An American
Religious Movement

Copyright, 1945
By
C. D. Pantle

First Printing, Sept., 1945
Second Printing, June, 1946

Printed in the United States of America

PREFACE

In an earlier volume, I recited the history of the Disciples of Christ under the title, Religion Follows the Frontier. The phrase was designed to emphasize the fact that this religious movement was born under pioneer conditions on the American frontier, in the days when the frontier was just crossing the Alleghenies, that much of its formative thinking followed patterns congenial to the frontier mind, and that its early expansion kept pace with the westward wave of migration.

Since that book is now out of print, while interest in the theme is increasing, it has seemed desirable to rewrite the history. If this were merely a sequel to the other, I would call it Growing Up with the Country.

It remains true that the pioneer beginnings must be remembered and understood if the initial motives and methods of the Disciples and the processes of their growth are to be understood. But important as the frontier is, as a fact in the history of the United States and of every phase of culture in the Middle West, an equally significant fact is that, as the frontier rolled westward, it left behind it a widening area in which pioneer conditions no longer prevailed. As the country was growing by the expansive drive of which the frontier was the cutting edge, it was also growing up, both behind and on the frontier. The process of maturing is as significant as that of expanding.

Since the present purpose is to survey the history of the Disciples through both of these phases, I have resisted the allurement of this second title and am giving the book a name which includes both; for the movement is distinctively American, and every American movement which began in pioneer days and has lived through the cycles of American life until now has both followed the frontier and grown up with the country.

As to the future—I am only a historian, not a prophet. But I shall be disappointed if this record of the past does not leave with the reader an acquaintance with the essential data upon which, using his own judgment and imagination, he will be disposed to project the curve of a future development far beyond any present attainments in promoting the ends for which the Disciples of Christ came into existence—the unity and purity of the Church, a reasonable and practical religion, and the enrichment of life through fellowship in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

W. E. G.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. Prelude 9

II. Ideas with a History: Union and Restoration 14

III. The American Scene 28

IV. The “Christians” 41

V. The Coming of the Campbells 60

VI. With the Baptists, 1813-30 76

VII. First Years of Independence, 1830-49 90

VIII. Organization and Tensions, 1849-74 108

IX. Renaissance, 1874-1909 125

X. Growing into Maturity, 1909-45 142

​ Index 157

CHAPTER I
PRELUDE

Who are these “Disciples of Christ”? What are these “Christian Churches” or “Churches of Christ” which now constitute one of the major religious groups in the United States? When, where, and how did they begin, and how have they become what they are?

They began early in the nineteenth century with the union of two separate movements, one of which had close kinship with two others. All four were alike in aiming to simplify the complexities of Christian faith and in going back of the creeds and the traditional practices of existing churches to the plain teaching of the New Testament. They believed that this was easy to understand, and that the divisions of Christendom would disappear if Christians would only agree to speak as the apostles spoke and to do as they did. They believed that man was sinful and needed God’s salvation; but they did not believe him to be so depraved by “original sin” that he could not, by the act of his own intelligence and by his own free will, accept the means of grace that have been provided. They wanted all the churches to unite on the basis of the simple and clear requirements of discipleship as given in the New Testament, leaving all doubtful and inferential matters in the field of “opinion,” in which every Christian should exercise liberty, and scrap the machinery of synods and bishops, for which they found no warrant in Scripture.

Of the two main movements, the name of Barton W. Stone was most prominent in one; the names of Thomas and Alexander Campbell in the other. Stone’s movement (1804) began earlier than that of the Campbells (1809), but later than two others practically identical with it. But the Campbells’ was the more dynamic, especially after it gained the advocacy of Walter Scott, who set the pattern for its evangelism. These are the four great names in the early history of the Disciples—Stone, Thomas