J. D. Tant, Rebaptism and the “New Paper” (1938-1939)

March 19, 2013

1938-1939 were significant years for the Churches of Christ. In 1938 E. W. McMillan, one time chair of the Bible department at Abilene Christian College, began preaching for the Central Church of Christ in Nashville, TN and in January 1939 assumed the editorship of the Christian Leader which was now under new management (Clinton Davidson). The journal intended to reflect a kinder, gentler approach to Christian thought, practice and fellowship. In October 1938 the 20th Century Christian began in Nashville under the leadership of Norvel Young among others. J. P. Sanders, the preacher for the Hillsboro Church of Christ, was the first editor. The magazine intended to promote undenominational Christianity but it a kind spirit that emphasized the practical as well as the pietistic spirituality. Even further, the Gospel Advocate was under new editorship as B. C. Goodpasture took the reins in 1939.

In July 1938,  Foy E. Wallace launched the Bible Banner which intended to combat the “general softness” which pervades among the “plus-mouthed and velvet-tongued moderns among us” (Bible Banner [July 1938] 2). Wallace was set for the defense of the gospel and would leave no stone unturned as he rooted out “Bollites” (among others) from the schools and leading churches of the Restoration Movement. In the spring of 1939 Wallace held a meeting at the Chapel Avenue Church of Christ in Nashville. One of his sermons was entitled “What Must the Church in Nashville Do to be Saved?” Part of his answer was that they must dismiss the Bollites from their colleges (aiming at David Lipscomb College where Ijams was president) and stop practicing the Social Gospel (aiming at the Central Church of Christ where McMillan preached).

Further, in 1938 N. B. Hardeman returned to Nashville for another “Tabernacle Meeting” at the Ryman Auditorium. Unlike previous meetings where the target audience was the community-at-large, this time the audience was the Churches of Christ. Hardeman dealt with issues that faced the “brotherhood,” particularly premillennialism.

This brief background provides the context for the article by J. D. Tant copied below. (For more information about this background, see Richard Hughes, Reviving the Ancient  Faith, chapter 9.) Tant’s article is illuminating on several counts if one remembers its context.

In particular, Tant sees the issue of “sect baptism” or “Baptist baptism” (the rebaptism question) is still alive. In fact, it needs to be publicly debated in Nashville in order to silence its promoters. Far from being put to rest back in the 1910s, the issue still festers, at least in the eyes of Tant.

Further I would suggest that the tensions present here are the vestiges of the conflict between the Tennessee Tradition and the Texas Tradition. Many of those associated with the new Christian Leader had their roots in the Nashville Bible School and the Tennessee Tradition.

Here is the article.  Soak in a bit of history.  Brackets [] are my own comments added to the article.

J. D. Tant, “On the Firing Line Again,” Firm Foundation 56 (6 June 1939) 3.

After being out of work for seven months, by paralysis, I am glad to state that I am on the firing line again.

Just closed my second meeting in Oklahoma, and am booked for one more meeting in Oklahoma, three in Tennessee, one in Texas, one meeting and two debates in California. Then back to the farm.

This letter will also inform my old time friend, Brother [F. B.] Srygley, that I am still able to kick with both feet, and if he had been kicking with both feet all the tie, we would not now have the departures from God’s word in Tennessee that we have.

I notice we now have in Tennessee a new paper which wants to be soft and not preach it straight like the Advocate once did [referring to 20th Century Christian]. I also heard that one church [Central Church] and their preacher [McMillian] in Nashville absolutely refused to announce Hardeman’s great meeting in that city. But through some means the meeting leaked out, and more than six thousand people heard Hardeman preach the gospel. If that preacher and that large church had announced the meeting and worked in it, no doubt, ten thousand would have attended. We are taught in the word of the Lord not to put a tumbling block in a brother’s way. But many good brethren forget that when they oppose a meeting.

I am also receiving another paper with a soft pedal to drown out the Advocate [referring to the Christian Leader]. As Brethren Sam Hall, G. C. Brewer, Dr. Ijams, A. B. Lipscomb, Adamson, J. P. Sewell, and others are all gone over to the new paper they will not give such strong medicine now.

