Pilgrimage of Joy. . . No. 40

REVIEWING OUR HERITAGE
W. Carl Ketcherside

The year of 1966 was destined to be one of violence at home and abroad. We were still entangled in war in Vietnam which was taking such a toll in lives and finance. And right in the middle of the year police in Chicago discovered the bodies of eight student nurses brutally murdered in the townhouse they shared. Fear gripped the hearts of those within the “Windy City” until police apprehended Richard Speck, an ex-convict and charged him with the killings. Two weeks later, Charles J. Whitman, an architectural student at the University of Texas, climbed into a tower and killed 15 persons and wounded 31 others before he was himself killed.

On March 16, astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and David R. Scott made the first of five successful Two-man Gemini spacecraft dockings, linking up with an Agena Target vehicle. On June 7, James Meredith, whose enrollment at the University of Mississippi in 1962 touched off massive riots, was shot from ambush on the second day of a projected hike of 260 miles from Memphis, Tennessee, to Jackson, Mississippi, to encourage Negroes to vote. Once again we demonstrated how great our technological skills were for handling acute problems of space, and how far behind we were in handling the agonizing problems of human behavior on earth.

The year was noteworthy in the restoration movement circles of which we were a part also. March 4, marked exactly a hundred years from the death of Alexander Campbell. I went back and read once again the touching story of his dying as written by Dr. Robert Richardson, who preached the funeral discourse in God’s Acre, at Bethany, before hundreds from all walks of life who came to honor the memory of this great man.

On September 1, the 150th anniversary of his “Sermon on the Law” was celebrated. It was this noble defense of the Good News from heaven given before the Redstone Baptist Association in 1816, which aroused so much hostility and created such animosity toward Campbell. He was ahead of his time. Today his message would hardly create a ripple on the surface of the muddled theological waters, but when delivered it cut right to the heart of things. It seems peculiar that the creeds of men are no longer the great issue among believers in Christ.

We had a gathering at Bethany during the year. It featured men and women from all of the major divisions of the movement. All of us stayed in the dormitory which gave us an opportunity to talk together between sessions. We also ate in the cafeteria and shared insights as we ate. Our discussions were held in Richardson Memorial Lecture Hall, and were generally very gracious. Brother Cawyer, an elder from Abilene, Texas, and a man I had known since childhood, tried to start an argument over music and kindred matters but served only to let off some of his own steam. No one was there to debate. During the sessions I heard Dr. Perry Epler Gresham deliver one of the finest speeches about Campbell that I have ever heard. He was an orator of the old school, and a real patron of a lost art.

On Sunday we held our meeting in the old brick meetinghouse which has been preserved, although only used upon occasions like this. We sat in the straight-backed seats and sang only hymns that dated back more than a century. We had no instrument. A sister had prepared a loaf as it used to be done, and we used the two silver chalices from which to drink the fruit of the vine. They had been used by the congregation in its earlier days, and were brought from the Campbell museum for the occasion. It was easy to envision the saints of old gathering in their simplicity and humility, with the freed slaves sitting on the back rows.

It was the same house in which the venerable Thomas Campbell had given his farewell address on June 1, 1851, at the age of 88 years. With his hearing greatly impaired and totally blind, he had to be transported to the place on a horse-drawn sled, prepared for the occasion. His text was Matthew 22:37-40. I was chosen together with Seth Wilson of Ozark Bible College to do the preaching. I was pleased to address such a select group upon the Lord’s table as a symbol of our unity. We parted at the door after having demonstrated the power of the Good News to unite the hearts of those who truly love Him.

During the year it was my privilege to address the Seventh Consultation on Internal Unity of the Christian Churches held at Enid, Oklahoma. Men from the Independent Christian Churches and Disciples of Christ periodically met to discuss their division and determine what grounds there might be for resumption of a working relationship. I was invited as a kind of “neutral” to serve as a Biblical lecturer at each session. It was there I first presented the thinking which later found its way into print as “The Death of the Custodian—the case of the missing tutor.”

I postulated that our relationship with heaven was covenantal, and that it was by grace and not by law. We must choose between love of law or the law of love, and the choice must be individual. It was in this series I first coined a number of phrases which I have since employed, such as “legalism has made of us good lawyers, but God designed for us to be great lovers.” The series was well-received but it became apparent that the brethren were far apart theologically. But it served to convince me of one great thing which has proven to be invaluable to me. Unity will never become a kind of organizational get-together. In the final analysis it is personal.

