These words are from one of the national co-chairmen of the Harvard Campaign, which raised 360 million dollars for Harvard University. Mr. Gordon graduated from Harvard 62 years ago. When he was asked why the campaign was such a success (They raised an average of six million dollars a month for sixty months!), he replied in part with the words quoted above.

Since reading this amazing report of how our richest university is now even richer, Mr. Gordon’s words bombard my mind: They’ve shown they understand the more you nourish your roots, the better you feel. Why did the Harvard alumni respond to the call? It had to do with an understanding and appreciation of their roots, says Mr. Gordon.

Our people in Churches of Christ are suffering from a malady that may be widespread among American churches: they do not feel good about themselves. Many among us are terribly embarrassed with that one tag of identification that so many of our neighbors hang on us: You think you are the only ones going to heaven, or maybe, You think you are the only true Christians. When they are too courteous to say such things, we are suspicious that they are thinking them. We want to be known for something more than that we do not use instrumental music in worship.

The more you nourish your roots, the better you feel, says the aged Harvard wheel. While it is to be admitted that Harvard, our oldest and perhaps greatest university, has roots that one may proudly nourish, I affirm here and now that our heritage in Churches of Christ is far more glorious than anything Harvard can come up with.

The problem is that our folk are for the most part ignorant of their roots, and we can’t nourish our roots if we do not know about them. Most of our people have heard of Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell but they have little understanding of what they really stood for. While our older people know something of more recent Church of Christ history since they helped in making that history, there is almost no connection in their thinking between our recent history and the earlier generations of the Stone-Campbell Movement. It is therefore easy for them to presume that Stone and Campbell believed as the Church of Christ today believes. They are surprised if not shocked to learn that for the most part both Stone and Campbell would be rejected by most Churches of Christ today as too different.

This implies that Churches of Christ have twofold roots. They have their original roots in the Stone-Campbell Movement which dates back almost two centuries, and they have their transplanted roots which dates back less than a century. If we are serious about our heritage, we should begin at the beginning and determine what ideas and principles gave us birth. We can then better determine what we brought with us and what we left behind, as well as what we added, when we were transplanted. By transplantation I am referring to our divorce from the Movement at large and becoming “Churches of Christ” as distinct from Disciples of Christ/Christian Churches who also called themselves by that name as well and still do.

To nourish our heritage and draw values from it we must be selective, whether it be our original roots or our transplanted roots. As we look back with a discriminating eye there will be things that shame us as well as things that make us justly proud. The Holy Spirit has a way of teaching us through history as well as through Scripture, and that includes the bad things that have happened as well as the good things. A philosopher has wisely observed that those who ignore their history have to repeat its mistakes.

Even if Harvard has a great heritage, there may still be things that its alumni are ashamed of, such as the demonstrations in the 1960’s when students commandeered the administrative offices. The beleaguered president of the university, who stood in “the Yard” and pled for reason, was left with no choice but to call on the Cambridge police to restore order. Those students, now middle-aged and much wiser, would just as soon forget that part of their roots. But they can learn from the bad as well as the good.

So with ourselves. While we look back upon a Movement that was “born of a passion for the unity of all Christians,” to quote one of our pioneers, and went on to divide itself asunder again and again, still there is a great heritage to be prized. We are thus to make the study of history our servant and not our master. If “History is bunk,” as Henry Ford supposed, it is because we have allowed it to control us rather than the other way around.

When we look at the best in our roots there are several values that should be emphasized.

1. A strong devotion and loyalty to the Bible.

Just as Luther included a translation of the Scriptures into German in his reformation, Alexander Campbell presented our young republic with the first “modern” translation in English of the New Testament, called The Living Oracles, as early as 1826. Equally significant was Campbell’s rules for the interpretation of the Bible by which he anticipated modern Biblical criticism, even the famous Tuebingen School of Germany which claimed that the Bible should be studied with the same vigorous methods as any other literature.

This means that our forebears not only preached the Bible instead of the creeds of men, but that they were scholars of the Bible. Whether the preacher-farmer or the elder-blacksmith, our folk came to be known as “people of the Book,” and their knowledge was not superficial. They took the Bible seriously and they studied it responsibly, even when their education was limited. My own father, who learned to read by reading the Bible and the Dallas News, was an example of this. Even though he read little else beside the Bible, his knowledge of the Scriptures was extensive.

