Devoted to the Propagation and Defense of New Testament Christianity
VOLUME 18
February 23, 1967
NUMBER 41, PAGE 1-3,5b

"Sect" And "Denomination," In The Church Of Christ

David Edwin Harrell, Jr.

(The Present In Perspective)

Using the terminology of modern religious sociologists and historians, the early nineteenth century religious movement led by Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone was a "legalistic sect." The church was intolerant, dogmatic, fervent, and spiritually oriented; it had its early appeal mainly among the common people and the psychologically aggressive. The claim to uniqueness of the early Disciples was based on their search for New Testament Christianity based on a legalistic and literalistic approach to the Scriptures.

The story of the success of this early aggressive movement is well known. The church experienced a startling growth. By 1860 the Disciples had become the sixth largest religious group in the nation and the largest religious body of American origin. But this growth was not accomplished without the generation of internal tensions and already by 1860 there were serious doctrinal differences among church leaders. In the years after the Civil War these differences hardened and deepened and led eventually to a three way schism in the movement.

The theological issues involved in the division of the movement have long been subject to discussion by historians and other scholars. The most serious problems were the use of instrumental music in worship, organized missionary societies, the pastor system, and, eventually, such issues as acceptance or rejection of higher Biblical criticism, and open membership. I do not intend to trace the development of these theological differences. Suffice it to say here that by the end of the nineteenth century the movement had divided around three groups of doctrinal standards. The most conservative element in the church had able spokesmen in David Lipscomb and his powerful paper the Gospel Advocate, as well as a whole crop of hard-nosed preachers scattered from Tennessee to Texas. The most progressive element in the church was moving rapidly by 1900 to a liberal point of view on all major doctrinal issues. The early liberal movement had been led by the St. Louis editor, James Harvey Garrison, and by 1900 was being spearheaded by a core of brilliant young scholars associated with the University of Chicago. A sizeable portion of the movement straddled the middle-of -the-road on these doctrinal issues. Many of the most important post-Civil War Disciples leaders, including James W. McGarvey, Moses Lard, and Isaac Errett, accepted the organ or the missionary society or both while persistently refusing to follow the mushrooming liberal movement in other areas. This doctrinal tri-section led to (1) the twentieth century church of Christ, and (2) the cooperative and (3) independent Disciples of Christ.

While a good deal has been written about the doctrinal controversies which led to the schisms in the restoration movement, very few scholars have realized the enormous importance of sociological pressures in prompting and forming the divisions. I believe that economic, psychological, and sectional motives were paramount in the nineteenth century divisions. In fact, I have written a good deal in the past few years pointing out the importance of these factors. I want to make my position perfectly clear. I have been accused of saying that the only basis for the division in the church over the organ was that those who were too poor to afford one opposed its introduction and those who were wealthy enough to own one defended it. This is not what I have said by any means. I believe that men on both sides of the controversy acted in good faith and with the firm conviction that they could scripturally fortify their position. But this does not alter the fact that the division of the church can be defined in terms of sociological classes as well as in terms of doctrinal differences — and I suspect that this is a more meaningful division.

That the schism of the restoration movement in the nineteenth century was a division into sociological groups is a matter of simple fact. A study of census returns makes the point obvious. According to the religious census of 1916, the Disciples of Christ had a membership of 1,226,000 while the Churches of Christ had only 317,000 members. In the former slave states, however, Disciples membership totaled only 485,000, over half of which was in the border states of Kentucky and Missouri. On the other hand, nearly 250,000 of the Churches of Christ's members were in the former slave states. In Tennessee, the Disciples listed 21,500 members while the Church of Christ claimed 63,500. (See David Edwin Harrell, Jr. , "The Sectional Origins of the Churches of Christ," Journal of Southern History XXX (August, 1964), 261-277; David Edwin Harrell, Jr. , "The Disciples of Christ and Social Force in Tennessee, 1860- 1900 , " East Tennessee Historical Society publications (1966); David Edwin Harrell, Jr. , "Disciples of Christ Pacificism in Nineteenth Century Tennessee, Tennessee Historical Quarterly, XXI (September, 1962), (263-74). In short, the most conservative element of the church centered in the lower South, the former states of the Confederacy. The middle-of-the-roaders found their strongest support in the border areas of Kentucky, Missouri, West Virginia, and East Tennessee. The liberal stream in the movement was most successful in the North. Some of the more perceptive church leaders of the day recognized that the division taking place was decidedly sectional in character. David Lipscomb was repeatedly accused of trying to draw the Mason Dixon line through the church. And it was true that many Southern church leaders did associate digression with the North and conservatism with the South. The caustic T. R. Burnet, condemning the formation of a state missionary society in Texas in 1892, said: "The brethren are following northern ideas and northern men, and patterning after sectarian plans and models, and have given up the Bible model."

