THEY HAD A WAY WITH SLOGANS

Pithy capsules of ideas have often captured the essence of new patterns of thought. “Knowledge is power” summarized the inductive method introduced by Francis Bacon in the seventeenth century somewhat like “The unexamined life is not worth living” caught the essence of Socrates’ humanistic thinking in the fourth century B. C. Even homely philosophers have couched important truths in such epigrams as “A stitch in time saves nine” and “A rolling stone gathers no moss.”

A band of immigrant preachers from Scotland and Ireland on the American frontier in the early nineteenth century embarked upon a reformation within the churches that eventually led to three new denominations, even though they did not intend for that to happen. The Disciples of Christ, Churches of Christ, and Christian Churches grew out of this effort, numbering today around five million members. The intention of the pioneers, however, was to start no new church but to launch a movement within the existing churches for the unity of all Christians. Since they appealed to “a restoration of the ancient order” it has often been called the Restoration Movement, though they usually thought of themselves as reformers.

Some of the slogans they came up with tell the story. There was, for instance, “We speak where the scriptures speak and we are silent where the scriptures are silent,” coined by Thomas Campbell in 1804. It shows how they chose to be non-creedal, which was a revolutionary concept in the churches on the American frontier, which were unduly influenced by Calvinism. Campbell did not mean, of course, that all the components of the on-going of the church are stipulated in the New Testament, as if it were a blueprint for all details, but that only the Bible, apart from human creeds, would be the rule of faith and practice, and that nothing would be required of Christians except what is clearly set forth in scripture.

Since unity was their business, they found slogans that capsulized their thought, such as “In matters of faith unity, in matters of opinion liberty, in all things love.” They borrowed this from the Reformation under Luther, which was originally stated as In fundamentals unity, in non-fundamentals liberty, in all things charity. It stands today as the church’s most generally accepted epigram and yet the most widely neglected. Everyone agrees that we should unite on the fundamentals and graciously allow for differences in opinions, but we have difficulty agreeing on what is a matter of faith and what is a matter of opinion. But these reformers were convinced they had the answer: matters of faith (the fundamentals) are explicitly set forth in scripture, such as the seven unities of Ephesians 4, while opinions are the deductions drawn from what the Bible says, and often from what the Bible says nothing about.

Another unity motto was “We are free to differ but not to divide,” which reflects their intolerance for a divided church, as is seen in Paul’s Is Christ divided? If Christ is not divided, the church cannot be divided. We cannot solve our problems by walking out and starting “a true church,” lest Christians end up with hundreds of “true” churches, which unfortunately is what has happened. The answer, they said, was to allow for differences and diversity within the church, looking for conformity only on the fundamentals of the faith. This is why Thomas Campbell further stated, “The Church of Christ on earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one.” By its very nature it is one and cannot be divided. It became his goal, therefore, to recapture or restore the church’s innate but lost oneness. It was a noble goal.

These pioneers practiced what they preached. Even though they were two or three separate unity movements, by 1832 they declared themselves one people in a gathering in Lexington, Ky., uniting the forces generally associated with Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell. At that time they numbered about 25,000, but by the close of the Civil War they had grown to upwards of a quarter of a million. Unity was their plea, and with it came more epigrams. Stone liked to say, “Let Christian unity be our polar start,” by which he meant that it is only a united church that can fulfill the mission of converting the world. They also insisted that “Christian unity is our business,” which shows that they knew where they were going.

Second and third generations often compromise the ideals of the first, and this is what happened to what might be called the Stone-Campbell unity movement. A new leadership emerged that lost sight of the vision expressed in the slogans, and so opinions were crystallized into tests of fellowship and deductions into unwritten creeds. Part of the movement became exclusivistic, assuming that they and they alone were the true church. While the pioneers had insisted in still another slogan that they were “Christians only,” believing that in that name all believers could unite, the new leadership supposed that they were the only Christians. By the turn of the twentieth century the movement that had been launched to unite the Christians in all the sects had itself divided. It is ironic that “unitists” should become so divisive, for they continued to divide something like once every decade in the twentieth century.

But truth crushed to earth, as the poet suggests, has a way of rising again. The ideals of the pioneers live on among these people. Thousands who are unity conscious are looking for ways to heal the factious wounds within and to rebuild the movement that called for the equality of all Chrisitans. A layman from one of the segments of this movement mixes judgment with hope in his view of the future:

“It is time for all of us to rise above the narrow partisan approach and to restore the spirit of the restoration movement. It means a recapture of the true sense of brotherhood in Christ Jesus based on the new birth. It does not mean the adoption of a single thing that you regard as an innovation or which you cannot conscientiously condone. It does not involve a change of procedure where you worship. It does involve a change of heart toward those baptized believers who do not proceed as you do. It does not require surrender of any truth you hold, or of anything you hold to be a truth. It only involves renunciation of the greatest error Satan ever palmed off upon us: the fallacy that we can argue ourselves into unity, split ourselves into harmony and divide ourselves into oneness.” (Arthur T. Boone, A Trimming of the Wick, p. 117)

(This essay was prepared for Letters, a magazine that circulates among college students who have no particular knowledge of our history. We hope it will give them some insight into the “spirit” of Christian Church-Church of Christ backgrounds. --- Editor)