among us that knew how to sympathize with him. I did my best to “save” him for the Church of Christ, for we need more like him, not fewer. I was impressed that his present Disciples church is giving financial assistance to the Church of Christ that he had to leave. And so I raise the question yet again, What is fellowship?

Tragedy marred my visit to Toronto. I had hoped to be greeted by O. H. and Barbara Tallman, who had arranged for my visit to Toronto, but they were brutally murdered a few days before by an irresponsible drunk, his weapon being a 90-mile-an-hour missile, called an automobile. Instead of getting to be with O. H., whose pilgrimage from oppression to liberty I had more or less witnessed from afar over a quarter of a century, I visited his lovely farm horne, now silenced by his passing. One of our brightest minds and onetime minister to the Manhattan Church of Christ in New York, he had finally quit preaching and gone into business, partly because of having to go through a cruel divorce and knowing that his people would no longer accept him as a divorced preacher. Thanks to a free, spiritual Church of Christ near his horne in Lockport, N.Y., O.H. found himself as the great teacher of the word he always was. They accepted him and his wife of two years, and life was again sweet, beautiful and fruitful. Then came the drunk with his missile, which O.H. could not avoid even by pulling off the road. The missile honed in on him and his lovely wife as if it had them on radar. They died within a few hours, having never regained consciousness. The killer, an American Indian, was inconvenienced by a few days in the hospital, with broken ribs, and he yet has to face judgment in a New York court for criminal homicide, but he will never know and is incapable of appreciating the sweetness and beauty of the two lives brought to an abrupt end insofar as this world is concerned.

I have long since ceased trying to give a rationale, a theodicy, for such gross injustices. Why didn’t O. H. have the broken ribs and the drunk have his head crushed, which is the way I would have arranged it, if there had to be a smash-up? At 61, O. H. had found a new wholeness and his best years were yet to come. Why? There is no answer, except that of child-like trust. We simply have to accept what we can’t understand. As I walked about his little farm with his sister Lena Pierce and her husband, Don, I felt the futility of trying to make sense of our world. There was his name “O. H. Tallman” on the mailbox at the roadside, the fruit trees he had recently planted, and a score of other signs of his handiwork as he “plowed in hope” on his own acreage.

Shortly after I heard of the tragedy and just before leaving for Toronto, I was in the TCU library in Ft. Worth, where I often go for research. For the first time I noticed that they had the bound Firm Foundation back through the years. Strictly at random I took one of the volumes in hand, to inspect the binding. The 1957 volume fell open at page 102, and there before my eyes was an article on “Representing Others’ Faith” by O. H. Tallman, back when his articles were still accepted by the Church of Christ press, and during those stormy days when he was being rejected as one of our “liberals.” The article set forth ten principles to follow in passing judgment upon others, the first of which was Use the imagination to create the climate of love. “Think of him as one you love most, like a brother or a son,” he commented under that point. I was so impressed that I would come upon that rare article in such a manner that I resolved to use it in my first presentation at the Toronto meeting.

I was put up in the small dorm of the Ontario Christian Seminary, which, because school was out, was occupied by only three others, one of whom was black. The tiny seminary, which is really a Bible College, is unusually well staffed, and there is an aura of loyalty and dedication on the part of faculty and students alike. It is a cooperative effort of our Christian Church brethren. In behind the three-story home that houses the seminary is St. John’s Anglican Church, and that’s where we met for our evening sessions. A seminary classroom was sufficient for our afternoon sessions, where we had some helpful discussions on our common problems.

At the evening lectures I reviewed the history of our people, showing the biblical basis of our plea, and that Jesus and the scriptures are our tradition. And that we were a movement uniting before we became a movement dividing, pointing to the difference between the two. Some were surprised to learn how diverse our people were when they united their forces back in 1832, that they had greater differences (the Stone and Campbell churches did) between them when they united than we had when we divided. Unity and division are not, therefore, caused so much by unanimity of viewpoint or doctrinal differences but by attitudes toward each other.

I met many delightful people, many of them native Canadians, who pronounce words like “house” in such a way that most Texans wouldn’t know what they are talking about, but then again Canadians have so much going for them that they couldn’t care less what Texans do or do not understand. There is a fierce loyalty in the Canadian psyche, and I admire it. There were some Church of Christ leaders in the general area from the States that had misgivings about “fellow shipping” Christian Church folk. I suppose most of these stayed away, but this did not bother the Canadians at all. They can take you or leave you. They had rather take you than leave you, I think, but they are not impressed by big money” big churches, or hot air.

I would like to name all those that I came to know and love, folk who took me into their homes and loved me as if I were a Canadian Christian, even if I were from Texas! But I must mention one young lady named Martha Rorabeck, who is the secretary at the seminary. It was her assignment to take me to Emmanuel College of the University of Toronto (by subway) to see the library deposited there by the late Reuben Butchart, the Canadian historian whose study of Canadian Disciples I have long admired. They are kept locked in an inner room, but I had permission to examine them. I was acquainted with most of the titles, but I delighted in seeing some of his notes on flyleafs, and an occasional card or letter inserted, one of which was from Al DeGroot, an American historian, who was commending him for his historical studies of Canadian origins of our movement.

Martha, who is only 21, and I had a good time at a soup/sandwich place in downtown Toronto. She asked me if I thought she ought to join the Church of Christ (or Christian Church), for, as she put it, “I’m an immersed believer, just a Christian—not even a Christian Christian.” Not even a Christian Christian! I got a charge out of that one. My answer was that she is already in the Church of Christ, and that there is nothing left for her to join, except it be a local congregation, and that that would depend on circumstances. But if she meant the “Church of Christ” or “Christian Church” Church of Christ, then No, that she has no obligation to join any party, not even a “Christian” party. I saw in her that tough, disciplined, indomitable will of the Canadians. It was her forebears that started a Restoration Movement in Canada quite apart from the American effort, and those who bear their torch can do very well on their own and with the Lord, with or without our help, thank you! —the Editor