Introduction Rochester University applied for a grant from the Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) in August 2021. Funded by the Lilly Foundation and administered by the CIC, the grant program is designed “to enable institutions to produce an updated account of their history and mission in light of their current context” (CIC website). In his cover letter for the proposal, Dr. Brian Stogner, president of the university, wrote: The sixty-year history of Rochester University has included many twists and turns, and an evolving sense of its identity. While the heart of our mission has remained true to its heritage, the nature and face of RU has changed and adapted to the needs of the society and community around us. As we have grown and transformed, we have become increasingly aware of the pressing need to clearly communicate to both our internal and external constituencies how the current identity and mission of our university is rooted and grounded in our origins. After approval of the university’s proposal in November, a steering committee began delving into the history of Rochester University, focusing on its heritage in Churches of Christ and the Stone-Campbell Movement. As the project progressed, the committee coordinated the writing of eight essays. Those essays, included in this volume, discuss identity markers that help define the institution today and will carry it into the future. During the fall of 2022, committee members coordinated the production of two videos, hosted a series of symposiums, presented chapel programs with talk-back sessions, and produced this book. The university hosted Dr. Richard Hughes, a noted scholar, church historian, and author, at the annual Capstone Conference in December. Dr. Hughes responded to the essays and provided further suggestions on how the university could carry the project efforts into the future.
Project Steering Committee Dr. Remylin Bruder, Administrative Advisor Dr. Rebekah Pinchback, Committee Chair Dr. David Greer Dr. Keith Huey Allison Jimenez Dr. Mark Love Darren McCullough Larry Stewart
Project Essays American Origins of Churches of Christ Keith Huey An Ecumenical Christian University: From “Christians Only” to “The Only Christians” and Beyond Naomi Walters No Creed but the Bible: The Story of Scripture in Churches of Christ Mark Love Alexander Campbell, Liberal Arts, and Integrative Learning Keith Huey The “Apocalyptic Tradition” in Churches of Christ: A Countercultural Remembrance and Challenge David Greer Missions to Missional: Rochester University’s Story in Churches of Christ from Otis Gatewood to Brian Stogner Beth Bowers Learning Virtues for a Church of Christ University Mark Love Rochester University: A Distinctive University – In Its Heritage and Its Future Brian Stogner
American Origins of Churches of Christ
Keith Huey, Ph.D. Rochester University Professor of Religion
ANTEBELLUM ORIGINS Rochester University was established in 1959 by members of the Churches of Christ, a heritage that originated in the early 19th century.1 This impulse developed in the frontier regions of Eastern Ohio, Western Virginia, and Kentucky, and was led by two erstwhile Presbyterians: Barton W. Stone (1772-1844) and Alexander Campbell (1788-1866).2 At first, these movements were billed as the “reformation” of Christianity, a corrective to clerical domination and unbiblical practices. Campbell himself, however, believed that stronger medicine was required, and he advocated a sweeping “restoration” that would erase every creed, clerical distinction, and denominational label. They worked in separate circles, but those circles were eventually merged in the winter of 1831-32.3 The early, most iconoclastic followers identified themselves with generic, non-denominational names: besides the Churches of Christ, the Stone-Campbell movement gave birth, eventually, to the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, and the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). The seeds for this movement were sown among the Reformed churches in the British Isles.4 They had been governed by foundational doctrinal statements, especially the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647). Throughout the 18th century, however, such statements had been the targets of anti-creedal protest. For instance, John Abernethy (1680-1740), a Belfast Presbyterian minister, insisted that creeds and confessions had been derived from fallible human decisions,
1 For the full story, see Larry Stewart, The Seasons of Rochester College (Rochester Hills, MI: Rochester
College, 2008). 2 Numerous resources are available for this narrative. Leading options would include Richard T. Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996); D. Newell Williams, Douglas A. Foster, Paul M. Blowers, eds., The Stone-Campbell Movement: A Global History (St. Louis: Chalice, 2021); David Edwin Harrell, Jr., The Churches of Christ in the 20th Century: Homer Hailey’s Personal Journey of Faith (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2000); and Douglas A. Foster, et al., eds., The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004). 3 Hughes, Reviving, 113-16. 4 C. Leonard Allen and Richard T. Hughes, Discovering Our Roots: The Ancestry of Churches of Christ (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1988), 11-73.
and he urged his audiences to interpret the scriptures for themselves.5 Meanwhile, Anglicans were transformed by the Evangelical revivals of George Whitefield (1714-70) and John Wesley (1703-91), and numerous para-church organizations (such as missionary societies and antislavery societies) were formed by the end of the century. For leaders like William Wilberforce (1759-1833) and the Clapham Sect, these ventures were unavoidably ecumenical, with little regard for creedal or clerical distinctions. Amid the currents of the fledgling American republic, these inclinations were greatly magnified. The tone was set by leaders such as James O’Kelly (1735-1826), who, in protest against the ecclesiastical authority of Bishop Francis Asbury, withdrew in 1792 from the Methodist Episcopal Church. First known as “Republican Methodists,” these churches eventually adopted the generic label of “Christians,” and during the late 1790s they became influential throughout the regions of North Carolina and Virginia. Meanwhile, in New England, Abner Jones (1772-1841) and Elias Smith (1769-1846) disavowed their Baptist identities and became the leaders of yet another “Christian” movement. Declaring their independence from the sectarian baggage of clerics and creeds, these preachers urged their audiences to embrace the simple, unadorned doctrines of the New Testament.6 When Barton Stone was examined for ministerial ordination with the Transylvania Presbytery, he was expected to subscribe to the Westminster Confession. He was reticent, however, about that requirement, and ultimately proposed a prodigious caveat. He received the Confession in 1798, but only to the degree that it was “consistent with the word of God.”7 In addition to his Presbyterian training, he was also enthralled with the fervor of revivalism, and he 5 See, for instance, John Abernethy, “Religious Obedience Founded on Personal Persuasion,” in Scarce and Valuable Tracts and Sermons, Occasionally Published, By the Late and Learned John Abernethy, M.A. (London: R. Griffiths, 1751), 222. 6 Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 40-43; 67-81. 7 D. Newell Williams, Barton Stone: A Spiritual Biography (St. Louis: Chalice, 2000), 29-45; and Stone’s own recollections in John Rogers, A Short History of the Life of Barton Stone (Cincinnati: J. A. and U. P. James, 1847), 29-30.
played an important role in the frontier manifestations of the Second Great Awakening. His ministry began at Cane Ridge, Ky. (near Lexington), and his congregation hosted the landmark Cane Ridge Revival in 1801.8 In Presbyterian circles, the ecumenical (and boisterous) revivals were frequently viewed with suspicion. Stone had already placed conditions on his doctrinal fidelity, and did very little to reassure his superiors. In 1803, under the looming threat of ecclesiastical discipline, he withdrew from the Synod of Kentucky; furthermore, in September of 1803, he joined with five similarly disaffected ministers, and they formed the alternative “Presbytery of Springfield.” This arrangement was short-lived: the following June, these ministers dissolved their corporate existence altogether with the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery. This document, a classic statement of anti-clerical and anti-creedal sentiment, encouraged its readers to exercise their “native right of internal government” and to find “free course to the Bible.”9 Like the “Christians” who followed O’Kelly, Jones, and Smith, Stone’s adherents began to call themselves “Christians,” and they spread rapidly throughout the region. In 1826, Stone began to edit a journal called The Christian Messenger,10 and a loose, unofficial, and variegated party was born. While Stone’s popularity radiated from central Kentucky, a similar movement was forming in the Ohio Valley. This was the movement of Alexander Campbell, a recent Irish immigrant who settled near the town of Wellsburg, Va. in 1809. Campbell had been raised in the Antiburgher Seceder branch of the Presbyterian Church, and his father, Thomas (1763-1854),
8 Williams, Barton Stone, 49-63; and Rogers, Short History, 30-42.
9 Williams, Barton Stone, 79-105. For the full text of the document, see Barton Warren Stone and Richard
McNemar, The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery, Disciples of Christ Digital Commons, https://digitalcommons.discipleshistory.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=all_foundationaldocuments, accessed 7 Feb 2023. 10 This publication has been reprinted in its entirety (Fort Worth: Star Bible & Tract Corp., 1978).
had served with a church in County Armagh.11 Thomas, who came to western Pennsylvania in 1807, had already expressed his growing discomforts with creedal definitions, and was known to fraternize outside the Antiburgher fold.12 Those tendencies had created tensions in his home country; in Pennsylvania, however, they ultimately led to his dismissal from the Antiburgher Seceder ministry.13 In 1809, Thomas formed an independent “Christian Association” in Washington, Pa., “for the sole purpose of promoting simple evangelical Christianity [sic].” His principles were outlined in a document called the Declaration and Address, where he lamented the fractured condition of the Christian community. He particularly condemned the divisive consequences of creedal orthodoxy, and he urged his readers to be satisfied with the elementary doctrines that are “expressly taught, and enjoined upon them, in the word of God.” He subsequently encouraged his readers to approach the Bible without ecclesiastical interference, using their own rational thinking to draw the proper conclusions. They should embrace the straightforward commandments (“express terms”) of scripture, and should conform to the early Christian examples (“approved precedents”) that are described in the New Testament. Nothing else, insisted Thomas, could be required from any Christian confession.14 Upon his arrival in 1809, the younger Campbell became an enthusiastic advocate for the principles his father had proposed. He soon moved in Baptist circles since he shared their disdain for infant baptism. That affiliation, however, began to unravel in 1816, when he addressed the 11 Various biographies have been written, including the early work of Robert Richardson, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: J. Lippincott, 1868; reprint, Indianapolis: Religious Book Service, n.d.). See also the recent work of Douglas A. Foster, A Life of Alexander Campbell (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020). 12 Foster, Alexander Campbell, 21-24; and Hiram Lester, “An Irish Precursor for Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address,” Encounter 50, 3 (Summer 1989): 247-67. 13 Richardson, Memoirs, 222-46. 14 Foster, Alexander Campbell, 24-26. For the full document, see Thomas Campbell, Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington, Disciples of Christ Digital Commons, https://digitalcommons.discipleshistory.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=all_foundationaldocuments, accessed 7 Feb 2023. See also Thomas H. Olbricht and Hans Rollmann, eds., The Quest for Christian Unity, Peace, and Purity in Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address, ATLA Monograph Series 46 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2000).
Redstone Baptist Association with a “Sermon on the Law.” In this presentation, he affirmed the divine origins of the Old Testament, but he denied the binding authority of its commandments and examples.15 This precipitated strong disapproval, and Campbell eventually shifted to the friendlier circle of the Mahoning Baptist Association; moreover, from 1823-30 he edited a popular journal called The Christian Baptist,16 where he vented his frustrations and publicized his perspectives. Propelled into the limelight by his journal and with public debates, Alexander quickly surpassed his father’s influence and became an outspoken advocate for anti-clerical, anti-creedal, New Testament Christianity. He protested against parachurch organizations such as missionary societies, Bible societies, and moral societies, because he regarded them as centralized bureaucracies for clerical power. He also began to advocate a sacramental function for baptism, and this conviction served to alienate him further from his prior Baptist connections. Nonetheless, his intellectual, rhetorical, and administrative talents were immense, and his influence spread rapidly throughout the Ohio Valley. By 1830, his movement of “reformers” had become a separate fellowship altogether, and he abandoned his Baptist affiliation.17 In time, Campbell moderated his contentious reputation, and he broadened his circle of influence. He earned widespread Christian support in 1829, when he debated the renowned skeptic Robert Owen;18 shortly after, in 1830, he discontinued his Christian Baptist and began the Millennial Harbinger, a journal that was relatively irenic in tone.19 Moreover, following his 1837 debate with the Catholic bishop John Purcell, he became a Protestant hero. With the 15 For the full text, see Alexander Campbell, “The Substance of a Sermon. Delivered before the Redstone
Baptist Association, met on Cross Creek, Brook County, Va., on the 1st of September, 1816,” in Pioneer Sermons and Addresses, 3d ed., ed. F. L. Rowe (Cincinnati: F. L. Rowe, 1925), 105-48. 16 This publication has been reprinted in its entirety (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1983). 17 Foster, Alexander Campbell, 61-80. 18 Richard J. Cherok, Debating for God: Alexander Campbell’s Challenge to Skepticism in Antebellum America (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2008). 19 Volumes from 1830-1863 have been preserved by the American Antiquarian Society Historical Periodicals.
establishment of Bethany College (in 1840), he assumed the mantle of a genteel educational reformer. For many, however, his identity had been formed during the Christian Baptist years, and a large percentage of his movement retained the iconoclastic spirit of that earlier publication. Though Campbell retained a heroic place in the narrative, his early supporters were largely unable to appreciate his later moderation. A crucial point of departure came in 1849, when, despite his earlier rejection of parachurch organizations, he sanctioned the formation of the American Christian Missionary Society (ACMS) and became its first president.20 A combined institution, however, had been born in the winter of 1831-32, when leaders from Campbell’s movement were gathered with Barton Stone’s associates. Held in Lexington, Ky., that meeting affirmed their mutual aims and formally brought them together. Campbell was not directly involved, and many churches declined to ratify the decision; without a centralized structure, this meeting could never produce an official merger. Nonetheless, it did mark the beginning of a singular fellowship, and Stone’s effects gravitated northward while Campbell’s influence swept southward. Many of the Stone-Campbell churches were known as “Churches of Christ,” but Stone’s partisans frequently retained the label of “Christians.” Campbell’s preference, meanwhile, was frequently expressed by those who called themselves the “Disciples of Christ.” These names would eventually mark significant lines of division, but they initially named the constituent parts of a singular movement.21 INTERPRETING THE ORIGINS
20
Hughes, Reviving, 32-46; and Richard T. Hughes, “From Primitive Church to Civil Religion: The Millennial Odyssey of Alexander Campbell,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44 (March 1976): 87103. 21 Williams, Barton Stone, 183-93; and Jack R. Reese, At the Blue Hole: Elegy for a Church on the Edge (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021), 70-110.
In many quarters, the Stone-Campbell churches were willing to claim that they had, indeed, restored the faith and practice of the primitive New Testament Christian communities.22 This interpretation has been central, ever since, to the self-understanding of many conservative members, and is best reflected in the four volumes of Earl West, who published The Search for the Ancient Order.23 Likewise (but from a more critical perspective), Richard Hughes and C. Leonard Allen have placed the Stone-Campbell movement in the larger context of American antebellum primitivism.24 Without question, both Stone and Campbell hoped to establish Christian churches that adhered, simply and exclusively, to the authority of scripture. This aspiration was completely consistent with the broader Reformed tradition, and was frequently expressed by American predecessors such as O’Kelly, Jones, Smith, and others. Aside from restorationist motives, however, there were other forces that fashioned this movement from the soil of the New American Republic. This was particularly true for Campbell, and is evident in the title of his Millennial Harbinger. He was enthusiastic about the prospects of Anglo-Saxon civilization,25 and was intrigued by the perceived decline of Catholicism. In keeping with the impulse of American “Manifest Destiny,” he believed the Bible foretold a millennial age, the “ultimate amelioration of society.”26 Simple Christianity, shorn of sectarian baggage, could deliver a global renovation of politics and religion. Thomas Campbell had been a gifted educator for his family, and Alexander was always marked by his brief experience (180809) at the University of Glasgow. For his part, therefore, the younger Campbell advocated for a
22 It is true that Campbell had published a book entitled Christianity Restored in 1835, but he subsequently
faulted the publishing “proprietors” for choosing that title. See Alexander Campbell, “Events of 1823 and 1827,” Millennial Harbinger, new series 2 (Oct 1838): 465-71. For the claims of his successors, see Hughes, Reviving, 5391. 23 Earl Irvin West, The Search for the Ancient Order: A History of the Restoration Movement, 4 vols. (Nashville: Gospel Advocate, 1979). 24 Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen, Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630-1875 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). 25 See, for instance, Alexander Campbell, “Progress of the Anglo-Saxon Race,” Millennial Harbinger, 4th ser., 1 (1 Dec 1851): 681-85. 26 Hughes, Reviving, 42-46. See also Douglas Foster, Alexander Campbell, 57-60.
state-sponsored “common school” education that utilized the Bible as a textbook. This millennial impulse was also central to the creation of Bethany College.27 More recently, many have interpreted the earliest movement as a “unity movement.” This perception has been valuable, as Churches of Christ and the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ have softened their disputes with one another, and have begun to reconcile past divisions. Toward this end, observers have emphasized Thomas Campbell’s pleas for unity in the Declaration and Address, and they have honored the merger of 1831-32 (which was realized in spite of potentially divisive obstacles). This approach is well-represented by Leroy Garrett's historical portrait, entitled The Stone-Campbell Movement.28 It is also prominent in numerous other works, including A Life of Alexander Campbell by Doug Foster.29 The early ecumenical efforts, however, were exceedingly narrow, and were easily overshadowed by the movement’s contentious reputation. Despite its edifying intentions, this interpretation fails to account for the frontier spirit that pervades the Stone-Campbell narrative. With this in mind, it is important to observe that the Stone-Campbell impulse was driven by a surge of antebellum populism. This has been described by Nathan Hatch in The Democratization of American Christianity.30 Winfred Garrison proposed a similar thesis, long ago,31 and connected the movement’s anti-clerical emphases with its frontier context. Aside from the sharp diatribes of the early Campbell Christian Baptist, the movement’s most provocative statement was surely co-authored by Stone (and his colleagues) when the Springfield Presbytery
27
This has been the topic of numerous studies. See Thomas L. Smith, “‘The Amelioration of Society:’ Alexander Campbell and Educational Reform in Antebellum America,” Ph.D. diss., University of Tennessee, 1990; and Keith B. Huey, “Alexander Campbell’s Church-State Separatism As a Defining and Limiting Factor in His Anti-Catholic Activity,” Ph.D. diss., Marquette University, 2000, 120-34, 220-26. 28 Leroy Garrett, The Stone-Campbell Movement: The Story of the American Restoration Movement (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1981). 29 Foster, Alexander Campbell, especially pages 81-90. 30 Hatch, Democratization, makes frequent references to major players like Stone and Campbell. 31 Winfred E. Garrison, Religion Follows the Frontier: A History of the Disciples of Christ (New York: Harper, 1931).
issued its Last Will and Testament. At once, this document declared total independence from the ecclesiastical oversight of the Synod of Kentucky, and it also renounced its own pretensions to congregational oversight. As such, it matched the broader frontier spirit of religious liberty and clerical disdain. Once again, it is easy to find kinship between Stone, Campbell, and the “Christian” churches of O’Kelly, Jones, and Smith. EMERGENCE OF CHURCHES OF CHRIST The Stone-Campbell churches prospered, with nearly 200,000 adherents by the start of the Civil War. Technically speaking, the war did not create a division in the movement; the conflict, however, served to magnify some familiar tensions. The ACMS, a point of controversy since its inception, became a symbol of northern arrogance and perfidy. Moreover, some churches, mostly northern, began to use musical instruments in their worship assemblies, and this “innovation” added fuel to the fires of division. Throughout the Deep South and in Texas, the movement’s churches were inclined toward a non-society, a cappella position. Under the leadership of Tolbert Fanning (1810-74) and David Lipscomb (1831-1917), who published the Gospel Advocate from Nashville, these congregations were generally known as “Churches of Christ.”32 Before and after Emancipation, this influence would persist in the African American communities, as well, as they began to establish their own traditions.33 In the mold of Campbell’s early iconoclasm, the Churches of Christ were strongly resistant to the encroachments of mainstream Protestant theology. A new provocation, however, arose by the end of the 19th century, when they became agitated by the issue of “higher criticism.” This academic discipline, largely built on liberal German scholarship, posed a challenge to traditional concepts of biblical inspiration, and was wholly incompatible with the 32 Hughes, Reviving, 64-91; and Robert E. Hooper, A Distinct People: A History of the Churches of Christ in the 20th Century (West Monroe, LA: Howard, 1993), 8-23. 33 Edward J. Robinson, Hard-Fighting Soldiers: A History of African American Churches of Christ (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019), 3-30.
movement’s trademark biblicism. This controversy, paralleled in other Protestant fellowships, was forcefully engaged by persuasive conservative voices. from the College of the Bible in Lexington, John W. McGarvey (1829-1911) exerted the most effective opposition. In spite of such protests, many ministers became sympathetic toward the trend of "theological liberalism," and they gained a significant coalition. In Ohio and northern Kentucky, especially, the “Disciples” found capable representation in the Christian Standard of Isaac ErretT (1820-88). Division existed de facto, and was soon recognized by the national census of 1906, where the Churches of Christ were listed as a separate denomination with 160,000 members.34 The Disciples would later suffer another rupture, when a confederation of conservative “Christian Churches” withdrew from their midst and formed a separate fellowship.35 Without an official corporate structure, however, the Churches of Christ have retained a tenuous statistical continuum ever since the census publication. First, their journals provided a degree of communication and cohesion: in addition to the Gospel Advocate, the Texas-based Firm Foundation was established by Austin McGary (1846-1928) in 1884, and G. P. Bowser (18741950) started the Christian Echo for African American churches in 1902. In time, these papers have been joined by many others. Second, these churches have been linked by a vibrant collection of liberal-arts colleges, where members could collaborate and students could receive a “Christian education.” The Nashville Bible School (now known as Lipscomb University) began in 1891, and Abilene (Texas) Christian College was founded in 1906. Two others, Harding College (Searcy, Ark.) and Freed-Hardeman College (Henderson, Tn.), were founded in 1919.36 Unable to find a home in these White institutions, Black churches eventually established Southwestern Christian College (Terrell, Texas) in 1948.
34 Garrett, Stone-Campbell, 307-405; Hooper, Distinct People, 25-43. 35 Garrett, Stone-Campbell, 407-32.
36 Hughes, Reviving, 137-89, 285-87; Robinson, Hard-Fighting Soldiers, 152-55.
In the early 1900s, the Churches of Christ existed as a relatively marginalized, countercultural sect. By the end of two World Wars, however, the pressures of patriotism had become too great, and the movement was driven toward the mainstream of American Protestant culture.37 They retained their distinctive opposition to instruments, and they held aloof from the broader Protestant spectrum; nonetheless, in sociological terms, the Churches of Christ had become, by the 1950s, a respectable conservative denomination. The 1950s and 1960s were particularly heady days, and they enjoyed an explosion in numbers. To answer the call for additional ministers, new preaching schools and colleges were established, especially in the South. North Central Christian College (now Rochester University) was a rare northern exception, a reflection of Detroit’s booming auto industry. Graduate programs were also added to the religious curriculum at George Pepperdine College (1944, in Los Angeles), Abilene (1953), and Harding (1954, in Memphis). Through the generous donations of numerous churches, the Herald of Truth radio ministries were launched in 1952, and television programs were added the following year. Moreover, missionaries flowed from these new institutions, and a newspaper called The Christian Chronicle (founded in 1943) kept the churches informed about the projects that were being achieved. By 1970, the Churches of Christ numbered close to two million members.38 This prosperity, however, was no guarantee for peace or continued growth. A small coterie challenged the biblical authorization for Sunday schools: these “non-class” churches, mostly in Texas, withdrew to form their own fellowship during the 1920s. There was also a “noninstitutional” protest, which reacted against the growing influence of the colleges and the Herald of Truth. Akin to the 19th-century arguments against para-church institutions, this perspective was forcefully argued by Foy E. Wallace, Jr. (1896-1979), who edited various
37 Michael W. Casey, “From Religious Outsiders to Insiders: The Rise and Fall of Pacifism in the Churches of Christ,” Journal of Church and State 44 (Summer 2002): 455-75. 38 Hughes, Reviving, 190-253; see also Richard T. Hughes, The Churches of Christ (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), 99-120.
periodicals such as the Bible Banner (1938-49). Meanwhile, the Churches of Christ suffered from persistent racial divisions and a lukewarm engagement with the Civil Rights Movement. Characterized by the rigid conservatism of leaders such as Marshall Keeble (1878-1968), R. N. Hogan (1902-97), and others, African American congregations have continued to develop in parallel with their White counterparts. As the Churches of Christ moved into the second half of the twentieth century, their growth began to stagnate. Many churches sought to distance themselves from a notoriously disputatious heritage, and they began to adopt new points of emphasis. For example, Mission magazine appeared from 1967 to 1987, dealing frankly with cultural topics such as racial injustice, militarism, and feminism. During the 1980s, another movement radiated from the Boston Church of Christ, placing radical emphasis on evangelism and discipleship. Eventually organized as the International Churches of Christ, this movement became a separate fellowship in 1993, and has endured its own tumultuous journey.39 Predictably, strong reactionary forces have tried to preserve the “sound doctrines” of the previous generation. In their quest to distinguish themselves from mainstream American Christianity, these churches have been represented by journals such as The Spiritual Sword, which began in 1969, and Contending for the Faith, which started in 1970. They rigorously defend an exclusivist, non-instrumental platform, and they continue to wield considerable (though waning) influence.40 To a significant degree, however, the Churches of Christ have moved in the opposite direction: many have embraced a broad range of Evangelical associations, and some have pursued the model of non-denominational “community churches.” The most interesting variable, here, could come from other parts of the world, especially in Africa, India,
39 Hughes, Reviving, 307-51; Hooper Distinct People, 207-35; and Harrell, Churches of Christ in the 20th Century, 39-218. 40 Hughes, Reviving, 327-30; and Hooper, Distinct People, 281-306.
and Latin America. Only time can tell what role the “Global South” will play, but the Churches of Christ have enjoyed considerable growth in those regions.41 DOCTRINAL DEVELOPMENTS Despite their debt to Barton Stone, the Churches of Christ have been primarily marked by the early, iconoclastic legacy of Alexander Campbell. They have favored his original mission to overturn denominational creeds and to restore the ostensible purity of primitive Christianity. In many Churches of Christ, the earliest centuries of Catholic development have been rejected as a time of “apostasy,” and the reformations of Martin Luther and John Calvin have been faintly praised as a partial move in a first-century direction. For them, therefore, the restorative work of Stone and Campbell should be viewed as an essential moment in Christian history. When these churches interpret scripture, Campbell’s influence is most evident. His approach to the Old Testament, as proposed in his 1816 “Sermon on the Law,” has been a powerful force. In accordance with this view, the Old Testament is “fulfilled” and is not authoritative for the “Christian dispensation.” This attitude has led, quite logically, to a disproportionate focus on the New Testament, especially the Epistles and Acts.42 For many Churches of Christ, this limited canon is sufficient to find a biblical pattern of “direct commands” and “approved precedents,” as Thomas Campbell proposed in his Declaration and Address. Acts 2:38, for instance, is frequently cited as an obligatory commandment from Peter,
41 Previously cited, Williams, Foster, and Blowers have edited The Stone-Campbell Movement: A Global History. To date, however, there is no systematic summary of the Churches of Christ in Africa, Latin America, and India. See the brief appraisals of Erik Tryggestad in The Christian Chronicle. They are: “Africa: A Century Later, Church Membership Tops 1 Million,” Christian Chronicle (1 July 2009): https://christianchronicle.org/india-andthe-subcontinent-a-profile-of-churches/, accessed 8 Feb 2023; “Latin America: From Dirt Roads to Urban Pavement, Churches of Christ Take Root,” Christian Chronicle (1 July 2011): https://christianchronicle.org/indiaand-the-subcontinent-a-profile-of-churches/, accessed 8 Feb 2023; and “India and the Subcontinent: A Profile of Churches,” Christian Chronicle (17 Dec 2009): https://christianchronicle.org/india-and-the-subcontinent-a-profileof-churches/, accessed 8 Feb 2023. 42 Thomas H. Olbricht, Hearing God’s Voice: My Life with Scripture in the Churches of Christ (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1996), 61-67; and Eugene Boring, “The Formation of a Tradition: Alexander Campbell and the New Testament,” The Disciples Theological Digest 2 (1987): 5-62.
who said, “repent and be baptized, every one of you.” Meanwhile, in Acts 20:7 we are told that Paul broke bread “on the first day of the week,” and this example is treated as a normative precedent for every Christian believer. In this quest for a coherent, authoritative, first-century pattern, the Churches of Christ have been optimistic about the clear-cut authority of scriptural data and have attempted to define their doctrines with scientific certitude. This interpretive method undergirds a nexus of distinctive practices in the Churches of Christ, beginning with baptism. In keeping with a literal translation of the Greek word baptizo (and the presumed example of the first-century church), it has been important for Churches of Christ to define baptism as a full bodily immersion. More distinctively, however, the purpose of baptism has been defined as a means for receiving grace and forgiveness. It is not understood to be a meritorious act in its own right; nonetheless, it represents an essential, visible, and salvific moment of obedience. Once again, Acts 2:38 has been determinative here, along with Acts 22:16, 1 Peter 3:21, and other “direct commands.” This doctrine has been foundational for all three branches of the Stone-Campbell movement and has been a trademark for the Churches of Christ.43 With an appeal to approved New Testament precedents, the Churches of Christ have also insisted that first-century churches were autonomous and were individually governed by a plurality of elders. Along with Stone and Campbell, they have rejected the concepts of regional bishops and authoritative councils, wherever clerical power might be centralized. As noted above, this persuasion has led some Churches of Christ to be suspicious about missionary societies, colleges, and radio programs.44 On the other hand, it has also allowed for remarkable
43 John Mark Hicks and Greg Taylor, Down to the River to Pray: Revisioning Baptism as God’s
Transforming Work (Siloam Springs, AR: Leafwood, 2004), 131-50; and Jeff Childers, Douglas A. Foster, and Jack R. Reese, The Crux of the Matter: Crisis, Tradition, and the Future of Churches of Christ (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2001), 120-25. 44 Harrell, Churches of Christ in the 20th Century, 39-175.
freedom of expression and is largely responsible for the bewildering diversity that presently characterizes the movement. Most famously, perhaps, the Churches of Christ are known for their insistence on a cappella music. Ephesians 5:19 and Colossians 3:16 are frequently cited, because they command “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” without any mention of instruments. In the absence of a command or a precedent, the practice of “instrumental music” has been judged to be sinful, and the issue is frequently treated as a litmus test for obedience. David Edwin Harrell has convincingly argued that this issue was exacerbated by 19th century sectional and sociological forces,45 but it continues to persist in the 21st century. Many churches, in recent years, have abandoned the traditional position; it is typical, nonetheless, for most congregations to sing without instrumental accompaniment.46 Normally, the Churches of Christ have reserved public leadership roles for their male members only. With their customary emphasis on Pauline epistles, they have appealed to biblical passages such as 1 Corinthians 14:34 and 1 Timothy 2:11-15, where feminine roles would seem to be clearly and sharply curtailed.47 Egalitarian advocates, by contrast, have argued that gender equality is an essential feature of the Kingdom of God, and they have challenged the hermeneutical assumptions that support the traditional biblical arguments.48 The interpretive stakes are significant and the issue has been hotly contested; male leadership, however, continues to be normative in most of the congregations. In recent years, Churches of Christ have been forced to reconsider their historic interpretive assumptions. Some have concluded that the traditional, pattern-seeking strategy has 45 David Edwin Harrell, The Social Sources of Division in the Disciples of Christ, 1865-1900: A Social History of the Disciples of Christ, vol. 2 (Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2003). 46 Rubel Shelly, Sing His Praise!: A Case for A Cappella Music as Worship Today (Nashville: 20th Century Christian, 1987). 47 F. Lagard Smith, Male Spiritual Leadership (Nashville: 21st Century Christian, 1998). 48 Sara Gaston Barton, A Woman Called: Piecing Together the Ministry Puzzle (Abilene, TX: Leafwood, 2012).
neglected crucial biblical themes, leaving Churches of Christ in a theologically shallow position. This concern was expressed as early as 1965 by Thomas H. Olbricht (1929-2020), who dared to suggest that Campbell had led the movement in “the wrong direction.”49 Moreover, subsequent critics have observed that the genre of biblical literature does not lend itself to systematic, “patternistic” manipulation.50 These suggestions have received a predictably mixed reaction, as traditionalists rightly recognize the threat that a “new hermeneutic” would pose for most of the doctrines articulated above. The Churches of Christ remain stridently conservative, but that consensus is eroding. It will be strenuously tested in future years, as they confront LGBTQ issues,51 environmental concerns, 52 and more. EVALUATION The Churches of Christ have inherited a vibrant heritage and a unique historical narrative, but their distinctive doctrinal identity seems to hang on a time-bound hermeneutical scaffold. More than two hundred years have elapsed since Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address, and it is philosophically difficult, in the world of the 21st century, to appeal to the clear-cut authority of biblical patterns. Traditionalists will surely continue to defend the old paths, and they will not be dissuaded by disapproval of the majority. Their mission, however, will be increasingly difficult, and their ranks seem destined to dwindle. Progressives will continue to press for hermeneutical changes, but it will be difficult to do this without a change of affiliation. Many congregations have already erased the “Church of 49 Thomas H. Olbricht, “The Bible As Revelation,” Restoration Quarterly 8 (1965): 229; and Thomas H.
