Restored by the Fathers

Theologically, I am descended from Presbyterians.

I’m a card-carrying member of what used to be called the Restoration Movement. The movement didn’t have a single inaugural event but rather coalesced as several preachers and Bible students, concerned about their denominational doctrines, began searching the Scriptures to know how the Bible addressed those concerns. One of them was a Scottish Presbyterian named Thomas Campbell.

Campbell was a minister in the Presbyterian Church. His ecclesiastical landscape in Scotland was riddled with factions and schisms. In 1733 a group of members seceded from the official governance structure of the Presbyterian church and formed the United Secession Church. That group had further division over whether public officials should take official oaths with the church (Burghers) or if state service and religious affiliation should remain separate (Anti-Burghers). And in a time when the church was looking to modernize, Campbell remained an “Old Light” conservative.

Campbell was a minister in the Old Light, Anti-Burgher, Seceder Presbyterian Church and was prohibited from offering communion or other ministerial duties to anyone outside that tradition. “Are you a New Light, Anti-Burgher, Seceder Presbyterian?” Too bad. No soup for you. Motivated by Jesus’ prayer “that they may all be one/unified” (John 17:20-23), Campbell grew weary and sought to restore the Christian unity he found in the New Testament. (Well, not Corinth.)

So it was with Barton W. Stone. Trained as a Presbyterian minister, Stone had concerns about the doctrine of the Westminster Confession. The pivotal moment was when Stone was asked, “Do you receive and adopt the Confession as containing the system of doctrine taught in the Scriptures?” Uncomfortable with the equation of the Westminster Confession with the Bible, Stone responded, “I do, as far as I see it consistent with the Word of God.” Stone sought the same thing Campbell was after: unity among believers based on the clear teaching of the Scriptures.

Stone was the host of the Cane Ridge Revival near Paris, KY. Fleshing out his own convictions, Stone invited Presbyterian, Methodist, and Baptist ministers to preach. “I don’t care what your tradition or theological nuances are. Bring your bibles, let’s open them, and be obedient to what we find.”

This vision—of restoring Christian unity with biblical truth—became the focus of what was known as the “Restoration Movement.” It’s an attempt to restore the thought and practice of the early churches we read about in Acts.

More recently it’s become known as the “Stone-Campbell Movement.”

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I grew up in a church founded by Barton W. Stone, 10 miles from Cane Ridge. But the church I grew up in wasn’t as committed to Christian unity as its founder was nearly a century earlier. The church sits (still) on the corner of Locust and Chestnut. On the opposite corner is the Baptist Church. And next to the Baptist Church sits the Methodist Church. There is a Disciples of Christ church in town, a Presbyterian Church two blocks from the aforementioned, a Catholic Church at the bottom of the hill, and an Assemblies of God church behind the Dairy Queen. Reader, this town has 1,800 residents. And while there aren’t 1,800 people in attendance each Sunday morning (I wish there were!), this seems like an awfully high number of churches for a three-stoplight town.

The doctrinal railing was loud. The Baptists (I was told) were all about predestination, and contrary to their name, they didn’t baptize people for salvation. The Methodists were liberal and were devoted to the religious traditions handed down by the Wesleys (John and Charles, their founders) rather than Scripture. The Catholics prayed to Mary, which was obviously an affront to Jesus. And the Assemblies were wild in worship, exercising little self-control. I was trained to be suspicious about friends who attended other churches, for their beliefs made them less “Christian” and in danger of offending God.

We had the truth. We alone.

Few of these things were accurate, mind you. In a small town you get to know people (I mean really know them), and the stakeholders in these churches—the Sunday school teachers, elders, deacons, and song leaders—were Bible-loving, Jesus-conscious, “salt of the earth” people. They were concerned about righteousness and justice. They were decent and honest and hard-working. They saw some theological nuances differently than we did, sure. But on the core tenets of the faith—the virgin birth, the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, the resurrection, the authority of Scripture, and the second coming—we all had agreement.

So how did it come to this? How did the vision of the Campbells (Thomas and his more prolific son Alexander) and Stone, which privileged unity around the core essentials, turn into an exclusionary movement that privileged doctrinal nuance as the basis of unity?

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In the Fall of 1989 I enrolled at Cincinnati Bible College. It was the flagship college of the Restoration Movement in its day. I studied with serious teachers, professors who were trained at Harvard, Princeton, Aberdeen, and Westminster. They taught me a vision of the movement that was in line with the early fathers—a vision of unity and biblical truth.

But there were also aspects of my education that reflected the exclusionary rhetoric I heard in the local churches, in the grassroots places that supported the college. It was the vitriol I grew up with: Church of Christ people good, all denominations bad. Cincinnati Bible College was founded in theological combat, specifically as a training ground against the doctrinal liberalism of the early 1900s. By the time I arrived that liberalism had waned (or died). But the approach hadn’t. Theological combat was embedded in the DNA. We were trained to be right, not to be kind.

