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Through
the good graces of a Christian physician in California this special
edition has been prepared especially for ministers within the
Stone-Campbell heritage. The publisher has mailed an invitation to
thousands of preachers, offering those who have not yet read this
history a free copy of this special edition. The doctor’s only
stipulation is a promise to read the book.
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This
in itself is history-making, for it is unusual for one to have such
a love for a heritage and such a desire that its story be
appreciated by those who are its heirs as to underwrite the
publication of thousands of books. The physician believes that the
story told in this book, with its tragedies and triumphs, will serve
to bring our fragmented Movement closer together. He believes we
might find healing in our common roots and rediscover principles
that will recapture the dream we once had for the unity of all
Christians.
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That
I have not yet met this physician and do not even know to which
group among us he belongs, and do not care, is consistent with the
impartiality I sought to reflect in the writing of this book. It is
not a “house” job and it makes no effort to identify any
“brotherhood” among us as “the true heirs of the
Restoration Movement.” I can ask no more than that the reader
will also endeavor to be impartial in the reading of it.
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At
this point in our history we might look to this doctor, whom I
presume wishes to remain anonymous, as a sort of weather vane that
points us in the right direction. He has something we all need if we
are interested in putting ourselves back together, a love for his
heritage and a passion for the unity of all Christians, starting
with the Restoration Movement itself. In this respect he reflects
the essence of the Stone-Campbell Movement, which Dr. Robert
Richardson, its first historian and most articulate spokesman,
described as “This reformation was born of a love of union,
and Christian union has been its engrossing theme” (See p.
363).
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There
is strong evidence that the dream of these two doctors, one from
Campbell’s day and the other from ours, has not died. A survey
of some of the events that have transpired among us since the book
was first published in 1981 will attest that the vision of Stone and
Campbell lives on.
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In
1984 some 100 leaders from Churches of Christ (non-instrumental) and
Christian churches gathered at Ozark Bible College, Joplin, MO. for
a “Restoration Summit,” a unity effort after the order
of those occasional meetings that date back to the Murch-Witty
efforts of the 1930’s and 1940’s and the Annual Unity
Forums of the 1960’s and 1970’s, which are recounted in
this volume. The Joplin “Summit” was followed by another
in Tulsa, and then still others, including one at Pepperdine
University in California. The intention is to make the unity summits
ongoing. .
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Unlike
the earlier efforts, these unity summits have enjoyed broad support
from institutional leaders of both churches, even though they have
been vigorously opposed by some of the more conservative preachers
and editors in Churches of Christ, who see such efforts as
“fellowshipping error” and “compromising the
truth.” But for most of those who gathered at Joplin and Tulsa
it was a “first” experience in tolerance and forbearance
“with brethren that we hardly knew existed,” as some of
them put it.
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Many
of those who attended the summits bore a message of reconciliation
to their churches back home, which may prove to be their most
salutary effect. The minister of a large Church of Christ in
Dallas-Ft. Worth metroplex gave a Sunday evening sermon on his
experience at Joplin, a jubilant report of a joyous fellowship with
brethren he hardly knew he had and a plea that there be more of the
same.
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The
editor of the
Christian
Standard
represented
the Christian Churches in the summit at Pepperdine which evaluated
those in Joplin and Tulsa. In an editorial report he quoted one
preacher who expressed his own sentiment: “The 1800’s
were a century of unity and growth. The 1900’s have been a
century of division and stagnation. May we lay the foundation for
the 21st century of unity and growth.”
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That
winds of change are blowing is also evident in current publications.
In 1985 the Churches of Christ launched a new, up-beat journal that
has an old editor but a new look.
Image
is
staffed with the church’s more open writers, both men and
women, and the editor has announced a policy that transcends the
sectarianism with which he is “fed up.” One of these
writers whom the right-wing dubs “liberal,” perhaps
because he was once one of them, has published a widely-read book,
I
Just Want to Be a Christian,
in
which he revived an old motto by telling his people that they have
nothing to lose and much to gain by being “Christians only”
rather than “the only Christians.” The book may cause
waves when it distinguishes between “the Yellow Pages Church
of Christ” and the universal Church of Christ that is made up
of all the saved.
