What is the Stone-Campbell Movement?

When I re-launched this blog and mentioned that my heritage is The Stone-Campbell Movement, I could almost hear people over the net ask, “What is that?”

The Stone-Campbell Movement, also often referred to as The Restoration Movement, began as a quest for Christian unity in the 19th century. The titular leaders of the attempt to unite followers of Jesus were Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) and Barton W. Stone (1772-1844). Both men emerged from the Presbyterian church after struggling with some tenets of The Westminster Confession of Faith but even more with the division of the Body of Christ.

They began, initially without knowledge of the other, to bring Christians together under two principles—The Bible is the Word of God and Jesus is Lord. They eventually discovered each other and joined forces.

Their efforts produced an immediate impact as they preached what were considered then to be simple sermons rooted in Scripture across the frontier. They rejected the historic confessions and creeds of the church, not because they disagreed with everything within them but because they viewed them as divisive.

Unfortunately, the Movement itself eventually split into Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ and The Independent Christian Church. The major factor that contributed to the initial crack of those who simply called themselves, “Christian” or” Disciples,” arose out the goal of re-establishing the New Testament church.

The leaders hoped that they could find a pattern of worship and template for congregational organization within the New Testament that all followers of Jesus could agree to adopt. The problem was how to deal with the silence of Scripture on issues such as para-church organizations and the use of musical instruments to aid worship.

Without a formal denominational structure, many Disciples turned for guidance on these debates to the editors of prominent publications such as The Christian Standard (still in print today). The influence of these men led some to refer to them as “editor-bishops.” The dispute eventually split the Movement into two—Churches of Christ (noted for their adoption of non-instrumental worship) and Disciples of Christ.

Unfortunately, and somewhat ironically, the Disciples of Christ would fracture over doctrine. North American Christianity found itself embroiled in a philosophical civi war in the 19th and 20th century over Biblical scholarship. Theological liberalism had migrated from Germany to England to American universities such as Harvard, Yale and Princeton (believe it or not, all three had originally been founded as conservative schools with the aim of training preachers of the Gospel!). At its core, this new academic approach defined “history” as purely naturalistic, which largely ruled out the possibility of miracles, and approached Scripture with the same skepticism an academic would treat any other work of literature.

When this strand of theology hit the Disciples churches, which once took for granted that the two principles of the Bible is the Word of God and Jesus is Lord meant that Scripture is inspired and without error and that Jesus is the only way to salvation, it split largely into theologically left leaning Disciples of Christ congregations and more conservative Independent Christian Churches.

While I’ll spend more time laying this all out over the weeks and months ahead, I want to stick to one point today and that is that it is still possible for a large number of Christians, albeit not all, to unite under the two core, founding principles of the Movement. Yet, it is, at least in my opinion, impossible to replicate the first century church and that is largely what doomed the Stone-Campbell Movement to lapse from a quest for unity into sectarianism.

In my own congregational setting, Christians from a variety of backgrounds and adhering to different theological approaches all worship together in pretty harmonious fashion and have since 1970! We have those who are dispensationalists and those who are amillennial. We have Arminians and Calvinists. We have those who privately speak in tongues and others who believe the days for such a practice have ended. I am blessed to serve a multi-racial church that boasts in a pretty equal distribution of four different generations under the banner of only two assertions—the Bible is the Word of God and Jesus is Lord.

I’ll touch more on the Stone-Campbell Movement at least once a week for…er…who knows how long but until then you can learn more by reading general histories such as The Stone-Campbell Movement by Leroy Garrett (Chalice Press, 1994) or In Search of Christian Unity by Henry E. Webb (ACU Press, 2003).

Next up, “What is Theological Liberalism and Why Should I Care?”