Highlights in Restoration History …

HOW ABOUT THE CHURCH OF CHRIST PIONEERS

Elsewhere in this issue we have raised the question as to whether the Churches of Christ could or would fellowship Alexander Campbell if he were now among us, believing and practicing what he did a century or more ago. Since Campbell is not as warmly received among us as some of the more conservative pioneers of the second generation, it is proper to add a footnote or two and ask some questions about some of the others.

It is now common knowledge that by the time of the national census of 1906 the Churches of Christ were for all practical purposes a separate communion from the Christian Churches. Because of this we tend to honor those men who were on “our side” of the controversies that led to the division, and so they have become our pioneers in a special way, while we accept with dampened enthusiasm the likes of Thomas and Alexander Campbell, John T. Johnson, Robert Richardson and Isaac Errett. These were, after all, “society men.”

The Church of Christ pioneers are J.W. McGarvey, Moses E. Lard, Tolbert Fanning, and Benjamin Franklin. Our graduate students like to do their theses on these men, and in at least one of our colleges there are “McGarvey scholarships,” which is far more predictable than “Errett scholarships.”

But even these men make an interesting study, if we raise the question as to whether the Churches of Christ would really accept these men.

Take the greatest of the heroes, J. W. McGarvey, who is presumed to be “Church of Christ” to the core. His essays against instrumental music are still being republished these days, and his rigid stand against the emergence of “modernism” is still proudly hailed. But McGarvey’s position on the instrument was not the same as today’s Churches of Christ, for, while he opposed it, he did not make it a test of fellowship. He did not withdraw fellowship from those who disagreed with him, even though he chose to be a member of a non-instrument church. He continued working with the instrumentalists, such as his cooperative efforts with W. K. Pendleton in publishing commentaries and his faculty position with the College of the Bible.

Moreover J. W. McGarvey was an enthusiastic “society man,” supporting and taking a leading role in the doings of the American Christian Missionary Society. When the national convention of 1890 formed the Board of Negro Education and Evangelization in an effort to reach more blacks with the gospel, J. W. McGarvey was a member of the original board.

But these boards, societies, and agencies are one reason why the Churches of Christ today reject the Christian Churches and Disciples of Christ as the true church. How about brother McGarvey? Was he a “faithful” preacher, aiding and abetting the missionary societies and boards?

By the way, McGarvey also believed, like Campbell, in an important distinction between preaching and teaching, or between gospel and doctrine, which would be enough to get him withdrawn from by the Churches of Christ in Denton, Texas, for one “bull” listed that point as a major offense against a dissenting group.

It was Moses E. Lard, however, who came the nearest projecting the Church of Christ position. He did make the instrument a test of fellowship, urging the brethren not even to go to church rather than attend where there was an organ. “The day on which a church sets up an organ in its house,” he thundered, “is the day on which it reaches the first station on the road to apostasy.” He insisted that preachers should never minister where the brethren have an organ, which he branded as that “infamous box.”

Lard was also on the right side when it came to “fellowshipping the sects,” which was an issue in his day. He opposed “communing” with them until they were immersed, and when someone asked him as to whether he considered Martin Luther a Christian, he asserted in no uncertain terms that Luther was not a Christian unless he was immersed.

How can you be any sounder than that? But before you make him the patron saint of the schools of preaching you had better hear the rest of the story.

Hold on to your seat for this one! Moses E. Lard was a premillennialist! In vol. 2, p. 14 of his Quarterly he is unequivocal: “I hence conclude that Christ will literally come in person at the commencement of the millennium, and literally remain here on earth during the entire thousand years.” He’ll never get a scholarship fund named after him at Sunset School of Preaching writing like that. When he wrote like that in 1864, there were some critical responses, but no issue was made of it either way.

That Lard as a conservative would be a premillennialist is not surprising to one acquainted with history of doctrine, for conservatives, except for classical conservatives like Machen and Warfield, are usually premillennial. Amillennial views usually go with more liberal theology. That Churches of Christ today should be rabidly amillennial, even to the point of making premillennialism a test of fellowship, is odd, and can be accounted for as much on personal grounds as theological.

Anyway, that takes care of poor brother Lard, for he certainly cannot be a faithful pioneer for the Church of Christ as an uncompromising premillennialist, as “sound” as he was otherwise. It might be added that he too was a “society man,” and when the missionary society was in danger of folding and they started “the Louisville Plan” in an effort to save it, Moses Lard served on the committee.

So did Benjamin Franklin. Even though he was very conservative and led in the opposition to “communing with the sects,” he was an advocate of the missionary society.

The only one among the Church of Christ pioneers (named here) that opposed the missionary society was Tolbert Fanning, and even he favored it “in principle.” First an advocate of the societies, he turned against them when they presumed powers that he thought went too far. But he was always for “consultations” in which the churches cooperated in various enterprises, even to sending out preachers. In his helpful study on Tolbert Fanning, The Hazard of the Die, James R. Wilburn makes it clear that Fanning did not object to the society per se, and that he was always an advocate of cooperative enterprises between congregations.

It is rather ironic that the Tennessee Churches of Christ, led by Tolbert Fanning in the years before the Civil War, were very cooperative and societal in their work, even to having a state missionary society.

Furthermore, Fanning makes less than an ideal Church of Christ hero because of his adamant opposition to the pastoral system that allows one man to do most or all of the preaching in a congregation at a stipulated salary, to the neglect of the proper function of the elders and other qualified teachers.

In fact Fanning would consider today’s Churches of Christ as apostate because of this practice. He said as much: “Whenever a people cease to perform their own praying, singing, admonishing, exhorting, and in a word, worship, private and public, they are to all intents and purposes apostate, and they constitute the greatest stumbling blocks of the age to infidels.” Referring to churches in Russellville, Alabama and Columbus, Miss., which he had organized, he wrote in 1844:

“For about a year the disciples met and attended to their own worship; but unfortunately, they finally employed preachers to worship for them a good portion of the time; since which time they have not done too well. The best preacher in the world, preaching three times on every Lord’s day, to keep the saints alive, will kill them spiritually; and without great care, eternally.”

McGarvey, Lard, Fanning, and Franklin. None of them will do as suitable reflections of the Church of Christ mind. In becoming exclusivistic and anti, in which lines are drawn on others because of differences in opinions and methods, the Churches of Christ are separated from their history and heritage, with no great figure to reflect their ways and attitudes, and this would include even David Lipscomb, who came along later. Their own history teaches them that they have no choice but to fellowship “brothers in error,” for they simply have none others to fellowship, either from the past or present. This demand for a crass uniformity, where everybody must see alike on all “the issues,” simply will not wash.

The lesson from history is clear. We must cease being exclusivistic and anti in terms of fellowship. We can be non-instrumentalists, like McGarvey was, without being anti-instrumentalists. We can be non-cooperative or non-missionary society (though we really do have the same thing in principle!) like Fanning was (part of the time), without being anti-societal.

There is a big difference between believing we are right in not using the instrument or supporting societies, and in believing we are right and everybody else is wrong. If we are right in our narrow views, then we stand alone in history, even in our own history, and we could not even fellowship our most conservative pioneers, not a one of them.

A people without roots is likely to be a people without fruit. —the Editor