Olbricht, “Biblical Theology and the Restoration Movement,” Mission Journal 13, 10 (1980): 4-9. 50 For a traditional “patternist” view, see Goebel Music, Behold the Pattern (Colleyville, TX: Goebel Music, 1991); for a contrasting point of view, see John Mark Hicks, Searching for the Pattern: My Journey in Interpreting the Bible (Self-published, 2019). 51 These discussions are surely on the horizon. Worth noting is Sally Gary, Loves God, Likes Girls: A Memoir (Abilene, TX: Leafwood, 2013). 52 Environmental issues have not been viewed as a theological priority in Churches of Christ, but they are being acknowledged. See Audrey Jackson, “‘Action on Climate Change . . . Is an Act of Love’,” Christian Chronicle (31 Aug 2022): https://christianchronicle.org/action-on-climate-change-is-an-act-of-love/, accessed 15 Feb 2023.
Christ” label from their stationery, and some are frankly indifferent about the historic ties they have severed. If they care about the past, they might salvage an ecumenical vision from the earliest days of the movement, or they might be inspired by the millennial “amelioration of society.” These kinds of options, however, can be pursued in other contexts, and there are plenty of places more amenable than the Stone-Campbell heritage. The most one can say, at this point, is that the Churches of Christ are still producing innovative ministers, capable scholars, and creative forms of mission. They clearly constitute an important and unfinished chapter in American church history.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Abernethy, John. “Religious Obedience Founded on Personal Persuasion.” In Scarce and Valuable Tracts and Sermons, Occasionally Published, By the Late and Learned John Abernethy, M.A. London: R. Griffiths, 1751. Allen, C. Leonard, and Richard T. Hughes. Discovering Our Roots: The Ancestry of Churches of Christ. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1988. Barton, Sara Gaston. A Woman Called: Piecing Together the Ministry Puzzle. Abilene, TX: Leafwood, 2012. Boring, Eugene. “The Formation of a Tradition: Alexander Campbell and the New Testament.” The Disciples Theological Digest 2 (1987): 5-62. Campbell, Alexander. “Events of 1823 and 1827.” Millennial Harbinger, new series 2 (Oct 1838): 465-71. Campbell, Alexander. “Progress of the Anglo-Saxon Race.” Millennial Harbinger, 4th ser., 1 (1 Dec 1851): 681-85. Campbell, Alexander. “The Substance of a Sermon. Delivered before the Redstone Baptist Association, met on Cross Creek, Brook County, Va., on the 1st of September, 1816.” In Pioneer Sermons and Addresses, 3d ed. Edited by F. L. Rowe. Cincinnati: F. L. Rowe, 1925. Campbell, Thomas. Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington. Disciples of Christ Digital Commons, https://digitalcommons.discipleshistory.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1006&context=al l_foundationaldocuments. Accessed 7 Feb 2023. Casey, Michael W. “From Religious Outsiders to Insiders: The Rise and Fall of Pacifism in the Churches of Christ.” Journal of Church and State 44 (Summer 2002): 455-75. Cherok, Richard J. Debating for God: Alexander Campbell’s Challenge to Skepticism in Antebellum America. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2008. Childers, Jeff, Douglas A. Foster, and Jack R. Reese. The Crux of the Matter: Crisis, Tradition, and the Future of Churches of Christ. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2001. Foster, Douglas A., et al., eds., The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004. Foster, Douglas A. A Life of Alexander Campbell. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2020. Garrett, Leroy. The Stone-Campbell Movement: The Story of the American Restoration Movement. Joplin, MO: College Press, 1981.
Garrison, Winfred E. Religion Follows the Frontier: A History of the Disciples of Christ. New York: Harper, 1931. Gary, Sally. Loves God, Likes Girls: A Memoir. Abilene, TX: Leafwood, 2013. Harrell, David Edwin. The Churches of Christ in the 20th Century: Homer Hailey’s Personal Journey of Faith. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2000. Harrell, David Edwin. The Social Sources of Division in the Disciples of Christ, 1865-1900: A Social History of the Disciples of Christ. Vol. 2. Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press, 2003. Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989. Hicks, John Mark, and Greg Taylor. Down to the River to Pray: Revisioning Baptism as God’s Transforming Work. Siloam Springs, AR: Leafwood, 2004. Hicks, John Mark. Searching for the Pattern: My Journey in Interpreting the Bible. Selfpublished, 2019. Hooper, Robert E. A Distinct People: A History of the Churches of Christ in the 20th Century. West Monroe, LA: Howard, 1993. Huey, Keith B. “Alexander Campbell’s Church-State Separatism As a Defining and Limiting Factor in His Anti-Catholic Activity.” Ph.D. diss., Marquette University, 2000. Hughes, Richard T. The Churches of Christ. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001. Hughes, Richard T. “From Primitive Church to Civil Religion: The Millennial Odyssey of Alexander Campbell.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44 (March 1976): 87-103. Hughes, Richard T., and C. Leonard Allen. Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630-1875. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Hughes, Richard T. Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996. Jackson, Audrey. “‘Action on Climate Change . . . Is an Act of Love’.” Christian Chronicle (31 Aug 2022): https://christianchronicle.org/action-on-climate-change-is-an-act-of-love/. Accessed 15 Feb 2023. Lester, Hiram. “An Irish Precursor for Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address.” Encounter 50, 3 (Summer 1989): 247-67. Music, Goebel. Behold the Pattern. Colleyville, TX: Goebel Music, 1991.
Olbricht, Thomas H. “The Bible As Revelation.” Restoration Quarterly 8 (1965): 211-32. Olbricht, Thomas H. “Biblical Theology and the Restoration Movement.” Mission Journal 13, 10 (1980): 4-9. Olbricht, Thomas H. Hearing God’s Voice: My Life with Scripture in the Churches of Christ. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1996. Olbricht, Thomas H., and Hans Rollmann, eds. The Quest for Christian Unity, Peace, and Purity in Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address. ATLA Monograph Series 46. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 2000. Reese, Jack R. At the Blue Hole: Elegy for a Church on the Edge. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021. Richardson, Robert. Memoirs of Alexander Campbell. Philadelphia: J. Lippincott, 1868; reprint, Indianapolis: Religious Book Service, n.d. Robinson, J. Edward. Hard-Fighting Soldiers: A History of African American Churches of Christ. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019. Rogers, John. A Short History of the Life of Barton Stone. Cincinnati: J. A. and U. P. James, 1847. Shelly, Rubel. Sing His Praise!: A Case for A Cappella Music as Worship Today. Nashville: 20th Century Christian, 1987. Smith, F. Lagard. Male Spiritual Leadership. Nashville: 21st Century Christian, 1998. Smith, Thomas L. “‘The Amelioration of Society:’ Alexander Campbell and Educational Reform in Antebellum America.” Ph.D. diss., University of Tennessee, 1990. Stewart, Larry. The Seasons of Rochester College. Rochester Hills, MI: Rochester College, 2008. Stone, Barton Warren, and Richard McNemar. The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery. Disciples of Christ Digital Commons, https://digitalcommons.discipleshistory.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=al l_foundationaldocuments. Accessed 7 Feb 2023.
Tryggestad, Erik. “Africa: A Century Later, Church Membership Tops 1 Million.” Christian Chronicle (1 July 2009): https://christianchronicle.org/india-and-the-subcontinent-aprofile-of-churches/. Accessed 8 Feb 2023. Tryggestad, Erik. “India and the Subcontinent: A Profile of Churches.” Christian Chronicle (17 Dec 2009): https://christianchronicle.org/india-and-the-subcontinent-a-profile-ofchurches/. Accessed 8 Feb 2023. Tryggestad, Erik. “Latin America: From Dirt Roads to Urban Pavement, Churches of Christ Take Root.” Christian Chronicle (1 July 2011): https://christianchronicle.org/india-andthe-subcontinent-a-profile-of-churches/. Accessed 8 Feb 2023. West, Earl Irvin. The Search for the Ancient Order: A History of the Restoration Movement. 4 vols. Nashville: Gospel Advocate, 1979. Williams, D. Newell. Barton Stone: A Spiritual Biography. St. Louis: Chalice, 2000. Williams, D. Newell, Douglas A. Foster, and Paul M. Blowers, eds. The Stone-Campbell Movement: A Global History. St. Louis: Chalice, 2021.
An Ecumenical Christian University: From ‘Christians Only’ to ‘the Only Christians’ and Beyond
Naomi Walters, D. Min. Rochester University Chair of the Department of Theology and Ministry Professor of Religion
CHURCHES OF CHRIST: “CHRISTIANS ONLY” In 1804, Barton W. Stone and five Presbyterian colleagues dissolved the Springfield Presbytery of Kentucky they had only recently formed in 1803, in a declaration of independence, entitled the “Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery.”1 It reads, “We will, that this body die, be dissolved, and sink into union with the Body of Christ at large; for there is but one body, and one Spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling…We will, that preachers and people cultivate a spirit of mutual forbearance; pray more and dispute less.” A few years later in 1809, another former Presbyterian in Pennsylvania – Thomas Campbell – penned the Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington, expressing similar sentiments: Being well aware, from sad experience, of the heinous nature and pernicious tendency of religious controversy among Christians; tired and sick of the bitter jarrings and janglings of a party spirit, we would desire to be at rest…Our desire, therefore, for ourselves and our brethren would be, that, rejecting human opinions and the inventions of men as of any authority, or as having any place in the Church of God, we might forever cease from further contentions about such things; Impressed with these sentiments, we have resolved as follows: That we form ourselves into a religious association…[and] that this Society by no means considers itself a Church.2 That same year, Thomas’s son Alexander came to America from Ireland, and – being both younger and more impassioned than his father – he “emerged as the pivotal leader of the movement his father had begun.”3 The two distinct movements led by Barton W. Stone and Alexander Campbell formally united on January 1, 1832.4
1 Barton Stone, Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery (1804). Accessed at:
https://digitalcommons.discipleshistory.org/all_foundationaldocuments/8. 2 Thomas Campbell, Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington (1809). Accessed at: https://digitalcommons.discipleshistory.org/all_foundationaldocuments/7. 3 Richard T. Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 2008), 11. 4 Douglas A. Foster, Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavant, and D. Newell Williams, “Chronology,” in The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, ed. Douglas A. Foster, Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavant, and D. Newell Williams (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004), xxxvii-xxxviii. Hughes; 12, 99.
In these early founding documents, as well as in the many other written artifacts by Stone, Campbell, and their colleagues from the early nineteenth century, it is evident that they desired visible Christian unity.5 Stone’s commitment to unity was inspired by his experience with the beauty of ecumenical unity in the Cane Ridge Revivals of 1801.6 However, for both Stone and Campbell, this desire for unity was also borne of their own experiences of disunity and division – both personally7 and in the American pluralist context more generally.8 Nondenominationalism In those founding documents, it is also clear that early leaders attributed the division and dissension they were experiencing to the existence of different denominations or “parties.”9 With this diagnosis, therefore, their proposed solution – the path to unity – was to become nondenominational.10 Thus, Stone and Campbell, and those who followed them, desired to be “Christians only,” neither affiliating with any particular denomination nor creating a new one.11
5 The word “visible” here is in contrast with the “invisible unity” or “actual oneness” of the church
described in the Last Will and Testament (referencing Ephesians 4:4): “there is but one body, and one Spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling.” 6 Hughes, 96. Leonard Allen and Richard Hughes observe that this was a shared motivation for many early followers of Stone. Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen, Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America 1630-1875 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 109-11. 7 One of Stone’s five co-authors and co-dissenters, Richard McNemar, had been told his participation in the revivals “had violated the standards of the Westminster Confession of Faith.” Hughes, 96. Thomas Campbell’s withdrawal from the Seceder Presbyterian denomination was a result of efforts to control his preaching. Hughes, 11. 8 Douglas A. Foster, “Unity, Christian,” in The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, ed. Douglas A. Foster, Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavant, and D. Newell Williams (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004), 754. 9 Stone, Last Will and Testament. In a “Witnesses Address” appended to the end of that document, its authors clarified their motivations for this declaration: “With deep concern they viewed the divisions, and party spirit among professing Christians, principally owing to the adoption of human creeds and forms of government.” 10 “These movements did not seek structural union or merger of denominations. They sought, rather, the destruction of the denominational system itself, which they saw as inherently divisive.” Foster, “Unity, Christian,” 755. 11 “Churches of Christ have passionately rejected the labels sect and denomination as pertinent to their own identity. Indeed, their resolute rejection of these labels has been central to what Churches of Christ have been about for almost two hundred years….This unique self-understanding has served to create institutional identity out of a denial of institutional identity.” Hughes, 2.
Stone-Campbell Movement historians Leonard Allen and Richard Hughes share this illustrative story: In 1860 the Kentucky ‘Christian’ preacher John Rogers admonished his cohorts in the Churches of Christ not even to speak of themselves as another denomination. ‘When we speak of other denominations, we place ourselves among them, as one of them. This, however, we can never do, unless we abandon the distinctive ground – the apostolic ground – the anti-sectarian ground, we have taken.12 CHURCHES OF CHRIST: THE ONLY CHRISTIANS Recalling the 1804 bequest of Stone and his five colleagues “that preachers and people cultivate a spirit of mutual forbearance; pray more and dispute less,” the 1837 emergence within the Stone-Campbell Movement of a journal entitled the Heretic Detector comes as quite a surprise. The editor of this journal, Arthur Crihfield, “regularly engaged in onslaughts on Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Universalists, Deists, and anyone else not of his tribe.”13 How did this happen? How did a movement go from “Christians only” to “the only Christians” in just over thirty years? Primitivism In part, this shift occurred as a result of the tactic the movement utilized to achieve unity: primitivism. In place of the doctrinal (creedal) and organizational structure offered by “the denominations,” Stone and Campbell urged a return to primitive or original New Testament Christianity: “the Christian faith as it was believed and practiced in the first century.”14
12 Hughes and Allen, 102. 13 Hughes, 59.
14 Hughes, 1. See Thomas Campbell, Declaration and Address. “Is there anything that can be justly deemed necessary for this desirable purpose, but to conform to the model and adopt the practice of the primitive Church, expressly exhibited in the New Testament?” Thus, the Stone-Campbell Movement sometimes goes by another name: the Restoration Movement.
Given the many divisions caused by the doctrinal systems and organizational structures of the denominations,15 Campbell argued: To us, it appears, the only practicable way to accomplish this desirable object [unity], is to propound the ancient gospel and the ancient order of things in the words and sentences found in the apostolic writings – to abandon all traditions and usages not found in the Record, and to make no human terms of communion . . . a union amongst Christians can be obtained only upon scriptural grounds and not upon any sectarian platform in existence.16 Those who sought unity would need to skip over the generations of human history that had caused division, and unite on the New Testament alone. One early restorationist explained it this way: “the Bible came from Heaven, [while] human creeds came from London, Westminster, and Philadelphia.”17 Therefore, according to historian Douglas Foster, although “unity was a major component of [Campbell’s] agenda,”18 restoration of the primitive church absorbed his attention, as the only sure means to that end.19 Rationalist Hermeneutic Inherent in this emphasis on restoring the New Testament pattern is a biblical hermeneutic that assumes at least two things: first, that the New Testament is primarily a book of facts,20 and second, that all rational readers would understand the New Testament to be saying the same thing,21 at least about matters that were essential. Indeed, Campbell did assume that through Baconian Common Sense Rationalism, one “could establish the precise meaning of
15 Hughes and Allen, 157.
16 Quoted in Douglas A. Foster, A Life of Alexander Campbell (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2020), 89. 17 Jacob Creath, quoted on Hughes and Allen, 107. 18 Foster, A Life of Alexander Campbell, 81. 19 Ibid, 84. 20 “Both [Alexander] Campbell and his father, Thomas, viewed the New Testament essentially as a law book, a kind of divine constitution for the church…Thomas Campbell wrote in the Declaration and Address, the cornerstone for the Campbell movement, that ‘the New Testament is [a] perfect constitution for the worship, discipline, and government of the New Testament Church’…Thus, the Christian could know the law of God with certainty, and have confidence that he or she had obeyed that law, simply by reading the New Testament.” Hughes and Allen, 116-7. 21 Foster, A Life of Alexander Campbell, 90.
scripture…By means of such certainty, people could be persuaded to give up their theories and embrace spiritual ‘facts.’”22 Because he believed “all Christians could read and understand the Bible alike, Campbell imagined that once the people took matters into their own hands, Christian unity could not be far away.”23 Implications This Campbellite perspective ultimately won out in the (so-called) Stone-Campbell Movement. The primitivist emphasis among Campbell and his followers meant “they routinely conceived of the restoration task as one of pruning and negation…They viewed their task, therefore, not as one of positive construction, but rather as one of elimination: they would prune the traditions of history and remove the encrustations of time.”24 This theology by negation became, ultimately, a combative theology. Campbell himself wrote, “the prince of Peace never sheathed the sword of the Spirit while he lived” and “there are no winter quarters in the good fight of faith, neither is there a truce nor an armistice in the war between truth and error.”25 Despite his emphasis on “the freedom of each individual Christian to understand Scripture…Campbell’s rational bent led him to systematize the teachings of Scripture in a way that moved inevitably toward uniformity and orthodoxy.”26 In this way, “Campbell seemed not to grasp…that restoration and unity were, in many respects, mutually exclusive terms.”27 Ultimately, this led Stone himself to lament, in 1836, that: Some among ourselves were for some time zealously engaged to do away [with] party creeds, and are yet zealously preaching against them – but instead of a written creed of man’s device, they have substituted a non-descript one, and exclude good brethren from their fellowship, because they dare believe differently from their opinions, and like other sectarians, endeavor to destroy their influence 22 Hughes and Allen, 156. 23 Hughes, 26.
24 Hughes and Allen, 107. 25 Quoted on Hughes, 25.
26 Particularly in the early periodical the Christian Baptist. Hughes, 99. 27 Hughes, 22.
in the world.28 Campbell’s Response Eventually, Campbell himself also became disillusioned with the increasingly sectarian followers of his own movement, joining his lament to that of Stone: “This plan of making our own nest, and fluttering over our own brood; of building our own tent, and of confining all goodness and grace to our noble selves and the ‘elect few’ who are like us, is the quintessence of sublimated pharisaism.”29 He came to realize the incompatibility between restoration primitivism and unity,30 and founded Bethany College without the requirement that its trustees be members of the Stone-Campbell Movement.31 However, the seeds that had been planted continued to grow without him in the leaders who came after him.32 “Those among Churches of Christ who continued their strong and strident attacks against other sects and denominations were acting out a script that Campbell himself had abandoned.”33 The sectarian spirit had been “caught,” if not “taught.” A Sectarian Denomination By the 1840s, people outside of Churches of Christ considered them to be a discernible and distinct denomination.34 Despite their own protestations against this denominational status, the Heretic Detector began keeping track of numbers of people in the fold, counting “four hundred
28 Quoted on Hughes, 104.
29 Quoted on Hughes, 37. See also his rewording in The Christian System. In 1835 (under the title Christianity Restored – which he asserts his publisher chose for him), it stated that his movement “is a nucleus around which may one day congregate all the children of God,” emphasis mine; quoted on Hughes, 45. By 1839, it was much softened: “a nucleus has been formed, or may be formed, around which may one day congregate all the children of God,” emphasis mine; quoted on Hughes, 391-2, footnote 73. 30 “Abundant evidence indicates that by the mid-1830s, Campbell’s concern for Christian unity had modified and even undermined his early concern for a radically restorationist posture based on the hermeneutic of example and silence.” Hughes and Allen, 180. 31 Hughes, 40. 32 Ibid, 53-77. 33 Ibid, 27. 34 Hughes and Allen; 102-3, 128.
and thirty members who have united with the church of God in this county.”35 Notice, the collapse of this group with “the church of God,” indicating that they were no longer “Christians only” but now considered themselves truly to be “the only Christians.” Having refused to admit they were a denomination,36 they became a sect: a “segment of the universal body of Christ that regards itself as the total body of Christ.”37 Between 1804 (the date Barton Stone and others published the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery) and 1837 (the first year of publication for the journal, the Heretic Detector), the early emphasis on unity gave way to a more exclusive, sectarian spirit – focused less on unity and more on uniformity, or at least unanimity. In the following decades, this posture gained traction and the Stone-Campbell Movement – formally united in 1832 – had divided by 1906 into what are now called Churches of Christ and Disciples of Christ, and the ecumenical impulse left with the Disciples.38 Therefore, still today: “It is to the young, brash, and swashbuckling Alexander Campbell…that Churches of Christ principally belong.”39 ROCHESTER UNIVERSITY Leaving a more detailed history of the intervening years to the historians, let us jump ahead to the 1950s, when Rochester University (RU) entered the Church of Christ story.40 An early brochure outlining the case for a Church of Christ school in southeast Michigan or northern Ohio observed that “members of the Lord’s Church have established several excellent
35 Quoted on Hughes and Allen, 127.
36 “A segment of the universal body of Christ that recognizes itself as a segment.” Hughes, 4. 37 Hughes, 4. 38 Ibid, 13. 39 Ibid, 46.
40 See Beth Bowers’ article in this project, “Missions to Missional: Rochester University’s Story in Churches of Christ from Otis Gatewood to Brian Stogner,” unpublished manuscript (Sept 2023), for a more detailed telling of Rochester University’s history. For a yet more detailed account, see Larry Stewart, The Seasons of Rochester College (Rochester Hills, MI: Rochester College, 2008).
colleges in the southern part of the United States”41 and it was high time the north had such a school too. In 1959, their hope came to fruition in the form of North Central Christian College (NCCC). The sectarian posture of Churches of Christ is a founding aspect of our story, if not obviously in the desire to establish a college associated with “the Lord’s church,” then certainly in the Articles of Incorporation for the NCCC Foundation, which required that members of the board also be members of the Churches of Christ. These Articles stated: “The school will be managed and controlled…by the Board of Directors, each of whom shall be a member of a congregation of the Church of Christ, which takes the New Testament as its only and sufficient rule of faith, worship, and practice,” a quotation once cited in a college newsletter in response to the question, “What assurance will be given that the school will be free from divisive doctrines, influences, and ‘isms’?”42 One such board member was described as “working to establish the Cause of Christ in Upper Peninsula of Michigan,”43 a statement which indicates a belief that there were not only no Churches of Christ but no Christians in the Upper Peninsula at this time. However, the student body appears to have been ecumenical from the start, with the “Aims of the College” in the first course catalog emphasizing only a Christian education and environment.44 But in 1965, now under the name Michigan Christian Junior College, the “Aims of the College” section of the course catalog was updated in a way that makes this ecumenism sound begrudging, at best: “Since the college was founded and is supported principally by
41 “More Precious than Rubies,” 1. Published by the North Central Christian College Foundation, Inc;
author and date unknown (though it is after the Articles of Incorporation were filed on March 4, 1955 and before a location for the campus was chosen). 42 Articles of Incorporation are referenced in “You Will Want the Answers to These Important Questions,” The North Central Newsletter 1, no. 4 (Sept 1956): 1, available in the RU institutional archives. 43 “More Precious than Rubies,” 2. 44 “Aims of the College,” North Central Christian College Course Catalog (1959-60), 13.
members of churches of Christ in Michigan and nearby states, the college primarily supplies education for this clientele; however, the student body is not limited to this constituency.”45 Future course catalogs reveal an ongoing tug-of-war between these two perspectives. In 1971, having dropped the word “Junior” to become simply Michigan Christian College, the “Aims of the College” were updated once again, removing any mention of a “primarily Church of Christ” student body, and adding a philosophical reflection on the importance of exploration to a liberal arts institution. The college is aware of extremes facing a [Christian liberal arts college]: first, that religious attitudes may be so inflexible and rigid that students are merely catechized, in which case the purpose of a liberal arts college is defeated; and conversely, that the religious philosophy of the college may be so nebulous and illdefined that the college is not distinctively Christian. The task of Michigan Christian College requires it to steer a course between these two extremes, and the college does, in fact, generally succeed in doing so.46 Despite this public statement regarding the importance of religious inquiry and curiosity, in this same year the institution faced – in its inner life – a controversial instance of “heretic detection.” Academic vice president and beloved faculty member Dr. Joseph Jones (voted best by students in 1969)47 was dismissed as result of pressure from local congregational leaders from Churches of Christ who disagreed with some of his theological views.48 Perhaps this is why the 1973-75 course catalog dropped from its “Aims of the College” the phrase “…and the college does, in fact, generally succeed in doing so.”49 In 1985, the course catalog changes its section heading from “Aims of the College” to “Mission of the College,” which reads: While having neither legal nor formal ties with any church, the college is under the control of a self-perpetuating Board of Trustees who are themselves members 45 “Aims of the College,” Michigan Christian Junior College Course Catalog (1965-67), 13. 46 “Aims of the College,” Michigan Christian College Course Catalog (1971-73), 34.
