Pilgrimage of Joy… No. 53

SPECTERS FROM THE PAST AT LEXINGTON
W. Carl Ketcherside

In my last installment I was in Friona, Texas. It is one of the great cattle feeding places in the United States. We visited one of the feeding pens. There were thousands of cattle. Everything was mechanized. The feed was mixed with supplements in a towering silo and fed by augers into the troughs. All the cattle did was to come and eat. It was almost like the church in a lot of places. The herd had nothing to do with selection. They had to take what was supplied. It was put into the feed trough and they could not question it. They must either eat it or sleep through it.

I went next to Portales, New Mexico, where I was a guest in the home of Frank Poynor, a brother with whom I had corresponded, and whom I had come to love. Our meeting was held in the Conference Room at the City Library. It was my privilege to have a number of young people from the New Mexico State College with us. A goodly number of them had recently left the large Church of Christ in the city and had started to meet to themselves. They had done so because they thought it was essential to protect their freedom from prejudice.

It all started over a Bible study held on campus. The young people were baptizing a number of other students. They obtained permission to use the baptistry at the church building. There was some objection to the dress of some of them. They wore jeans. They allowed their hair to grow a little longer than the people were accustomed to. They ignored the pews and sat down on the steps to the pulpit and on the floor surrounding the baptistry. They sang choruses. When one was baptized they lifted up their hands to God and praised Him. They hugged the person while he was still dripping wet. The deacon who was taking care of the building and unlocking the door became infuriated. He declared, “Not only did they not sit on the comfortable pews we had provided, but they sat there and sang songs that were not even in our books.” So they left and began meeting where they were cemented together and not concretized.

At Lubbock our meeting was held in the Student Center at Texas Tech. It was preceded by a small gathering in the home of Dr. Thomas Langford, dean of the university, and a real man of God. A number of friends dropped in to talk about the progress of reformation. They were overjoyed with what was happening. The meeting at the center brought together a goodly number of readers of Mission Messenger in the area, some of them secretly “for fear of the Pharisees.” There were also students present from Lubbock Christian College as well as from the local school of preaching. It was quite obvious I was saying some things they did not hear daily. I was “bringing certain strange things to their ears.”

The question period was particularly penetrating. One young man asked if I were not afraid that I might be advocating heresy. I replied that I was even more afraid that he would confuse orthodoxy with heresy, and pointed out that it was Erasmus who said, “By identifying the new learning with heresy, you make orthodoxy synonymous with ignorance.” I then mentioned that every reformer in history had been branded a heretic by the establishment. Luther, Huss, Calvin, Wesley and even Alexander Campbell. If I were a heretic I was in good company. All of these were hounded and harassed, driven out and persecuted during their lifetimes, and it was only after they had been dead a hundred years that they became heroes. Anyone who differs with us, who does not parrot the traditional ideas is regarded as a heretic. We mistake walking in the old paths with wallowing in the old ruts. It is not wrong to dissent. It may be wrong not to do so. The status quo is not sacred. We have to be willing to be reckoned as oddballs rather than to play ball sometimes.

It came to me that the reason these diverse people could come and hear me was because I represented no party or sect. I belonged solely to Jesus. I was continually astounded by the fact that people could grow up in the same community and know nothing about their “other brethren.” There were six different groups present at Lubbock. Each of them knew only a certain group of preachers. They read only their own party papers. I introduced some who had met in business transactions but did not know each other as Christians. They could hear me with a clear conscience because I no longer represented any of them. I was simply a member of the fellowship of the unashamed. My only creed was Christ, my only law was love. I did not shrink from questions of anyone.

At Ruidoso, New Mexico, the following night, we met in the Luncheon Room at the Chaparral Motel. There were not many of us but it was a thrill to sit down and discuss “kingdom matters” with those who had vowed allegiance to the king. After it was allover we went to the lovely home of Brother Teague and continued talking until it was quite late. I have often wondered about those whom I met. I have heard of none of them during the years that have elapsed. Are they still faithful to the principles about which we talked, or has the lure of the world deflected them from their goal?

After a brief series at Ferry Road Church of Christ in Waynesville, Ohio, I went to the banquet held in the Student Center ballroom, at the University of Kentucky, in Lexington. I never visit the city without feeling a sense of something bordering upon awe. The cause was established there by Barton Warren Stone in 1816, with 24 members. It was here, just sixteen years later that the Disciples and Christians united in a meeting which began on New Year’s Day and continued four days. On the following Lord’s Day they communed together and pledged to each other their cooperation.