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An
older journal,
Mission,
branded
as “ultra liberal” by the same right wing, recently
conceded the unthinkable, that the Church of Christ has become “a
full-blown denomination.” This aversion to “denomination”
in the Movement’s history is odd since Alexander Campbell had
no problem in referring to this people as “We as a
denomination,” while challenging his antagonists with “You’ll
never make a sect of us.” Unlike Campbell who accepted
denominational status as a matter of fact (a distinct religious
community) but rejected sectarianism as an intolerable sin of heart
and mind, we still use the terms as if they were synonymous.
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Still
another significant development occurred in 1985 when the Central
Church of Christ in Irving, Texas called a gathering of “changing”
Churches of Christ, which was especially for the churches marked “E”
in
Where
the Saints Meet,
which
is “A Directory of the Congregations of the Churches of
Christ.” The “E” stands for ecumenical or “more
open to persons among the denominations.” It proved to be so
helpful in identifying new directions that the elders have been
encouraged to make it an annual affair.
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Christian
Church leaders are having tough dialogue with each other as well as
with their non-instrumental brethren. The
Christian
Standard
reveals
that things were said in their recent St. Louis Forum that they
could hardly have said a generation ago in their confrontation with
the Disciples of Christ. Not only is “restoration” being
more critically defined, but the old controversy of
Who
is a Christian?
which
produced Campbell’s Lunenburg Letter, is being revived, and
this time with less passion and more reason. One noted preacher
proposed that all those who accept the lordship of Jesus Christ
should be accepted as Christians, while an eminent educator, who was
with the armed forces that liberated Dachau, referred to Martin
Niemoeller, an unimmersed Lutheran, as a Christian, one reason being
that the Nazis considered him one, a pastor who ministered the Word
to the dying masses at Dachau. And he dared to conclude that he
found God’s church at that concentration camp — even if
there were no members of the Christian Church or Churches of Christ
imprisoned there!
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If
the Disciples of Christ were not part of the recent unity summits
(Were they invited?), it does not mean that they are indifferent
either toward the other groups or toward our common heritage. In a
review of this book the editor of
The
Disciple
wrote.
“We welcome more information about the life and thought of
Churches of Christ and ‘independents’ in a time when
communication is diminishing,” and in a later issue the
journal reproduced this book’s account of Cane Ridge in a
cover story about that old Restoration shrine. And a seminary
professor, in a review in
Discipliana,
thought
this book might serve “as a foundation upon which future
efforts at unity within the movement may be constructed.”
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These
affirmations would indicate that the Disciples are not only still
mindful of their heritage but of the other wings of the Movement as
well. And when they published their
A
Handbook for Today’s Disciples
(1981)
we can think of them as speaking for us all when they said, “As
we enter the closing years of the twentieth century the polar star
of the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ) remains undimmed.
The quest for unity proceeds as a quest refined.”
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There
is therefore a growing appreciation among all three churches of the
genius of the Movement in its origins, which this study identifies
as a plea for unity based upon the absolute essentials of the faith,
allowing love and liberty to rule in matters of opinion and methods.
This means that our forebears came to see that unity and fellowship
are not predicated upon agreement in all things, but that agreement,
to the extent that it can be realized, comes as a result of unity
and fellowship.
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This
book is about men and women who believed that the prayer of Christ
for the oneness of his church can be realized, and in the crucible
of hardship and controversy they forged ideas and principles for the
answer to that prayer. That their dream of a united church appeared
to die in the fragmentation of the unity movement they launched does
not detract from “the great idea” they bequeathed to the
Church of Christ upon earth. We have a great heritage. The torch has
passed along to us. The more we shake it the brighter it will burn.
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“The
whole world is the sepulcher of famous men, and their story lives
on, woven into the stuff of other men’s lives.” —
Pericles