Highlights in Restoration History . . .

THE MAN WHO INTRODUCED THE ORGAN

One day recently Ouida and I were recalling some of our old friends, a pastime that does not necessarily go with advancing years, for we’ve been doing it all our lives. We reminisced about the old preacher that married us (He got his lines confused and I had to help him out from the groom’s perch, as if I didn’t have my hands full already!), a brother we both greatly loved, now long gone to his reward. Ouida recalled his hangup about instrumental music, how he often bemoaned the probability that most folk in the Church of Christ would offer no serious objection if it were introduced, as if this would be the ultimate in apostasy. He referred to the organ as “Balaam’s ass” (I never thought to ask him why), and one would suppose that an image of Buddha in the church would be no more offensive than the presence of an organ.

This sort of thing, which may be more emotional than logical, is not without its parallels in other communions. There are a lot of Texas Baptists who go bananas if they see a bottle of wine or beer in a neighbor’s refrigerator, and there are still Quakers who get upset over anything very modern. To our Amish friends the refrigerator itself is an abomination, with or without beer. As for instrumental music, there are old-line Presbyterians in Scotland who are as rigid about it as our old preacher friend --- and who probably make better arguments against it!

It is as unfortunate as it is interesting that religion should ever take this turn, but it is as old as Pharisaism. If those Ph.D.’s of the law would burden themselves with whether one can expectorate (One can spit on a smooth stone but not a rough one!) or tie a horse (Yes, if he does so with one hand!) on the Sabbath, then there is no wonder that our folk would hassle over organs, chandeliers, and stained glass windows, and with equal sincerity. And many Pharisees were sincere, including one Saul of Tarsus.

As for instrumental music, some have suggested that it has become such a big deal among us because of its high visibility, what Paul Tillich might call an ontological reality! After all, we can’t see errors of the mind all that obviously, however dangerous they may be. But a three by five box that makes sounds and stands over in the corner for all to see is something else! We are sometimes so paranoid about this that we have to cover the organ (hide it from sight!) if one chances to be where we assemble.

The issue has had its humor. In the old days when folk in Indiana had never even seen an organ, much less heard one, Daniel Sommer was beating the trail warning churches against it. It is a matter of record that his vehement protests in one church that had given no thought to getting an organ became so curious about the matter that they were inadvertently led by Sommer to investigate and finally adopt the organ! A church in St. Louis divided over the organ, with the pro-organists leaving. Meeting on their own, they could not yet afford an organ, so the anti-organ group had an organ (which they would not use of course) while the pro-organ group did not have one! Still another church took architectural safeguards, building its facility with doors and windows too narrow for the importation of the controversial device.

But the purpose of this piece is to acquaint you with the man who first introduced an instrument. He surely deserves some kind of recognition, considering what he set in motion. Dr. L. L. Pinkerton, a physician in his early years, began his ministry with high credentials, being baptized under Alexander Campbell. Combining his gifts, he served as both surgeon and chaplain in the Union army. When he returned to his native Kentucky, his home church in Louisville, where he had once ministered, would not receive him because of his Union loyalties. He was a professor at Kentucky University for awhile, but he continued to hear the call to preach. For a time he preached among the blacks, being very sensitive to the injustices heaped upon them.

In time he was both an editor and a schoolmaster, and it was in Midway, Kentucky that he had both a school and a church, as well as an orphanage, and it was there, insofar as we know, that the first instrument was introduced, a melodian, in 1849. The singing was so deplorable, Pinkerton insisted, that it scared the rats away. But the melodian did not reign for long, for as the story goes, one of the elders who opposed the instrument, arranged for his slave to purloin the helpless intruder under cover of darkness and stash it away in the elder’s barn for safekeeping.

This unpretentious offender is on display at Midway Christian College, serving as a grim reminder of the beginning of the end of the unity that prevailed among our people in those days.

Pinkerton had some other “firsts” in his ministry, being something of a cross between a maverick and a liberal. He was the first to espouse open membership, which meant that he received as members those not yet immersed, a practice that was controversial from the start. This made him “worse than a drunkard” in many Disciple eyes, as he put it. And he was one among the first to become a settled pastor, which was also innovative in the 1840’s. When the agencies began to merge, such as the missionary society, he was a supporter. He even ventured to question the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, so he was a bit “far out” for his day.

So the melodian was obviously a matter of little moment to him, his chief concern being “a fierce sectarianism and intolerant dogmatism,” as he put it as an editor, that had emerged among Churches of Christ. One of his contemporaries, J. S. Lamar, one of the editors of the Christian Standard, agreed with Pinkerton that a new spirit of intolerance had risen, and this was the greatest peril faced by the Movement. Lamar blamed it on men of “comparatively small calibre” who had come into places of leadership. He said they drew attention away from the essential truths and vitalizing principles that had sparked their reformation up until then by emphasizing incidentals and making them tests of soundness. Pinkerton wrote of those who would smash a church over whether communion was in the morning or evening, and Lamar complained that some of the brethren supposed Christ died so as to keep organs out of churches.

But there is something interesting and exciting about this period of our history. Despite the legalisms and intolerance, the churches did not suffer an open split. If it was the organ that divided us, it took it several decades to do so. If Pinkerton gave us the first one in 1849, there were numerous others by the 1860’s, and we had “organ” and “non-organ” churches in fellowship with each other. Even the staunchest foes of the organ, J. W. McGarvey and Benjamin Franklin, did not believe in making it a test of fellowship. Franklin had a way of saying “Let there be no non-fellowship,” despite his vigorous protests. It is noteworthy that from 1849 until the 1880’s when the Churches of Christ began to be a separate communion, there was only one leader among our people that made instrumental music a test of fellowship, and that was Moses E. Lard.

This bit of history shows us how it might have been and provides a clue as to how it might yet be. There was probably no way for our brethren in those days to have avoided disagreement over the organ, just as no other frontier church avoided it, once the organ became available. But they nonetheless lived with the difference for several decades. No one insofar as we know drew the line on Pinkerton’s church in Midway, Kentucky. Some may have fussed about it, but no one was ready to break fellowship. Even in the 1860’s when Moses Lard began to insist that the faithful not even attend an organ church and that the loyal preachers not preach for one, there were but few that paid him any mind. And Lard himself, once the Civil War was over, wrote of a united brotherhood, and was insistent that if the war had not caused an open split, the Movement would never divide.

So it might have remained that way if our forebears had remained true to their old adage, We are free to differ but not to divide. Some leaders arose with a different spirit who believed the converse of that, We are free to divide but not to differ, and thus made the organ (and other things) the occasion for an open split, so that by 1906 the Churches of Christ and Christian Churches were recognized as no longer one fellowship.

These facts from history raise the question of what actually divided us. Church after church divided over the organ after having had the organ for decades! Is it not a spirit that divides people rather than things? Yes, the factional spirit. When the party spirit comes into the heart, it will find reason enough to divide.

So, we can back up and take over where they left off, in those days when they could disagree and still accept each other. Our only hope is for the spirit of love and acceptance to overcome the spirit of division and rejection. - the Editor