Look out for Brothers Boll and Klingman [both premillennialists] to come next. In five years I look for the new paper and Word and Work to be consolidated. Now if we can get Jim Allen [editor of the Apostolic Times in Nashville, JMH] and Goodpasture [editor of the Gospel Advocate, JMH] to consolidate it will be fine.

As some of the contributors to the new paper are now endorsing sect baptism, and calling on Baptists to lead prayer in their meetings, it will be necessary for me and all lovers of the truth to kick with both feet when I get back to Tennessee.

So I am making a standing challenge to all you boys: Will any, or all of you affirm that baptism as taught and practiced by the Baptist church is scriptural, and all who have it should be welcomed into fellowship of the church of Christ? I want one debate held in the Central Church of Christ, and one in the Russell Street church in Nashville. Will these boys defend their practice? I’ll wait and see.

After my last meeting in Oklahoma, wife and I had a kind invitation from the Highland church in Abilene, where Homer Hailey preaches, to attend their meeting, and hear our son, Yater Tant, in a gospel meeting. We both went, and were treated kindly along all lines, and shall ever cherish with love and appreciation the members of the church there.

Yater is a strong gospel preaching, yet young. In ten years he will stand up with N. B. Hardeman, A. G. Freed, F. W. Smith, Foy Wallace as one of our sgtronges men.

I was invited while at Abilene, to preach one sermon, and I did so to a large congregation. When I saw such men as Charles Roberson, J. F. Cox, President of Abilene Christian College, Harvey  Scott, Homer Hailey, and fifteen to twenty more up-to-date preachers sit at my feet and learn wisdom from me, I felt like if only had my degree in penmanship, I would be in the ring as a big preacher. But such is life.

I used to be a preacher, but I am a farmer now. But I am not too good to go back to preaching if I can get me a degree and find a located job that suits me.

But withal I had a find [sic] time and hope to visit the college again at Abilene.

I hear that Foy Wallace’s write-up of Abilene College had a wonderful influence for good [referring to Wallace's opposition to put Colleges in church budgets and his response to a circular letter defending Abilene on several counts], and we should rejoice and give  God the glory.

San Benito, Texas.

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Posted by John Mark Hicks

Daniel Sommer on the Public Religious “Duties and Privileges” of Women

March 10, 2011

Daniel Sommer (1850-1840), a graduate of Bethany College and the heralded successor of Benjamin Franklin among northern conservatives, lived and worked among congregations of Churches of Christ who were more open to the public voice of women than their southern counterparts.  In particular, at least in the article below, Sommer is quite explicit about the “priviledge” of women to publicly read Scripture and exhort the congregation in their worship assemblies.  Southern congregations, particularly in the Tennessee Tradition of David Lipscomb and James A. Harding, opposed any public reading and exhortation of women in the assembly.  In this the northern conservatives, often more “right-wing” than the southerners, are more progressive (or biblical?) than the southerners. In fact, the Tennesee folk are one the “extremes” to which Sommer refers.

Daniel Sommer, “Woman’s Religious Duties and Privileges in Public,” Octographic Review 44.34 (20 August 1901) 1,

Extreme begets extremes in all departments of life, and at all angles of religious thought. As a result we are requested to write in regard to woman’s public religious duties and privileges.

What woman is divinely commanded to do is no doubt her duty regardless of what any human being may think or wish, approve or disapprove. That she is commanded to become a Christian just as publicly as the circumstances of her obedience may suggest is admitted by all who read the New Testament aright, also by many others. That woman is likewise commanded to worship publicly as a Christian is likewise admitted by all who think seriously on the subject. Thus we need not quote scripture on the subject, nor reason thereon in any measure or degree. Moreover, that it is the woman’s duty as a Christian to obey the scripture which says, ‘I suffer not a woman to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence,” (1 Tim. 2:12), is likewise admitted, as well as the reasons which Paul gives for such restrictions.