47 “Students Vote Dr. Jones MCC Best,” Michigan Christian College Bulletin 8, no. 5 (April 1969), 2. 48 Stewart, 44. See also Bowers, 5, fn15. The college publicly apologized to Dr. Jones in 2000. 49 “Aims of the College,” Michigan Christian College Course Catalog (1973-75), 3.
of Churches of Christ. The college is active in the support of activities which aid these churches such as lectureships, workshops, and choral programs. Michigan Christian College, however, has always welcomed and served qualified students regardless of their religious faith.50 This course catalog also adds that “students have the opportunity not only to study in class with faculty members who have the appropriate scholarly training but also to associate with them as committed Christians active in local Churches of Christ.”51 This public emphasis on employee affiliation with Churches of Christ remains the same until the 1993 course catalog, at which point employees are referred to as simply Christian.52 It is surely more than coincidental that this change follows shortly after the start of Dr. Ken Johnson’s presidency, since he was a key proponent of the university’s transition to a more ecumenical posture. Once again, this public emphasis on a more ecumenical posture was followed shortly by another interior conflict related to theological freedom. In 1997, Lynn Anderson – a prominent and progressive Church of Christ minister and author – was scheduled to speak at the college’s annual ministry conference. Anderson had just written a book entitled Navigating the Winds of Change, in which he encouraged people to become “change agents” in the Churches of Christ, attending to which parts of Church of Christ practice might be traditional or cultural but not actually mandated by scripture.53 Again, local congregational leaders in Churches of Christ pressured the institution, and the board counseled President Johnson to rescind Dr. Anderson’s
50 “Mission of the College,” Michigan Christian College Course Catalog (1985-86), 10.
51 “Mission of the College,” Michigan Christian College Course Catalog (1985-86), 11. This language is
expanded in 1992 to indicate that both faculty and staff are affiliated with Churches of Christ. “College Mission,” Michigan Christian College Course Catalog (1992-93), 10. 52 “[Students] also have daily contact with a Christian staff, which provides students with additional opportunities for personal example and encouragement.” “College Mission,” Michigan Christian College Course Catalog (1993-94), 4. 53 Lynn Anderson, Navigating the Winds of Change (New York City, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1994).
invitation – or at least delay it until the current name change to Rochester College was completed – which President Johnson did.54 This incident prompted President Johnson – first privately with the Board in 199755 and then more publicly in 1998 in a position paper that eventually circulated throughout American Churches of Christ56 – to advocate for a more ecumenical atmosphere among the college’s campus community. In the position paper, Johnson appealed to the Church of Christ theological heritage this way: “We recognize that the early years of the American Restoration Movement were dominated by a call to unify all Christians, explicitly recognizing not that denominational membership precludes salvation but that the creedal requirements of denominationalism hinder the cause of Christ, making a nondenominational situation preferable.”57 He also observed, as a caution: The American Restoration Movement, however, did not generally preserve this openness. Instead, Campbell’s followers soon began to reduce theological freedom in favor of an unwritten creed…After nearly two hundred years…the movement does not look like its primary roots. Profitable and open dialog known at times in the nineteenth century became lost by the twentieth century as powerful voices assumed control of restorationist publications and ultimately separated from or silenced other voices.58 The present article has already recounted this history and shared a similar caution. Throughout his presidency, Johnson advocated for a more ecumenical posture on campus, based on freedom in Christ as a return to an important aspect of the Stone-Campbell Movement heritage. His perspective was central in shaping many of the university’s current policies.
54 Stewart, 112.
55 Ken Johnson, “Presentation Regarding Lectureship Speaker Selection Policy,” speech given to the Michigan Christian College Board of Trustees (July 12, 1997). 56 Ken Johnson, “Rochester College, Churches of Christ, and Nondenominational Christianity,” position paper informally published (Dec 15, 1998). 57 Ibid. Emphases his. 58 Ibid.
In a 1999 presentation to the board, Johnson went on to emphasize the importance of articulating this ecumenical posture publicly, reflecting: We say that we are a Christian college. There are perhaps 500 different identifiable Christian religious groups with varying doctrines and beliefs. New acquaintances ask, “Which one are you?” I and our recruiters get the question often. We answer, “We are the Church of Christ,.” They say, Oh, now, is that the same as Church of Christ Scientist? Is that the United Church of Christ? Is that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? Is that the Church of God in Christ? Are you the International Church of Christ?...I cannot sit down and explain to every one of them…Our 21-year-old recruiters [cannot fully] address the question, Who is Rochester College, religiously speaking?...There is insufficient time and inadequate knowledge to do it orally. We must do it in writing, or we miss opportunities.59 The college did so that year, in documents entitled “Presenting Foundational Concepts of Rochester College” and “The Religious Affiliation, Spiritual Emphasis, and Theological Understandings of Rochester College.”60 That fall, in a presentation to academic deans from other Church of Christ colleges and universities, Johnson summarized his past several years at Rochester College and the changes it had been making, including the various public documents that had been produced articulating a more ecumenical posture. He posed to them a question: Two hundred years ago, there was much diversity among the men and women whose dream it was to call all Christians out of denominationalism to be ‘Christians only.’ Over time, however, that diversity gave way to increasing uniformity…At Rochester College, we want to be true to our ownership group, the Churches of Christ. But what does being true to them mean? When are we true to our heritage in Churches of Christ? Is it not when we are most true to the ideals of Churches of Christ? Shouldn’t we be looking at an ideal rather than an actual present-day model?61
59 Ken Johnson, “Presentation to the Board of Trustees,” speech given to the Rochester College Board of Trustees (Jan 16, 1999). 60 Shared with me by Larry Stewart. 61 Ken Johnson. “What Religious Culture for Our Campuses?”, speech given at the national conference of academic deans affiliated with Churches of Christ (Sept 18, 1999).
Nearly a quarter century later, in many ways, this current institutional identity project is wrestling with much the same question. Echoes of Dr. Johnson’s encouragements and cautions can be heard in the statements of our current president, Dr. Brian Stogner, such as: One key adaptation in the life of Rochester University has been to become a more religiously inclusive institution. RU was founded by members of the Church of Christ and for most of its history, all of those who led the institution, including administrators, full-time faculty, key staff members, trustees, and primary supporters were from that religious group. Students from the Church of Christ were the primary prospects for admissions counselors. We still owe, and always will owe a great debt of gratitude to those founding visionaries. However, as the institution developed to face a changing world, it became an organization less exclusively led by, taught by, and attended by individuals from the Church of Christ and, across the spectrum from trustees to students, became more religiously diverse within the context of the broader Christian community. This evolution has allowed RU to grow and prosper in ways that it otherwise never could have, but it has left some feeling confused and unmoored from the traditions that guided us, defined us, and formed our identity…It is clearly time now (perhaps past time) in the life of the institution to be more intentional and strategic in addressing, clarifying, and communicating our identity.62 Church of Christ membership has long since ceased to be an employment requirement, and our student body has long since ceased to be primarily – or even noticeably, at this point – affiliated with Churches of Christ. Our course catalogs no longer waffle about these realities from year-to-year. These things are rightfully and beautifully so! As Dr. Johnson wrote many years ago: “exclusivism is neither practically nor morally acceptable.”63 Yet, we still find it difficult to articulate clearly who we are, religiously: if not denominationally, still theologically. There are some who would argue, in fact, that the very act of articulation is itself exclusive, saying something along the lines of: “As soon as we say who we are, there will be someone who disagrees. So it would be better not to say anything, but just to quietly get on with
62 Brian Stogner. “Rochester University – A Distinctive Christian University,” speech given at the Spring Semester Opening Sessions (Jan 2022). 63 Johnson, “Rochester College, Churches of Christ, and Nondenominational Christianity.”
things internally.” Is this true? Is the best way to be inclusive to be vague? Is the only way to be ecumenical to attempt to be nondenominational? RESISTING NONDENOMINATIONAL CHRISTIANITY It is at this point that a return to the Church of Christ history with which we began may be instructive. Recall that the early founders of the movement had a commendable desire for unity, but a problematic method (restoration or primitivism), which ultimately led to a sectarian emphasis on unanimity or uniformity rather than unity. It is common to describe this historical reality as “ironic.” For instance: “These people increasingly identified the primitive church of the New Testament with the Church of Christ movement to which they belonged, and they defended that church against all comers. In this way, ironically, they build a sect on the foundation of the original vision of ‘nondenominational’ Christianity.”64 However, it is my argument that this is not “ironic.” It is inherent. It is not unfortunate happenstance that the move toward the generic or the universal created a particularizing, absolutizing, exclusive sect. This is, in fact, precisely what happens whenever one attempts to abstract to a generic, universalized vision. Therefore, the story of Churches of Christ is not just a story of a commendable desire (unity) but a problematic method (primitivism). Though primitivism certainly is problematic, there is problem further back than that, with the initial diagnosis that the very existence of denominations is what causes disunity. This inaccurate diagnosis prompted an ineffective prescription – nondenominationalism. Nondenominationalism Is Impossible 64 Hughes, 56. Emphasis mine. See also Hughes and Allen, 78: “Ironically, however, many in this absolutist, coercive tradition began their restoration careers employing the restoration ideal as a tool of dissent and a means to freedom. This is true of both individuals and denominations that finally absolutized their dissent and the grounds of their freedom…In the Churches of Christ, one moves from the freedom-loving Barton W. Stone to an Arthur Crihfield with his Heretic Detector in a matter of years.”
To begin with, nondenominationalism is impossible. From their earliest days, Stone and Campbell and the people who followed them simultaneously needed and resisted names to refer to, or to “denominate,” those who shared their perspectives. Attempting to provide a label while resisting labels, they called themselves “Christians” or “Disciples.” In contemporary usage, the denial of denominational status in our naming conventions is indicated by the use of a lowercase “c” in the phrase “church of Christ.”65 Also, those supposedly universal shared perspectives, themselves, were shaped by particular elements of nineteenth century American life.66 The unity impulse, though certainly theological, was also a product of the particular expression of pluralism in frontier America.67 The impulse to be nondenominational and free from clerics and creeds was an expression of the American concept of freedom and democracy,68 put most concisely by an early Stone-Campbell Movement preacher who said: “the motto of the patriot and the Christian is, Liberty or death.”69 The method of primitivism, or attempting to be ahistorical, was motivated by that particular historical moment.70 The hermeneutic by which the primitive pattern was attained was steeped in the rationalism of that time period.71 Allen and Hughes put it this way: “All human beings are creatures of history and culture and, for that reason, cannot escape the constraints of time and place in their quest for the
65 By contrast, a capital “C” would appear to be a proper noun, and therefore, a denominational label, which simply would not do for those who endeavor to be “Christians only.” 66 See Keith Huey’s accompanying article, “The American Origins of the Churches of Christ,” unpublished manuscript, (Sept 2023). 67 Hughes, 12. 68 See Nathan Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (Yale, CT: Yale University Press: 1991). 69 Hughes and Allen, 105. This page contains a number of similarly revealing quotations. 70 Hughes and Allen, 21-2. 71 This critique emerged even during the nineteenth century, when Robert Richardson criticized the hermeneutic of Tolbert Fanning and others, as summarized by Hughes: “Then he made the really critical point that such a view does not revere the Bible so much as it reveres a philosophical perspective imposed on the Bible, and those who revere this philosophical perspective often do so unconsciously, imagining that they are actually rejecting all philosophical systems in deference to the Bible alone.” Hughes, 70. See also Hughes and Allen, 168.
natural, primordial, or universal.”72 But, precisely because the early members of the StoneCampbell Movement believed themselves not to be products of any particular historical or philosophical moment, they universalized their historical and philosophical perspective, and called it God’s. Nondenominationalism Is Harmful If one believes they have universal and particularity-free access to the mind of God, it does not take long to impose and enforce that view on all others. In what theologian Willie James Jennings calls “a flight to the universal,”73 when there is no regard for one’s own particularity, there is simultaneous disregard for the particularity of others. The assumption becomes that other people’s particularity is causing disunity or conflict, whereas one’s own particularity is not particularity at all, but is just the way things are or should be. Using the example of a specific Anglican missionary in South Africa in the 1850s, Jennings displays the way an overemphasis on a universal or de-particularized account of the Christian story in fact enabled oppressive missionary practice – because God loves all people, there is no need to wonder what God’s love looks like among these particular people.74 Jennings concludes: “What looks like a radical antiracist, antiethnocentric vision of Christian faith is in fact profoundly imperialist, [undermining] all forms of identity except that of the colonialist.”75 In other words: “neutrality” or “universality” always favors the majority. Allen and Hughes describe this reality in the Churches of Christ, specifically: Indeed some leaders in the Churches of Christ by the early 1840s even threatened their religious neighbors with divine retribution if they refused the truth and continued in the errors of their way. That this spirit of exclusivism and even coercion surfaced soon is deeply ironic when one considers that the Churches of 72 Hughes and Allen, 230.
73 Willie James Jennings, The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (Yale, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 132. 74 Ibid, 119-68. 75 Ibid, 145. More succinctly: “[His] universalism was the other side of his colonialism.” Jennings, 146.
Christ were born of passion for freedom…But, then, the soul of this tradition was the conviction of its people that they had bypassed history with its constraints and limitations, that they were heirs to no cultural presuppositions, that their spiritual sights were clear and unclouded, and that they therefore stood squarely on the firm ground of the first Christian age.76 Nondenominationalism Is Theologically Inappropriate Not only does “a flight to the universal” or an “illusion of innocence” bear rotten, colonialist fruit, such a flight/illusion is not rooted in the soil of incarnation. A central characteristic of the Christian God is that this God works through what is particular for the sake of what is universal. This is what Jennings calls “the scandal of particularity.”77 The Old Testament or Hebrew Bible records a God who chooses the family of Abraham and Sarah so that “all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:3). God works through the people of Israel for the sake of all peoples. The New Testament records this same particularizing work continuing in a God who becomes flesh in a specific, historical person (Jesus), for the sake of all persons.78 WHAT, THEN, SHALL WE SAY? The history of Churches of Christ can be understood – at least in part – as a cautionary tale warning against the idea of a “generically Christian” denomination. Similarly, the history of Rochester University may caution us against the idea of a “generically Christian” university. The initial Stone-Campbell Movement desire for unity is a commendable one. Similarly, the ecumenical and dialogical impulse in Rochester’s history has been – and continues to be – a beautiful thing, making possible my own education and employment here, at a time when many of our affiliated schools would not have trained or hired a female for ministry.
76 Hughes and Allen, 103. 77 Jennings, 160. 78 Ibid.
In the ongoing embodiment of those good desires, it is my hope that Rochester University can embody trinitarian unity in diversity (or unity in the midst of scandalous particularity), in which we aim not to be non-denominational, but inter-denominational. Be Denominational Being now aware of the historical reality that, “because [Churches of Christ] refused to accept the notion of a nondenominational denomination, they found themselves caught in the trap of belonging to a very particular denomination, all the while denying its denominational dimensions,”79 it will not do to deny or distance ourselves from the particularity of our denominational heritage. To be “ecumenical” does not mean being “less Church of Christ.” Ecumenism actually requires various denominations to know who they are and what good they bring to the table (and what bad they ought to leave behind). Henri Nouwen makes a similar observation related to Christian hospitality, defined as “the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy.”80 He describes the importance of particularized presence as the pillars that actually hold space, saying: To be receptive to the stranger in no way implies that we have to become neutral ‘nobodies’…Space can only be a welcome space when there are clear boundaries, and boundaries are limits between which define our own position. Flexible limits, but limits nonetheless…not hiding ourselves behind neutrality, but showing our ideas, opinions, and lifestyle clearly and distinctly. No real dialogue is possible between a somebody and a nobody.81 Be “Creedal” Nouwen’s encouragement to “define our own position” finds resonance with Dr. Johnson’s encouragement to say who we are, and to say it in writing – and President Stogner’s
79 Hughes, 7.
80 Henri Nouwen, Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life (Colorado Springs, CO: Image Publishers, 1986), 71. 81 Ibid, 98-9.
assertion that it is time to “clarify and communicate our identity.” In a sense, this is a call to be unapologetically “creedal,” insofar as we can use the word “creed” to mean a statement of a group’s current sense of where it stands. It may be useful to recall at this juncture that the original Stone-Campbell Movement rejection was of “enforced creedal uniformity,”82 not of creeds themselves.83 Remembering the impossibility of avoiding particularity, enjoy the following anecdote, paraphrased from Dr. Johnson: When seated at a conference with a member of the faculty at Fuller Theological Seminary, Johnson introduced himself as the President of Michigan Christian College. The colleague inquired: “With which church is MCC affiliated?” Dr. Johnson replied, “the Churches of Christ.” His colleague replied: “Oh, I’m familiar with your group. It’s the group that refuses to write down their creed.”84 Elsewhere, Johnson argued: “Our traditional resistance to expressing our core beliefs in written form has left us (Churches of Christ) defining ourselves by the few issues that separate us from others rather than by the overwhelming abundance of factors that contribute to the unity we claim to desire.”85 Recall Barton Stone’s consonant concerns that “instead of a written creed of man’s device, they have substituted a non-descript one.” A clear articulation of our theological postures would go a long way toward both internal clarity and external communication.
82 Hughes and Allen, 105.
83 See Thomas Campbell, in the Appendix to the Declaration and Address: “As to creeds and confessions,
although we may appear to our brethren to oppose them, yet this is to be understood only in so far as they oppose the unity of the church, by containing sentiments not expressly revealed in the word of God; or, by the way of using them, become the instruments of a human or implicit faith: or, oppress the weak of Gods heritage: where they are liable to none of those objections, we have nothing against them. It is the abuse and not the lawful use of such compilations that we oppose.” 84 Johnson, “Presentation to the Board of Trustees.” 85 Johnson, “Rochester College, Churches of Christ, and Nondenominational Christianity.”
However, joining with our Church of Christ ancestors who desired the freedom “to think, to dialogue, and to search for fuller understanding of scripture,”86 we should consider that articulation to be a snapshot of a theological life in progress, not an end point. To whatever extent Churches of Christ were anti-creedal, this was as a “commitment to the task of theologizing, with the single qualification that no one’s theology or interpretation would ever be accepted as equivalent to the word of God. Put another way, the search for the ancient order was just that: a search. It was process, not accomplished fact.”87 Embodying humility, we avoid clenched fists – both as they indicate a defensive or combative posture, and as they indicate a sense of protectiveness or attachment. CONCLUSION In short, if the story of Churches of Christ is one that goes from “Christians only” to “the only Christians,” my proposal is not that we need to get back to “Christians only” again. Instead, I propose we become “Christians together.” The open table is not a table at which we serve a blended puree of various things that become indistinguishable from one another, but a diverse potluck, with many types of food represented and appreciated – “a feast of rich food for all peoples” (Isaiah 25:6).
86 Hughes and Allen, 118. 87 Hughes and Allen, 118.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Anderson, Lynn. Navigating the Winds of Change. New York City, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1994. Bowers, Beth. “Missions to Missional: Rochester University’s Story in Churches of Christ from Otis Gatewood to Brian Stogner.” Unpublished manuscript. Sept 2023. Campbell, Thomas. Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington. 1809. Accessed at: https://digitalcommons.discipleshistory.org/all_foundationaldocuments/7. Foster, Douglas. A. et al., eds., “Chronology.” In The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Edited by Douglas A. Foster, Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavant, and D. Newell Williams. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004. Foster, Douglas A. A Life of Alexander Campbell. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2020. Foster, Douglas A. “Unity, Christian.” In The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Edited by Douglas A. Foster, Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavant, and D. Newell Williams. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2004. Hatch, Nathan. The Democratization of American Christianity. Yale, CT: Yale University Press: 1991. Huey, Keith. “The American Origins of the Churches of Christ.” Unpublished manuscript. Sept 2023. Hughes, Richard T. Reviving the Ancient Faith. Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 2008. Hughes Richard T. and C. Leonard Allen. Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America 1630-1875. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Jennings, Willie James. The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. Yale, CT: Yale University Press, 2011. Johnson, Ken. “Presentation Regarding Lectureship Speaker Selection Policy.” Speech given to the Michigan Christian College Board of Trustees. July 12, 1997. Johnson, Ken. “Presentation to the Board of Trustees.” Speech given to the Rochester College Board of Trustees. Jan 16, 1999. Johnson, Ken. “Rochester College, Churches of Christ, and Nondenominational Christianity,” Unpublished manuscript. Dec 15, 1998. Johnson, Ken. “What Religious Culture for Our Campuses?” Speech given at the national conference of academic deans affiliated with Churches of Christ. Sept 18, 1999.
Michigan Christian Junior College Course Catalog (1965-67). Michigan Christian College Course Catalog (1971-73). Michigan Christian College Course Catalog (1973-75). Michigan Christian College Course Catalog (1985-86). Michigan Christian College Course Catalog (1992-93). Michigan Christian College Course Catalog (1993-94). “More Precious than Rubies.” North Central Christian College Foundation, Inc., between 19551959. North Central Christian College Course Catalog (1959-60). Nouwen, Henri. Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life. Colorado Springs, CO: Image Publishers, 1986. “Presenting Foundational Concepts of Rochester College.” Rochester College, 1999. “The Religious Affiliation, Spiritual Emphasis, and Theological Understandings of Rochester College.” Rochester College, 1999. Stewart, Larry. The Seasons of Rochester College. Rochester Hills, MI: Rochester College, 2008. Stogner, Brian. “Rochester University – A Distinctive Christian University.” Speech given at the Spring Semester Opening Sessions. Jan 2022. Stone, Barton. Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery. 1804. Accessed at: https://digitalcommons.discipleshistory.org/all_foundationaldocuments/8. “Students Vote Dr. Jones MCC Best.” Michigan Christian College Bulletin 8, no. 5 (April 1969). “You Will Want the Answers to These Important Questions.” The North Central Newsletter 1, no. 4 (Sept 1956).
No Creed but the Bible The Story of Scripture in Churches of Christ
Mark Love, Ph.D. Rochester University Director of Graduate Program in Missional Leadership Professor of Theology & Ministry
INTRODUCTION From their inception until the present day, Churches of Christ have been a “people of the book.” Eschewing creeds and ecclesiastical structures above the congregation, the Churches of Christ have relied, at least in theory, on the sole authority of the Bible in matters of faith and doctrine. While the way the Bible is interpreted and used has changed over the last 200 years, the overall priority placed on the Bible has not. The Churches of Christ represent a wide spectrum of religious belief and practice, but the “through line” in our history is a high view of the Bible’s authority. Growing up in Churches of Christ, I was peppered with sayings related to our reliance on scripture, and particularly the New Testament (and even more particularly, Acts-Epistles). “We speak where the Bible speaks and are silent where the Bible is silent.” “We have no creed but the Bible.” “Give me book, chapter, and verse.” “Do not go beyond what is written.” My Sunday school training included memorizing important verses, notably the “Great Commission” in Matthew 28:16-20, and Acts 2:38, passages that emphasized the importance of baptism. I remember in Vacation Bible School being taught that we were to be like the “noble Bereans” in Acts 17, who searched the scriptures for themselves to see if claims being made were found in scripture. We were and are, above all things, a people of the book. 1
2 My wife, Donna, grew up Catholic and has commented that her eventual participation with Churches of Christ was notable for the fact that members were encouraged to read their Bibles for themselves, something she had not received encouragement to do before. Colleagues at Rochester University have commented that their own denominations do not display the same commitment to the Bible as what they observe in the Church of Christ. I point this out, not to highlight any superiority, but only to say this feature of being a member of the Church of Christ is observable to nonmembers. Like other Protestants, we have been committed to the notion of Sola Scriptura (scripture alone), but we took that commitment to extremes. Most Protestants accept some creed as authoritative, e.g. the Westminster Confession, the Apostles’ Creed, the Helvetic Confession, and so on. But creeds were rejected by early figures in the StoneCampbell movement as human-constructed innovations that got in the way of going directly to the pure source, the Bible. While, like other Protestants, we tried to take the positive teachings of the Bible as a guide, even a blueprint, for Christian life, the church of my youth took the silence of scripture, not as freedom, but as prohibition. So, since musical instruments are not mentioned in the New Testament, (never mind the Old Testament, since that was no longer in force), we had no authorization to use them. We were not to go beyond what was written. This use of the silence of scripture, though inconsistently applied, explains many of the idiosyncratic practices of Churches of Christ. Though extreme in some ways, we were not, however, unique. Nathan Hatch, in his book, The Bible in America, places early Stone-Campbell figures like Elias Smith and Alexander Campbell alongside notable American
3 denominational leaders like Samuel Davies, the first president of Princeton, as promoting a democratization of faith in the heady aftermath of the American revolution. Old authorities had been thrown over in the pristine wilderness of America, allowing the individual to approach the Bible on his or her own terms. Unmoored from larger denominational commitments, novel ways of approaching faith and the Bible were numerous.1 So, though we were not alone given the time-period during which the StoneCampbell movement emerged, we were nevertheless adamant concerning the Bible’s singular authority. It is the golden thread that runs through the story of Churches of Christ: no creed but the Bible. Being a people of words on a page, however, also necessitates certain philosophical or hermeneutical commitments. How should we interpret this set of writings we hold dear? For the majority of our history, we have been characterized by what Amanda Pittman calls an “informational hermeneutic,” or an “intellectualist approach.”2 This approach tends to make the Bible a set of “facts to be believed, and commands to be obeyed.” The Bible becomes a handbook of sorts for good church order and daily living. This approach might even feel familiar to those who grew up in more conservative denominations. Reading the Bible this way, however, tends to rub out the rich diversity of scripture, in both genre and perspective, and it can lead to a variety of fundamentalisms.3
1 Nathan Hatch, “Sola Scriptura and Novus Ordo Seclorum,” The Bible in America, Nathan Hatch and Mark Noll, eds. (New York: Oxford Press, 1982): 59-78. 2
Amanda Pittman, “Storying the World: Proposals for a Formative Reading of Biblical Narratives,” Restoration Quarterly, 64 no 3, 2022: 129. 3
81.
Mark Love, “Reading the Bible on Its Own Terms,” Teleios Journal, 2 no 2, Summer, 2022: 73-
4 It is precisely related to fundamentalism that the Church of Christ approach to scripture takes an interesting twist. Alexander Campbell is in many ways responsible for the early development of biblical hermeneutics in Churches of Christ. He championed an intellectualist, patternist approach to Bible reading. He did this, in part, because it conformed to the best science and philosophy of his day. He used the analytical philosophy of Thomas Reid, John Locke, and other empiricists, and combined their emphases with the leading science of his day, the Baconian Inductive Method, to develop an interpretative strategy designed to produce an unbiased reading of scripture.4 His stated aim was to “Open the New Testament as if mortal man had never seen it before.”5 While now we see his approach as flawed, it nevertheless reveals Campbell as a man of letters, familiar with the philosophical currents of his age. Many Churches of Christ no longer read the Bible the way Campbell did. This is in part because biblical scholars have followed Campbell’s commitment to pursue the best scholarship of their day. Locke, Reid, and Bacon have been replaced by Gadamer, Ricoeur, and Polanyi.6 A later essay will sketch the story of liberal learning within Church of Christ universities, but it is notable here that beginning in the mid 20th century a cadre of young Church of Christ scholars emerged from Ivy League and other highly regarded institutions. Lemoine and Jack Lewis, Everett Ferguson, Abraham Malherbe, Jim Roberts, Carl Holiday, John
4
There are many excellent treatments of Campbell’s hermeneutical approach. See especially C. Leonard Allen’s article, “Baconianism and the Bible in the Disciples of Christ: J.S. Lamar and ‘The Organon of Scripture,’” Church History (Jan. 1, 1986): 65–82. 5
6
Alexander Campbell, The Christian Baptist, III: 229.
I love Adam Wells essay, “Biblical Criticism and the Phenomenology of Scripture,” Phenomenologies of Scripture, ebook (New York: Fordham University Press, 2017): Loc 63-482. He describes aptly the shift away from analytical scientific readings to phenomenological approaches.
5 Willis, Neil Lightfoot, David Balch, and Tom Olbricht, to name some of the most notable, earned doctorates from Harvard, Yale, Vanderbilt, Union Seminary, and Duke. Most earned their doctoral degrees in biblical studies, not in theology or Christian history, underscoring the importance of the Bible in Churches of Christ, but also following Campbell’s openness to the best of contemporary learning. Rochester University’s Bible and theology faculty reflects this same dynamic. Recent faculty have earned doctorates at Princeton, Emory, Notre Dame, Marquette, Aberdeen, and Luther Seminary. Though this is an impressive story of academic pedigree, it is offered here more as a way to situate Church of Christ scholarship in relation to other approaches to scripture. Simply put, the vast majority of men and women who train ministers in Church of Christ universities are not evangelicals and are certainly not fundamentalists. The old, Baconian-patternist approach to scripture has given way to other interpretative approaches. Philosophical hermeneutics casts doubt on the idea of a disinterested, or completely objective interpreter, so that it no longer makes sense to say, “We speak where the Bible speaks, and are silent where the Bible is silent.” Biblical theology has shown us the “echoes and illusions” of the Old Testament used by New Testament authors so that it is no longer possible to neatly divide the Bible into dispensations. Literary scholarship poses questions of genre and meaning in such a way that “patternist” readings no longer hold sway. This list of changes in biblical interpretation could be multiplied. I want to underscore, though, that Campbell’s commitment to the most learned approaches of the day continues, even as his particular way of interpreting the Bible has given way to other approaches.
6 There are, of course, congregations where a patternist hermeneutic can be found. “Preacher training” schools like Brown Trail or Bear Valley still follow the hermeneutical lead of early Restoration leaders. Also, many African American and Latinx leaders still read the Bible in similar ways. Even in these instances, however, the patternist approach to reading the Bible is shrinking, giving way to other approaches.7 With this overly simplified sketch of biblical interpretation in place, I want to pursue two lines of inquiry. First, what difference does this make in how the Bible is read and understood among Bible and theology faculty in Church of Christ academic institutions? Second, how does this square with how the Bible is read or understood in Church of Christ congregations?