We became a Bible people at the very beginning of our history in this country, for when the Republican Methodists, under the leadership of James O’Kelly, wrote out their Principles of the Christian Church (1794) they included “The Holy Bible, or the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament our only creed, and a sufficient rule of faith and practice.” Thomas Campbell was later to put it this way: “Where the Scriptures speak we speak, and where the Scriptures are silent we are silent.” It was their way of saying that the Bible was the basis of their faith rather than the creeds and opinions of men.

This has been a hallmark of the Church of Christ all through the years. We are a people that love the Bible and that love has enriched our heritage. Even if some of us may at times be somewhat stubborn, if we can be shown that a doctrine or a practice is supported by Scripture, we will accept it.

If a people’s strength can also be their weakness, then it may be that this devotion to the Bible has sometimes misled us. The very Book that should unite us has often divided us, perhaps because we have allowed some preachers to make too much of incidentals of Scripture and even its silence. When such an able and dynamic leader as Daniel Sommer, whose name looms large in Church of Christ history, felt obligated to find authority for artificial lighting in the Bible (and he did find a proof text!) , we have our clue that we were sometimes led astray by making the Bible a book that it was never intended to be. This helps to explain why we have several different kinds of Churches of Christ, each drawing a line on the others. Our greatest strength became our undoing. But this need not detract from the fact that we are a people of the Book, an honorable part of our rich heritage.

2. Liberty of conscience, freedom of opinion.

In admiring those Republican Methodists who became the first Church of Christ back in 1794 (when Alexander Campbell was a six-year old lad back in Ireland!), we note that they also resolved as one of their founding principles: “The right of private judgment, and the liberty of conscience the privilege and duty of all.” It was an amazing statement coming out of the wild and woolly American frontier, even if a passion for freedom and individuality filled the air. For creed-bound, unlettered church folk to see liberty of conscience and opinion both a privilege and a duty is as remarkable as their resolution to reject all creeds and be directed by the Bible only.

When Barton Stone and the Campbells later became part of the Movement, they too stressed liberty of conscience and freedom of opinion —“In matters of opinion, liberty” became part of a slogan. And the principle was rather faithfully observed, at least as long as Alexander Campbell lived. Even an issue as laden with passion as slavery, up to and including the Civil War, was mostly treated as a matter of personal conscience.

For the most part we continue to be a forbearing people, allowing liberty of conscience and freedom of opinion. While we have some party leaders among us who are quick to draw the line if folk do not kowtow to their dictates, the rank and file of our folk are willing to “live and let live.” They can absorb differences within the congregation graciously enough if preachers and editors would not impose scare tactics. It is natural for people to be accepting of others of like faith, and that is why Thomas Campbell referred to the scandal of division among Christians as “antiscriptural, anti-Christian, and anti-natural.”

Alexander Campbell insisted that unity of faith in essentials with freedom of opinion in non-essentials were basic to his plea. So he did not call for a unity in doctrinal interpretation, but in the great catholic truths upon which all Christians can agree. There is no hope for Churches of Christ being a viable witness in the larger Christian world unless this ingredient of our roots is nourished. We can make nothing a test of fellowship that would not be a condition for going to heaven.

3. We are to be above all else a unity people and a unity movement.

To quote those Methodists who became “simply Christians” once more, they named as a cardinal principle of their faith “The union of all followers of Christ to the end that the world may believe.” Our founding documents that followed, those created by Haggard, Stone and the Campbells, were all unity documents. When Rice Haggard published his treatise on the name Christian in 1804, which was a plea for all sects to unite upon that name, he wrote: “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.” And he named the cause of division: imposing non-essentials as terms of communion.

In their Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery, Barton Stone and his men laid to rest the little presbytery they had created with these intriguing words: “We will that this body die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large.” The document had a ring of inclusiveness that represents the best of our roots: We heartily unite with our Christian brethren of every name.

Thomas Campbell afterwards produced the Declaration and Address (1809) that not only called for a united church but set forth principles whereby this could be achieved. This document gives us the most quoted non-biblical lines in our history: The Church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one, consisting of all those in every place who profess their faith in Christ and obedience to him in all things according to the Scriptures.