But what do these restrictions embrace? Here is the only question to be decided and this is not difficult if we be unbiased. Certainly they do not restrict women in regard to her worship, and thus she is not restricted in regard to communing, singing, and praying in public. Any reasoning which will prevent woman from praying in public will prevent her from communing and singing.

But may a woman who is a Christian in good standing arise in a congregation and publicly read in audible tones a portion of scripture without comment? The answer to this depends on whether reading is in the New Testament called teaching. In 1 Tim. 4:13 Paul says, “ Till I come give attendance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine.” The revised version gives the word “teaching” instead of “doctrine.” This ought to settle the question and enable all to understand that a woman may without comment read any part of the Bible publicly without thereby becoming a public teacher. But when a woman comments on scripture, applying and enforcing its meaning, she then and there becomes a public teacher and falls under condemnation of Paul’s restriction.

But may a woman teach a class in this meeting house without falling under condemnation? The question is troubling some congregations. Its answer depends on whether Paul’s restriction on women in regard to speaking did or did not refer to the public congregation when assembled. In 1 Cor. 14:34, 35 Paul says, “Let your women keep silence in the churches…For it is a shame for a woman to speak in the church.” The translation called “Living Oracles” gives us “congregations” and “congregation” in the foregoing scriptures, and this is correct. The “silence” which Paul enjoined on woman was therefore in the “congregation” when assembled, and in regard to teaching and authority. But teaching a class, especially a class of children, in a meeting house does not conflict with such restriction. Therefore, we conclude that it is woman’s privilege to teach a class in a meeting house.

Woman is the first divinely ordained teacher of children. She is made thus by nature, and God is the author of nature. Besides, Timothy’s mother and grandmother are honorably mentioned in connection with the mention that is made of the faith that was in him. (2 Tim. 1:5.)  Finally, aged women are required to be teachers of young women. (Titus 2:3-5.) Yet they must do such teaching in such manner and circumstances of Paul’s restriction. But that restriction simply forbids a woman being a teacher in the public congregation and forbids her usurping authority over the man. Up to this restriction woman may go; beyond this restriction she should not go.

But as exhortation and teaching are different the question arises, May a woman exhort in the public congregation? This question is sometimes asked, and should be answered. In response thereto we state that where Paul had “no command” of the Lord he simply gave his “judgment” as one that had “obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful.” (1 Cor. 7:25.) We do the same, and our “judgment” is that if a sister in good standing wishes to arise in a congregation and offer an exhortation it is her privilege to do so, but let her be careful not to become a teacher. She should simply exhort on the basis of what has been taught, or on what is generally understood in the assembly, and at all times, both publicly and privately, she should avoid usurping authority over man. This needs to be emphasized, especially in the United States, where woman is so highly praised that, in many instances, she forgets the word of God, and becomes a dictator.

But may not a woman lead a woman’s prayer meeting or even preside at the Lord’s table when no mean are present who are capable of so doing? Here again we have no command but our “judgment.” A woman’s prayer meeting is not the kind of “congregation” of which Paul was writing in 1 Cor. 14th chapter. It is not a public assembly. Neither should an assembly of women on the Lord’s day to break bread be thus regarded. Men—godly men—are divinely intended to be the public teachers, and regulators of established congregations, and the public preachers to build up congregations. But with these exceptions, women—godly women—are privileged, and, in most particulars, are duty bound, to be partakers with godly men in their religious work. Priscilla helped her husband to teach a preacher named Apollos the way of the Lord more fully (Acts 18:24-26), and they were among Paul’s “helpers in Christ Jesus.” Rom. 16:3. But this does not mean that Priscilla was a public teacher or a preacher. All that she is reported as having don could have been accomplished by her without one public speech.

The foregoing paragraphs are submitted to our readers, not as an exhaustive discussion, anticipating all possible objections of gainsayers, but as sufficient to indicate the public duties and privileges of godly woman [sic] in the public congregation.