THE BIBLE IN THE ACADEMY Richard Hughes, in his book, Reviving the Ancient Faith, notes that a dramatic hermeneutical shift began to occur among Churches of Christ in the 1980’s.8 Indeed, the shift was already well under way, but it emerged front and center as the primary issue that characterized deep fissures developing in Churches of Christ as a whole. The older patternist readings of the Bible were giving way first to critical, and later, to theological
7
I recently attended the “National Lectureship,” a conference mostly attended by African American preachers in Churches of Christ, and was stunned to find an almost unanimous approach to scripture among the numerous presenters. These preachers are loyal of Southwestern Christian College, but more to the point, loyal to the larger-than-life influence of the late Dr. Jack Evans. That said, some preachers have found a new path to follow, represented by the New Wineskins group led by Dr. Kenneth Greene and Dr. Jerry Taylor, and this year by a new conference hosted in Los Angeles by Fate Hagood, which seems to be an alternative to the National Lectureship. The best history of African American Churches of Christ is by Edward J. Robinson, Hard Fighting Soldiers: A History of African American Churches of Christ (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019). 8
Richard Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 365-373. Hughes highlights Rubel Shelley’s role in those discussions.
7 approaches to scripture. By critical approaches, I do not mean critical of the Bible, but critical in the way scientists use critical method to understand something, or the way we encourage students to use critical reasoning. With regard to the Bible, this includes a variety of approaches (text, literary, redaction, source, form, rhetorical) that attempt to understand scripture in its relationship to its original contexts. So, Genesis is read in light of other Ancient Near East texts that possess similar creation stories, the Pentateuch as a collection of sources developed over time, the Gospels as edited literary accounts of the life of Jesus, and so on. The first wave of Church of Christ scholars to graduate from places like Harvard and Yale stayed mostly in the shallows of critical approaches to scripture, focusing more on text criticism (identity of the earliest and most reliable Greek manuscripts) and historical-grammatical exegesis (meaning of words and sentences in their historical context). This work was relatively safe, requiring no potentially controversial positions, and even lined up with our restorationist impulses to return to the original. These scholars, however, made it possible for successive generations to move more fully into the guilds of biblical scholarship. The latter half of the 20th century saw significant and related changes in philosophy, science, and the interpretation of texts. In particular, the work of philosophers like Gadamer, Heidegger, Girard, Marion, and others challenged the “subject centered” notions of reality that imagined an individual, armed with critical methods, could master not only the world, but ancient texts as well. These philosophers taught that not only could perspective not be overcome by method, but perspectives, or fruitful prejudices to use Gadamer’s term, were actually necessary for understanding
8 anything at all.9 The world of biblical interpretation shifted accordingly, away from “text scientists” dissecting ancient artifacts and toward interpreters who understood the lively nature of language and the generative value of perspectives, both theological and sociological. It makes a difference, in other words, if you are a Pentecostal reading from the margins in East Africa, or a Catholic, Latina immigrant teaching in Southern California, or a white male Presbyterian teaching at Princeton. One result of this swing toward perspective is how it now matters what an interpreter thinks about both God and the Bible as a sacred text as they interpret. While critical approaches could not be abandoned, (we have learned too much from them to leave them behind) they came to occupy a less significant place in the interpretation of the Bible. As a result of these shifts, theology became a more prominent interpretative consideration.10 Scholars in Churches of Christ moved in sync with these shifts. Several books have explored these changes in biblical interpretation within our movement, notable among them are Tom Olbricht’s and John Mark Hicks’ autobiographical accounts of their developing perspectives.11 Neither Olbricht or Hicks are biblical scholars, which points to both the broadening of scholarship beyond biblical studies, and the importance of theological perspectives in considering hermeneutics. When I received my first graduate
9
Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Continuum, 1975), 241-297.
10
I am often asked by church members to distinguish between biblical and theological considerations. “Aren’t they the same?” They certainly overlap. Theologians know the Bible and biblical scholars work from a theological perspective. Still, they are distinguishable from each other. Biblical scholars tend to limit themselves to the interpretation of certain texts, while theologians ask broader, more global questions about the reality of God in the contemporary world. This shift is real and tangible is marked by new and prominent commentary series written by theologians who are not trained in biblical studies. 11
Thomas Olbricht, Hearing God’s Voice (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1996). John Mark Hicks, Searching for the Pattern: My Journey in Interpreting the Bible (Self-published, 2019).
9 degree at Abilene Christian University in the 1980’s, we did not have a single faculty member who was trained in theology. Now, there are several. It is both a testament to the growth of theology in Church of Christ graduate schools and to our ongoing commitment to the Bible that a recent Yale-trained theologian now teaching at ACU published his first books, both highly regarded, on the doctrine of scripture.12 This foray into developments in biblical interpretation over the last 100 years or so demonstrates a commitment to pursuing the most learned approaches to biblical interpretation by Church of Christ scholars. What remains of Campbell’s approach to the Bible is not his Baconian/patternist approach, but a commitment to interpreting scripture according to the best intellectual standards. In terms of biblical scholarship in Churches of Christ, this means our Bible and theology faculties do not have fundamentalist or even evangelical members. We have no historical stake in words like “inerrancy” or “infallibility.” We are not likely to teach Genesis 1-3 as a literal or historical account of creation or see a conflict between science and faith. We acknowledge both divine and human elements in the composing of the Bible. While the Bible reliably reveals God, it does so within the constraints of ancient cosmologies, approaches to history, and literary conventions. Church of Christ scholars acknowledge the rich diversity of scripture, even in its diversity of beliefs about God. None of these orientations toward scripture should be seen as abandoning a high view of the Bible’s authority or a belief in scripture as inspired. To the contrary, these newer approaches arise out of a commitment to let the actual details of scripture define
12
Brad East, The Doctrine of Scripture (Eugene, OR: Cascade Press, 2021), and The Church’s Book: Theology of Scripture in Ecclesial Context (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022).
10 what it means to be inspired and authoritative, rather than imposing modern sensibilities on scripture that the Bible cannot sustain.13 This often means, however, that the Bible and theology faculties in our universities are seen as more “progressive” theologically than the rest of the university, or even more so than the constituencies that make up the university’s support. Within the university, a tension often exists between the Bible and theology faculty, and student services, which has responsibility for the spiritual life of the campus.14 This tension should not be construed on either side as a devaluing of the Bible, or as a lack of commitment to theologically informed spirituality, but instead as a measurement of the gap between different ways of interpreting scripture and understanding faith.
THE BIBLE IN THE CONGREGATION Let me turn attention now to the function of scripture in Church of Christ congregations. While few if any Bible professors are fundamentalists or evangelicals, the same cannot be said of church members. The historic commitment of Churches of Christ to the primacy of the Bible makes it easy for some to assume that positions like inerrancy and verbal inspiration are natural accomplices for staying true to the faith. Also, the loss of a hard sectarianism in Churches of Christ over the past 50+ years makes evangelical congregations seem more like faith partners than mainline congregations.15 As a result,
13
Love, “Reading the Bible on Its Own Terms.”
14
One need only to check their Facebook feed to verify this reality playing out in several of our affiliated institutions. 15
Evangelical is a notoriously hard term to define. It is used here less as a theological definition and more as a sociological depiction. Most Baptists, Bible churches, or community churches would fit here.
11 Beth Moore and Bible Study Fellowship are influential in many of our churches and shape opinions of what the Bible is and what it does. The rub here is less between university professors and congregations, and more between graduate trained ministers and their members. The expectation in many congregations, especially larger, urban/suburban ones, is that the lead minister would hold an advanced degree. Because of their training, ministers tend not to hold fundamentalist or evangelical positions related to the Bible. Members, as a result, tend to be more conservative than their preachers. While this can lead to conflict and minister burnout, this combination may work well for two reasons. First, Church of Christ preachers tend to preach biblical texts (as opposed to topics), and in doing so avoid hot button political issues that might be more characteristic of other groups. The performance of scripture in preaching lands right with Church of Christ congregants, and persuasion is possible when rhetoric is primarily biblical. The second reason requires some explanation, but I would suggest that it works in our congregations because our graduate-trained ministers take a more postliberal or postcritical approach to the Bible. Let me explain. After the fundamentalist/modernist controversies of the early 20th century, there were basically two options regarding the interpretation of scripture: literalist (conservative/fundamentalist) or higher critical (liberal).16 As mentioned earlier, Churches of Christ had a foot in both worlds, holding conservative positions while being trained in mainline seminaries. In the back half of the
Mainline is a bit easier to define. These are denominations that tend to be more progressive theologically and have origins outside of America: e.g. Episcopal, Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Disciples of Christ. 16
Nancy Murphey, Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda (Philadelphia: Trinity Press, 1996).
12 20th century, however, scholars like George Lindbeck, Hans Frei, Brevard Childs, Ellen Davis, Walter Bruggemann, Richard Hays, and many others, revealed both the limitations of this conservative/liberal binary and carved out options in the broad center.17 This movement could be characterized in many ways, and there is no single “middle” option. At the risk of oversimplification, though, one way of characterizing the shift is from historical to rhetorical. Both liberals and fundamentalists were interested in history, or what actually happened. Liberals, like those in the Jesus Seminar, “demythologized” the Bible to arrive at a plausible account of events—what Jesus actually did and said— whereas fundamentalists accepted everything as literal, historical fact. They were, as Nancey Murphy points out, two sides of the same modernist coin.18 Postliberal, or post-critical scholars are less interested in history and more interested in how the texts themselves are functioning (rhetoric). Put another way, they are less interested in the world that produced the text and more interested in the world the text would produce. Postliberals play the text “where it lies,” honoring the language and arrangement of the text as irreplaceable. To use Linbeck’s term, the text comprises a unique “cultural-linguistic” reality that cannot be substituted simply with contemporary terms or concepts.19 Preachers following this postliberal approach, therefore, are not so much concerned with explaining the text, as they are with allowing it to perform.20 These
17
With the exception of Walter Brueggemann and Ellen Davis, the scholars listed have connections to Yale. Approaches being described are often referred to as the “Yale School of Theology.” 18
Murphy, Beyond Fundamentalism and Liberalism.
19
George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, 25th Anniversary Addition (Philadelphia: Westminster/JohnKnox Press, 2009) 20
See for example, Walter Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989).
13 sermons tend to be very “biblical,” using the actual language of the text, satisfying the Bible forward sensibilities of those in the pew. As an aside, performance of the text is the kind of preaching I endeavor to do. One astute comment made by a more conservative member I received was, “I don’t have a single problem with anything you’re saying. It’s what you’re not saying that troubles me.” It occurs to me that this might be a potential problem with a Christian university hoping to avoid right leaning Christian politics while avoiding the pejorative label of “liberal.” It might be what we don’t say that raises suspicions.
CONCLUSION In summary, my argument is that the Churches of Christ have always been and always will be a movement centered in interpretation of the Bible, even to the exclusion of other Christian norms such as creeds or theological traditions. Campbell’s twin commitments of having “no creed but the Bible,” and using the best learning of his day to interpret scripture are still honored, particularly by biblical scholars in our universities. While interpretation has moved away from the patternist hermeneutics of Campbell and other early leaders, his commitment to applying the best learning of his day remains. Newer hermeneutical approaches carry with them possible conflicts within both universities and churches but can be ameliorated by approaches to the Bible that are more postliberal or post-critical. Rochester University’s own story with the Bible is representative of these directions.
14 BIBLIOGRAPHY Allen, C. Leonard. “Baconianism and the Bible in the Disciples of Christ: J.S. Lamar and ‘The Organon of Scripture,’” Church History. Jan. 1986: 65–82. Brueggemann, Walter. Finally Comes the Poet: Daring Speech for Proclamation. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989. Campbell, Alexander. The Christian Baptist, III: 229. East, Brad. The Doctrine of Scripture. Eugene, OR: Cascade Press, 2021. East, Brad. The Church’s Book: Theology of Scripture in Ecclesial Context. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2022. Gadamer, Hans Georg. Truth and Method. New York: Continuum, 1975. Hatch, Nathan “Sola Scriptura and Novus Ordo Seclorum,” The Bible in America, Nathan Hatch and Mark Noll, eds. New York: Oxford Press, 1982: 59-78. Hicks, John Mark. Searching for the Pattern: My Journey in Interpreting the Bible. Selfpublished, 2019. Hughes, Richard. Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996. Lindbeck, George. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age, 25th Anniversary Addition (Philadelphia: Westminster/JohnKnox Press, 2009). Love, Mark. “Reading the Bible on Its Own Terms,” Teleios Journal, 2 no 2, Summer, 2022: 73-81. Murphey, Nancy. Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy Set the Theological Agenda. Philadelphia: Trinity Press, 1996. Olbricht, Thomas. Hearing God’s Voice. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1996. Pittman, Amanda. “Storying the World: Proposals for a Formative Reading of Biblical Narratives,” Restoration Quarterly, 64 no 3, 2022: 129. Robinson, Edward J. Hard Fighting Soldiers: A History of African American Churches of Christ Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2019. Wells, Adam. “Biblical Criticism and the Phenomenology Scripture,”Phenomenologies of Scripture, ebook. New York: Fordham University Press, 2017: Loc 63-482.
Alexander Campbell, Liberal Arts, and Integrative Learning
Keith Huey, Ph.D. Rochester University Professor of Religion
APPROACHING CAMPBELL’S POSITION In my earlier presentation, I provided a brief overview of the historical origins of the Churches of Christ. Along the way, I spoke of four complementary approaches people have taken, as they have attempted to make sense of the antebellum origins of this heritage. ● One approach is the “Ecumenical View,” which suggests that these churches were seeking to build a generous, orthodox alternative to the perplexing cacophony of American sects and denominations. This is an appealing approach, and there are significant irenic voices to cite. Overall, however, it comes with a limited list of supporting narratives and documents. ● Another is the “Restorationist View,” which claims that these people were trying to “restore” the first-century church, to clear away centuries of crusty traditions, and to do Bible things in Bible ways. This, I believe, is closer to the truth, but its usefulness is mostly limited to the postbellum South. ● Third is “the Millennial View,” which views the movement as a harbinger of God’s long-awaited millennium, the “amelioration of society,” where peace and justice and knowledge will reign upon the earth. This, I would argue, fits closely with the career of Alexander Campbell in particular, but not with most of his allies. ● And fourth is “the Populist View,” which understands these people as frontier rabblerousers who hoped to overturn the elitist authority of clerics, creeds, and councils. As you might recall, I think this is the best approach we can take, if we want to see the big picture. In this presentation, however, we will not be looking at the big picture. We are looking, for the moment, at the career of Alexander Campbell, and we are restricting ourselves to his philosophy
of education. For this, we will surely notice his populist prejudices, and his millennial visions will loom just as large. CAMPBELL’S CONCERNS WITH EDUCATION Campbell was schooled at home in Ulster, in Northern Ireland, and he never attended a full collegiate program. Yet, he was extremely well-educated, and he possessed a prodigious intellect. Despite the brevity of his attendance at the University of Glasgow, he flourished in that environment. His educational interests were surely nurtured by his father, Thomas (an ordained Presbyterian minister), who was renowned, wherever he went, for his significant pedagogical talents. This included a controversial episode in Kentucky, when Thomas attempted to teach a crowd of black men and women.1 Back in Ulster, the younger Campbell had worked as an assistant for his father, and later, in 1818, he opened his own “seminary” in Brooke County, Va. These passions ran deeply in the Campbell family: his sisters, Dorothea and Jane, founded and administered their own schools as well. The younger Campbell’s role as an educator has been frequently visited by Restoration scholars, and has been the subject of several dissertations, numerous chapters, and significant articles.2 In the midst of these labors, Campbell was deeply critical of the educational status quo. For him, God’s millennium would be a spectacular upheaval of unprecedented brilliance, and it would require some very heavy lifting from a well-prepared order of teachers and schools. The millennial project was much more, he lamented, than the existing systems could handle. In his
1
Robert Richardson, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1868; reprint, Indianapolis: Religious Book Service, n.d.), 1:495. 2 For example, see John Lowell Morrison, Alexander Campbell and Moral Education, Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1966; Thomas H. Olbricht, “Alexander Campbell As an Educator,” in Lectures in Honor of the Alexander Campbell Bicentennial, 1788-1988, ed. James M. Seal (Nashville: Disciples of Christ Historical Society, 1988), 79-100; Lawrence Thomas Smith, The “Amelioration of Society”: Alexander Campbell and Educational Reform in Antebellum America, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tennessee, 1990; and Randall Arthur Colvin, Alexander Campbell and the Power of Education, Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Texas, 2020.
prospectus for the Millennial Harbinger journal, he promised to attend to a series of critical issues, including the “inadequacy of all the present systems of education, literary and moral, to delvelope [sic] the powers of the human mind, and to prepare man for rational and social happiness.”3 True to his word, he addressed this concern – sharply and relentlessly – in subsequent Harbinger issues. As an anti-clerical populist, Campbell had little interest in training students for professional ministry. He regarded such schools with contempt.4 He sought, instead, to promote a diverse range of scholarship, what we might call the “Liberal Arts.” He was keenly interested in farming, medicine, history, literature, business, and politics, and he hoped to prepare his students for all such endeavors. As Campbell said to a convention in Clarksburg, Virginia, in 1841: There are seven arts that human nature must acquire in a judicious course of primary and fundamental education. These seven arts are as essential to education as society always was, and is, and ever more shall be, as food and raiment are to the human body . . . They are as follows: - 1st. The art of thinking; 2d. The art of speaking; 3d. The art of reading. 4th. The art of singing; 5th. The art of writing; 6th. The art of calculating; and, 7th. The art of book-keeping.5 In the charter of his own Bethany College, he called for “the instruction of youth in the various branches of science and literature, the useful arts and the learned and foreign languages.”6 In the catalogue, he offered ancient languages and history, algebra and general mathematics, chemistry, natural philosophy and natural sciences, mental philosophy, evidences of Christianity, morals,
3
Alexander Campbell, “Prospectus,” Millennial Harbinger 1, 1, (4 Jan 1830): 1-3. John L. Morrison, “Education, Philosophy of,” in Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, ed. Douglas A. Foster, et al., (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 292-94. 5 Campbell, “Address to the Convention Assembled at Clarksburg, Va.,” Millennial Harbinger new ser. 5, 10 (Oct 1841), 441. 6 Alexander Campbell, “Charter of the Bethany College,” Millennial Harbinger new ser. 4, 4 (April 1840): 17679. 4
political economy, grammar, logic, and rhetoric.7 He also believed in physical education, and he counseled his readers to: Exercise gently, gradually, constantly, without oppression, without fatigue, without excess, every organ, faculty, power, and capacity, whether physical, mental, or moral . . . as God has made body, soul, and spirit, do you train them all . . . Exercise, it must be conceded, enlarges and improves every member and organ of the body.8 Above all else, however, Campbell was concerned about the issue of moral development. It is a very common error, he said, to suppose that “in cultivating the intellect we are cultivating the moral sentiments and feelings.” In 1836 he spoke to the College of Professional Teachers in Cincinnati, where he insisted that “moral culture” is an essential (but neglected) part of “national and popular education.” This moral neglect, he argued, had corrupted youthful minds, and many had been “forever ruined by receiving a college education.”9 This was, for him, an oft-repeated theme. In 1832 he said that “most of the common schools” waste their time with “a mere smattering of words, without the knowledge of anything in nature, society, or religion.”10 In 1841 he stated that “intellectual without moral culture is a curse to each and every community . . . a national calamity rather than a public benefaction.”11 QUEST FOR NON-SECTARIAN MORAL TRAINING Churches, it would seem, were well-positioned to address these shortcomings in moral preparation. Catholics and Protestants (in America and in Europe) were prepared to assert their academic potential.12 Jesuits came to be known as the “schoolmasters of Europe,” and Lutherans launched their own educational projects in Germany. Anglicans and Puritans, meanwhile, had 7
Morrison, “Education,” 293. Alexander Campbell, “Education – No. 5,” Millennial Harbinger 6, 5 (May 1835): 226-27. 9 Alexander Campbell, “Importance of Uniting the Moral with the Intellectual Culture of the Mind,” Millennial Harbinger Extra (Dec 1836): 579-607. 10 Alexander Campbell, “Education – New Series. No. I,” Millennial Harbinger 3, 8 (6 Aug 1832): 408-9. 11 Campbell, “Address to the Convention,” 1841, 445. 12 James Bowen, A History of Western Education, vol. 3 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1981), 5. 8
established academies and universities in England.13 Moreover, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, a British Evangelical movement, had labored to extend these privileges to those who could least afford it.14 Likewise, in the New American Republic, preachers were universally zealous to “prepare a responsible citizenry.”15 Various streams of the Puritan movement, in particular, controlled a sizeable portion of the New Republic’s educational enterprise,16 with flagship institutions such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Campbell’s disdain for clerical imposition, however, prevented him from joining these kinds of efforts, and his critiques were exceptionally cynical. In 1825, for instance, the Kentucky legislature considered a proposal for a new university in the town of Danville. It would be incorporated and endowed by the state, but it would also be administered by the local Presbyterian synod. Campbell was appalled by the temerity of the Synod, and he asked: What sort of a spirit do they exhibit in this effort? What moved them to solicit such a favor for themselves, to the exclusion of all other Christian sects? I see in them the spirit of the two sons of Zebedee. They beg for the highest places in the kingdom. They obsequiously approach the legislature of Kentucky, and pray them to grant that their sons may sit at their right hand in their dominion and rule.17 Campbell believed that State authorities could deliver the right kind of educational (and moral) system, but they needed to stand completely clear from sectarian interference. With this in mind, he developed an argument for State-sponsored “common school” education. In 1829 he was elected as a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention, and he came with these statements in hand:
13
Ibid., 6-32. Ibid., 143-46. 15 Lawrence A. Cremin, American Education: The National Experience 1783-1876 (New York: Harper & Row, 1980), 18. 16 T. Scott Miyakawa, Protestants and Pioneers: Individualism and Conformity on the American Frontier (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 99-100. 17 Alexander Campbell, “A Presbyterian University at Danville, Ky.,” Christian Baptist 2, 7 (7 Feb 1825): 128. 14
1. Ignorance is the parent of idleness, and this becomes the fruitful source of immorality and crime of every gradation. 2. To prevent crime is much wiser than to punish it. 3. Government having for its object the prevention rather than the punishment of crime . . . ought, if it act wisely, to devote its energies to the erection and maintenance of the safeguards of life, liberty, reputation, and property, which it is agreed on all hands, are INTELLIGENCE AND VIRTUE. 4. Schools and seminaries of learning, well conducted and sustained, are essential, in every community, to the expulsion of ignorance, and the promotion of intelligence and virtue. 5. They are, therefore, the most necessary, useful, and every way appropriate objects of legislation, and of governmental supervision, protection, and support. . . .18 The Virginia Convention, however, did not provide a useful platform for Campbell’s educational activism, and, despite the depth of his convictions, he was forced to keep them to himself. He was largely dismissed as a mere clergyman, and the Convention was consumed, instead, by intractable sectional disputes.19 Back home in 1830, Campbell used his Millennial Harbinger to unveil a three-point proposal. First, he suggested, the entire state of Virginia should be subjected to a modest school tax; second, those taxes should pay for a central state university and for common schools in every corner of the state; and third, a body of teachers should be trained and licensed by the new university.20 Clearly, he was willing to vest considerable authority in Richmond, and he trusted its capacity to manage teacher compensation and to create pedagogical excellence.
18 Campbell, “Incidents on a Tour to Nashville, Tennessee. No. I,” 1830, Millennial Harbinger 1, 12 (Dec 1830): 555. 19 Proceedings and Debates of the Virginia State Convention, of 1829-30 (Richmond, VA: Ritchie & Cook, 1830), 750, 786-87. A more accessible version of the resolution can be found in Campbell, “Address to the Convention,” 1841, 451. 20 Campbell, “Incidents on a Tour,” 1830, 555.
In the following years, his recommendations became more detailed. In Clarksburg, in 1841, he presented the “most systematic” summary of his ideas.21 He was weary of sectional disputes, and he was unwilling, at this point, to wait for Richmond’s unlikely cooperation. He asserted that: . . . common schools can be introduced in Western Virginia without any or at least with very little additional expense to the richer classes, or to the whole community, I am confident can be made apparent to all. But, in order to this, we must go to work not only energetically, but systematically. We must not wait till all the East and the West agree on one system. This would be equivalent to postponing indefinitely the matter altogether.22 Campbell then outlined the “ways and means” for his strategy. He urged his audience to make a persuasive campaign of lectures and periodical publications. He also advocated letters to Richmond, pleading for an equitable portion of the state’s “Literary Fund.” He believed counties (or districts of counties) should have the power to levy taxes of their own, and he proposed the creation of school districts. Each district would have a supervisory committee and a treasurer.23 In 1835 Campbell had specified a system “patronized, sustained, guarded, and controlled by the State,”24 and in his Clarksburg address, he believed the government should exercise “very strict and rigid supervision.”25 Compared with other contemporary approaches, these proposals were highly bureaucratic,26 and they were destined for resistance in the context of the New
21
See Olbricht, “Campbell as an Educator,” 85; and Harold Lunger, The Political Ethics of Alexander Campbell (St. Louis: Bethany, 1954), 171. 22 “Campbell, “Address to the Convention,” 1841, 452. This ominous note is also noticed by Smith, Amelioration, 116. Western Virginia’s long-standing frustration with Eastern Virginia finally culminated in the formation of West Virginia, in 1863. 23 Campbell, “Address to the Convention,” 1841, 453-54. 24 Campbell, “Education – No. 2,” Millennial Harbinger 6, 2 (Feb 1835): 66. 25 Campbell, “Address to the Convention,” 1841, 447. 26 Aside from the centralized model of “incipient bureaucracy,” Katz has listed the models of “paternalistic voluntarism,” “corporate voluntarism,” and “democratic localism.” See Michael B. Katz, “From Voluntarism to Bureaucracy in American Education,” in Education in American History: Readings on the Social Issues, ed. Michael B. Katz (New York: Praeger, 1973), 38-50. On this issue, William Maddox, The Free School Idea in Virginia Before the Civil War: A Phase of Political and Social Evolution (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1918; reprint, New York: Arno, 1969), 57-62; and Charles William Dabney, Universal Education in the South (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969), 1:36-37 discuss the noteworthy debate between the Federalist Charles Fenton Mercer and his anti-Federalist opponent, Joseph Cabell.
