Highlights in Restoration History. . .

THE MAN WHO NAMED TWO CHURCHES

Rice Haggard’s name suffers from an undeserved obscurity, for as we learn more about him we may have to agree with the late Colby Hall of Texas Christian University, who is his only biographer, that he deserves a place alongside Barton Stone, Alexander and Thomas Campbell, and Walter Scott. While he lived and died (in 1819) without having even heard of the Campbells, it is noteworthy that he anticipated much of what they were to teach a generation later.

When James O’Kelly, who is only slightly better known in our history, broke with Bishop Francis Asbury and the Methodists in 1794 and started his own denomination, which he tentatively named the Republican Methodist Church, Rice Haggard was at his side. O’Kelly and Haggard were among Asbury’s circuit-riders; and they shared the unbelievable hardships of pioneers on horseback who were forging a new frontier as well as planting the Methodist faith in a newly-born nation. When George Washington was sworn in only five years earlier as the country’s first President, he voiced sentiment that could be shared by every circuit-rider: I walk on untrodden ground.

Had Francis Asbury not been an austere dictator, which Methodist historians concede, the Movement of which we are heirs might never have happened, for it was this that led James O’Kelly to defect from that courageous effort to transplant the Methodist Church from England to a land where freedom of religion was not yet fully realized. It was not doctrinal differences that led to the breach, but simply a desire to be free in Christ.

It was Haggard, more than O’Kelly, who soon began to champion the cause of Christian unity on a frontier where only 5% of the population were members of any church, and yet the churches were so creed-bound as to war with each other in their struggle for the souls of men. When O’Kelly’s church was but a year old, it was Haggard who stood before its first convention, holding his New Testament aloft and urged that they look to the scriptures only as their rule of faith and practice. He further urged that they be “Christians simply,” basing his appeal upon Acts 11 :26, “The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.” The motion was accepted and so they began to call themselves Christians and their church the Christian Church. This took place at the Old Lebanon Church, formerly a Methodist Church, in Surry County, Virginia, 1794. Haggard had named his first church, right out of the Bible!

Haggard got his idea of “Christians simply” from correspondence with John Wesley in England, who urged his people in the new world to be “downright Christians.” After all, Methodist was but a nickname and Wesley did not favor partyism of any kind. This is the origin of the epigram Christians only, which is accepted by all heirs of the Movement.

But Haggard was to name still another church. In our December issue we reviewed the reformation of Barton Stone and other Presbyterian ministers which led to the formation of the Springfield Presbytery and then finally to the writing of The Last Will and Testament, which occurred ten years after the O’Kelly break. Writing afterwards in his Biography, Stone explains why his people came to wear the name Christian: “We published a pamphlet on this name, written by Elder Rice Haggard, who had lately united with us.”

So Haggard named or re-named two churches, who dropped their party names and became simply the Christian Church. This was considered the same as Church of Christ, so the names were used interchangeably. Stone often designated himself as Barton W. Stone, E. C. C., which meant Elder, Church of Christ, which he sometimes spelled out.

While Stone’s reference to Haggard’s pamphlet revealed that such a document had been published, it was lost to historians until 1954 when it was found by John Neth, librarian at Milligan College, who found it after a search of many years. It has been republished by the Disciples of Christ Historical Society, a reading of which will convince one that Rice Haggard was indeed one of the founding fathers of our Movement.

The pamphlet, An Address to the Different Religious Societies on the Sacred Import of the Christian Name, was unsigned, which made it difficult to locate and identify. Its purpose was to convince the various parties that there is one sure way to unity, which is for all party names to be laid aside and for all to become simply Christians, which is the name God gave to his church. Like Thomas Campbell, who wrote a similar document a few years later, Haggard discerned the evil effects of a divided church:

“To me it appears that if the wisdom and subtlety of all the devils in hell had been engaged in ceaseless counsels from eternity, they could not have devised a more complete plan to advance their kingdom than to divide the members of Christ’s body.”

If that quote does not rival any of those that are often quoted from our pioneers, then perhaps this will:

One thing I know, that wherever non-essentials are made terms of communion, it will never fail to have a tendency to disunite and scatter the church of Christ.

This insight anticipated the slogan that was afterwards to find expression and which is still current in the Movement: In essentials unity, in opinions liberty, in all things charity. Haggard expressed concern that “things which will be granted to be not essential to the salvation of the soul should so long have been made terms of communion.”

This has always been the albatross about our necks, even as far back as our Scottish roots: the tendency to impose opinions or non-essentials upon our sisters and brothers, making them tests of fellowship. Haggard realized that such an attitude always tends to divide the Body.

In describing the evils of sectarianism Haggard observed that a party makes loyalty to its own peculiarities more important than the cultivation of Christian character, and that while it may concede that others may have some truth it and it alone has all truth. He also notes that a party is more likely to censure its members for infractions of its party standards than for lying or drunkenness. He furthermore states that the way to unity is for all believers to adhere to what is actually recorded in scripture rather than upon party creeds. And so he gives an impressive one-liner: Let none be excommunicated from the church but for a breach of the divine law.

This is similar to what Thomas Campbell was to write in the Declaration and Address: “No man has a right to judge, to exclude, or reject his professing Christian brother, except in so far as he stands condemned or rejected by the express letter of the law.”

These men were influenced by Paul’s principle of freedom in Rom. 14: “Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth.” We have been less than faithful to such a heritage, for we have drawn the line on our loved ones in Christ over matters that are not “the express letter of the law.” But I am impressed when I find those amidst the conflicts who refuse to make their opinions laws for others. Such a one was R. B. Neal, who wrote in the Gospel Advocate back in 1889 during the organ controversy. “They are brethren,” he wrote, “and not for my right arm would I teach men to make instrumental music a test of Christian fellowship.” Shades of Rice Haggard, the man who revived the name Christian and who insisted that it is Christian character that is the basis of fellowship. It was when our people forsook this principle, putting pettiness before Christian love, that we became a divided people.

It is noteworthy that Haggard did his thing before the Campbells came to this country, and his unity-reformation movement was under way several years before Stone. His unity pamphlet is not only the first major document in our history, but it is among the first ecumenical documents in American church history.

Had he not died at the young age of 50 he would have witnessed the acceptance of his “great idea” on the part of thousands and the eventual union of the Campbell-Stone movements of which he was a forerunner. His wife survived him by 43 years, and when she died her obituary appeared in Campbell’s paper, in which she and her husband were hailed as being among those pioneers who “prepared the way for reformation.”

We have a heritage to keep, not to forget. --- the Editor