This document sets forth both the principle of non-judgment and the principle of acceptance. We may judge a man only as the Bible judges him, and we are to “Receive one another even as Christ has received us,” a passage repeatedly quoted in the document. The Campbells believed that we can impose things upon others only as they are clearly and explicitly set forth in the Bible, and they complain that divisions in the church are usually caused over things that are not even mentioned in Scripture.

These four documents, the basis of our roots, have a continuing theme, unity. It may appear odd to you that not a one of them even mentions baptism, a concern that came later. And only one of them mentions restoration, and it barely. The documents show, as do the other writings of these pioneers, that Unity is our business!, a slogan that eventually became current among us. Dr. Robert Richardson, an associate of the Campbells, said it well with “This reformation was born of a passion for unity.”

If we in Churches of Christ have lost that passion for unity as enunciated by our founding fathers we have lost the best of our roots. Ours is not to be a plea for conformity to our way of doing things, as if others must become precisely like us, the true “restored” church to the exclusion of all others. Unity is not a “true church” concept but a humble acceptance of all those who are in Christ as equals, sisters and brothers in the family of God. Unity is God’s gift to his church, the creation of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and minds, and it is realized when we accept all those that Christ accepts in spite of differences. This is what our roots are all about.

There are other important features in our roots, such as the divine name we’ve always worn, Christians, rather than a party name, and the place we have given to those great ordinances of God, baptism and the Lord’s Supper. We believe in preaching the gospel all over the world and we have always reached out to the dispossessed, from the time David Lipscomb in the South raised money for the poor in the North, even if they were Civil War enemies, to the present hour when our churches are sending millions to starving masses in famine-stricken nations. All that without any denominational headquarters!

And we have always been great singers who love great singing. Recently in Dallas a special singing to honor Tillet S. Teddlie on his l00th birthday, a songwriter who has written many of our hymns, attracted 1300 people. They gathered and sang for two hours. It isn’t everybody that does that sort of thing.

Our greatest failure? If we allow a critic to speak to that, and we must with prayerful hearts listen to those who criticize us, the answer would be that our greatest failure has been in reference to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Homer Duncan of Lubbock, TX., editor of Missionary Crusader and a Baptist, I believe, has some good things to say about us in his booklet The So-Called Church of Christ (no date). But he says there is “one basic error” in every false system, and the basic error of the Church of Christ is that “they have not learned to be taught by the Spirit of God.” While he sees our people as for the most part not even believing in the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit, he is pleased to concede that some of us do. But our failure to see the mission of the Spirit in the life of the Christian has also, he charges, given us an inadequate view of the grace of God and even of justification by faith. He has heard our preachers ridicule the Holy Spirit, he says, and it is common for Church of Christ folk to equate the Holy Spirit with the Bible.

These criticisms, which I believe have some validity, can also be traced to our roots, which have shown a greater place for a rationalistic interpretation of the Bible than the teaching ministry of the Holy Spirit. We have not emphasized what 1 John 2 clearly states: “you have no need for anyone to teach you; but his anointing teaches you about all things.” Moreover, Jn. 16:7-13 is to the point in describing the Spirit as our teacher. Duncan says when he shows such texts to our preachers that their response is that such scriptures do not apply today!

Alexander Campbell had this problem when he dared to affirm in a debate that the Holy Spirit operates only through the word. Dr. Richardson tried to dissuade him from taking such a position. Campbell modulated his position as he grew older, and Barton Stone, looking back over their early history with a critical eye, stated that the Movement would have grown even more if Campbell had taught in his earlier years what he finally taught about the ministry of the Spirit. Richardson himself sought to strengthen this weak spot by publishing a book on the ministry of the Spirit. If we had followed Richardson in this area instead of Campbell, the likes of Homer Duncan would have no criticism to level against us in reference to the Holy Spirit. As it is we are very vulnerable in reference to this doctrine.

This is enough to show that we have impressive roots, a great history, and a glorious heritage. We have much to draw from and to build on. Like the pilot of an airliner that has a determined destiny, we may have some mid-course corrections to make. We can learn from the mistakes of those who have gone before, while drawing upon the values they have passed along to us.

Truth is like a torch, the more you shake it the brighter it burns. To change the metaphor, the more vigorously we churn the annals of our history the more the cream will rise to the top. —the Editor