WHAT CAMPBELL SAID TO THE BAPTISTS

Some years ago I took part in a seminar at Baylor University on the relationship between Churches of Christ and Baptists, especially from a historical perspective. It was, I think, the first time ever on that campus that a friendly, scholarly exchange took place between representatives of these churches. Most contact between these peoples, especially in Texas, has been confrontational, such as public debates, which have been legion. But this time it was brotherly and positive.

An interesting anecdote grew out of that occasion. One Baptist student who was engaged to a Church of Christ girl saw notices of the seminar on campus bulletin boards and could not believe his eyes. A brotherly gathering between leaders of the Church of Christ and Baptists! He came to see for himself, and he was overjoyed to meet someone from the Church of Christ that would treat him as an equal in Christ. He had had such bitter experiences in trying to deal with his fiancé’s church folk that it was a threat to their relationship.

He was willing to be married in a Church of Christ, as his fiancé and her people insisted, and even by a Church of Christ minister. But he drew the line at one point: he refused to be married by a minister who did not even consider him a Christian! Needless to say that I was to him a God-send. It turned out that I performed their marriage in a small town Church of Christ in Texas hill country. But I never succeeded in persuading her people to accept him as a fellow Christian, not even when I pointed out that he was a baptized believer just as they were. Their unyielding spirit eventually alienated the girl and she eventually joined the Baptists. With a little loving acceptance they could have gained a son; instead they lost a daughter.

At that seminar I told my favorite story about Alexander Campbell and the Baptists. It was 1866 and Campbell was on his death bed. A unity meeting was being held at the same time in Pittsburgh. Charles Loos, who served on the faculty with Campbell at Bethany College, presided over the unity gathering. When he afterwards wrote a history of the Movement, Loos told of his visit with Campbell during his last days and how he reacted to the Baptist-Disciple unity effort. “I have always regretted that the Baptists and we had to part; it ought not to have been so. Moved to tears by the good news that Loos had brought, the dying reformer went on to say, “I had hoped that we and that great people could have stood together for the advocacy of apostolic Christianity. They are worthy of such a mission.”

While the Disciples and the Baptists were not able to effect a union, the prospect of it was enough to warm the heart of Alexander Campbell. And it confirms what Campbell often contended, that the unity of believers was the heart and soul of his efforts at reform.

The Baylor folk thought it odd that while the leading figure in Church of Christ history would weep with joy at the prospect of unity with Baptists (and insisted they should have never separated!), there is such little of that spirit today. I noted that that is why we need to study our own history, for the lessons of history obligate us to be more sensitive.

I thought of that story when I came upon some things that Campbell had said to the Baptists, tucked away in a letter he wrote to a Baptist preacher named James Inglis in the 1850 Millennial Harbinger. I esteem it as one of the most moving pleas for unity that I have ever read from anyone’s pen:

If all you good Baptist brethren, and our good Christian brethren, could abandon every other center than Christ, and draw nearer and nearer to this unsetting sun of an eternal day, how soon would all these roots of bitterness and alienation wither, and languish, and perish! What a blissful cooperation and hallowed concert of action would ensue! What a revenue of glory to a common Savior and a common Father would arise!

And how soon would we throw the arms of Christian affection and Christian enterprise around our own happy land, and make the wilderness and solitary places glad, and cause the deserts to rejoice and blossom as the rose.

What a glorious description of unity that is! As we draw closer to Christ we grow closer to each other. We can find each other only at the center and that is where Christ must be. Campbell was right in saying that we all have centers beside Christ, and not the least of these are our denominational peculiarities in which we take pride, whether conventions, agencies, colleges, publication houses. We don’t want our little systems disturbed. Sometimes our center is a system of theology or a set of traditions. We have our Baptistisms and our Church of Christisms. And we don’t want to move them from center stage.

Abandon every center but Christ! There is no other way to unity. Campbell does not say that opinions or peripheral matters must be abandoned, but only those things that are moved to center stage and made tests of fellowship.

Campbell may well have had Co!. 2:19 in mind when he made that plea: “holding fast to the Head, from whom all the body, nourished and knit together by joints and ligaments, grows with the increase which is from God.”

If there is a pattern for unity that is it. Jesus Christ is our pattern. That passage refers to our being “knit together,” and there is no better description of unity than that. And how are we knit together? Not by an exact doctrinal conformity or by practicing everything alike, but by “holding fast to the Head.” We should let that phrase ring in our ears and lodge in our hearts, holding fast to the Head. Unity and fellowship are not based on being “right on the issues,” but on being right about Christ.

Campbell recognized that we can hold fast to the Head and yet have diverse views and practices. We might be wrong about some things and still make Christ the center.

Campbell closed his letter to his Baptist friend by expressing what could be called the genius of his plea:

Our motto is: “The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible.” Let him that has a dream keep it to himself, and let him that has the word of God in his heart speak it, and make proper allowance for difference of opinion, and the work is done.

Here is the way to unity for all believers: Make Christ the center, hold fast to him as the Head, and allow for diversity of opinion. That’s it, Campbell is saying. The work is done. Is it so wonderfully simple that we are afraid of it?—the Editor