The late nineteenth-century division of the church of Christ, then, was essentially a sectional division. Of course, there were thousands of individual exceptions, but this was the general pattern. The interesting question raised by this is: Why did most southerners believe that the organ was wrong and most northerners believe that it was right? One may assume that they were honest in their convictions, that the doctrinal problems involved were significant, but it does appear that some other factors must have been involved.

The three great sections in post-Civil War United States (the South, Border areas, and the North) also represented three economic and sociological groups. The population of the South remained rural and economically depressed after the war. It was among this sociological class that the conservative plea of the restoration movement continued to thrive. Outside of the South the only areas where the conservative position held its own were in some of the economically depressed farming sections of the Midwest. The areas of the South where the conservatives failed to win the doctrinal battle were largely in the middle class congregations of the Southern cities. In short, that element which was receptive to conservative plea and uncompromisingly rejected all innovations was the most depressed class in the movement.

On the other hand, the liberal wing in the church was strongly urban. It was led by the preachers of the growing cities of the Midwest and Kentucky. Disciples in these areas had grown rich and fat in the nineteenth century. The liberal movement grew in almost a precise ratio to the growth of sophistication of the membership of the churches. In short, that element in the movement which was most receptive to "progress," that element which first introduced the organ, which pushed for changes in the organizational structure in the church, and which accepted the findings of modernistic scholarship, was the most economically and psychologically stable element in the church.

Those who were middle-of-the-roaders doctrinally represented an economic class somewhere between these extremes. The most notable doctrinal moderates were Kentuckians. The moderate movement got strong support from the neat and respectable rural churches in Kentucky and the Midwest. These churches were neither so economically depressed as those of the South nor so sophisticated as the growing congregations in the cities. Neither was the doctrine they accepted so extreme as that of either of the other groups.

What this demonstrates is that while the nineteenth century division of the restoration took place over doctrinal problems, it was rooted in deep economic differences in the membership of the movement. By 1900 there were serious class differences within the movement and the church divided along class lines.

What had happened was that the Disciples of Christ had undergone the"sect to denomination" evolution — at least a segment of the movement had completed the transition. The group had passed through the same transition common to all religious movements. Three incompatible classes had emerged within the church.

By 1900, the sociological unity of the church had vanished. The old conservative values of the early movement were simply no longer an acceptable expression of Christianity to the more sophisticated elements in the church. As wealthier, more educated, and more socially established elements in the church emerged, they simply formulated a more denominational expression of Christianity. By 1900, the liberal element of the Disciples of Christ was well on its way to becoming a prominent American denomination.

On the other hand, there remained in the church in 1900 a sociological class of fervent people who could only be satisfied with the same old vital, aggressive emphasis common to the founders of the movement. They refused to evolve into a denomination and retained the strict standards which fitted their emotional religious needs.

It is enough to simply point out that the peacemakers in the middle-of-the-road were simply another sociological group. They made a part of the transition to denominationalism but stopped short of the full process. Doctrinally they reached a hybrid position of partial acceptance of denominational standards and partial retention of the old legalistic standards. In short, they became an "institutional sect." This was the point in the transition which suited their sociological needs. They were also a hybrid sociological class — at a kind of half-way house between rural poverty and urban sophistication. In sum, they also had their own unique religious needs which were met by the unique solution of the institutional sect.

As these sociological changes took place within the movement — as the movement came to include vastly different kinds of people — it was inevitable that a schism take place. The simple fact of the matter was that the people within the church no longer wanted the same kind of Christianity. This was the basic issue what doctrinal problems arose to divide over were inconsequential. When this basic transition had taken place issues were bound to arise. The doctrinal clashes could have taken place in a hundred different areas. As it happened, the first innovations injected by the liberals in the movement was instrumental music and organized missionary societies. But they were only the first; many others followed; many others were bound to follow. Instrumental music and organized societies were in essence the accidental basis of the doctrinal division in the movement. They certainly were not the cause of the schism. The cause was that the church had grown to include incompatible kinds of people.

Of course, most of the people involved in the long and bitter controversy in the church little understood the deeper tensions within the movement. Some were not totally unaware of the class divergence underlying the doctrinal problems. In 1897, Daniel Sommer wrote a very perceptive analysis of the pressures leading to the schism: "As time advanced such of those churches as assembled in large towns and cities gradually became proud, or, at least, sufficiently world-minded to desire popularity, and in order to attain that unscriptural end they adopted certain popular arrangements such as the hired pastor, the church choir, instrumental music, manmade societies to advance the gospel, and human devices to raise money to support previously mentioned devices of similar origin. In so doing they divided the brotherhood of disciples, and thereby became responsible for all the evils resulting from the division which they caused." (Octographic Review, XL, October 5, 1897,1). Sommer had placed the responsibility for the division at the doorsteps of the upper-class city churches--precisely where it belonged. But such understanding was rare. Especially liberal leaders in the movement were unwilling to admit that they had become too sophisticated for the old principles of the fathers.