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Posted by John Mark Hicks

R. C. Bell: A Lament Over A Theological Shift Among Churches of Christ

March 7, 2011

R. C. Bell (1877-1964) attended the Nashville Bible School from 1896-1901. James A. Harding took Bell with him as a faculty member at the newly founded Potter Bible College in 1901. Later Bell would teach at several different colleges among Churches of Christ and eventually ended up at Abilene Christian College as a beloved teacher.

In 1959, Bell was asked to give a lecture on “A Lifetime Spent in Christian Education” and he used the opportunity to lament the shift among Churches of Christ that distressed him. In his autobiographical article in the 1951 Firm Foundation he had warned that the church needed a new infusion of the kingdom theology of James A. Harding in order “to save [it] from chaning divine dynamics to human mechanics” (“Honor to Whom Honor is Due,” Firm Foundation 68 [6 November 1951], 6). Now, in his closing years, describes what is lacking among Churches of Christ in 1959.

Below is the whole speech, but I wanted to highlight what I think is the essence of his point with the following selection taken from different parts of the speech:

Especially, [Harding’s] soul-kindling faith in God as a personal Friend matched the wave length of my eager, hungry heart. I caught his contagious enthusiasm for God as a Father who personally identifies himself with each of His own, and for the Holy Spirit as a Comforter who personally resides in and empowers every Christian, slowly enough.  However, [his] conception of Christianity as “a divine-human encounter,” in which immediate spiritual communion between God and man is established and perpetually maintained, gradually, became also my conception of Christianity.

I also knew that in such vital matters as Christians being crucified to the world and the world’s being crucified to Christians (Gal. 6:14), and as Christians really believing with all their hearts that the Holy Spirit was working personally in them to help their infirmity, to pray unutterable prayers for them, and to make all things work together for their good (Rom. 8:26-28) so that they, ever mindful of the Lord’s presence, might be anxious about nothing, praying in everything, thankful in anything, and possess “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding” (Phil. 4:5-7), the primitive church was not being fully restored. In short, I knew that church of which I was a member was not identical in all things with the church of the New Testament.

With more and more lived faith, as the years passed and I myself increased in spiritual stature, I taught, first, that the personal presence and conjoint working of the “Three-personal God” (Father and Son and Spirit) in and through cooperating Christians is at the very heart of Christianity; and second that Christianity, primarily, consists, not in what Christians do for Christ, but in what Christ does for Christians.

When Christians fail to make use of the sanctifying portion of Christianity, as though it were an optional adjunct instead of the built-in essential which it is, they harden into harsh, unloving, unloved, self-sanctifying, unlawful legalists and defeated Pharisees, biting and devouring one another as the Galatians were doing (Gal. 5:13-15). A man’s unchristian self-effort to justify himself no more certainly leads to arrogant self-righteousness than does the same kind of effort to sanctify himself.

His emphasis on a personal (relational) dynamic is at the heart of what Bobby Valentine and I have called the “Tennessee Tradition.” He stresses what God does for us rather than what we do for God. He emphasizes a sanctification of life that is rooted in a divine-human encounter rather than located in a correct form. He hopes for a sanctified Christianity rather than an unloving legalism.

I believe Bell laments the shift among Churches of Christ from the Tennessee themes of his young adulthood to the Texas themes of his old age. Something, he feels, was lost. It was present in his mentor Harding and in the early institutions of the century (Nashville Bible School and Potter Bible College). He fears, however, it might be lost now. or at least marginalized.

Read his speech and feel his pain but also recognize his deep relationship with God and fervent faith in the God who can work redemption in our hearts and in/through our churches.

The following text was scanned and edited by Bobby Valentine, my good friend and co-author. I thank him for sharing it with me and now with you. The text is from Things that Endure: Third Annual Lectureship, Lubbock Christian College (Jackson, TN: Nichols Brothers, 1960).