On June 15, I brought out the first edition of the book “Voices of Concern,” edited by Robert Meyers, at the time a minister for the Riverside Church of Christ, and a professor of English at Friends University, in Wichita. Bob was eminently qualified for the work of bringing out such a volume. He had been chewed up by the brotherhood “meat grinder” and thrown to the lions at Harding, much to the discomfiture of the lions. He graduated summa cum laude from Abilene Christian College, received an M. A. from the University of Oklahoma, and a Ph. D. from the Washington University. He took special courses at Oxford University and at Salisbury, in England.

The book featured one chapter each from seventeen outstanding men and women who were or had been affiliated with the Church of Christ. It was written in compassion and with a tinge of sorrow that it had to be produced by these people at all. In a well-phrased preface the editor wrote, “Their hope was that this book would so alter conditions that no other volume of this kind would ever need to be written.” Almost from its inception it came under attack and was subjected to bitter criticism. It could not be ignored. The writers were not ignorant, but were among the most brilliant thinkers produced within the Churches of Christ in this generation.

Not everything written about it was bad. It was reviewed in numerous periodicals, many of them outside the Church of Christ. Their favorable reports caused it to be widely read. It represented a complete reversal of policy and a new approach to journalism among Churches of Christ. We were attacked because we had disclosed sad and sordid things which had always been swept under the “brotherhood rug.” For years the references to it in “Church of Christ journals” were all of vinegar mingled with gall. But “the cat was out of the sack” and there was no way now to capture the feline quietly. It is interesting that, after the book went. out of print, we still received many calls for it. Even now, after fourteen years, people write us wanting to know where they can obtain a copy, and offering premium prices for it.

Meanwhile I was busy traveling. I conducted a Forum on Fellowship at Lancaster, California; and a Conference on Evangelism at San Jose Bible College. I spoke at the State Christian Convention at Clovis, New Mexico; at the Mid-State Christian Men’s Preaching Rally, at Mt. Zion, Ill.; at the Christian Student Fellowship, at Lexington, Kentucky; at the Christian Evangelistic Society Convention, at Pittsburgh, Penn.; at the Commencement and Preacher’s Institute at Alberta Christian College, in Canada; at Kingdom Builder’s Fellowship at Sumner, Illinois; at the School of Ministry, Milligan College, Tennessee; at the Blue Ridge Clinic, Hillsvale, Virginia; at Mountain States Christian Men’s Retreat, Bluefield, West Virginia; and at the College-Career conference in Southern California.

These were but a few of the places to which I went during the year. I was also editing the paper, bringing out books, and doing a full service effort in Saint Louis. Everywhere I went I took the message that all of us could be one in Christ, and none of us give up any truth he had ever held. I defined fellowship as the sharing of a common life—eternal life. Many were not ready for it. Brethren were afraid of it. They had lived so long behind the walls of their self-imposed exiles that they felt protected and shaded. The elders of the Chestnut Drive Church of Christ in Doraville, Georgia issued a “white paper” in opposition to the things “Mr. Ketcherside” said on fellowship in Atlanta. I was not recognized as a brother by these unfortunate persons. I mentioned it without rancor in Mission Messenger and urged everyone to write for a copy and read carefully the negative opinions it expressed. It was obvious that in Church of Christ circles fellowship was conditioned upon what you were against, rather than who you were for.

I was not deterred by the attacks upon me, either made clandestinely or openly. When I first sat down several years before and worked out the strategy for my attack upon the sectarian spirit, I recognized that it would be unsuccessful if I allowed myself to become ruffled or lost my ability to show love for those who counted themselves to be my enemies. I resolved to remain calm and cool under fire. Regardless of the misrepresentations of my position I must never stoop to the employment of such methods. It has paid off to be fair, just and equitable.

The Hartford (Illinois) Forum, held in December of 1966, was on the theme “The Holy Spirit in Our Lives Today.” It brought together men from the Disciples of Christ, Christian Churches, and three different segments of the Church of Christ brotherhood. Some were charismatic while others were opposed to it. There was not one untoward moment. We came together as brethren and left with the feeling heightened above what it was when we came.

When Roy Key, of Ames, Iowa delivered his gracious message on “The Holy Spirit and Our Prayer Life” he touched a responsive chord in every heart. Bro. Key grew up in the Churches of Christ. All of his family were still members of it. But he was so abused and mistreated by brethren that he was literally driven out. During his address he told the touching story of Roland Hayes, the talented black singer who sang before the crowned heads of Europe, but who later returned to the old plantation where his mother had been a slave. There was hardly a dry eye in the house as Roy painted the picture of his confrontation with the old master and mistress and the forgiveness he felt in his heart. It was a great meeting, a good one, and it made all of us regret when it was over and we had to return home to the divisions that existed.