American Republic. Many feared, quite rightly, that centralized systems could challenge the rights and privileges of minority cultures and parents.27 Common schools were destined to become “agents of cultural standardization” and “outposts of native culture.” Decent and educated people could easily believe in alternatives.28 In his own language, Campbell had little to say about the bureaucratic-localist controversy. State sponsorship had obvious financial advantages, and he was quite unworried about the tyranny of centralized systems. He had very little sympathy for “minority cultures,” such as Catholicism, which were (in his opinion) opposed to God’s millennium. Those kinds of minorities could be safely excluded from his vision for the future, and could not be safely accommodated. Indeed, in Campbell’s view, anti-Catholic prejudice was a very good thing, and worked (ultimately) in everybody’s favor.29 He was also willing to accept the risks of centralization because he wanted to build an alternative to clerical and sectarian influence. It was essential, as John Lowell Morrison observes, to protect the system from “corrupted clerical trustees.”30 As we have already seen, Campbell rejected the Presbyterian programs especially, but he also repudiated ecumenical societies, as well. To him, they were little more than the iniquitous schemes of a “learned priesthood,” designed “to keep men in ignorance and bondage,” teaching people to “put out their own eyes, to fetter their own feet, and to bind the yoke upon their own necks.”31 With such
27
Carl F. Kaestle, Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1983), 148-58. 28 Michael B. Katz, “The Origins of Public Education: A Reassessment,” History of Education Quarterly 16 (Winter 1976): 394, 404. 29 Alexander Campbell, “Baccalaureate Address, Delivered to the Graduating Class of Bethany College,” Millennial Harbinger 4th ser. 3, 8 (Aug 1853): 428. 30 Morrison, Campbell and Moral Education, 11. See also Smith, Amelioration, 130-31. 31 Campbell, “The Boston Recorder,” Christian Baptist 1, 1 (Aug 1823): 18.
impressions as these, he was driven to commit his ambitious proposals to the hands of civil servants who were rational, broadminded, and objective – like him. A POLAR STAR: THE EDUCATIONAL ROLE OF THE BIBLE Campbell, of course, was familiar with human weakness. For that reason, he rested his confidence on the prudent application of the wisest, most trustworthy, and impartial book ever written. That book, of course, was the Bible, the indispensable key to an authentic moral education. This was a primary theme in his address to the Charlottesvile Lyceum in 1840, where he argued that the value of ancient moral philosophy was completely dependent on its origins in the Abrahamic traditions.32 Likewise, in 1856, with another address in Cincinnati, he insisted, over and over, that the Bible must be employed as a public-school textbook. “A school, an academy, a college, without the Bible in it, is like a universe without a centre and without a sun.” “We want the Holy Bible of Protestant Christendom,” he continued, to be consecrated in the heads, the hearts, the consciences and the lives of our sons and daughters. We, therefore, plead . . . especially with the curators, the superintendents, the presidents, the professors, the teachers, of all seminaries of learning, to permit their pupils, if not to cause them, duly to listen to God speaking to them, teaching them and directing them in the path of life and honor and blessedness eternal.33 This was a frequently-argued position, and was a philosophical cornerstone in his educational community at Bethany. It is scarcely imaginable, in the present day, to imagine the Bible as a public-school textbook. Doctrines of church-state separation have clearly evolved since the times of the New Republic. Nonetheless, Campbell was already aware of the objections that his Bible-reading proposals might elicit, and he was current with the relevant legal debates. In response to a
32
Alexander Campbell, “Is Moral Philosophy an Inductive Science?” Millennial Harbinger new ser. 5, 8 (Aug 1841): 337-60. 33 Alexander Campbell, “An Address on Education,” Millennial Harbinger 4th ser., 6, 11 (Nov 1856): 635-50.
hypothethical Jacobin critic from the French Revolution, he attempted to uphold the principle of Bible-reading without sacrificing the principles of the Constitution.34 For him, the First Amendment did prohibit an alliance between Congress and particular sects of Christianity; it did not, however, prevent the promotion of nonsectarian Christianity. Some had argued that the Bible could never be used without sectarian prejudice; to them, however, Campbell had a scornful rejoinder. “What!” he exclaimed. “Is the Bible a sectarian book? Which sect made it?”35 In his 1856 address “On Education,” he explained that the Bible is a book of facts, and not of theories.” It can be used, therefore, “without one speculative oracle, on the part of teacher or pupil.” In the 1837 meeting of the College of Professional Teachers, they passed a Bible-reading resolution with one condition, submitted by Campbell himself: teachers were not to offer “denominational or sectarian comment” in conjunction with their scriptural readings.36 He was remarkably confident about the practicality (and constitutionality) of that principle. Once again, however, his sympathies were explicitly Protestant, and his program was urgently promoted as a bulwark against the anti-millennial threat of Catholicism. “Remember,” he said, “that the Catholic bloodhounds of the dark ages were persons who never had read the Bible . . . who have always feared light from that book, as Satan loves darkness.”37 In 1838 Campbell admonished his readers: . . . let no squeamishness on the subject of a state religion, prevent the reading and teaching of the Bible . . . The Bible is the shield of the nation; and if it be not read and
34
Alexander Campbell, “Education – No. 2,” 67. Alexander Campbell, “Schools and Colleges,” Millennial Harbinger 3d ser. 7, 3 (March 1850): 170. 36 The conflict with Purcell is discussed by Campbell in a collection of correspondence entitled “Roman Catholic Discussion, Millennial Harbinger 7, 12 (Dec 1836): 551-54; and in Alexander Campbell, “The Month of October,” Millennial Harbinger new ser. 1, 12 (Dec 1837): 568-70. 37 Campbell, “Education – No. 2,” 66. 35
universally taught from Dan even to Beersheba, the Catholics will take away our place and nation just as certain as the waters of the Ohio descend into the Mississippi.38 CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS What, then, should we do with all of this? I am quite unimpressed with Campbell’s insensitivity toward the concerns of Catholic families, his flirtation with theories of “Manifest Destiny,” his naïve confidence in the objectivity of “biblical facts,” and his faith in nonsectarian public adminstrators. At the same time, however, I believe he speaks a meaningful word for anybody who lives, works, and teaches in the movement he inspired. In particular, I can think of three lessons, very closely related, that would be instructive for us. First of all, I believe we should revive his passion for the “amelioration of society.” When Campbell used this language, he was pitching for peace, justice, and knowledge on this earth. His Harbinger prospectus, accordingly, was unabashedly political. Among other interests, it specifically advocated the “emancipation” and “exaltation” of African slaves. He did not attempt to divorce such “worldly” concerns from the “spiritual” quest for “saving souls.” This priority, unfortunately, was not retained by his heirs in the Churches of Christ, and his millennial language has been treated as a point of embarrassment. We would be faithful to Campbell’s influence, if we could recover this holistic legacy. Second, he captured the spirit of the liberal arts, giving dignity to a broad spectrum of disciplines. He did not merely speak of diverse academic options; even more, he believed that a
38
Ibid. Smith (Amelioration, 150) has suggested that, aside from Campbell’s debate with Bishop Purcell, nearly all of his anti-Catholic rhetoric was connected to educational and common-school interests. To be sure, Campbell’s anti-Catholic fever was not coincidentally paired with his educational zeal. Smith surely overstates the case, however, and the Purcell debate presents something more than a mere exception. Papal authority was Campbell’s central concern throughout the “Romanism” series (“Romanism – No. 1,” Millennial Harbinger 6, 5 (May 1835): 201-4; “No., 2,” Millennial Harbinger 6, 9 (Sep 1835): 385-88; and “No. 3,” Millennial Harbinger 7, 3 (March 1836): 112-17. Such is also the case in Alexander Campbell, “Roman Catholicism,” Millennial Harbinger new ser. 1, 2 (Feb 1837): 49-55.
well-rounded person would integrate the insights of different academic fields. To receive a Bachelor of Arts degree from Bethany, each student was required to “graduate” from all five of the institution’s schools.39 With this policy, Campbell sought to highlight the value of a “general education program,” and to reverse the isolation of different departments. Third, he believed in the moral potential that came with every vocation. I do not know how he would integrate the Bible with mathematical, agricultural, or psychological instruction. It seems crucial, however, for a liberal arts program in a “Christian university” to nurture vocational possibilities for every field of study. We might be reluctant to speak in terms of “the millennium,” but we should not be hesitant about “the Kingdom of God.” This project should not be restricted to a band of religious professionals, and should be entrusted to accountants, schoolteachers, and nurses as well. To this day, the Churches of Christ have been characterized by an impressive list of liberal arts institutions. Against Campbell’s wishes, we have created degrees in theology and ministry. In addition, we have unaccredited schools that specialize in ministerial preparation. Nonetheless, we have been shaped by the legacy of the liberal arts idea, and Rochester University owes its existence to this ongoing story. To me, this seems like a very good thing.
39
Colvin, Power of Education, 151-52.
BIBLIOGRAPHY Bowen, James. A History of Western Education. 3 vols. New York: St. Martin’s, 1981. Campbell, Alexander. The Christian Baptist. 2d ed. Edited by Alexander Campbell and David S. Burnet. Cincinnati: James and Gazlay, 1835. Reprint, Joplin, MO: College Press Publishing, 1988. Campbell, Alexander. Millennial Harbinger. 1830-66. Reprint, Joplin, MO: College Press Publishing, 1987. Colvin, Randall Arthur. Alexander Campbell and the Power of Education. Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Texas, 2020. Cremin, Lawrence A. American Education: The National Experience 1783-1876. New York: Harper & Row, 1980. Dabney, Charles William. Universal Education in the South. 2 vols. New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1969. Kaestle, Carl F. Pillars of the Republic: Common Schools and American Society, 1780-1860. New York: Hill and Wang, 1983. Katz, Michael B. “The Origins of Public Education: A Reassessment.” History of Education Quarterly 16 (Winter 1976). Katz, Michael B. “From Voluntarism to Bureaucracy in American Education.” In Education in American History: Readings on the Social Issues. Edited by Michael B. Katz. New York: Praeger, 1973. Lunger, Harold. The Political Ethics of Alexander Campbell. St. Louis: Bethany, 1954. Maddox, William. The Free School Idea in Virginia Before the Civil War: A Phase of Political and Social Evolution. New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1918; reprint, New York: Arno, 1969. Miyakawa, T. Scott. Protestants and Pioneers: Individualism and Conformity on the American Frontier. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964. Morrison, John Lowell. Alexander Campbell and Moral Education. Ph.D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1966. Morrison, John Lowell. “Education, Philosophy of.” In Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Edited by Douglas A. Foster, et al. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004.
Olbricht, Thomas H. “Alexander Campbell As an Educator,” in Lectures in Honor of the Alexander Campbell Bicentennial, 1788-1988. Edited by James M. Seal. Nashville: Disciples of Christ Historical Society, 1988. Proceedings and Debates of the Virginia State Convention, of 1829-30. Richmond, VA: Ritchie & Cook, 1830. Richardson, Robert. Memoirs of Alexander Campbell. 2 vols. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1868; reprint, Indianapolis: Religious Book Service, n.d. Smith, Lawrence Thomas. The “Amelioration of Society”: Alexander Campbell and Educational Reform in Antebellum America. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tennessee, 1990.
The “Apocalyptic Tradition” in Churches of Christ: A Countercultural Remembrance and Challenge
David Greer, Ph.D. Rochester University Professor of History
1 THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH AND FREEDOM Founded in 1959, North Central Christian College—subsequently Michigan Christian College, Rochester College, and now Rochester University (RU)—was, like many other private American institutions of higher learning, established with two broadly-conceived missions in mind.1 One was—and remains—distinctly “spiritual.” That is, founders sought to provide an environment for the encouragement and development of Christian faith, devotion, and leadership, or, as more recently expressed, a place to foster spiritual formation and growth. This was understood, of course, from within the particular tradition of Churches of Christ, whose relevant theological, historical, and cultural characteristics are among the topics treated in these essays. The other mission—envisioned as the best means for achieving the first—was to provide a high-quality, regionally-accessible education grounded in the liberal arts. The founders believed that a liberal arts curriculum not only provided essential knowledge in a wide variety of disciplines, but also developed skills, personal attributes, and habits of mind for functioning effectively in the world and society. More fundamentally, the “liberal arts”—as their historical origins and the term itself attest—were held out as a learning regimen for the development of “liberated”—that is, free, creative, clear-reasoning, and independent—individuals. These two missions, though different and not infrequently in tension, shared powerful impulses: among them, both affirmed the pursuit of truth and both advocated for freedom in the endeavor. Also, as Keith Huey and Mark Love highlight in accompanying essays, both of these “missions” had deep roots in the American religious movement of the early-to-mid-nineteenth century from which Churches of Christ emerged, most often referred to as the “Christian,”
1
For an overview of the founding and development of Rochester University through its first fifty years, see Larry Stewart, The Seasons of Rochester College (Rochester Hills, MI.: Rochester College, 2008).
2 “Stone-Campbell,” or “Restoration” movement.2 Nathan Hatch, eminent among historians of nineteenth-century American religion, observes of the Restorationists that “theirs was a religious movement that brought into question traditional authorities and exalted the right of the people to think for themselves.”3 Likewise, Richard Hughes, among the most prolific and influential interpreters of American Christian primitivism and Restorationism, and a lifelong member of Churches of Christ, adds: “Even a cursory review of the early literature produced by the founders . . . reflects their preoccupation with Christian freedom and the right of every Christian to search for truth.”4 That preoccupation drew deeply from Protestant, Enlightenment, and American Revolutionary inheritances and related notions of liberalism, egalitarianism, democracy, and an anti-elite populism. The latter was exceptionally potent in the trans-Appalachian frontier where the Restoration Movement was strongest (and where many hardscrabble inhabitants imagined being looked down upon by polite society as the “deplorables” of the day).5 ALEXANDER CAMPBELL AND THE LIBERAL ARTS IDEAL Among early leaders of this “largest indigenous Christian movement in the United States,”6 Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) stands as foundational—not only for much of later
2
See Keith Huey, “The American Origins of the Church of Christ” and “Alexander Campbell, Liberal Arts, and Integrative Learning”; and Mark Love, “No Creed but the Bible: The Story of Scripture in Churches of Christ.” 3 Nathan O. Hatch, “The Christian Movement and the Demand for a Theology of the People,” in Richard T. Hughes, Nathan O. Hatch, and David Edwin Harrell, Jr., American Origins of Churches of Christ: Three Essays on Restoration History, intro. and analysis by Douglas A. Foster (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2000), 41. 4 Richard T. Hughes, Reclaiming a Heritage: Reflections on the Heart, Soul, and Future of Churches of Christ (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2002), 26. See also Hughes’s essential history of Churches of Christ, Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996). 5 Nathan O. Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989) thoroughly explores this theme. See also C. Leonard Allen and Richard T. Hughes, Discovering Our Roots: The Ancestry of Churches of Christ (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1988), chaps. 7-9; and Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen, Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630-1875 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 103-107. R. Laurence Moore, Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 46, notes the construction of an “outsider” social identity. 6 Hughes, Reclaiming a Heritage, 97. Historian Paul K. Conkin examines (and begins with) the Restoration Movement as one of several “homemade” and “original” Christian movements of nineteenth century America in his American Originals: Homemade Varieties of Christianity (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
3 Church of Christ doctrine and culture but also for the movement’s approach to higher education. It was he more than any other “founder” that advocated for Restorationists to acquire a broad education in the arts and sciences, freely using the best scientific, literary, and philosophical scholarship of the day.7 While he articulated the movement’s intense anti-elitism and prejudices against denominational creeds and clergy, Campbell’s “populism” bore no anti-intellectualism. Indeed, unlike his Restorationist co-founder Barton Stone—to whom we shall quickly turn—he was decidedly unenthusiastic about religious “enthusiasm,” emotionalism, or revivalism, certainly as any reliable substitute for sound reason, knowledge, or adherence to the biblical text.8 Campbell’s own Bethany College, founded in 1840, demonstrated his commitment to liberal education. His was an Enlightenment-infused Baconian philosophy—rationalist, empiricist, and textualist. That his approach and arguments would in later eras be found wanting in some particulars, even among many within Churches of Christ (for example, his assertions that the Bible is a book of scientifically reliable facts and clearly discernable patterns that requires no speculation) does not detract from the valuable legacy of his conviction that faith and learning were ultimately harmonious, dignified, and mutually beneficial in God’s created order.9 God’s world as well as God’s text had something to teach humanity about God. That powerful liberal arts ideal was carried forward in the establishment of later colleges and universities by heirs of the movement, including the founders of Rochester University, who desired a “liberal arts college with Christian ideals” that would be “open to students of all faiths.”10
7
Huey, “Alexander Campbell”; Love, “No Creed but the Bible.” Hughes, Reclaiming a Heritage, 98-99. Recent echoes of the need for liberally educated Christians may be found in the work of the eminent historian Mark A. Noll. See, for example, his influential The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994; reissued with a new preface and afterword, 2022); and Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011). In the latter, Noll contends that “coming to know Christ provides the most basic possible motive for pursuing the tasks of human learning” (ix-x). 9 Huey, “Alexander Campbell”; Love, “No Creed but the Bible.” 10 Stewart, Seasons of Rochester College, 10. 8
4 BARTON W. STONE AND THE “APOCALYPTIC WORLDVIEW” Campbell’s priorities and methods, however, were not the only ones in the heritage of Churches of Christ, nor the only ones available to inform the culture and priorities of colleges and universities of that tradition. The “Stone-Campbell” label exists for a reason. Barton W. Stone (1772-1844), the other key founder of the movement, shared much with Campbell but also differed in profound and consequential ways. The separate movements of the two men merged in 1832 in common service to, for example, visions of ecumenical unity, primitivist restoration, anti-creedal nondenominationalism, anti-clerical egalitarianism, advocacy for total separation of (institutional) church and state, simplicity in worship, and the authority of scripture.11 Nevertheless, differences of emphases, priorities, and doctrine (on present-day miracles and workings of the Holy Spirit, for example) also reflected divergent worldviews and sustained strong tensions within the presumably united fellowship.12 The result, in one later historian’s outsider view, was to produce “perhaps the most schismatic [movement] in American religious history.”13 Although Campbell, through his voluminous writings and well-publicized debates, and by providing system, order, clarity, and a sense of certainty in doctrine and practice, became the dominant influence in the Restoration Movement, Stone’s vision and spiritual emphasis persisted in influence and maintained a potent (or at least potential) check on and challenge to the more modernist, rationalist, and—as will be noted—nationalist “Campbellites.”14
11
Classic early statements of founding themes are Stone’s Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery (1803) and Thomas Campbell’s (Alexander’s father’s) Declaration and Address of the Christian Association of Washington (1809). 12 C. Leonard Allen, Distant Voices: Discovering a Forgotten Past for a Changing Church (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1993), 46-48. 13 Conkin, American Originals, 32-33. 14 See Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, chap 2; Allen and Hughes, Discovering Our Roots, 107-108; and other of Hughes’s writings cited in this essay. As for comparative strengths of the two founders, a midtwentieth-century Christian Church memorialist observed that “Campbell could make greater speeches and write more flaming editorials, but he was not half so lovable a man.” Frederick D. Kershner, “Stars: Message of Barton Stone,” Christian Standard (May 4, 1940), excerpted in “A Biographical Study of Barton W. Stone (Part 4),”
5 That vision reflected what Hughes has deemed Stone’s “apocalyptic worldview.” This does not refer so much to millennial expectations or speculation about end times but rather “an outlook that led Stone and many of his followers to act as though the final rule of the kingdom of God were present in the here and now.” Hughes explains: “Though Stone seldom used the exact phrase ‘kingdom of God,’ he routinely used phrases such as ‘God’s rule,’ ‘God’s reign,’ and ‘God’s government,’ and he sought to live his life as though God’s rule were complete in the present world.” This had major implications for Stone’s reformist and restorationist priorities. Unlike Campbell’s reform, which was “primarily rational and cognitive, focusing on . . . forms and structures,” Stone’s foremost concerns were “ethical and spiritual, focusing on inner piety and outward holiness.” The apostle Paul’s admonition in Romans 12:2—“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind”—was key to Stone’s thought. Separation from the values and norms of the larger culture to lovingly serve in God’s kingdom was the essence of faith and discipleship. Christians were but strangers and resident aliens in the world, being in it but not of it, belonging to a different order and bearing different citizenship. Among other things, Stone “called on his followers to open their lives to the Holy Spirit and, in the power of the Spirit, to abandon self for the sake of others, to render aid to those in need, and to stand with those who suffered.”15 The social implications of Stone’s views were—and remain—enormous. In his day, Stone expressed his vision by living humbly, donning plain attire and traveling often as a poor itinerant,
Christian Standard (21 May 2020), https://christianstandard.com/2020/05/a-biographical-study-of-barton-w-stonepart-4/ (Accessed 6 Oct 2023). 15 Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 92-93. Hughes notes in his introduction that Campbell was “essentially a rationalist”; Stone “essentially a pietist” (p. 11). Recalling later in life the extraordinary multiday communion festival that he and his congregation helped to host in 1801—famous as the “Cane Ridge Revival”— Stone reminisced: “All urged faith in the gospel, and obedience to it, as the way of life. The spirit of partyism, and party distinctions, were apparently forgotten. . . . The spirit of love, peace, and union, were revived. . . . Happy days!” Quoted in Allen, Distant Voices, 11-12.
6 preaching and ministering largely among impoverished frontier folk. (He had in fact been born to moderate wealth and was college educated, had once abandoned plans for a career in law, and eventually took up editing a movement journal, The Christian Messenger, from 1826 to 1844.) Care for the poor and marginalized was an imperative. Moreover, he and most of his followers openly condemned the institution of slavery, eventually speaking out in support of abolitionism and incurring threats of violence that came with it. (In the 1830s, Stone and his wife moved from Kentucky to free-state Illinois, at least in part to emancipate slaves she had inherited from her Tennessee mother.) In short, Stone lived and taught counterculturally and prophetically in expression of radical discipleship under an apocalyptic—that is, a kingdom of God—vision.16 As noted, both Campbell and Stone advocated for Christian restoration and freedom. However, where Campbell thought more in terms of restoration of original forms and freedom from denominational creeds and authorities, Stone was much more concerned about restoration of pure Christian ethics and freedom from the values of a corrupted secular world, American society included. Campbell’s modernist optimism about the potential for moral progress and Christian restoration once oppressive systems had been removed; his noticeable affection for the achievements of Protestant and Anglo-Saxon civilization; his measured confidence in American ideals and institutions in an era of Christian “Awakening” and rising “Manifest Destiny” nationalism, even to the point of harboring hopes that the United States might indeed become God’s chosen agent for the millennium; and his surprising trust in the state to provide sound
16
Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 106-110; Hughes, Reclaiming a Heritage, 74-75, 81. Stone described slavery as “the darkest cloud that hangs over America” and reprinted in his Christian Messenger the radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison’s famous address on the subject. Richard T. Hughes, “The ‘Politics of the Day’ and ‘The Politics of Heaven’: The Apocalyptic Orientation of Barton W. Stone,” in John Mark Hicks, ed., Resisting Babel: Allegiance to God and the Problem of Government (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2020), 30-31. In contrast to Stone’s absolute moral opposition to slavery, the rationalist-textualist Campbell once argued of slavery in public debate: “There is not one verse in the Bible inhibiting it, but many regulating it. It is not then, we conclude, immoral.” Quote in Hughes, Reclaiming a Heritage, 83.
7 moral training—all of this indicated a degree of comfort with the culture of his time.17 In stark contrast, Stone’s bias was anti-modern and anti-nationalistic. He held out no hope whatsoever for human moral progress, let alone salvation, through any state, government, or other secular agency, or through any modernist reasoning, science, technology, or other human ingenuity. Righteousness, hope, and peace were to be found not through “worldly” values, institutions, or innovations, but only through a wholehearted embrace of apocalyptic reality and values.18 Here the political implications of Stone’s views were—and remain—enormous. Since all governments and nations were pretenders and usurpers of the rightful reign and rule of God, they were illegitimate if not demonic. It followed, Stone argued, that Christians must not be coconspirators through participation in political systems, whether by office-holding or, in a democracy, electioneering or even voting. Christians could and should submit to authorities as scripture commanded, so long as doing so did not violate God’s moral law or justice. Obeying most civil laws and paying taxes, for example, remained duties. But Stone held that to be Christian was to be apolitical in the affairs of the world, neither posing a threat to authority nor being an aider and abettor. Certainly, Christians should not engage in armed rebellion or fight in wars. “A nation professing christianity [sic], yet teaching, learning and practicing the arts of war cannot be of the kingdom of Christ,” he declared. God’s kingdom was peaceable and holy and therefore called for faithful, absolute pacifism.19 Here again Stone urged believers to detach from “worldly” values and live counterculturally, prepared both to accept any resulting suffering and to take delight in the blessings of living under the sovereign will of God.
17
Allen, Distant Voices, 48-49, 52-53; Keith Huey, interview, Aug 4, 2023. Notably, observed Huey, that confidence was shaken late in Campbell’s life by the Civil War. 18 Hughes, Reclaiming a Heritage, 73, 113. 19 Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 110-113 (quote on p. 111); Allen, Distant Voices, 52-53.
8 It is worth noting here that pacifism was a pervasive though not universal position of Restorationists and Churches of Christ up to the First World War era. Indeed—and perhaps surprisingly in light of their later history—Churches of Christ once represented “one of the most important American pacifist sects.”20 Even the Civil War and its heady passions did not generally coax movement leaders away from this stance. This may be less surprising when we remember that Restorationists were largely made up of relatively poor, “outsider” folk “with a classconscious membership” who were “grounded in left-wing Protestant perspectives” and skeptical of traditional policymakers.21 But even the well-educated and well-traveled among them such as Campbell, one of the wealthiest men of West Virginia, argued for pacifism, highlighting war and violence as incompatible with Christ’s teaching and the primitive church’s practice.22 Yet one more political implication of Stone’s apocalyptic worldview demands attention. Indeed, its greatest import was not fundamentally political, but a matter of identity. Christians’ recognition of the kingdom of God as real, present, and paramount necessarily rendered all other identities and loyalties, if not meaningless, at least conditional and dependent. Hence, for Stone and his spiritual heirs, nationalism—broadly speaking, devotion to a particular state, ruler, ethnicity, race, caste, heritage, political system, ideology, or any group or organizing principle other than Jesus Christ and one’s fellow subjects of the kingdom—was unthinkable. Nay, it was idolatry. The scope of God’s love and concern for humanity and his creation was boundless, boundary-less, and borderless. Nationalism and its relatives such as racism, social injustice, and
20
Michael W. Casey, “From Religious Outsiders to Insiders: The Rise and Fall of Pacifism in the Churches of Christ,” Journal of Church and State 44 (Summer 2002): 456. Casey credits Peter Brock, Pacifism in the United States: From the Colonial Era to the First World War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), 911-915, for this observation. 21 Casey, “From Religious Outsiders to Insiders,” 455-456. 22 Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 111-112; Michael W. Casey, “Pacifism,” in Douglas A. Foster, Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavant, and D. Newell Williams, eds., The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), 586.
9 other forms of discrimination, by prioritizing and preferring some people over others, stood in defiance of God’s kingdom of equally beloved subjects.23 COUNTERCULTURAL HEIRS: DAVID LIPSCOMB AND JAMES A. HARDING Stone died in 1844 and so did not live to witness the devastation of the Civil War, the joy of slavery’s end, or new convulsions that quickly followed: the rise of white supremacist activism; Jim Crow segregation, convict leasing, and lynching in the South; rapid expansions of corporate power, wealth concentration, and labor unrest in the industrial North, and dizzying changes in social and material life under industrialization. Among those who did, the most influential heirs of Stone’s apocalyptic vision from the era of Reconstruction to the First World War were David Lipscomb (1831-1917) and James A. Harding (1848-1922). Both men, themselves college graduates, exerted a major influence not only on emerging Churches of Christ but also on higher education within that tradition. Based in Nashville, Lipscomb was, in Restorationist historian Leonard Allen’s view, “unquestionably the most influential leader among southern Churches of Christ in the second half of the nineteenth century,” while Harding “emerged in the closing decades of the nineteenth century as a leading evangelist, debater, and educator among Churches of Christ.”24 Without question both men manifested aspects of Alexander Campbell’s Baconian rationalism and biblicism. They were “modern people within a modern movement rooted in modern perspectives,” as John Mark Hicks and Bobby Valentine note in an insightful study of the pair’s legacy. However, Lipscomb and Harding also
23
Professor of Theology John Mark Hicks aptly and passionately speaks to this: “Nothing is more subversive of the gospel than racist attitudes and practice. Racism strikes at the heart of the gospel itself!” John Mark Hicks, Searching for the Pattern: My Journey in Interpreting the Bible (Self-published, 2019), 213. 24 Allen, Distant Voices, 85-86, 144. Hicks, a careful scholar of Lipscomb’s thought and impact, deems him “arguably the most influential thought leader among Churches of Christ from the Civil War to the beginning of World War I.” Hicks, “Introduction: Lipscomb, the War, and the Kingdom Vision,” in Hicks, ed. Resisting Babel, 9. Tellingly, the names of Lipscomb and Harding remain recognizable in two of the Church of Christ’s most prominent universities (though neither institution would always reflect the priorities of its namesake).
10 fundamentally championed the apocalyptic tradition of Barton Stone and thoroughly “critiqued the progress of modernity.”25 Lipscomb is the most obvious case in point, for, as Hughes has observed, “he reflected Stone’s countercultural views almost perfectly.” Reminiscent of Stone, for example, Lipscomb “identified with the outcast and the poor, resisted racial discrimination, and refused to vote or fight in wars.”26 The horrors of the Civil War had dispelled any earlier confidence he had in human institutions and deepened his identification with the kingdom of God, leaving him thereafter a fierce Christian pacifist and skeptic of all civil government.27 He laid out his strong views as editor of the Gospel Advocate magazine from 1866-1912 and in his influential Civil Government: Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny, and the Christian’s Relation to It, which also first appeared just after the war.28 Like Stone, notes Allen, “Lipscomb believed that all human government represented the rebellion of humankind against God’s sovereign rule.” The kingdom of God was “a transcendent reality that alone should claim Christians’ allegiance.”29 Lipscomb would scoff at the idea that the United States was, could be, or should seek to declare itself a “Christian nation,” having lived through both North and South making such claims in the Civil War and political activist groups such as the “National Reform Association” (an earlier NRA) and “Evangelical Alliance” seeking an amendment to the Constitution explicitly declaring
25
John Mark Hicks and Bobby Valentine, Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James Harding (Abilene, TX: Leafwood, 2006), 16. 26 Hughes, Reclaiming a Heritage, 114. 27 John Mark Hicks carefully presents Lipscomb’s thought in three essays: “Introduction: Lipscomb, the War, and the Kingdom Vision,” “David Lipscomb’s Political Theology: Submit but Don’t Support,” and “From Slavery to Segregation: A Case Study in Lipscomb’s Political Theology,” in Hicks, ed., Resisting Babel, 9-13, 37-58, 59-79. As did Stone for his support for abolitionism, Lipscomb received threats of violence for preaching pacifism. Casey, “From Religious Outsiders to Insiders,” 456. 28 First published serially in the Gospel Advocate in 1866-1867, Civil Government was published in bound form in 1889. David Lipscomb, Civil Government: Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny, and the Christian’s Relation to It (Nashville: Gospel Advocate Publishing, 1889). 29 Allen, Distant Voices, 87, 89.