“A LIFETIME SPENT IN CHRISTIAN EDUCATION”

 R. C. BELL

 At the age of eighteen years, three years after becoming a Christian, I enrolled as a student in the Nashville Bible School, Nashville, Tennessee, in 1896. That School grew directly into David Lipscomb College, and less directly into a score of other colleges, several of which, though now dead as colleges, yet speak.

 As an example of this deathless life of Christian education, the Shorts, the Scotts, the Merritts, the Reeses, and the Lawyers, most of whom have become two-generation families of missionaries in Africa, received the inspiration for their life-work in Western Bible and Literary College, Odessa, Missouri, and in Cordell Christian College, Cordell, Oklahoma, two schools that ceased to function as schools years ago. Then, think of the good in the world today that has its roots in Thorp Spring Christian College of our own state before her doors were closed.

 Under the teaching and daily influence of such men as David Lipscomb, James A. Harding and J. N. Armstrong, dedicated men serving God as school teachers, I soon began to see that Paul’s characterization of some who would hold a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof described me. Especially, Brother Harding’s soul-kindling faith in God as a personal Friend matched the wave length of my eager, hungry heart. I caught his contagious enthusiasm for God as a Father who personally identifies himself with each of His own, and for the Holy Spirit as a Comforter who personally resides in and empowers every Christian, slowly enough.  However, Brother Harding’s conception of Christianity as “A divine-human encounter,” in which immediate spiritual communion between God and man is established and [p. 105] perpetually maintained, gradually, became also my conception of Christianity. I shall ever be thankful unto the Sovereign Master of the mysterious sea of life for launching my life before the earthly voyage of this Man of God was over.

 This fuller understanding of Christianity changed the axis of my life and turned my world upside down. The revolution in my life with its new scale of values was similar, except that I had nothing to lose, to the revolution that Paul’s becoming a Christian made in his life. After naming seven fleshly things of which Jews were exceedingly proud, Paul declares that he no longer has “Confidence in the flesh,” but considers the things which were once all-important to him to be gainfully exchanged for Christ, for whom he suffers the loss of all things and counts them but refuse (Phil. 3:5-8). That Paul’s and Harding’s interpretation of Christianity, which I have up to my measure labored over a lifetime to impart to students, would have ever been mine, had I not attended the Nashville Bible School, is doubtful.  In any event that is where my revolution occurred.

 That the Gospel which Paul and Harding preached and practiced does so revolutionize lives was demonstrated in a family I knew sixty years ago. When the time came for the third son in that family, whose two older brothers had attended the Nashville Bible School, to go to college, his father, an “elder” in his congregation, said that, since Brother Harding had already ruined two of his boys, he wanted the third boy to go to another college.

 While I was at the Nashville school, the idea of teaching the Bible in such a school, in the Providence of God, as a life work grew steadily upon me. As I did not know, then, so well as I know, that I was better fitted by nature for this type of work than for exclusively preaching, the final decision did not come easily. All the while, I was praying God to guide my thinking, feeling and deciding, and I have never doubted that He did so. Consequently, when Brother Harding started another college at Bowling Green, Kentucky, named Potter Bible College, and asked me to become a member of [p.106] his faculty, I took his invitation as God’s opening a door for me. Religiously and gratefully therefore, I began in this manner a lifetime spent in Christian education in 1901 to continue until my retirement from the faculty of Abilene Christian College in 1951 – an even half century.

 I entered upon this work with the twofold conviction that the movement to restore Primitive Christianity was not fully materializing: first, because Christ was not being exalted to the position of solitary pre-eminence and dominant centrality as life-giving, all-pervading personal Savior that He occupied in His church when it was first inaugurated; and, second, His church, inasmuch as the Flesh and the Spirit “Are contrary the one to the other,” needed less Flesh and more Spirit – that is, less man and more God. May I add candidly and modestly that I began this work in the hope of helping to make the church of the twentieth century more like the church of the first century.