During my time there I read Harry S. Stout’s The New England Soul. Stout examined the (handwritten) sermons of the first generations of Puritan preachers in colonial America and noticed a pattern in their values and rhetoric. Those early fathers preached with passion, hope, and vision. The generation that followed them (what I’m calling the “middle fathers”) believed in the vision enough to build protections around it—protections of doctrine, ethics, and practice. Eventually, that pattern of “constantly protecting the vision of our ancestors” became so harsh and untenable that the later fathers, who had no connection to the fight, began throwing off everything that hindered and returned to the original hope-filled vision.

It seems that something similar happened in the Stone-Campbell Movement. Thomas Campbell laid out his vision for a new way in The Declaration and Address, and one of the principles was that the New Testament Church ought to reflect the teachings and practice of the New Testament. His son, Alexander Campbell, took that clarion call and published nearly every thought he ever had about NT doctrine and practice, cementing with more vigor the beliefs of his father. Once Campbell published his conclusions, his followers took those conclusions and preached them—because they were founded in Alexander’s clear study of the Bible—as the gospel truth. Nothing more was to be done than to let those conclusions stand. No more study necessary. “We have everything we need. Campbell will teach us.” Those truths became hardened over time, and like a whetstone, little outside water seeped into the pores.

Too bad, really. A wet stone makes a sharper knife.

Here’s an example of that doctrinal hardening. A man stood in my office last year and complained for over an hour that too many Restoration professors didn’t have terminal degrees from Restoration schools, and that one of our theology professors was attending a non-Restoration church. He had a “middle-fathers” understanding of the movement. Ironically, his favorite theology professors (whom he kept naming) had terminal degrees from outside the movement (and they were sharp knives!). He refused to admit that Alexander Campbell’s explicit desire was that there be no Church of Christ denomination. And that, theologically, he’s also descended from Presbyterians. He wanted only Restoration people attending Restoration churches, and only Restoration professors teaching Restoration students and publishing Restoration books in Restoration publishing houses.

As one of my teachers quipped, “The Way is narrow. But it’s not that narrow.”

The vision of the early Restoration fathers was one of unity based on biblical truth. The vision of the middle fathers was one of biblical truth, only the agreement with which fostered unity. Having lived both versions, I can tell you there’s a massive difference in approach and tone.

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"The cause that we advocate is not our own peculiar cause, nor the cause of any party, considered as such; it is a common cause, the cause of Christ and our brethren of all denominations." -- Thomas Campbell, Declaration and Address

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All of this came to a head for me last year when I was asked by a leader of another educational institution, “How do you teach Restoration theology to your students?” I heard myself answering before I even thought about the question:

“I don’t.”

My approach has never been to try to demonstrate the nuances of my own tradition’s beliefs as superior to those of other traditions. There are plenty who do that, but it feels unwelcoming and out of sync with the way that Thomas Campbell and Barton Stone approached the denominational landscape of their own time. Like them, I simply ask my students to open their Bibles. Let’s read it. Let’s understand it—culturally, linguistically, canonically, and historically—and let’s understand what the author was trying to communicate. And when we see it, let’s explore ways we can become obedient to their message in our own time.

This is what I want for my classroom: students from I-don’t-care-what tradition, interested in Scripture and committed to Jesus, agreeing to study together, obeying what we find. This is more welcoming. This is more evangelistic. This is more in line with the vision of the Restoration fathers. I’ve had students from (last I counted) 11 different countries and from numerous denominations (even non-denominational denominations!). I love it when they discover the truth of the Scriptures and then return to their churches with that truth.

Not a truth rooted in some kind of Restoration triumphalism. A truth rooted in the triumph of the Lord Jesus.

Asking students from other traditions to be open to un-learning their various doctrinal beliefs means that I too must be open to learning things that don’t match my own Old-Light, Anti-Burgher, Seceder, Presbyterian-based, Scottish-Realism-informed, instrumental, mission-supporting, independent Christian Church/Church of Christ beliefs. If I wanna be heard, I gotta hear. And if I wanna be listened to, I gotta listen to.

This was the vision of Campbell. And the vision of Stone. It’s the Cane Ridge Revival for a modern time. “Whatever tradition you’re from, bring your Bible and let’s read together.”

To the hardliners, my way is suspect. I don’t believe that if a person misses communion one week that the flames of hell are licking their boots. I believe that my Brethren friends who take communion once a year are still my brethren (and sisteren). It was a former Methodist mega-church pastor, one with significant anxiety and mental-health struggles, who then became a Third-Wave Pentecostal who has had one of the most significant influences on my life. (And I was only physically in his presence for two weeks.) I have a terminal degree from a Brethren/Mennonite school. I’ve been rejected multiple times by the Restoration publishing houses. (My major books have been published by the Dutch Reformed.) My son is a worship leader for a Community Church. My sister attends a Reformed church. And I’m not willing to tell my students they are going to hell because they aren’t from my tradition.

The open and welcoming nature of the early Restoration fathers is the open invitation of the Lord Jesus. “Come, all who are thirsty, and take of the free gift of the water of life” (Rev. 22:17).

Their vision isn’t just one of restoring the Church in an organizational way. It’s one that has restored me personally, spiritually, and vocationally.

And I don’t know if the Restoration fathers ever saw that coming.