11 Christian nationhood as a shield against secularism, non-Protestantism, and radical ideologies like Marxism.30 Harding, an 1866 graduate of Campbell’s Bethany College, likewise evolved toward a thoroughly apolitical and pacifist position on the basis of a commitment to a kingdom vision. Governments, he held, stood as separate, rival kingdoms to God’s. The United States or any other government was “not a necessary prop to help support the Christian faith but was actually a Satanic seduction away from the utter dependence on God.” Christians lived as “foreigners” in the world, bound like resident aliens and sojourners to submit to government—to obey laws, pay taxes, and pray for leaders. The faithful, however, would “not seek to advance the agenda of the kingdoms of the world.” To participate in violence or coercion, to threaten it, or even to offer any proactive support to secular power was but to participate in Satan’s designs.31 It should be emphasized that Lipscomb and Harding’s positions were not first antipolitical, anti-American, or anti-denominational, but rather pro-kingdom in the apocalyptic tradition. Christians were to be “a distinct people [who] had values distinct from this age.” As summarized by Hicks and Valentine, Christians are “stewards of God’s good gifts to be shared as freely as they were received”; so, for example, “the poor are not considered a burden but are regarded as the preference of God’s heart. The color of one’s skin, in the shadow of the second coming, [loses] all relevance as a basis of relationship. Indeed, a church that is truly a beachhead of God’s reign will risk cultural alienation for the sake of those victimized on the basis of social
30
John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 12-29. Hughes rightly argues that “the notions of a ‘Christian culture,’ or a ‘Christian America’ make no sense in the context of the restorationist principle.” Hughes, Reclaiming a Heritage, 107. 31 Hicks and Valentine, Kingdom Come, 28, 30. Hicks’s summary phrase for Lipscomb’s view of a proper Christian mandate in relation to the state is apt for Harding as well: “Submit but don’t support.” Hicks, “David Lipscomb’s Political Theology: Submit but Don’t Support,” in Hicks, ed., Resisting Babel, 37.
12 location and race.”32 The Stone-Lipscomb-Harding tradition was foremost a radical commitment to “seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.”33 Hicks and Valentine fully acknowledge that both Lipscomb and Harding, as Stone and Campbell before them, were imperfect vessels, sometimes falling short of their own ideals—as do we all—by too closely mirroring their cultural inheritance.34 Lipscomb, notwithstanding his outspoken condemnation of racism, still manifested an unfortunate amount of “White Man’s Burden” racial paternalism,35 and both he and Harding remained “social segregationists in relation to race.”36 Also sadly, with regard to higher education, neither of the colleges they established in the turn-of-the-century years—the Nashville Bible School (founded by both men in 1891) or Potter Bible College in Bowling Green, Kentucky (founded by Harding in 1901 and no longer existing)—admitted Black Americans. The former institution, which would evolve into today’s distinguished Lipscomb University, did not change this policy until 1964—such was the potency of Jim Crow and the power of culture. Despite such flaws and blind spots, all too common across white American society, Lipscomb and Harding did seek to strengthen Christian commitment with higher learning in service to a God-centered mission in the world, holding out that the kingdom of God was not to be equated with any nation or denomination (even a “nondenominational” one). The “Nashville Bible School Tradition,” as Hicks and Valentine have named it, sought “God’s fully consummated kingdom” on earth by calling for peaceable, non-nationalistic, countercultural
32
Hicks and Valentine, Kingdom Come, 31-32. Matthew 6:33, New American Standard Bible (1995). 34 Hicks and Valentine, Kingdom Come, 23-24. 35 Hicks, “From Slavery to Segregation: A Case Study in Lipscomb’s Political Theology,” in Hicks, ed., Resisting Babel, 68. Hicks also points out in this essay that Lipscomb too readily accepted a gradualist approach to integration. The “White Man’s Burden” reference reflects the famous “benevolent empire” poem of that title by the British writer Rudyard Kipling in 1899. Kipling wrote the poem to urge the United States to accept annexation of the Philippines as part of a larger Anglo-American and Christian civilizing mission to more “primitive” peoples. 36 Hicks and Valentine, Kingdom Come, 24. 33
13 lives open to all humanity and marked by, for example, “the spiritual disciplines of prayer, Bible reading and caring for the poor.”37 “APOCALYPTIC” DECLINE IN AN AGE OF WAR, POWER, AND AFFLUENCE David Lipscomb died in 1917, notably just months after the United States had declared war on the German Empire in the “Great War” (not yet the even more tragically named “First World War”), and James Harding followed just a few years later. At the start of the war in 1914, the Church of Christ—which only recently had emerged as one of what would be three distinct “fellowships” (denominations) of the once unity-aspiring Restoration Movement—still constituted “the largest peace church in the nation.” But a combination of aggressive U.S. wartime propaganda, surveillance, and prosecutions, mounting editorial attacks from within the fellowship (some quite ferocious), and a longing among many church leaders and members for greater social legitimacy took their toll. For the apocalyptic tradition, states Joshua Ward Jeffrey, “the damage inflicted by the conflict ultimately proved fatal”—or nearly so.38 Voices of pacifism and apoliticism were marginalized or went silent altogether.39 On this subject, Keith Huey offers a poignant observation: “The turn away from apocalypticism came through experience, not theology.”40
37
Hicks and Valentine, Kingdom Come, 18. Hughes notes that Lipscomb and Harding’s support for Christian education was not shared by all within the movement. Referring to higher education for preachers, one critic complained in a Jabberwocky-esque rant: “We have no patience with this mere butterfly twaddle, toploftical, aircastle, highfalutin and empty thing.” Quoted in Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 228. 38 Joshua Ward Jeffrey, “Exchanging the Kingdom of Heaven for the Empire of America: The Loss of the Apocalyptic Worldview in Churches of Christ,” in Hicks, ed., Resisting Babel, 107-108. 39 Michael Casey cites examples of external and internal pressure: David Lipscomb College’s president received hate mail in response to his speech urging Christians against fighting; the Gospel Advocate editor stopped publishing pro-pacifist articles in response to threats of arrest under the Espionage Act; Cordell Christian College in Cordell, Oklahoma—the largest Church of Christ college at the time—eventually closed under pressure from prowar Church of Christ members. Casey, “From Religious Outsiders to Insiders,” 461-463. See also Hughes, “The Apocalyptic Origins of the Churches of Christ and the Triumph of Modernism,” in Hughes, et al., American Origins of Churches of Christ, 97-100. Hughes affirms that in the World War I period “one witnesses the erosion . . . of not only pacifism but also the basic Stone-Lipscomb worldview that sustained the pacifist sentiment” (100). 40 Huey, interview, Aug 4, 2023.
14 In short, World War I produced conditions—both external and internal—that accelerated a decline in the influence of the Stone-Lipscomb-Harding apocalyptic tradition in favor of what became over the succeeding decades a more nationalistic, pragmatic, and culturally mainstream movement—one which, although presumably more thoroughly “modern,” nevertheless continued to maintain much of its “outsider” exclusivist identity and legalistic impulses.41 There was a momentary revival of pacifism within Churches of Christ and other denominations in the anxious years of economic depression and gathering war clouds leading up and into the Second World War. That revival found cover in a broader surge of American isolationist sentiment (embodied, for example, in the original “America First” campaign). But shock over rapid Nazi German conquests, American naval run-ins with German U-boats, and at last the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor snapped most minds back into line. The cultural environments of the Second World War, the Cold War that followed, and the unprecedented American power and wealth in the postwar decades were not conducive to pacifist, anti-nationalist, or other countercultural appeals. The vision and priorities of Stone, Lipscomb, and Harding seemed distant indeed, now largely discredited or muted in the fellowship’s publications, “lectureships” (the closest thing the congregation-based Church of Christ had to denominational conventions), and college administrations. In the absence of a meaningful “apocalyptic” check and challenge, Churches of Christ—at least in the more numerous and increasingly prosperous white congregations—became more politically active, conservative (including intensely
41 Hughes’s work, of course, covers this ground well, as has that of Michael W. Casey and several others. A brief incisive analysis and overview of the subject with a focus on the World War I is Jeffrey, “Exchanging the Kingdom of Heaven for the Empire of America,” in Hicks, ed., Resisting Babel, 105-125. On the latter point, Hughes observes, “When Churches of Christ undertook modernization, they did so in the name of primitive Christianity, which means that they essentially backed into the modern age, often with great reluctance. The process of modernization was at best ambiguous.” Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 231.
15 anticommunist), and comfortable in mainstream American culture.42 This was certainly a significant factor contributing to the fellowship’s greatest period of growth, reaching from fewer than 700,000 members in 1946-47 to over two million some twenty years later, with the large majority still in the southern “Bible Belt” region.43 THE SINGULAR ERA OF RU’S FOUNDING And so it was in this less “apocalyptic” and more “modernist” era of Church of Christ evolution that North Central Christian College welcomed its opening class of students to a newly prepared campus in “remote” Avon Township (later incorporated as Rochester Hills) in the fall of 1959. More than five years of planning and preparation had already passed since the first recorded meeting of area leaders to consider such a possibility. Representing various Detroit-area congregations, the number and sizes of which had significantly grown during the influx of migrants drawn by war production and the postwar auto-industry boom, founders and supporters lamented the absence of a nearby liberal arts college that reflected their particular denominational tradition. Among other interests, they hoped to keep their college-bound children closer to home by providing an alternative to the fellowship’s southern flagship colleges.44 To describe the era of RU’s founding as extraordinary is understatement. The Second World War alone, writes historian Richard Polenberg, had “radically altered the character of
42
Casey, “From Religious Outsiders to Insiders,” 466-475. Casey does note that a remnant of pacifist resistance persisted, citing as an example the successful effort of a few professors at Abilene Christian College to block an ROTC program on campus. Jeffrey, “Exchanging the Kingdom of Heaven,” in Hicks, ed., Resisting Babel, 122, concludes also that “the apocalyptic worldview had fallen victim to the culture of war and of leaders in the Churches of Christ who wished to move from the outside to the inside.” 43 Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 235. 44 Stewart, Seasons of Rochester College, 9-10. Stewart notes here that by the mid-1950s the Detroit region was “home to the largest concentration of Churches of Christ in the northern United States”—still, of course, much smaller than that of the Bible Belt.
16 American society and challenged its most durable values.”45 Massive wartime federal budgets, over ten times larger than any of the Depression-era New Deal budgets, had enabled the United States and especially the Detroit region to emerge as the “arsenal of democracy.” Adding to the dramatic economic recovery was the relief, elation, and pride of victory in what most Americans believed had been a morally clear-cut war. (The revelation of Holocaust and Japanese atrocities had only enhanced the notion of a righteous cause.) The defense of freedom and democracy had restored familiar themes of national identity and mission, which, as with Manifest Destiny before, was readily connected in many American minds with the will of God. The United States was not the only power critical to victory, of course, but Americans nevertheless had emerged from the war with far and away the most benefits. As a later Harper’s Magazine editor reminisced, “In 1945, the United States inherited the earth.”46 With scant physical damage suffered at home—Pearl Harbor excepted—the U.S. now dominated the global economy. By war’s end, for example, the U.S. owned two-thirds of the world’s gold reserves, half its shipping, and more than half its manufacturing capacity as former competitors—friend or foe—had become exhausted or destroyed. (Especially important to southeast Michigan was that by 1947 Americans produced 80% of the world’s automobiles.)47 Also, as the recent movie Oppenheimer has reminded us, the United States held a monopoly of atomic power, albeit briefly. (As for Oppenheimer’s movie release rival Barbie, we would only note that the Barbie doll, which would
45
Richard Polenberg, War and Society: The United States, 1941-1945 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1972), 4. See also Allan M. Winkler, Home Front U.S.A.: America during World War II, American History Series, ed. Arthur S. Link (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, Inc., 1986). 46 Lewis H. Lappam, “American Foreign Policy: A Rake’s Progress,” Harper’s (1979), quoted in Terkel, 6. Lappam continued: “What was left of Western civilization passed into the American account. The war had also prompted the country to invent a miraculous economic machine that seemed to grant as many wishes as were asked of it. The continental United States has escaped the plague of war, and so it was easy for the heirs to believe that they had been anointed by God.” 47 Michael C. C. Adams, The Best War Ever: America and World War II, 2nd ed., The American Moment series, ed. Stanley I. Kutler (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 87, summarizes the American advantages thus: “Domestically the war inaugurated the greatest era of prosperity in human history.”
17 demonstrate America’s postwar affluence, consumerism, Baby Boom, and global cultural power, was introduced in 1959—the same year as RU’s founding.) The majority in American society—including those within Churches of Christ—now embraced the U.S. role as “leader of the free world.” Moreover, with the rise of a “Cold War” against a new ideological, strategic, global, and soon nuclear adversary, Americans readily supported a massive expansion of the federal government, military expenditures and commitments, and international activism and intervention. (The G.I. Bill, Marshall Plan, CIA, NATO, Korean War, and rising “military-industrial complex” exemplified this, as would also the war in Vietnam and space program.) The culture of fear—reflected in fallout shelters, “duck-andcover” school drills, the McCarthyist “Red Scare,” John Birch Society conspiracy-mongering, and a U.S. strategic doctrine of MAD (“Mutually Assured Destruction”)—was far from the peaceable kingdom that Stone, Lipscomb, and Harding had so fervently advocated for God’s people to occupy. Ironically, the apocalyptic tradition now appeared least in evidence at a time when the possibility of human self-annihilation appeared most in evidence. As in the “Manifest Destiny” periods of the mid- and late-nineteenth century, prosperity and expansion served up plenty of temptation to Americans and American Christians to project successes and satisfactions of the moment into claims of U.S. “exceptionalism” and God’s perpetual favor.48 Added to that was the temptation to assume that the “unrighteousness” of an adversary (then, the Soviet Union and communism) rendered one’s own nation, institutions, and
48
Studs Terkel acknowledged this tendency by reminding readers that “We had hardly considered ourselves God’s anointed in the thirties.” Terkel, 6.
18 ideologies more righteous.49 Without an effective apocalyptic rebuttal to such hubristic thinking, the temptation to equate national interests with God’s (or vice versa) was all the greater. CONSTRICTED VISION An even more glaring problem in the absence of a strong apocalyptic voice among at least white Churches of Christ in RU’s founding years was a dulled sensibility about the era’s great moral issues of social ethics and racial justice. Coincidentally, the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education appeared nearly concurrently to the first planning meeting of hopeful RU supporters. The Court decision denounced the racial “separate-but-equal” doctrine, launching desegregation efforts and an intensified Civil Rights Movement that featured the likes of Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., and a host of other Black leaders, including the prominent Civil Rights attorney and Church of Christ preacher Fred Gray. To all this, as Richard Hughes recalls from his own memories and scholarship, the typical white Church of Christ response was mostly tepid. “Why,” he asks, “were we so reluctant to see the implications the gospel holds for large-scale issues of peace and justice?”50 This reflected more than entrenched racism or the Jim Crow cultural context of a southern-based denomination; it reflected as well the diminishment of a theological framework that would offer greater access, empathy, validity, and urgency to cries for relief and justice. This moment did not call for Campbellite rationalism and textualism, but for the prophetic witness and countercultural conscience of a Stone, Lipscomb, or Harding. Alas, that powerful voice of the Restorationist past was now too thin, with too few ears to hear it.51 49
As if to reflect the point, in June 1954—just weeks after the first planning meeting for RU—the U.S. House and Senate jointly added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and, two years later, “In God we trust” as the national motto. 50 Hughes, Reclaiming a Heritage, 58. Hughes recounts his personal experience in recognizing and coming to terms with this disconnect on issues such as Civil Rights and the Vietnam War on pp. 58-66. 51 In Paul Conkin’s critical view, the Churches of Christ “had bought into most of the consumptive, capitalistic, and intensely nationalistic values of conservative Protestantism.” Conkin, American Originals, 43.
19 Such were some of the contextual elements of the founding of the liberal arts college that would become Rochester University. The southeast Michigan founders and supporters, as bearers of the rationalist-legalist Church of Christ heritage of the 1950s, were perhaps more constricted in their theological and hence social-cultural and fellowship vision than what a robust apocalyptic tradition—equally drawn from the Restoration heritage—might have enabled. Nevertheless, they were also, by fortune of geographical and cultural distance, less bound by the southern cultural constrictions that weighed so heavily on most other of the fellowship’s educational institutions. Reflecting their own regional realities, for example—as Beth Bowers notes in her essay—RU’s founders adopted a non-segregationist policy from the start, and soon thereafter a vision was cast to attract students from beyond Churches of Christ. The new college also exhibited the optimism of an era of denominational growth by developing a strong missions emphasis and ethos, which in turn encouraged a wider global vision and open-mindedness toward other cultures.52 Even so, there is no getting around the sense of a missed opportunity for Churches of Christ and, by then, Michigan Christian College, to have offered a more distinct and sustained contribution to the peace and justice issues of the 1960s. The diminishment by that time of a compelling prophetic voice from within the Church of Christ’s own heritage certainly played a role. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS Today, of course, the geopolitical, political, economic, social, cultural, technological, environmental, and religious contexts in which we are embedded differ just as profoundly from that of the founders of Rochester University as theirs did from that of Campbell and Stone or Lipscomb and Harding—indeed, one might easily argue, much more so. And yet the dual
52
Beth Bowers, “Missions to Missional: Rochester University’s Story in Churches of Christ from Otis Gatewood to Brian Stogner.”
20 missions to cultivate both spirit and mind in devotion to transcendent reality and truth—that is, to God’s kingdom—remain as essential as ever. They still together form the basis and justification for RU’s existence. Certainly, as Huey argues, the liberal arts ideal of Alexander Campbell and RU’s founders should remain a core value and high priority for Christian higher education and not sacrificed to narrower or more “pragmatic” aims and outcomes.53 More to the focus of this discussion, however, is consideration of the value of the “apocalyptic tradition” in our institution’s heritage for its present and future. A few concluding observations might be offered. A first point to be made is that this tradition draws us back to first principles and priorities. It focuses us on ends before means or methods; hence, it asserts and affirms purposefulness and value to the whole of the educational enterprise as a worthy endeavor in relation to ultimate truth—which is God. Relatedly, the apocalyptic vision infuses a deep Christian piety and spirituality to matters otherwise mundane or merely pragmatic. In short, it reminds students, professors, staff, administration, trustees, and supporters that what we do together and in our respective roles matters in the most fundamental way. We should regularly and gratefully refresh ourselves in this affirmation, individually and collectively. Another observation is that the Stone-Lipscomb-Harding orientation offers a powerful countercultural impulse and challenge to which we might turn for grounding, guidance, and inspiration. Even if many of us are not prepared to embrace categorical pacifism or apoliticism, we may certainly agree with the apocalyptic tradition that, in recognizing God’s authority on earth, Christians are called not to accept conventional priorities, definitions, and values as normative. Instead, we advocate and seek to embody an alternative, kingdom-of-God vision and set of values, which may sometimes and for certain matters parallel secular views and interests,
53
Huey, “Alexander Campbell.”
21 but also often will not.54 One implication is that we should remain extremely wary about aligning our identity, energies, and resources—or even appearing to do so—with any particular political, ideological, partisan, or national agenda or agency. (Among concerns at the present historical moment, given their demonstrated potencies, are nationalism and its most pernicious and selfcontradictory form, Christian nationalism.) This, of course, is not to counsel unconcern or inaction. Pacifism is not passivity. Matters of peace and reconciliation, social and racial justice, environmental health, and human health and well-being, for example, remain important for Christian attention and activity. An apocalyptic outlook cautions Christ-followers neither to accept the world in its broken state, nor to abandon it, but to engage with it as a countercultural offering. As Hicks and Valentine remind us, the example has been set by God, who neither accepted creation’s estrangement, nor abandoned it, but radically engaged it, not with force but through love at the highest sacrificial cost.55 Connected to the previous point is that the apocalyptic tradition calls us to adopt a view of humanity in which all members reflect the image of the creator and hold equal worth. Systems of value disparity such as nationalism, racism, genderism, wealth, power, caste, sexuality, health and ability, age, or heritage stand against the ethic of all being subjects equally loved by and responsible to God. The apocalyptic tradition in fact calls for attention to those who are disadvantaged, neglected, and suffering under such human schemes. The apocalyptic tradition reinforces a transnational and multicultural perspective, not merely a national or monocultural one; it prioritizes relationship over rules, competency, or achievement; it beckons us into a beloved community; it is inclusive and ecumenical; it offers, shall we say, an open table.
54
To this end, among the essential and faithful services we at RU can fulfill is to provide our students and other constituencies (including one another) with disciplinary knowledge and analytical tools to assess both historical and current norms and claims, especially through the lens of God’s authority. 55 Hicks and Valentine, Kingdom Come, 159.
22 We would do well to recover much of the values and practices of this part of our Restorationist and Church of Christ heritage.
23 BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, Michael C. C. The Best War Ever: America and World War II. 2nd ed. The American Moment series, ed. Stanley I. Kutler. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015. Allen, C. Leonard. Distant Voices: Discovering a Forgotten Past for a Changing Church. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1993. Casey, Michael W. “From Religious Outsiders to Insiders: The Rise and Fall of Pacifism in the Churches of Christ.” Journal of Church and State 44, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 455-475. Conkin, Paul K. American Originals: Homemade Varieties of Christianity. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997. Fea, John. Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011. Foster, Douglas A., Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavant, and D. Newell Williams, eds. The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004. Hatch, Nathan O. The Democratization of American Christianity. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989. Hicks, John Mark, and Bobby Valentine. Kingdom Come: Embracing the Spiritual Legacy of David Lipscomb and James Harding. Abilene, TX: Leafwood, 2006. Hicks, John Mark, ed. Resisting Babel: Allegiance to God and the Problem of Government. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2020. Hicks, John Mark. Searching for the Pattern: My Journey in Interpreting the Bible. Selfpublished, 2019. Hughes, Richard T., Nathan O. Hatch, and David Edwin Harrell, Jr. American Origins of Churches of Christ: Three Essays on Restoration History. Intro. and analysis by Douglas A. Foster. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2000. Hughes, Richard T., and C. Leonard Allen. Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630-1875. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Hughes, Richard T. Reclaiming a Heritage: Reflections on the Heart, Soul, and Future of Churches of Christ. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2002. Hughes, Richard T. Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996.
24 Kershner, Frederick D. “Stars: Message of Barton Stone.” Christian Standard (4 May 1940). Excerpted in “A Biographical Study of Barton W. Stone (Part 4).” Christian Standard (21 May 2020). https://christianstandard.com/2020/05/a-biographical-study-of-barton-w-stonepart-4/. Accessed 6 Oct 2023. Lipscomb, David. Civil Government: Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny, and the Christian’s Relation to It. Nashville: Gospel Advocate Publishing, 1889. Moore, R. Laurence. Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Noll, Mark A. Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2011. Noll, Mark A. The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1994; reissued with a new preface and afterword, 2022. Polenberg, Richard. War and Society: The United States, 1941-1945. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1972. Stewart, Larry. The Seasons of Rochester College. Rochester Hills, MI.: Rochester College, 2008. Terkel, Studs, ed., “The Good War”: An Oral History of World War Two. New York: Ballantine, 1985. Winkler, Allan M. Home Front U.S.A.: America during World War II. American History Series, ed. Arthur S. Link. Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1986.
Missions to Missional: Rochester University’s Story in Churches of Christ from Otis Gatewood to Brian Stogner
Beth Bowers, D.Min. Rochester University Instructor of Theology and Ministry
INTRODUCTION Rochester University1 is a relative late-comer within institutes of higher learning associated with the Church of Christ branch of the Stone-Campbell movement. Positioned well outside of the southern Bible-belt, the locus of Church of Christ wealth both in people and dollars, southeast Michigan attracted thousands of southern Church of Christ members in the era following the second World War as the automobile industry exploded. In these decades, southeast Michigan housed the “largest concentration of Churches of Christ in the northern United States.”2 This climate fostered desire for a local, liberal arts, Church of Christ college, and in 1959, years of dreaming, planning, and grass roots fundraising came to fruition in North Central Christian College, housed in the rural community of Rochester Hills on the outskirts of Detroit. The documented “aims of the college” stated that North Central Christian College would aspire to “[lead] its students toward high academic achievements while at the same time dedicating [themselves] to the teaching of Christian principles and the maintaining of a total environment that is Christian.”3
1
The names used for Rochester University in this essay will follow the progression of the name changes through the decades: North Central Christian College, Michigan Christian Junior College, Michigan Christian College, Rochester College, and Rochester University. 2
Larry Stewart, The Seasons of Rochester College (Rochester Hills, MI: Rochester College,
3
North Central Christian College Course Catalog, “Aims of the College,” (Rochester Hills, MI,
2008), 9. 1959), 13.
1
FOUNDING In the months before its opening in the fall of 1959, board members introduced Otis Gatewood as the college’s first president and E. Lucien Palmer as the first dean. Both Gatewood and Palmer, in addition to faculty members like Maurice Hall, led the college from their own particular backgrounds in global missions, as well as from their religious convictions formed in the Church of Christ. Not only did North Central Christian College emphasize a global missionary posture as it prepared students to engage their sense of calling in the world, they understood themselves as an outpost of the kingdom of God, particularly an outpost of Churches of Christ. In 1965 they added language in their “aims of the college” stating that the student body was formed primarily from Churches of Christ, but noting “the student body is not limited to this constituency.”4 The college also distinguished itself as non-segregationist from its inception, consistent with its own cultural context in the North, but in contrast to its southern affiliated schools and southern Churches of Christ.5 Archivist and institutional
4
Michigan Christian Junior College Course Catalog, “Aims of the College,” (Rochester Hills, MI, 1965-67), 13. To be clear, despite the emphasis on peace and unity in the early Restoration movement, by the 1950s and 1960s, Churches of Christ, almost universally, held an exclusivist sectarian posture which implied they knew the correct doctrine, worshipped the correct way, and rightly interpreted the Bible. Thus, while impossible to discern motive with exactitude, it is not a far stretch to assume that conversion (to the Church of Christ) drove the founders’ inclusive approach. 5
According to Richard Hughes’s seminal work, Reviving the Ancient Faith, “as late as 1960, all Church of Christ-related colleges located in the South still refused admission to [black people].” For an overview of racial discrimination in Churches of Christ, see the chapter entitled “Blacks and Whites: The Struggle for Social Justice in the 1960s.” Richard T. Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 288. Also worth noting is the vast racial division that continues to exist in Churches of Christ in southeast Michigan. Metro-Detroit is still reckoning with its history of white supremacy which manifested itself in red-lining, forced racial resettlement, racial insurrections, restrictive neighborhood covenants, and sundown towns. This racist climate of the 1950s and 1960s was the cultural water in which the founders of NCCC swam; nevertheless, they committed themselves to a (imperfect, to be sure) campus culture of racial and ethnic inclusion.
2
historian, Larry Stewart suggests, “[The early leaders’] strong emphasis on missions fostered an open attitude toward diverse cultures and helped define the character of the institution.”6 The missions emphasis among the leadership at North Central Christian College patterned the larger movement in Churches of Christ following World War II.7 The number of foreign missionaries supported by Churches of Christ grew from 46 to 724 in the 20 years after the end of the war, and Otis Gatewood was instrumental in that combined effort which mirrored the astronomical growth of congregations in the US.8 Understanding Church of Christ culture during the 1950s and 1960s, as well as deepseeded historical postures, is crucial. James Maverick Cook reminds us that “religion was an integral part of the nineteenth-century march-of-human-progress via Western culture. Ideas of progress, science, Americanism, Enlightenment rationality, and Christianity were…intertwined.”9 The world wars of the early twentieth century halted our collective trust in the march of progress, but Churches of Christ were birthed in the climate of reason and progress. That, combined with a desire to restore embedded into their DNA,10
6
Stewart, The Seasons of Rochester College, 19.
7
Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 233.
8
Ibid, 235.
9
James Maverick Cook, “Identity and Nostalgia Among the Campbellites,” Restoration Quarterly, 48. 3 (2006): 133. 10
Cook suggests that the “primitivistic longing for a first-century Christian experience in the nineteenth or twentieth century…is very close to the nostalgia…in which one longs for things as they never were and also geographically shifts that longing to spaces in which they do not belong.” Cook, “Identity and Nostalgia Among the Campbellites,” 140. In hindsight, this critique of Church of Christ ethos is needed so as to re-imagine its missional identity in current and future contexts. And, we extend grace and gratitude to those that both journeyed imperfectly and lived the kingdom of God in their particular contexts and cultural realities.
3
a conviction that they possessed the key to the one true church, and controversy about missionary societies a concern of the past, cultivated the post-war climate ripe for renewed missionary effort. Alan Henderson suggests the rapid expansion of missions in Churches of Christ resulted precisely from leadership in its institutes of higher learning, in addition to the “explosive growth” of churches in general and the cultural climate of “robust optimism.”11 Additionally, a self-proclaimed “pioneer spirit” defined North Central Christian College’s foundational years. Otis Gatewood wrote, “The young people who enter North Central this fall will truly be pioneers in their own right. They will be blazing a trail that thousands of other youth will follow.”12 Gatewood was a trailblazer in his own right. He spent the first half of his career as a missionary alongside his wife, Alma, in Western Europe. They were the first American missionaries to work in Germany after WWII, focusing a majority of their energy toward humanitarian relief efforts. The Gatewoods returned to the US in 1957 and in 1958 accepted the call to lead this newborn college in the North. “Even the college’s own seal featured an open Bible pointing to a globe and commanding students to ‘Go Ye.’”13 In its own early publications, emphasis on the combined 100 years missionary experience among faculty drew the attention of
11
Alan Henderson, “A Historical Review of Missions and Missionary Training in the Churches of Christ,” Restoration Quarterly, 35 (1993): 205. Henderson, additionally, cites the practice of colleges hiring returned missionaries and missionaries on furlough to teach and prepare future missionaries (210). This pattern is continued in Rochester University’s narrative, albeit with different emphases and outcomes in mind. See discussion in section “Opening” regarding Ken Johnson’s hiring John and Sara Barton, returning missionaries from Uganda. 12
Stewart, The Seasons of Rochester College, 20.
