An American Religious Movement : A Brief History of the Disciples of ChristGarrison, Winfred Ernest
History
An American Religious Movement : A Brief History of the Disciples of Christ
Garrison, Winfred Ernest
Disciples of Christ -- History
The _Christian Baptist_ began in 1823 and continued for seven years. Mr.
Campbell was his own publisher. He set up a printing office on his farm,
secured the location of the post office of Buffaloe (later Bethany), and
was appointed postmaster. The magazine took up at once the delayed task
of “detecting and exposing the various anti-christian enormities,
innovations and corruptions which infect the christian church.” It was
small, as a hornet is small, and its sting was as keen. It attacked
especially three characteristics of the existing churches: the authority
and status assumed by the clergy; unscriptural organizations, such as
synods and church courts, missionary societies, Bible societies, Sunday
schools, and all kinds of “innovations” and “popular schemes”; and the
use of creeds. There was loud outcry that it sowed the seeds of discord
among the churches. It certainly did. Mr. Campbell would have said that
there must always be discord when truth is boldly proclaimed and error
is stubbornly held.
On the constructive side, the magazine used much space in developing—as
the Postscript had suggested doing in a catechism—“that complete system
of faith and duty expressly contained in the Sacred Oracles respecting
the doctrine, worship and government of the church.” A few years later
it was said that Mr. Campbell now became the advocate of “a particular
ecclesiastical order.” To him it was the order of the apostolic church.
For a time, little attention was paid to Christian unity. This objective
was not forgotten, but it was held that emphasis should be first upon
the pattern and procedure of the primitive church as the only ground
upon which Christians could unite.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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