MYTHS OF THE RESTORATION MOVEMENT (4)
W. Carl Ketcherside

The truth revealed to us from heaven was never intended to be static. It was not a stagnant pool filling a depression hollowed out in one year of time. I think that the actual revelation was completed during the lifetime of the apostles and prophets. This brings me into some conflict with those who think there are prophets of God now. I especially ran into the problem in the 1960’s when I was doing a lot of work on university campuses. Some college student, who was generally like Elijah, “a hairy man and girt with a leather girdle about his loins,” would arise and say, “Hear the word of the Lord which came to me this morning,” and then quote from the King James Version. I’ve often wondered where these prophets are now, and if they are still with it. They were a spin-off from the drug culture which blew the minds of so many of our youth, and led them into fantasies.

But I realize that while the revelation was complete, the understanding and grasp of it was never so in any generation. It was accepted into the hearts of men and given a thorough mastication by their minds. But no one approaches knowledge in a vacuum. Every experience of life, every hardship and every pleasure, enter into his heart and influence him. So truth is a river, ever flowing, sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly, but always relentlessly through history. As it glides along it affects and changes the terrain, but the terrain also affects it. The stream is colored by the minds through which it is funneled. It picks up sediment. This does not affect the truth but it does affect our approach to it and our comprehension of it. It does demand that there be periodic reformations in which the waste matter can be filtered out and the water purified.

It must not be forgotten, however, that those who seek to do the straining are also caught up in the human predicament. They are subject to errors in judgment, to personal preferences, and to pride of attainment as were many of their ancestors whose mistakes they seek to correct. Almost every movement known to me, forgetting extraneous matters which have influenced its thought patterns, begins to think it has arrived while everyone else is still departing. It feels that it has truth in its cage and congratulates itself that no one else has access to this rare and untamed specimen. The movement may awaken some morning to learn that it was mistaken in identification and has been feeding and nurturing something else all of the time.

I rather think this is one of the myths plaguing “the restoration movement.” It began at a certain time in history, in a specific part of the world, among those who were a frontier people. Most of them were kind, considerate and compassionate. They were hospitable. The latchstring hung on the outside. Some of them were grossly ignorant but this was no fault of their own. Most everyone else was in the same flatboat as themselves. It was a natural consequence for them to assume that their will was God’s will, and that God had said what they came to understand that he meant by what he said. There would probably be no particular harm ensue if they had been a little more modest but they felt called upon to take the platform and vigorously denounce everyone who did not share their views and who resented their playing God with the lives of others.

While I am a little reluctant to open this kind of a can of worms, I think that a good case can be made that, morally and ethically, “the restoration movement” as we know it, is not so much a revival of God’s revelation as it is a reflection of the Puritan, rural and southern cultures which have influenced it far beyond its willingness to admit. As a youngster I recall how restricted life was for us. Confusing the Jewish sabbath with the first day of the week, we were forbidden to participate in any innocent game on Sunday afternoon. No dominoes. No checkers. No baseball. No basketball. No nothing! We were continually bombarded with such misapplied scriptures as “Shun the very appearance of evil.” I came to appreciate what Thomas Babington Macauley had written, “The Puritans hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators.” I also agreed that the Puritans celebrated Thanksgiving because they were delivered from the Indians; we celebrate it because we were delivered from the Pilgrims.

Our brethren had no qualm about threatening everyone with perdition who attended a movie. This tactic did not make better disciples but it did serve to make bigger hypocrites. Lurid tracts were passed out entitled, “From Hollywood to Hell.” It was made to appear that the apostles, who never saw a movie camera, or any other, for that matter, had them in mind by extension in a number of statements they made. Apparently they excluded the use of tobacco because many of the preachers who came down hardest on the foibles of the age carried a plug of Brown Mule and took a pretty good cut of it as soon as they got down from behind the sacred desk. Apparently they did not taste it because “Touch not, taste not, handle not” was the passage frequently quoted and just as often misapplied.

The rustic influence was manifested in our anti-intellectual status. Fifty years ago we were afraid of someone who went away and secured a higher education. We had not yet heard of the Communists and we had to be afraid of someone. Many of us went to one-room schoolhouses, some constructed of logs. Frequently the same building doubled for the holding of religious meetings on Sunday. We were pretty crude. We thought the best board of education was a pine shingle applied to the seat of the difficulty. If a person went away to college and got a degree we said he would lead the church to hell by degrees. If he used good English we accused him of “putting on airs,” and said he was “getting too big for his breeches. “

The same spirit was manifested in the preoccupation with the length of women’s dresses and the height of their shoe heels. Modesty was not so much restraint by a sense of propriety as it was limitation enforced by preachers. It was a man’s world and man ruled it with an iron hand and roughshod. I shall never forget my father (bless his memory) and other preachers likening women who cut their hair to streetwalkers and “chippies” (our vernacular for prostitutes). It was difficult to make the slow transition from a rural culture to an urban one.

When we began to get water in our homes and it was suggested that we put in a baptistery a good many people actually gave up and quit the church rather than sanction the sacred rite performed in a box under the pulpit. I have cut the ice many times and immersed people who stood shivering on the bank in their wet clothing with teeth chattering and beating out a tattoo to the song “Happy Day” which was always sung after a baptism to make it official.

Science does not stand still. It continues to work and investigate and invent new things even if all the Christians on earth stand wringing their hands in desperation. The radio came into being and we were against it. We searched the scriptures to find why and we found passages that we could use against it. Then came television. Men stood in the pulpits and condemned it as the way that Satan had of invading our homes. People were urged to throw the rascal out if they had already purchased one. Some factions gave those whom they immersed thirty days to cast their set to the moles and the bats or be withdrawn from.

What we did not realize was that all of these are neutral in and of themselves. It is the heart of man which determines how they are used. They are like a knife which is powerless to do anything good or evil because it does not have volition. But in the hands of one person it can be used to slice ham; while in the hands of another it is used to stab his neighbor. Those who are members of the restoration movement are like thousands of others. They are victims of their past. They need to realize this and become more charitable toward others. We have not yet learned all we need to know about God’s will for us.