13
Ibid, 22. (in a special presidential profile written by Brad Irwin).
4
prospective students and constituents.14 A missionary ethos permeated the soil of North Central Christian College, which in 1961 became Michigan Christian Junior College. When Otis Gatewood finished his tenure as president in 1964, E. Lucien Palmer filled the role. Palmer, like Gatewood before him, had missionary roots. His emphasis, however, was the expansion of Christian education, particularly in Nigeria, and he was instrumental in establishing Bible colleges. When he came to North Central Christian College, alongside the other founders, his emphasis was on crafting solid academic, systemic, and social foundations. His energy permeated the institution and set it up for a season of hard-earned growth, even as Churches of Christ were on the brink of stagnation. GROWTH TO FRAGILE STABILITY Don Gardner was inaugurated president of Michigan Christian Junior College in 1971 when Lucien Palmer assumed a new position as chancellor.15 Gardner’s presidency was marked by growth. He expanded a team of administers, staff, and faculty while tightly controlling costs. The 1970s were a time of expansion and excitement on campus as student populations flourished, activities and programs grew, debt was reduced, giving
14
Ibid, 25.
15
Shortly before Gardner assumed his presidency, the college faced a controversy involving its academic vice president and respected professor, Dr. Joseph Jones. Dr. Jones was scheduled to speak at a gospel meeting in Flint, MI, and after the meeting he was asked to meet with a group of elders regarding some of his viewpoints. Dr. Jones, sensing the ways this type of meeting could go sideways, declined. In the following months, the college faced intense pressure from area church leaders regarding the employment of Dr. Jones, and in order to protect the reputation and fragility of the college, they dismissed him (Stewart, Seasons, 44). In 2000, the college publicly apologized to Dr. Jones. This incident, however, reads as a microcosm of the “brotherhood watchdog” culture prevalent in Churches of Christ in the 1960s and beyond.
5
accelerated, and steps were made to develop the college’s first four-year degree and drop “Junior” from the name. Like Gatewood and Palmer before him, Gardner had some background in missions, and though his primary experience was in education and preaching, a missions culture still infused the campus of Michigan Christian College. Students participated in aggressive door-knocking campaigns through the student organization Mission Emphasis during these years in partnership with local Churches of Christ.16 In 1978, Walter Gilfilen assumed the presidency of Michigan Christian College. His term only lasted two years, but during that time he managed to bolster the college’s endowment and ushered in the first four-year degree. Milton Fletcher became the fourth president of Michigan Christian College in 1980, and in contrast to Gardner, Fletcher worked tirelessly to foster a climate of stability and consistency. His financial stewardship “preserved the college when other private two-year institutions failed.”17 Fletcher made it a practice to visit area Churches of Christ on weekends, building and nurturing relationships. The missions focus shifted a few degrees in the 1980s as the college began organizing programs in service to local churches. A newly formed church relations office provided training, workshops, and seminars, and during that decade, the college hosted over 60 events in local congregations in addition to bolstering its lectureship programs.18 This emphasis served to identify Michigan Christian College as a
16
Stewart, Seasons, 57.
17
Ibid, 72 (in a special presidential profile written by Brad Irwin).
18
Ibid, 85.
6
key resource for area Churches of Christ in southeastern Michigan. According to Hughes, by the 1970s Churches of Christ essentially fell into three broad traditions: …a mainstream that embraced some diversity but that sought, by and large, to preserve the dominant vision of the 1950s; a group of progressives who challenged that vision; and a group of conservatives who, in reaction to both the progressives and the relativizing tendencies of the 1960s, absolutized the historic vision of Churches of Christ, claimed to understand absolute truth absolutely, and maintained that Churches of Christ were not ‘Christians only’ but the ‘only Christians.’19 Particularly situated outside of the Bible belt, Michigan Christian College’s constituency consisted of every sector of this three-pronged reality, but on a much smaller scale than her affiliated institutions in the South. Thus, while the larger colleges tended to lean toward one of the prongs more heavily than the others, Michigan Christian College had no choice but to skirt the borders of all three. Additionally, the numbers of congregations and people within those congregations that formed the student pool was simply smaller than other sister schools. Thus, when Churches of Christ experienced minimal growth in the 1970s, this trajectory affected Michigan Christian more rapidly than her affiliated schools. As is true for practically every decade in her history, Michigan Christian College sat on a precipice of growth and potential but precariously close to the edge. In 1973, the college added language to their “aims of the college.” Specifically, they state: The college is aware of extremes facing an institution so oriented [as Jesus centered, Bible focused]. First, that religious attitudes may be so inflexible and rigid that students are merely catechized, in which case the purpose of a liberal arts college is defeated. Second, that the religious philosophy of the college may be so nebulous and ill-defined that the college is not distinctively Christian. The task of Michigan Christian College requires it to steer a course between these two
19
Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 308.
7
extremes.20 This addition seems to reflect the self-knowledge that attentiveness to identity within the broader Church of Christ movement was on the horizon, and though this attention to identity would not be fully articulated by the college for almost another two decades, the mid-1980s produced the college’s first mission statement: “Michigan Christian College is a Christian institution of higher education whose mission is to help students develop academically, socially, and spiritually in order to achieve their potential, to possess a meaningful faith, and to serve God and others in their occupations, family, church, and community.”21 CHANGE OR DIE When Fletcher retired in 1991, Michigan Christian College called Ken Johnson to the presidency. Like Don Gardner before him, Johnson preached growth. Unique to Johnson’s presidency, however, was an emphasis on change. Ken Johnson was acutely aware of the religious climate in Churches of Christ, and in many ways he was troubleshooting a pattern of decline two decades before his counterparts in larger Church of Christ affiliated colleges. Hughes notes that the 1970s brought swift decline in mainline protestant churches while conservative evangelical churches began growing; at the same time growth rates in Churches of Christ stagnated.22 The response of congregations, according to Hughes, typically fell into one of three categories: promoting
20
Michigan Christian College Course Catalog, “Aims of the College,” (Rochester Hills, MI, 1973-
21
Michigan Christian College Mission Statement, 1985.
22
Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 353.
75), 3.
8
the Church of Christ as relevant in sharing the concerns of other (growing) conservative churches (e.g. family values and/or soft nationalism); doubling down on sectarianism (e.g. the Boston/Crossroads movement on the extreme end); or revisiting the theological posture of Churches of Christ and asking deeper questions of identity (e.g. a renewed vision of grace and an updated hermeneutical posture).23 These realities played out in congregations in the 1980s and 1990s all over the United States, but it happened more noticeably in the North where there were fewer congregations to begin with, and Michigan Christian College felt the effects of a consistently shrinking student pool as Churches of Christ began differentiating themselves theologically from each other and from their perceptions of the college. Johnson made several significant moves in light of this religious climate. First, he spearheaded a name change, and in 1997, Michigan Christian College became Rochester College. Overall, this change was met openhandedly as the college’s constituents embraced the reasoning behind the change: the perception in the greater community (and even among churches) that Michigan Christian College was a preacher training school. There were, of course, some vocal opponents who suggested the name change was an identity concession: the college was abandoning its Christian identity. The truth, rather, was that Rochester College and its leaders were attempting to better articulate its Christian identity. Johnson wrestled with the contexts and realities shaping and informing the college’s present, and he was convinced that its future was in danger if the college failed to articulate its identity and posture. Thus, he wrote and presented on several occasions during the late 1990s and challenged the college’s board,
23
Ibid, 354-373.
9
constituencies, and the broader Church of Christ college community to join him in asking some hard questions. In a 1997 board of trustees meeting, the board discussed the selection of lectureship speakers, prompted by an invitation and subsequent un-invitation of a particular speaker following pressure from a small but vocal group of area fundamentalist preachers. In response, Johnson said the following: I am strongly opposed to the aggressive but failing movement on the right among Churches of Christ to take control of and mandate a creed for our fellowship. And I am just as concerned about the left who would manage our fellowship into the mixing bowl of unparticular doctrine that we see among conservative evangelicals. However, we must serve all three camps if we want what is best for Michigan Christian College…If we skew to the left, the danger is that we will fade away into lack of identity alongside other conservative religious evangelical groups and we won’t be distinctive about who we are. We do not want death on the right and we do not want to disappear into the independent evangelical church movement.24 Johnson re-narrates the broad categories noted by Hughes, anecdotally defining a left, right, and (unstated) middle ground posture found in Churches of Christ. Hughes notes that, “To a great extent, Churches of Christ were moving squarely into the orbit of American evangelical Christianity.”25 This orbit, defined by relationality rather than
24
Ken Johnson, “Presentation Regarding Lectureship Speaker Selection Policy,” Michigan Christian College Board of Trustees (July 12, 1997). It is worth noting that the perception in Churches of Christ (at least in the 1990s) was that “skewing to the left” was concession to conservative evangelicalism. This bears out in the so-called “worship wars” of the 1990s/early 2000s in which “progressive” churches were the ones who utilized praise teams, contemporary worship music, and allowed influence of evangelical voices. 25
Hughes, Reviving the Ancient Faith, 373. This seems to be particularly true for the congregations in the first and third categories Hughes initially suggests: both the churches promoting conservative Christian values and those rethinking traditional Church of Christ postures. These are the categories Johnson would name the middle and left. Congregations holding fast to traditional, exclusivist sectarianism have been much slower to embrace evangelical culture. Hughes continues, “Having said all this, two caveats are in order. First, while dissatisfaction with the old rational paradigm was widespread among Churches of Christ in the waning years of the twentieth century, and while many Churches of Christ were groping for a more relational model that might inform their theology and identity, there was little agreement on precisely what that model might be or how it might be developed. Put another way, Churches of Christ still were caught in an identity crisis of significant proportions.” (373).
10
“patternistic primitivism,” carried with it a new set of evangelical baggage which would clutter the closet in the years to come. 26 Johnson’s initial, private, expression of concern shared with the college’s board turned into a public narration, somewhat evolved, by December of 1998. In his position paper titled, Rochester College, Churches of Christ, and Nondenominational Christianity, Johnson again articulated the desire of the college to serve the spectrum of Churches of Christ and argued that a commitment to non-denominational Christianity must serve as a guiding principle.27 Johnson describes the narrow, public image of Churches of Christ: “they insist they are the only ones going to heaven” as differentiated from the founding Restoration axiom, “Christians only, but not the only Christians,” and states that “by 1958, when Rochester College was founded, this narrow view was dominant among acapella Churches of Christ. In recent years many voices within Churches of Christ have worked to eliminate the narrow view, but changing the public image will be difficult as long as a vocal and combative group perpetuate the view.”28 Johnson was insistent that in order for Rochester College to survive and even grow, it must break free from some of its own foundational assumptions and dig deeper into the core of what it means to be “Christians only, but not the only Christians.” Johnson was clear that he was not interested in leading the college to what he calls a
26
Ibid, 373.
27
Ken Johnson, “Rochester College, Churches of Christ, and Nondenominational Christianity,” (Dec 15, 1998). Incidentally, it could be argued that a returned focus on “non-denominational” Christianity (a term popular in Church of Christ vernacular) when emphasized in an evangelical culture of denominations abandoning formal affiliations in preference to the growing “community church” movement is precisely a factor leading to the identity drift currently present in mainstream and “progressive” Churches of Christ. 28
Ken Johnson, Rochester College, 6.
11
theological liberalism (in the true sense), but that he was also not willing to concede control to a traditionalist position. Rather, he aimed to articulate a middle of the road posture knowing, “That range, however defined and whether expressed by policy or practice, will be unsuitably broad for some friends of the college and unsuitably narrow for others. For that reason the college will always be under pressure to modify its policy and/or practice…It must defend the freedom of open dialogue…An appropriate measure of openness creates a marvelous environment where it is safe to hold questioned beliefs, safe to question held beliefs, and safe for everyone to grow.”29 This posture opened the door for a intentionally more religiously diverse student population, and it also incited several area Churches of Christ to formally withdraw their support of Rochester College. Meanwhile, the climate on campus in the late 1990s and early 2000s largely mirrored a “progressive” Church of Christ culture, which mirrored a larger evangelical church culture. Ken Johnson seemed to sense this shift happening in real time, when at a college dean’s conference hosted for Church of Christ colleges in 1999 he noted that should the college “retain significant numbers of enrollees from other religious groups, it will change the spiritual climate on a college campus,” and that the faithful response of the college ought to be to “lead a changing spiritual dynamic on our campuses…with the hope of being in charge of our formal campus religious culture and being the primary shapers of the informal campus religious culture.”30 He ended that presentation by noting that many in the room could “leave these concerns to a subsequent administration.
29
Ken Johnson, Rochester College, 12-15.
30
Ken Johnson, “What religious culture should we have on our college campus?” Academic Deans Conference Presentation (Sept 18, 1999).
12
However, our situation at Rochester College has forced us to address these issues in the 1990s.”31 The situation being, continue the dying process or implement change. Students, as in decades past, embraced the desire to participate in missions, but in the late 1990s and early 2000s the emphasis focused attention on local service projects rather than evangelistic efforts aimed at conversion. In 1999, the college changed its mission statement to reflect a broader and simplified posture: “The mission of Rochester College is to engage students in a vigorous liberal arts education within a Christian community for a life of study and service.”32 OPEN HANDS The early 2000s brought another change in leadership to Rochester College, and in 2004, Michael Westerfield, the college’s vice president of academic affairs, became the president after serving in that capacity on an interim basis for several months after Johnson’s departure. Westerfield’s presidency focused on the continuing development of academic programs, including the first graduate program in religion, but in 2008 he returned to a full-time teaching role as the college entered the most financially precarious season of its 50-year life. Faced with a nationwide financial crisis alongside its own multifaceted financial crisis, the board asked graduate professor Rubel Shelly, also widely known in Churches of Christ nationwide, to assume the role of president. Shelly agreed, sensing the urgency, but committing to five years knowing that his long-term calling was not in college administration. Nevertheless, Shelly led the college through the hardest years of its history. In many ways, appointing Rubel Shelly as president severed
31 32
Ibid. Rochester College Mission Statement, 1999.
13
any floundering ties with the ultra-traditional sects of Churches of Christ, for Shelly’s reputation in Church of Christ circles placed him in the “progressive” category. At best these groups were suspicious, and at worst, Shelly, and by association Rochester College, was categorized as heretical. Alongside navigating floundering budgets, limited resources, and constant pressure, Shelly reflects, “The long term hope was to expand the footprint of the college into the larger community and to justify its existence to people who knew little to nothing about it…Connections were established that enlarged the school’s visibility as a four-year liberal arts college with clear Christian commitments.”33 As such, emphasis in recruiting shifted hyper-locally, but at the same time more broadly into high schools, focusing attention on sports teams, theater programs and the like, and no longer dependent solely on churches. The survival of the institution rested on this commitment to expanding the college’s footprint more broadly. In 2010, the college once again changed its mission statement: “Rochester College cultivates academic excellence, principled character, servant leadership, and global awareness through a rigorous educational experience that integrates liberal arts and professional studies within an inclusive Christian heritage.”34 Perhaps the most significant word in this new articulation of mission and purpose was “inclusive.”
33
Rubel Shelly, email interview (Sept 27, 2022). For many years, Shelly was a sectarian standardbearer of the right. His personal theological shift to a non-denominational voice was an evolution which happened over a number of years, but the publication of his book I Just Want to Be A Christian in 1984 marked a public shift in his theological articulation, a move away from exclusivism and strict sectarianism in Churches of Christ. In hiring a recognized “lightning rod” in the Church of Christ world, Ken Johnson's non-denominational vision was solidified. 34
Rochester College Mission Statement, 2010. This mission statement was written during negotiations with K12, a for-profit Rochester College considered partnering with who wanted as generic a statement of identity as possible.
14
At the same time, a theological movement was gaining traction, particularly in the academy, and certain theologians and practitioners in Churches of Christ found themselves articulating this movement broadly known as the missional church. Gailyn Van Rheenen, professor of missiology at Abilene Christian University, articulated the contrast between the missional church movement and the “church growth” movement which dominated so-called progressive Churches of Christ mirroring the larger evangelical culture of the 1980s and 1990s. The church growth movement, like many iterations of mission strategy (both domestic and foreign) before it, utilized an anthropocentric approach, a “what can we do for God?” mindset which inevitably focused on questions of programming, strategy, and effort while missing the foundational questions of God and what God is up to in the world.35 A missional approach, on the other hand, did exactly that: it shifted the focus to God, what God is doing in the world, and how we as human communities might participate in the mission that is, first, God’s.36 In some ways, Johnson’s desire to shift Rochester College’s identity outward reflected aspects of missional postures, though he did not have the language to convey this. But even more importantly, hiring choices he made, such as bringing in Sara and John Barton, former missionaries in Uganda (with a non-traditional, missional posture), to teach (John) and lead campus ministry (Sara), reflected Rochester College’s long-
35
Gailyn Van Rheenen, “Contrasting Missional and Church Growth Perspectives,” Restoration Quarterly, 48 (2005) 25-32. 36
Ibid. Van Rheenen goes on to name the following: missional communities are oriented by the mission of God rather than the mission of the church, regarding scripture, the focus is on the story of God rather than propositional truth (narrative vs inductive), the orienting question is what is the gospel rather than what makes the church grow, the assumption is that mission happens by the surprising work of the Spirit rather than strategic planning, the nature of the community is inclusive rather than exclusive, the focus is the kingdom of God and becoming a community that reflects the redemptive reign of God rather than a focus on individual sanctification, and the commitment to social action is understood as part of the gospel (27-29).
15
standing missionary ethos while challenging its traditional assumptions and postures. Additionally, the choice Mike Westerfield made to hire Rubel Shelly reflected the openness that Johnson worked so hard to effect during his presidency, and Shelly himself brought a missional posture to Rochester College, reflected both in his teaching and leadership. In his own words: I use the term [missional] to mean the intentional aim to connect with persons and cultures for the sake of influencing them with the acceptance, love, and nurture distinctive to the gospel of Christ. I use it principally for the sake of distinguishing a dynamic mindset and lifestyle from the corporate, institutional, and static model of faith that has come to dominate what is commonly referred to as Christendom. Missional Christians, churches, and parachurch entities (e.g., Christian colleges) function in their various environments to bring God’s kingdom reign to reality by connecting the gospel’s metanarrative to the life narratives of persons, families, institutions, and cultures in those settings. They cross cultural lines, break down barriers, introduce salt and light, model and share God’s shalom, and otherwise live into their Christian confessions for the sake of introducing people to Jesus.37 When Shelly became president, Mark Love was hired to direct the graduate program, and his experience and expertise in missional theology and practice shifted the focus of that program to missional leadership.38 Several years later, Mark Love hired Naomi Walters as a professor of ministry, and within three years, she was named chair of the department and the undergraduate theological program evolved to reflect a particular missional posture.39
37
Rubel Shelly, email interview (Sept 27, 2022).
38
Beginning in the late 1990s, the more progressive identity of the college allowed for a gifted, “progressive” bible faculty to be built. In addition to Steve Eckstein and Mel Storm, the college’s primary Bible faculty for many years, Ken Johnson hired David Fleer, Greg Stevenson, Craig Bowman, Ron Cox, Rex Hamilton, and Keith Huey over the course of several years. This was a significant lineage, especially in Churches of Christ, and this theological faculty was widely recognized in Churches of Christ and beyond for its outstanding academic reputation. Additionally, in the mid-2000s, David Fleer began hosting the sermon seminar which attracted guests, mostly from Churches of Christ, to hear the best scholarship in Bible and homiletics. Academically and in its theological department, Rochester has a long heritage of an ecumenical, inclusive posture.
16
Holding to his 5-year commitment, Shelly resigned the presidency and ushered in John Tyson in 2013. Tyson served the campus for two years as finances continued to stabilize, and in 2016, long tenured professor and provost, Brian Stogner, became the tenth president of Rochester College, which became Rochester University in 2019. The climate on campus continued shifting as recruiting brought in higher percentages of students from diverse religious backgrounds, and the spiritual culture on campus reflected those changing realities. From the early 1990s, campus ministry played a significant role in student life, and campus ministers were hired to nurture spiritual formation on campus. This office reflected the passion and training of its leaders, and the emphases and practices implemented during these different seasons both mirrored changing Church of Christ culture and contributed to the changing spiritual climate on campus. The shift away from exclusive sectarianism toward a general evangelicalism, the trend that began as early as the 1970s, but did not become fully realized until the late 1990s in large swaths of Churches of Christ, served to exacerbate a “sheep shifting” culture. But rather than people moving from one Church of Christ to another (particularly in the North), they felt a new freedom to explore any non-denominational church, which in the 1990s and 2000s were experiencing explosive growth. Additionally, many Churches of Christ, now feeling the pressure to adopt the “church growth” patterns
39
Rochester College was a trailblazer in women’s inclusion in Church of Christ affiliated colleges. Ken Johnson created an atmosphere in the 1990s that slowly included women in chapel services, highlighted by the hiring of Candace Cain as dean of students, and this inclusion was most fully realized when Sara Barton was hired to be the campus minister in 2002. Barton later transitioned to a teaching role, and before she moved to Pepperdine in 2013, she was teaching full time in the Bible department. Unlike many other Church of Christ affiliated colleges, women were hired to teach all genders in religion classes. Women were never segregated into women-only ministry courses taught by women. Barton taught her first Bible class at RC in 2009, and Beth Bowers followed closely on her heels in 2010. When Naomi Walters was hired in 2015, she became (by 2018) the first (and, as of now, only) woman to chair a department of Theology/Ministry/Bible in Church of Christ affiliated colleges.
17
popular in the larger non-denominational world rather than the time-intensive identity work necessary for missional engagement, became attractional, program-oriented bodies, mostly un-distinctive from other non-denominational churches. Churches of Christ (from the most traditional to the most progressive within the movement) have, in general, continued their pattern of decline, as have all Protestant denominations and community churches in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 only served to accelerate this pattern. The future is open, and only time will tell what it holds for Churches of Christ. CONCLUSION Rochester University finds itself on a precipice as we, once again, work to articulate our particular identity. The last 25 years have clearly differentiated the university from its exclusivist sectarian roots. In Fall 2022, only 6.2% of the student population came from Churches of Christ. Rochester University has become ecumenical.40 In 2019, the college adopted its current mission statement: “Rochester University prepares students for professional and personal success as they serve in God’s world.”41 Once again, this statement expands the university’s shared imagination, shifting the focus toward God and what God is up to, broadly, in the world. In the spring of 2022, Dr. Stogner shared the following with the faculty and staff at opening meetings: Our heritage (the heritage of the Church of Christ) is in the Stone-Campbell Movement, which had its beginnings on the United States frontier in the early 19th 40 Not only is the student body diverse, religiously, but the faculty and staff are as well. Sometime in the early 2000s the college ceased requiring membership in a Church of Christ to be a faculty or staff member. 41
Rochester University Mission Statement, 2019.
18
century. This movement conceptualized and proclaimed an arguably noble attempt to accomplish both unity and restoration of the church. Though I believe all reasonable people would agree that neither of those ideals has been realized, the best elements of that heritage still provide a helpful set of guiding principles for us today. One of those key principles is the theologically and socially profound notion of the Lord’s Supper as an open table. Because Jesus is the host, his hospitality is open to all who are willing to come. Consistent with that heritage principle, Rochester University will strive to exemplify the spirit of the open table. RU exists to provide “a rigorous and holistic education” that prepares students for personal and professional success as they serve and participate in God’s mission in the world. Such an objective entails with it (among other things) a relentless pursuit of truth (which makes the epistemic presumption that such a thing as truth both exists and is discoverable,) and devotion to practices of discernment that engage, involve, and respect the voices and perspectives of the entire community. So, at RU, anyone of any stripe who is willing to sit at this metaphorical table with us, will be extended the hospitality and welcome of the Table of the Lord, as together we pursue truth, a rigorous and holistic education, and participation in God’s mission in the world.42 Brian Stogner’s “open table” posture is the beginning of a new articulation of what God is up to in this small campus in the North. As Rochester University pursues articulation of her particular identity and sense of calling in God’s world, we carry with us gratitude for those who have come before us, faithfully navigating their contexts and cultures, and we move forward with open-handedness trusting that the Spirit moves ahead of us, providing courage and hope for the future.
42
Brian Stogner, “A Distinctive Christian University,” Spring Semester Opening Sessions of Rochester University (January 2022).
19
BIBLIOGRAPHY Cook, James Maverick. “Identity and Nostalgia Among the Campbellites,” Restoration Quarterly 48. 3 (2006): 129-142. Henderson, Alan “A Historical Review of Missions and Missionary Training in the Churches of Christ,” Restoration Quarterly, 35 (1993): 203-217. Hughes, Richard T. Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996. Johnson, Ken. “Presentation Regarding Lectureship Speaker Selection Policy.” Michigan Christian College Board of Trustees (July 12, 1997). Johnson, Ken. “Rochester College, Churches of Christ, and Nondenominational Christianity.” (Dec 15, 1998). Johnson, Ken. “What religious culture should we have on our college campus?” Academic Deans Conference Presentation (Sept 18, 1999). Shelly, Rubel. Email interview (Sept 27, 2022). Stewart, Larry. The Seasons of Rochester College. Rochester Hills: Rochester College, 2008. Stogner, Brian, “A Distinctive Christian University,” Spring Semester Opening Sessions of Rochester University (Jan 2022). Van Rheenen, Gailyn. “Contrasting Missional and Church Growth Perspectives,” Restoration Quarterly, 48 (2005) 25-32.
20
Learning Virtues for a Church of Christ University
Mark Love, Ph.D. Rochester University Director of Graduate Program in Missional Leadership Professor of Theology & Ministry
We have spent the last two semesters benefitting from the research of our colleagues who have explored the ways Rochester University lives into its mission in relation to its Church of Christ roots. This work is more than a nostalgic walk down memory lane. Our purpose in writing these essays is not to idealize our roots, but to recognize them and their continuing influence on our identity so we can be conscious of what we want to carry forward into our future. There are certainly other ways to tell the Church of Christ story than the ways we have in these essays. Sadly, we could tell this story in anti-intellectual, sectarian, exclusivist terms. But we have chosen themes using Rochester’s own story, and the story of Christian higher education in many of our universities, as a filter that guides our selections. While we have applied certain filters, this is not a fiction. Those things we have emphasized can absolutely be found in the Church of Christ story. Some of the themes have been consistent from beginning to end, such as our commitment to the authority of the Bible. Other themes are less consistently present in our historical journey, for instance the peace and justice tradition exemplified by Stone, Lipscomb, and others in the period before the 20th century World Wars. Still, the themes we have pursued are a true part of our story, themes that might be pursued as relevant to our current circumstance. 1
2 At this point, I want to underline a point made in Naomi Walter’ excellent essay. The Stone-Campbell movement began with a plea to be “Christians only.” In less than a generation, however, there were already some who had staked out reasons for seeing ourselves as the “only Christians.” This slide from a plea for a generic, inclusive movement, and into a decidedly sectarian one is an all-to-common outcome, one that Walter’s labels inevitable. The original plea rests on a conceit that we are Christians only. The truth is, as Keith Huey’s first essay pointed out, we were post-revolutionary American, enlightenment rationalist, anti-Calvinist, anti-Catholic, antebellum Christians. Both Stone and Campbell were influenced in positive and negative ways by their Presbyterian roots. And lurking behind all of that are consequential figures in the history of the church: Athanasius, Augustine, Calvin, and Luther to name only a few. We were never “Christians only.” The problem with thinking you are Christians only when you are not, is that you begin to see your version of the faith as normative. You become the measure of what it means to be Christian, which is the banana peel to sectarianism. Part of why we are writing and thinking and discussing is to affirm we are a particular kind of Christian institution. We do not stand free from historical influence.1 We are not simply a generic Christian university. We stand somewhere in the great stream of Christian history. The irony of this claim to particularity is that it actually allows us to welcome others. If we are not the measure of what it means to be Christian, then we are open to learn with and from others.
1
C. Leonard Allen and Richard T. Hughes, Discovering Our Roots: The Ancestry of Churches of Christ (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1988).