 Of course I knew that in such essential matters as there being but one church, as baptism being for the remission of sins, and as singing being the only music, the primitive church was being restored. But I also knew that in such vital matters as Christians being crucified to the world and the world’s being crucified to Christians (Gal. 6:14), and as Christians’ really believing with all their hearts that the Holy Spirit was working personally in them to help their infirmity, to pray unutterable prayers for them, and to make all things work together for their good (Rom. 8:26-28) so that they, ever mindful of the Lord’s presence, might be anxious about nothing, praying in everything, thankful in anything, and possess “The peace of God, which passeth all understanding” (Phil. 4:5-7), the primitive church was not being fully restored. In short, I knew that church of which I was a member was not identical in all things with the church of the New Testament.

 With more and more live faith, as the years passed and I myself increased in spiritual stature, I taught, first, that the personal presence and conjoint working of the “Three-personal God” (Father and Son and Spirit) in and through cooperat- [p.107] ing Christians is at the very heart of Christianity; and second that Christianity, primarily, consists, not in what Christians do for Christ, but in what Christ does for Christians. What Christ with divine insight and foresight, and with anxious heart, said to correct the misplaced joy of the Seventy when they returned to Him rejoicing that the demons were subject unto them, namely, “Rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you; but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20), continually became deeper and richer in meaning to me. Without this cardinal Christian truth which Christ impressed upon the Seventy, Christianity cannot properly function and fulfill itself. Christians, know that only Christ can write their names in heaven and that they can do nothing apart from Him so as to deserve credit for themselves, choose to let Him live in them to express Himself by doing Christian things in and through their surrendered personalities and bodies (Gal. 2:20).

 Across the years of my teaching in our Christian colleges, thousands of young people of the onrushing, swelling stream of humanity, often from two, sometimes from three, generations of the same family, still in the susceptible time of life, passed through my classes. As a teacher can never tell in which students the seed he scatters will “Spring up and grow, he knoweth not how,” I considered everyone one of these students, without respect of persons, a seedbed entrusted by parents and God to my sowing. A Christian teacher sows the word of God in hope, wherever, he may, both morning and evening, for he knoweth not “Whether this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good.”

Of course some of the seed I sowed fell by the wayside, some on rocky ground, some among thorns, some upon “Good ground, and yielded fruit, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” These good-ground hearers, a goodly number as pioneers in remote lands among strange peoples, many more, very many more, as evangelists, located preachers, elders, deacons, teachers of classes, business men, professional men, and all the rest, certainly including the self-effacing, godly women [p. 108] – unmarried, wives, mothers—are all, according to their respective personalities, talents, circumstances, and fidelity, wells of living “Water springing up unto eternal life.” Probably, this host of Christian men and women now scattered over the face of the earth, during our close associations as students and teacher, helped me more than I helped them. With what ecstasy, we shall at last bring in our ever increasing harvest of souls to become a part of the “Great multitude, which no man can number, out of every nation and of all tribes, peoples and tongues!”

 If students seemed but little interested sometimes in what I was trying to teach them, and apparently were not getting much into the heart of things, I was encouraged and strengthened to continue the teaching, kindly, patiently, hopefully, when I recalled that I subconsciously received good seed into my soul in Nashville that brought forth Christian fruit in future years. Yea, that seed is even now “Living and active … and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.” Many times have I with joy seen this experience of mine repeated in my students, a fact to which they freely testify.

 For just about half of the time I have spent in our colleges, I received no regular salary. Throughout the first eighteen years, and during some years since, my income was meager—even insufficient to meet the necessary expenses of my family. But this income, supplemented by what I received for preaching appointments on Sundays and evangelistic meetings during summer vacations, was ever a competency. We could have scarcely known this competency, however, had not my wife been a frugal, self-sacrificing homemaker and help meet in all things. She and I were happy classmates under Brother Harding his last year at Nashville, and, knowing the economic situation involved, planned our lifework together that year. Never has a husband and father had more unselfish help and encouragement from his wife and children to give himself wholly to his work than I have had. Mrs. Bell and I together share the esteem of former students and other friends, and together we hope to share Christ’s reward through all eternity.