As a result, the controversy was largely a doctrinal struggle. Most of the debates centered, for several decades, around the attempts of each side to scripturally document its position. Each side was also profoundly interested in rallying the testimony of the early leaders of the movement to the support of its position.

This was an uneven and unrealistic struggle from the beginning. Within the context of a literalistic interpretation of the scriptures it was no contest. The innovations which became issues in the controversy were simply not justifiable in terms of a literalistic interpretation of the scriptures. The best a liberal literalist could do was obfuscate, muddle, or evacuate. This is not to say that there was no defense for liberalism. There is, and later liberal Disciples leaders find and use rationalism and liberal Biblical interpretation as their rationale. But the point is, there was no case for liberalism within the context of Biblical literalism and this is where most early Disciples liberals felt compelled to fight. They lost. I say it not because I think they were wrong, but because any objective witness of the struggle would say they lost. You can't accept the Book of Mormon and defeat a Mormon; you can't use papal proclamations to beat a Roman Catholic; and you can't be a Biblical liberal and fight a legalist.

I suppose it ought to be parenthetically asked: If they lost, why did the majority of the people follow them? The answer is simply that who wins or loses an argument has very little to do with the convictions of the listeners. The listeners generally believe what they want to believe and in the nineteenth century controversy most members of the Disciples wanted to be denominationalists.

Not only was there no realistic clash between the groups within the context of a literalistic interpretation of the scriptures, neither was there any question about which of the elements was heir to the traditions of the early movement. The early movement would be classified by every religious sociologist as a "sect" and when the split came the conservatives were clearly the spiritual sons of the early leaders of the movement. This question is not important to us doctrinally, but it is interesting, and in every church controversy it is broadly disputed. But the question is not even debatable. Both sides quoted Alexander Campbell, Walter Scott, and Barton Stone during the controversy on specific issues. But whatever they might have said on specific issues, they were by nature fanatical literalists. By 1900, they would have only fit within one segment of the church --the church of Christ.

But back to the main question. The battle between the divergent elements within the church was fought on the unrealistic and meaningless battleground of scriptural literalism. This raises the further interesting question of why did the liberal element join the battle on these uneven and unrealistic terms.

One obvious answer is that they did not know (as many of the conservatives did not know) that this was not the real point of controversy. It was not until the twentieth century that a sizeable number of liberal leaders recognized the fact that they had abandoned their allegiance to scriptural literalism and restoration. It was easy for a man who wanted a more progressive and denominational religion and yet at the same time wanted to believe that he still held to his old time convictions to satisfy himself with fuzzy rationalizations. Some very unconvincing arguments can convince us to believe what we already believe. The transition into a denomination is a complex one. It takes time and it often takes place subtly--even though the change is basic and dramatic. A man in the midst of the change often fails to recognize it. If he is perceptive enough to recognize it, he must have the additional ingredient of courage and moral honesty to admit it. It takes at least one generation to make the change and at least one more generation to understand and admit the change.

But there was another important reason why early liberal leaders in the church refused to admit that they were changing the fundamental direction of the movement during the nineteenth century. By 1875, the divergent elements within the church were engaged in mortal battle for the loyalty of local congregations. A successful liberal leader must move with calculated caution. Many church members in the fifty years from 1860 to 1910 traveled the slow road to denominationalism who would have been repelled by a rapid and conscious transition. It was certainly the part of wisdom for the progressive leader to move slowly. Many liberal Disciples leaders during these crucial years underplayed the magnitude of the transition in his own personal conviction for the benefit of the less perceptive general body of members. Whether this policy is vicious and dishonest or enlightened and shrewd depends pretty largely upon which side the viewer is on.

This, then, is a sociological interpretation of the late nineteenth century division in the Disciples of Christ. It was a division which followed the well established patterns of "sect to denomination" evolution based on diverging class interests.

This evolution reached a rather satisfactory and stable conclusion by about twenty years ago. The church of Christ remained at that date firmly conservative in emphasis, united around the old plea of restoration of the ancient order. The Disciples had, reached a point of fairly stable denominationalism. What conservatism remained in the Disciples movement was shed in the independent-cooperative division of the early twentieth century. Liberal Disciples today are, by and large, proud to have made the transition to denominationalism, and have gained new insight into the meaning of the restoration movement. A liberal Disciple today would not think of holding a scriptural debate on instrumental music--or anything else. He understands he does not stand on the same platform as the early nineteenth century reformers. I think most would freely admit that the church of Christ does. The Disciples of Christ have an entirely new set of justifications for their existence. In short, in the perspective of some thirty or forty years it is relatively easy for the historian to draw meaningful conclusions. With the passing of time it has also become easy for the interested groups to understand and appreciate what has happened.