3 One more comment by way of introduction. Walters’ essay in this collection suggested that we act like what we are—a denomination with a creed, though an unspoken one. I wholeheartedly agree with recognizing ourselves as a historically contingent, “denominated,” group. Walters calls us to say what we believe, even though it is subject to revision. I like the instinct to name our particularity. I believe the StoneCampbell movement has gifts to offer that would distinguish us from other traditions. The problem, though, is in deciding who the “we” is in determining what “our beliefs” are. The fact that Churches of Christ have never been defined theologically has allowed an impressive amount of diversity. I know this claim might surprise some given our “only Christians” sectarianism through the years. But at the same time the Heretic Detector was being published, other Stone-Campbell publications were affirming that there were Christians among the denominations. At the same time Foy E. Wallace, Jr. (1896-1979) was defining what it meant to be a Christian in ever narrowing (and mean) ways. Leaders like Leroy Garrett (1919-2015) and K. C. Moser (1893-1976) were staking out an open, irenic vision of the kingdom of God. While Wallace Jr. was arguing for a “word only” view of the Holy Spirit (the Holy Spirit was only present in the Bible) in the Firm Foundation, authors like Frank Pack, J.D. Thomas, J. W. Roberts and others were arguing for the personal indwelling of the Holy Spirit in Power for Today and in a new publication, Mission Journal. While Tom Warren was publishing the contentious journal, Contending for the Faith, his young protégé, Rubel Shelly was charting a new path with his book, I Just Want to be a Christian. Within Rochester’s own story, there is a wide
4 diversity between Otis Gatewood and Rubel Shelly, or between John Tyson and Brian Stogner, and likely between Dr. Stogner and whoever follows him.2 The one doctrinal theme that has risen above the rest in this series of essays is the kingdom of God. While I will use that term below in a general sense, what is meant by it carries diverse meanings as well. For instance, what Stone meant by the term certainly differed from what Campbell meant. All of this to say, what held us together as a movement was less our beliefs, but more our practices. Whether in a legalistic church in Tennessee, or a grace-oriented congregation in the Pacific Northwest, all Churches of Christ practice believer’s baptism by immersion and weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper. Additionally, while our “preachers” are increasingly called “pastors,” none will ever wear vestments and our congregations will be lay led. We might have a wide spectrum of beliefs about these practices, but more than our beliefs they define who we are for better or worse. So, the approach taken here will not be to define what it means to be a Church of Christ university related to a set of agreed upon beliefs, but rather related to “learning virtues” which arise principally from our practices, as virtues typically do. Perhaps Charles Taylor’s term, “social imaginary” best depicts what I am attempting to describe—a complex of beliefs and practices that authorizes how we do what we do. What follows, then, are important aspects of how learning could be imagined, connected to our Church of Christ roots. They are not a list of things that make a person or a 2 When I taught at ACU, I found the theological commitments of individual faculty to be quite diverse. Our lack of a creedal tradition left our primary theological development to the places where we pursued doctorates. Our primary theological “catechisms,” therefore, were not in the Churches of Christ, but at places like Yale, SMU, Oxford, and Harvard. Far more diversity, in my opinion, existed in our all Church of Christ faculty than I experienced at the more ecumenical Luther Seminary where I received my doctorate.
5 congregation a “Church of Christ.” Rather, the list recognizes our location as a university that is about the business of Christian higher education. These virtues are offered specifically for this work. These also do not comprise a complete list of virtues necessary for Christian learning to be achieved. We will need to add to our list as we learn from other universities that have different learning virtues. Nor are specific virtues unique to us. Taken together, however, if we choose to maintain these virtues, we will assuredly be a university in the Stone-Campbell tradition.
Churches of Christ established universities committed to arts and sciences. I found Keith Huey’s second essay on Alexander Campbell’s views on higher education fascinating. While founding liberal arts institutions seems like an obvious choice, this has not been a unanimous pursuit in Christian Higher Education. The Scopes Trial (July 1925) and the ensuing conflicts between modernism and fundamentalism led many conservative denominations to found Bible colleges instead of liberal arts universities.3 Bible colleges offered safe environments, particularly from the effects of emerging scientific knowledge, like evolution. In the Stone-Campbell tradition, Independent Christian Churches established Bible colleges, while Churches of Christ, along with the Disciples of Christ, continued to establish liberal arts colleges and universities.
3
For a discussion on the origins of fundamentalism in America, see George M. Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986). I found Rebekah Pinchback’s response to Keith Huey’s essay interesting. Her denomination, Assemblies of God, has few colleges, and most are “Bible colleges” devoted to training ministers and missionaries.
6 When the “integration of faith and learning” movement was at its zenith fifteen years ago, I attended a meeting with the president of a well-known Christian college, founded as a Bible college, to hear about what they had done as leaders in the integration of faith and learning. He talked particularly about the sciences at their college and how they integrated their fields of study with biblical teaching. “Biblical teaching” became the monitor on what conclusions could be reached. This is less the integration of faith and learning and more the absorption of learning within a particular version of the faith. In contrast, the virtues related to a commitment to arts and sciences are open inquiry and academic freedom. Of course, Christian biologists and physicists are going to see God being related to their work, but this is different than saying what the Bible or a statement of faith sets the boundaries on what conclusions may be reached. The truth is, Christians of all stripes trust Copernicus and Galileo more than they do statements from the Bible on cosmology. While controversies arise from time-to-time in Church of Christ universities that would question whether open inquiry and academic freedom are learning virtues, for the most part, and in most institutions, they are.
Churches of Christ prize the life of the mind. It might very well be the case that members of the Church of Christ are more spiritually moved by a good syllogism than they are an emotionally stirring worship service. I have made accusations like these myself from time-to-time and might even be one of these logic-centered worshippers. We are rationalists, often to a fault, a disposition we inherited from Campbell who was said to carry John Locke’s and Thomas Reid’s writings in his saddlebags. Even Stone doubted
7 the doctrine of the Trinity because it was irrational.4 Nevertheless, it is a virtue to insist that positions be well reasoned and that conclusions be based on reliable sources. It is a very Church of Christ thing to instill the importance of critical thinking in students. And in an age when truth is up for grabs, it is certainly virtuous to cite one’s sources, to evaluate claims on an evidence basis, and to insist others do the same in public discourse.
In Churches of Christ, the Bible is the ultimate authority in matters of faith. While I believe this statement is true, it definitely deserves some qualification. First, it is true in the sense that what the Bible says counts more to Church of Christ members than a creed or a statement of faith. This is likely one reason why Church of Christ universities typically do not ask employees to sign a statement of faith as a condition of employment. We expect that Christians will seek God first through the pages of scripture and follow its teaching as they understand it. Second, the priority of the Bible is not true in the sense that “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.” The Bible, as an ancient and diverse collection of writings does not yield easily to a literalist approach of interpretation. As I mentioned in my first essay, biblical scholars in Churches of Christ have always used the best tools at their disposal to get at not only what the Bible said in its original context, but also what it means for today. Sometimes this is a pretty straightforward endeavor, but more often it is a complex affair.
4
Kelly Carter, Trinity in the Stone-Campbell Movement: Restoring the Heart of the Faith (Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2015).
8 The Bible as a diverse collection of writings is a living word, able to speak again to our diverse situations in often surprising ways. Virtuous learners move beyond simplistic “if… then” formulas to the complexities of interpretation. In this way, the Bible, as a sacred text, models this very approach to learning. It does not agree in all aspects, portraying knowledge of a Holy God as a complex endeavor requiring wisdom.5 It is also the case that placing the Bible in a prominent place in a university’s curriculum says something about what we think it means to be an educated person. If we are created, being educated would require pursuing questions about the Creator, and what it means to be human in God’s world. This instinct locates truth, not simply within an immanent frame to use Charles Taylor’s term, but in transcendent categories that lie beyond notions of the autonomous, self-realizing individual.6
Churches of Christ pledge allegiance to a different kingdom. The kingdom of God has been a perennial theme for Churches of Christ, though not always in the best way. Many preachers and teachers conflate the kingdom with the church, which feeds our historical sectarianism.7 Many have been taught, in other words, that the church and kingdom of God are the same thing. Early in our movement, however, the kingdom of
5
See Peter Enns, How the Bible Actually Works, (New York: HarperOne, 2019); Mark Love, “Reading the Bible on Its Own Terms,” Teleios Journal, 2 no. 2, Summer, 2022: 73-81. 6
7
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007).
The sectarian reasoning goes something like this: “If the church and the kingdom are coterminous, then the church can be the complete expression of God’s historical presence. Since we have restored the New Testament church in all aspects, we, and not others, are the complete expression of God’s historical presence.”
9 God was equated more with God’s coming kingdom,8 not to be realized by any human institution or endeavor. As David Greer’s essay points out, David Lipscomb believed that Christians belonged to a different kingdom and were, therefore, not citizens of human kingdoms. For Lipscomb, this meant Christians should abstain from civil government, even from the right to vote. Lipscomb believed that Christians certainly should not fight in the wars of other kingdoms. Instead, Lipscomb saw that Christian duty in any society should be serving the poor and those in need. While few hold to Lipscomb’s views on voting and pacifism today, the impulse that we serve a different kingdom continues in other ways. You will not find, for instance, American flags in most of our buildings, and elections and candidates will not be discussed from the front in church. Churches of Christ, while tending to be politically conservative, avoid anything that might seem partisan. The temptation for Church of Christ universities to be aligned with a certain set of partisan political positions is strong right now. The political polarization of our society seemingly leaves no neutral ground. Money for Christian universities comes primarily from the Christian right, making the pull even more tempting. The option for Christian nationalism seems plausible to more and more on the right end of the political spectrum. At the very least it should be pointed out that this violates traditional teaching in Churches of Christ.
8
It is important to clarify differences between Campbell and Lipscomb regarding the millennial kingdom, and to distinguish both of their views from the predominant view in Churches of Christ today. Campbell was a postmillennialist, indicating that human progress could establish God’s kingdom and create the conditions for Christ’s return. Lipscomb, in contrast, being pessimistic about human ability, was a premillennialist, viewing the millennial kingdom as being inaugurated only with the second coming of Christ. Church of Christ members today are primarily amillennial, seeing the apocalyptic language of the millennium as figural and symbolic.
10 So, what type of engagement might a Christian university have that is nonpartisan? Lipscomb might respond that service to the poor and overlooked should be the calling of a Christian university. This seems especially to be the case for a university located between communities like Detroit, Pontiac, and Flint. Perhaps this should inform our decisions about what kinds of students we welcome and what kinds of accommodations we will invest in to help them to be successful. But how does this relate to learning virtues? Everything we know and learn, we know and learn from a certain perspective. There are very few “neutral” facts. What is learned is dependent to a large extent on our angle of vision. The kingdom of God is always about “lifting up the lowly” and “bringing down the proud in the imagination of their hearts” (Luke 1:51-52). Approaching what we know from this perspective, and not from the perspective of American visions of success, is a learning virtue related to the kingdom of God.
Churches of Christ possess a sacramental imagination. If you attend a Church of Christ these days, you might worship acapella or you might have a praise band. You might have women leading publicly, or not. You might find the church to be open and affirming to LGBTQ+ persons, but most likely not. In other words, you will find diversity among our churches except for these two things: adult believer’s baptism by immersion, and weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper. These two practices, more than any others, define what it means to be a faithful congregation in Churches of Christ.
11 As scholars have recently emphasized, practices—what we do with our bodies—shape our desires. And what we learn is always conditioned by our desires.9 Dr. Stogner will have more to say about “the open table” as a practice that determines what it means to be a Church of Christ university. I will say here only that this is more than a metaphor, but an actual embodiment of what it means to be Christian. Tables as places of welcome should inform how we lead, how we teach, and how we learn. I want to say a word, though, about baptism. I will confess two things at the start: believer’s baptism by immersion for the forgiveness of sins was the line drawn by many in Churches of Christ to define who was in or out. It became the occasion for our sectarianism, the place where restoration won out over unity. Second, our views on baptism have tended toward legalism; that baptism is an obedience we could perform to win God’s approval. Both instincts are not good. The thing about baptism is that it is not a do-it-yourself project. It requires others. God’s grace is mediated through the hands of others and through water. In fact, a strong view of baptism sees the officiant, not as the pastor or priest, but as the community of believers. It is an action of solidarity with those who have made the same confession. It orients the Christian journey from the very beginning as a walk with others. As the baptized, we are not monads; autonomous, self-possessing individuals. Rather, baptism mediates the public statement that we are not our own but are joined to all whom God
9
See the work of James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009); You are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016). See also, Esther Lightcap Meek, Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People (Downers Grove, IL: Brazos, 2003).
12 loves. Baptism is, in this sense, our ordination for mission. Christianity then, as a baptismal faith, is a mutually interdependent reality. Said in reverse, Christianity as a mutually interdependent reality, is a baptismal faith. We learn best what it means to be Christian, and most everything else, through communities of interdependence, which requires humility, patience, kindness, and any other fruit of the Spirit you want to add.10 These communal aspects of baptism are true for both those baptized as infants and adults. Before the modern era, the church quarreled over the mode and subject of baptism but not its necessity. The church did not question the necessity of baptism until the modern period with the rise of the priority of the autonomous individual. If what is most real takes place in the interior of the individual, then an “outward” ritual’s importance is diminished. The faith, within this frame, does not need to be mediated if the individual is elevated. Faith becomes a direct interaction between “God and me.” I say all of this, not as a polemic on baptism, but as a way of marking the learning virtue of interdependence, and to provide a theological rationale for these types of learning communities. I should also note that the understanding of baptism highlighted here is not the one held by most members of Churches of Christ. But to the extent that baptism is a recognized, ongoing practice of our churches, its full significance resides in potential through reflection on the practice itself. In other words, the fact that we practice baptism the way we do carries these meanings whether we are aware of them or not.
10
Matthew Crawford describes the way formal education in the US is highly individualized and demonstrates through several examples the way apprenticing in learning communities is both a more effective way of learning and a truer path to individual identity. The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2016). These are not new themes in American educational theory but are overridden by larger cultural instincts. I am thinking of the often overlooked, but exceptionally important work of John Dewey and other American pragmatists who saw education as primarily social. These instincts concerning education fit well within the social view of baptism and faith I am advocating here.
13 While these are Church of Christ virtues for higher learning, they are not unique to Churches of Christ. Taken separately, they might also be true of other Christian Higher Education commitments. Mennonite universities might have peace and justice commitments. Jesuit and Methodist universities might model open inquiry and academic freedom. Baptist universities might center the Bible as the primary authority in matters of faith. I think, however, that taken together these virtues comprise a unique contribution in Christian Higher Education, a contribution worth honoring and embodying.
14 BIBLIOGRAPHY Allen, C. Leonard and Richard T. Hughes. Discovering Our Roots: The Ancestry of Churches of Christ. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 1988. Carter, Kelly. Trinity in the Stone-Campbell Movement: Restoring the Heart of the Faith. Abilene, TX: ACU Press, 2015. Crawford, Matthew. The World Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction. Downers Grove, IL: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2016. Enns, Peter. How the Bible Actually Works. New York: HarperOne, 2019. Love, Mark. “Reading the Bible on Its Own Terms,” Teleios Journal, 2 no. 2, Summer, 2022: 73-81. Marsden, George M. Fundamentalism and American Culture, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Meek, Esther Lightcap. Longing to Know: The Philosophy of Knowledge for Ordinary People. Downers Grove, IL: Brazos, 2003. Smith, James K. A. Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009. Smith, James K. A. You are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016. Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2007.
1
Rochester University: A Distinctive Christian University – In Its Heritage and Its Future
Brian L. Stogner, Ph.D. Rochester University President
2
INTRODUCTION Rochester University (RU) is now well into its seventh decade of existence, and though it has faced daunting challenges throughout that time, perhaps never in its history has the university formerly known as North Central Christian College, Michigan Christian College, and Rochester College faced a sociocultural milieu that is more demanding of innovation and imagination. The 21st century has been marked by sweeping social and cultural conflicts, and a populace polarized along political, ethnic, economic, and generational lines. Accompanying this social upheaval is a demographic shift in the northeastern and midwestern United States, resulting in a sharpening reduction in the number of students prospectively bound for college, and especially a Christian college. Biologists suggest that a hallmark and a distinctive of human beings is our extreme adaptability. Homo sapiens can function effectively and even thrive in a broader range of situations, climates, circumstances, and stresses than perhaps any other species. Though we might not always enjoy it, humans are exceptionally good at responding to novel situations and adapting to change. However, many of those same biologists would now suggest that the rapid and ubiquitous changes in our current environment are taxing even our considerable adaptive capabilities. We are in what those scientists sometimes call a “hypernovel” environment.1 Though the environment is difficult, Rochester University stands in a unique place to face its
1
Heather Heying and Brett Weinstein, A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century (New York: Portfolio Press, 2021).
3 challenges, in significant measure due to its heritage. Since 1959, RU has made numerous changes and adaptations, often reflected but not fully captured by its name changes.2 One key adaptation in the life of Rochester University has been its evolution into a more religiously inclusive institution. As the essays in this series have discussed, RU was founded by members of the Church of Christ, and for most of its history all of those who led the institution, including administrators, full-time faculty, key staff members, trustees, and primary financial supporters were from that religious group. Students from the Church of Christ were the primary prospects for admissions counselors. However, as the institution developed to face a changing world, it became an organization less exclusively led by, taught by, and attended by individuals from the Church of Christ and, across the spectrum from trustees to students, became more religiously diverse within the context of the broader Christian community. These moves were not only adaptive but were entirely consistent with the values and principles at the core of the StoneCampbell Movement from which the institution sprang. As the essays in this series also elaborate upon, the Stone-Campbell Movement conceptualized and proclaimed an arguably noble attempt to accomplish both unity and “restoration” of the church. Though clearly neither of those ideals has been realized, the best elements of that heritage still provide a helpful set of guiding principles for us today. The objective of this essay is to sketch out a framework for how RU can move forward, mindfully rooted in and honoring its heritage, while also responding to the current realities in the world that
2
Larry Stewart, The Seasons of Rochester College (Rochester Hills, MI: Rochester College, 2008). See also Beth Bowers, “Missions to Missional: Rochester University’s Story in Churches of Christ From Otis Gatewood to Brian Stogner,” in the present series of essays.
4 might require a Christian university to stretch, adapt, and grow beyond its heritage. Such a framework should also more directly and comprehensively answer the question, “Who is Rochester University today?” In response to that question, a fundamental aspiration of RU is to honor and recognize our heritage while becoming a distinctive Christian university. “Distinctive” has become an overused word among colleges and universities. (One of the great ironies in higher education is that everyone is trying to be unique in essentially the same ways.) In that context, to be truly distinctive in the ways that are important would mean for RU to be: o Nonsectarian and interdenominational.3 o Rooted in a history and heritage that informs and guides us. o Engaging constructively with the diverse and rapidly changing perspectives in a post-denominational and in many ways post-Christian culture. o Firmly rooted in the commitment that Jesus is Lord and guided by the Truth of the gospel story. THE OPEN TABLE – A GUIDING PRINCIPLE A foundational priority of the Stone-Campbell Movement was the centrality of the Lord’s Supper in Christian assemblies and insistence upon this observance as an “open table,” at which all who would partake are welcome. The Stone-Campbell pioneers saw restricted observance of the Lord’s Supper as a reflection of the sectarianism to which their movement was opposed. There is an oft-repeated story of a critical moment in the life of Alexander Campbell when, in a scene worthy of cinema, he cast into the pewter plate containing the Lord Supper’s emblems a
3
See Naomi Walters, “An Ecumenical Christian University,” in this essay series.
5 token he had been given certifying his worthiness to partake in the sacrament, signifying his recognition that all are invited to experience the radical and welcoming hospitality of the table of the Lord. As one biographer of Campbell dramatically put it, "The ring of that token, as it fell from his hands, like the ring of Martin Luther's hammer on the door of the Wittenberg cathedral, announced the renunciation of the old church ties, and marks the moment of which he forever ceased to recognize the claims or authority of a human creed to bind upon men the conditions of their acceptance with God." 4 Interestingly, at least one other university emerging from the Stone-Campbell tradition (Pepperdine) has pointed to the significance of the theologically and socially profound notion of the Lord’s Supper as an open table as a grounding and guiding principle,5 though Pepperdine’s application of this principle differs somewhat from that of RU. Because Jesus is the host, his hospitality is open to all who are willing to come. Consistent with that heritage principle, Rochester University’s commitment is to strive to exemplify the spirit of that open table. RU exists to provide “a rigorous and holistic education” that prepares students for personal and professional success as they serve and participate in God’s mission in the world. Such an objective entails with it (among other things) a relentless pursuit of truth (which makes the epistemic presumption that such a thing as truth both exists and is discoverable,) and devotion to practices of discernment that engage, involve, and respect the voices and perspectives of the entire community. So, anyone of any stripe who is willing to sit at this metaphorical table with the RU community is to be extended the hospitality and welcome of the Table of the Lord, as
4
Thomas W. Grafton, Life of Alexander Campbell (Melbourne: Australia Publishing, 1899), 40-41. Rick Marrs, “Pepperdine University and the Churches of Christ: A White Paper Presented to the Religious Standards Committee,” (Malibu, CA: Pepperdine University, 2014). 5
6 together we pursue truth, a rigorous and holistic education, and participation in God’s mission in the world. That principle also creates a foundation at RU for an emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion. In fact, if the radical hospitality of Jesus is our guide, then diversity, equity, inclusion, (and justice) must not be only slogans or even programmatic efforts. They must be among the core principles upon which the institution is based. Thus, RU will be welcoming and inclusive of all believers and unbelievers, all races and ethnicities, all political persuasions, all socioeconomic statuses, all orientations, and citizens of every nation, an assertion that will be elaborated upon below. If Rochester University truly emulates Jesus’s model of hospitality, welcome, and inclusion, it will inevitably encounter others (and already has encountered them) who embrace a life narrative that is different from the Christian story. That difference will produce deep variations in perspectives, values, and practices. Thus, in this increasingly post-Christian culture, RU must be prepared to follow and practice the radical hospitality of Jesus and provide a welcoming environment even for those who do not embrace the Christian faith or believe the Christian story. It is easy for any Christian university to claim that it provides such an environment. In fact, most of them make precisely that claim. However, the proof of the claim is found in the perspectives of those to whom welcome is extended (students and the community at large,) especially those who do not fully embrace the values of the institution but are still willing to consider coming and learning there. To be credible in our claims of welcome and hospitality, the RU community must “practice what we preach” in a manner that is especially evident to those who are different from us. To discern the best way to fully live into that sort of practice, it is requisite that we understand and respond appropriately to some key developments in the world around us. In the
7 current environment in which social, political, and religious discourse have degenerated into name-calling and line-drawing, a rare opportunity presents itself for RU to stake out territory that is meaningfully divergent from that occupied even by other institutions that share our heritage or current circumstances. To begin staking out that territory, it must first be recognized that terms such as diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice have come to be surrounded by a host of connotations and presumptions that have led to even the most cursory discussion about them deteriorating into conflict and divisions along rigid ideological and political lines. Because of that context, as Rochester University clarifies its identity and vision, it is vital that we place these ideas within a particular and appropriate theological, educational, and policy framework. When RU uses these terms, we specifically mean: 1. We oppose ethnic prejudices, and bias or discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, nationality or country of origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status. Individuals who identify with any of the diverse communities mentioned above and who enter into the RU community should be viewed and welcomed as individuals who bear the image of God, as opposed to being reduced to issues to be debated or problems to be solved. 2. We view male and female as equally reflective of the image of God, and potentially equally gifted and called by God to diverse roles and responsibilities within God’s kingdom, including leadership roles.
8 3. We recognize and honor the value and significance of race and ethnicity in human identity, but strongly oppose discrimination based on race and ethnicity, and actively oppose racism in all its forms. We are devoted to racial reconciliation. 4. Since the kingdom of God encompasses individuals from all nations and tribes and transcends citizenship in any human entity, we are opposed to Christian Nationalism. 5. The socially, economically, and intellectually marginalized are the very people most welcomed, included, and embraced by Jesus and as followers of his example and teaching, RU must create and foster policies and practices that reject that marginalization, (which will be further elaborated upon below.) In sum, in the spirit of the open table (which also reflects the Golden Rule and the greatest commandments,) as an institution RU will welcome, value, and embrace the diversity described above and the people who embody it, while continuing to speak and live the truth as we understand it. The Rochester University community will treat differences in perspectives and values with civility, respect, and grace. Moreover, this welcoming, loving, inclusivity will help RU to establish a credible and relevant voice to speak into a polarized and post-Christian world. SCRIPTURE, THE APOCALYPTIC TRADITION, AND REACHING THE MARGINALIZED How we do that speaking and living can also find deep roots in our StoneCampbell/Restoration heritage. Another of the foundational principles of that faith tradition and of the Protestant Reformation which preceded it was an emphasis on “the priesthood of all
9 believers.”6 This precept carries with it the idea that even though God’s people are always intended to exist and thrive in community, we all bear an individual responsibility to “work out” our relationship with God. Wedded to that idea is the belief that scripture, rightly interpreted and appropriately discerned with the guidance of the Holy Spirit would serve as the primary guide for the formation and health of that relationship and would also foster the unity of believers. The implications of these principles and their connection both to the inclusivity of the open table, and to the diversity of perspectives welcomed in a university are particularly significant for us. An important backdrop to our consideration of this principle is a recognition that our view of scripture has itself been shaped and formed by our own religious and philosophical traditions which may differ from the traditions which shaped and formed the perspectives of others in our community. Thus, we recognize that even though “sola scriptura” is a foundational principle for many of our traditions, it is difficult in the extreme to truly formulate our guiding tenets on “scripture alone,” without the often unrecognized effects of our respective cultural biases, ecclesial traditions, hermeneutical practices, and (as a psychologist, I cannot refrain from pointing out) our individual inclinations and personality differences.7 An undeniable implication and practical application of what all of this suggests is that though our convictions about God and faith may be held dearly and firmly, they must also be held with humility. Further, our guiding principle must be, as some have put it, that there is one inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of God, and his name is Jesus.8 It is to his authority and to his teachings and example that RU will unfailingly look for guidance in our pursuit of truth.
6
This principle was also identified as important in the Pepperdine White Paper by Marrs (2014), though again with a somewhat different focus and set of applications than advocated for here. 7 See Mark Love, “No Creed But The Bible: The Story of Scripture in Churches of Christ” in this essay series. 8 Brian Zahnd, Sinners In The Hands of a Loving God (New York: Waterbrook, 2017).
10 As we seek that guidance with a mindful recognition of our heritage, it is deeply helpful to consider again the perspectives and approach promulgated by Barton W. Stone, which Richard Hughes has termed the “apocalyptic worldview.”9 One essential conclusion drawn from this worldview is, as Greer puts it, Stone’s conviction that “care for the poor and marginalized was an imperative.” If we truly are to grasp our heritage and be guided by the teachings and example of Jesus in the development and clarification of our institutional identity, we must clearly perceive and embrace the compellingly “upside down” nature of the kingdom he established. Jesus stood with and for the poor, the marginalized, the ostracized, (or, as one songwriter put it, “the sat upon, spat upon, ratted on.”)10 So, Rochester University also must strive to stand with and for those individuals. One key element of what that idea undeniably suggests is that a Christian university must recognize that there is a fundamental incompatibility between calling itself “Christian,” while also creating institutional admission policies, systems, and pricing that prevent anyone but the socioeconomically and/or academically elite from entering. We live in a time when many such universities specifically and intentionally are articulating these elitist strategies, as a means of heightening their academic and socioeconomic reputations, and their US News rankings. So, among other things, being a distinctive Christian university means RU must go against that grain and do all it can to keep the price of attendance as low as it feasibly can. Further, it must ensure that well-delineated avenues for admission are made available to marginalized, underserved, and underrepresented students, along with both curricular and co-curricular support systems that
9
Elaborated upon by David Greer, “The Apocalyptic Tradition in Churches of Christ” in this essay series. Paul Simon, “Blessed.”
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11 allow academically capable but underprepared and underprivileged or otherwise disadvantaged students to both gain access and have a realistic hope for success. ROCHESTER UNIVERSITY AND KINGDOM VALUES In conclusion, as we further clarify our distinctive identity, Rochester University must sharpen its focus on the words and example of Jesus. That focus demands that we emphasize humble and selfless service, not seeking glory or recognition for our efforts, but setting an example and teaching our students that following the call of God means carrying a cross, not accumulating possessions. That is a countercultural (even apocalyptic) message, but no Christian university can accept, endorse, or propagate the idol of materialism and the fantasy of the ultimate value of worldly success. If RU educates its students well, material success and wealth will come to some of them. As their education prepares them for successful careers and the potential for material success, RU’s mission is to help students understand the proper value to place on those things in the kingdom of God and how to be good stewards of them. If we think carefully and communicate well, a clear sense of the core values that will guide us and how they play themselves out in our daily work in the service of the RU mission and vision will emerge. These core values are both grounded in our heritage and emergent from sound theological underpinnings. To cite some examples, our emphasis on vocation springs from our conviction that life has purpose and meaning, and our participation in God’s mission calls us to find and develop that vocation in ourselves and others, that we may all participate richly. The importance of rigorous scholarship, inspiring pedagogy, and individualized attention to students flows from a calling to excellence in the service of God and love for his children. Valuing science, the humanities, professional studies, as well as biblical and theological studies arises from our recognition that these are all gracious sources and repositories of God’s truth.
12 Another clear element of Stone’s “apocalyptic worldview” is the notion that the kingdom of God is both a current reality in the present and an ideal not fully realized until some unknown future.11 It is both now and not yet. We all live in that eschatological tension, whether we know it or not. But, there are some people, consistent with Stone’s vision, who are pushing hard to live into the values of that coming kingdom, leaning into vocations and ways of being that hasten the coming of a more fully realized kingdom, replete with the upside-down values and open table hospitality that this essay has discussed. As we move into a future filled with uncertainties but abounding with opportunities, Rochester University exists to develop, foster, and send into the world those kingdom builders. It beckons all members of the community to be one of them, as well. And ultimately, Rochester University invites “whosoever will” to come and join all of those gathered at the open table in the pursuit of truth and that kingdom mission.
BIBLIOGRAPHY WILL BE ADDED
11
See Greer, in this essay series.