It was in Lexington that the debate between Alexander Campbell and N. L. Rice was held. It began at 10 o’clock, Wednesday, November 15, 1843. It lasted fifteen days. Each disputant made 64 speeches. The published account filled a book of 912 pages of small closely set type. Mr. Rice proved to be the most difficult opponent Mr. Campbell had met during his whole career. In 1847 the church in Lexington was the largest in the state. It contained 382 members. It had been beset by trouble over various things from the beginning. From 1864 to 1870 instrumental music became the most bitterly discussed issue in the Millennial Harbinger and in Lard’s Quarterly. Some of its greatest antagonists were in Kentucky. Among these were J. W. McGarvey, Moses E. Lard, and I. B. Grubbs. Brother McGarvey withdrew his membership from the Broadway Church when the instrument was installed. But he never made it a test of fellowship. He still returned to Broadway to preach when invited to do so. He professed a sincere love for all of the brethren there. He was big enough to distinguish between fellowship of God’s children and participation in a practice which he could not condone.

When I visit Lexington it seems that I am in a microcosm of the entire movement. Specters from the past appear to materialize out of the gloom. Heroes of yesterday who “waxed valiant in fight and turned to flight the armies of the aliens” seem to hover about. But gone is the deep seated spiritual dedication combined with intellectualism of the highest sort. What a privilege it would be to sit at the feet of Campbell, Stone and McGarvey. I spoke at the banquet on the topic “The Battle of the Pea Patch,” drawn from 2 Samuel 23:11, 12.

I went next to Belmont Avenue congregation in Nashville. This was a unique and free congregation. Some had been excommunicated by Churches of Christ in the area because their opinions did not jibe with the establishment. Others had just grown tired and left of their own accord. They were searching for green pastures. They were tired of munching on dried hay. There were jeans-wearing, long-haired kids in the number, but there were also doctors, lawyers, professors and businessmen. All got along well. The only test of fellowship was your relation to Jesus. The service was alive unto and enlivened by the Spirit.

The congregation had a magnificent social consciousness. They supplied, food, clothing and furniture to the needy on a daily basis. They had chosen to remain in the old building and it was crowded for every service. There were two meetings held on Wednesday night while I was there. Both of them filled the place to capacity. A lot of students from David Lipscomb College came to hear me. They sat on the floor, on the steps of the pulpit and in the baptistery. Some of them stood patiently in the rear.

People drove long distances to be present. I met young people who were in Nashville, hoping to make good in country or bluegrass music. The service was so unstructured that anyone could come up on the platform, or stand where he was, and tell what Jesus meant to him. Don Finto was generally responsible for the meetings. He had been a teacher at David Lipscomb College but was let out in one of their purges. He was joined by several other professors who were guillotined and who helped to start Belmont. It was a church whose time had come.

Actually the church had been there for many years. The father of Norvel Young was one of the elders. But the church was fading into the background as the community changed. It was dying rapidly. Only a handful of people were attending. Most of them were afraid to return at night. Drugs and prostitution were all around them in the streets. Stealing and vandalism took their toll. And then renewal set in. Drug users came back from a living death through Jesus. Young prostitutes found a haven of rest in Jesus. In an amazing fellowship which knew no second-class citizens of the kingdom people were baptized unto a living hope. Obviously there were risks. There are always risks where freedom is found and everything is not cut, dried and stacked beforehand. But it was a great thing to be a part of a congregation which had been resurrected from the dead. It was while I was there that I met the father and mother of Pat Boone. They were gracious, kind and unassuming. We went out to eat together one night so they could tell me their story. They were greatly disturbed when they heard that Pat and Shirley had become wrapped up in the Holy Spirit. They prayed for them every night, asking God to bring them back. They had all been members of the Churches of Christ for years. One night the elder Brother Boone could not sleep, so in the middle of the night he slipped out to read his Bible and pray. While he was praying he became convinced of the presence of the Holy Spirit. He awakened his wife and told her that Pat was right. She arose and prayed and said she experienced the nearness of the Spirit. They were so overjoyed at the discovery that they made the mistake of telling about it next Sunday. Sister Boone was divested of her class which she taught and they were both excommunicated. They were still attending there, however, as they loved those who had treated them so unfairly.

Right after I left Nashville I went for a Talkathon to Missouri University. It lasted about nine hours in all. I began at 1 :30 p.m. and closed at 10:30 p.m. Students could come and go as classes or work demanded. The room was always full and some were standing in the hall ready to take the place of those who had to vacate. There was a fifteen minute rest period every two hours. In each segment I spoke for 30 minutes and then answered questions for the remainder of the time. Some of the questions were very interesting. They were the kind you would expect from students who were part of a great university under the domination of humanistic thinking.

We discussed the relativity of truth and I suggested that in its final analysis truth was a person and not a proposition. Jesus declared that he was the way, the truth and the life. Before a proposition can be stated it has to exist first as a concept in a logical mind. I postulated that all truth had to exist in a divine mind. It was a great session.