 [p.109] As the subject the committee assigned me, “A Lifetime Spent in Christian Education,” does not exclude the years of my retirement, I wish to say, a few words about this period.  God, I believe, closed my classroom door eight years ago, and as He is not to be limited to miracles in religion any more than He is in nature, opened, superhumanly but without miracle, another door to me. I beg you, brethren, to feel brotherly toward me when I tell you that I have wondered whether there is not another analogy between God’s giving retirement to Paul in prison that he might write his elevated “Prison Epistles” and His giving me retirement that I might try to teach these same four Epistles through the Press.  Men who know God expect Him to do such things. Asked Mordecai of Esther, who had become queen of Persia by “good luck” as men say, in a national crises when only her perilous, dauntless deed could save the Jews from destruction, “Who knoweth whether thou art not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Est. 4:14).

When the late, beloved G.H.P. Showalter, Editor of the Firm Foundation, whom I had written that I had time and disposition to write some for his paper, kindly encouraged my writing, I began “Studies” in some of the Books of the New Testament, which I had been teaching for many years in college. After Brother Lemmons became Editor of the magazine, he graciously continued to publish my “Studies,” and continues to do so even until now. These “Studies,” since being printed in the Firm Foundation as separate articles, have been collected and published by the Firm Foundation Publishing House as booklets, or in the case of Romans as a book. I am truly grateful to these two good men for enabling me to continue my lifetime business of teaching God’s word. With this writing, two weekly Bible classes which I have continued to teach in the College Church, and other duties, I have been busy and happy.

 “Let one more attest

I have lived, seen God’s hand through a lifetime,

And all was for best.”

 Now, may a veteran make some suggestions for Christians [p. 110] in general by calling attention to some constitutionally Christian truths. When God purposed and wrought to redeem the sin-unk world, He was too wise and too good an Economist to include anything the vast Enterprise did not need. His work is never either deficient or redundant. It takes all of Christianity as God made it, therefore to justify, to sanctify, to spiritualize and to glorify Satanically deluded and deflowered humanity. As it takes the blood of God’s Son to justify men by washing away their sins, even so it takes the power of God’s Spirit to continue the redemptive work by sanctifying those who have been justified so that they may not continue to sin. To break the stranglehold of sin from Adam onward (Rom. 7:17-24), to lead upward out of the power and practice of sin unto the lofty “Sanctification of the Spirit” (2 Thes. 2:13), “Without which no man shall see the Lord” (Heb 2:14) as far transcends the utmost human reach as does to justify alien sinners by remitting the guilt and the penalty of their sins to begin with. Sanctification and holiness are by grace in the same way that justification and pardon are by grace. It matters not where men start in to save themselves by law, they “Make void the grace of God.” Indeed, Christianity all the way, from its beginning on earth unto heaven is all by grace. To add the principle of law with its inevitable meritorious works anywhere along the way implies that, inasmuch as men can save themselves, “Christ died for nought” (Gal. 2:21).

 When Christians fail to make use of the sanctifying portion of Christianity, as though it were an optional adjunct instead of the built-in essential which it is, they harden into harsh, unloving, unloved, self-sanctifying, unlawful legalists and defeated Pharisees, biting and devouring one another as the Galatians were doing (Gal. 5:13-15). A man’s unchristian self-effort to justify himself no more certainly leads to arrogant self-righteousness than does the same kind of effort to sanctify himself.

 But when Christians repent deeply enough to lose all “Confidence in the flesh,” to renounce all unchristian self- [p. 111] help, and in profound contrition to make use of all of Christianity, they grow into loving, compassionate, lawful, gracious, spiritual, Christian men and women. Because “Love is the fulfilling of the law” (Rom. 13:10), Christianity is God’s perfect way of making mature, lawful men. Behold, God as amazingly proficient Philosopher, Metaphysician, Psychologist and Psychiatrist!

 Does not Christ teach in His story of the “Good Samaritan” that zealots of law have no “compassion”? Can men without compassion have the mind of Christ, or of Paul? The best demonstration of how these respective religions of Law and of Grace work out in life is the hard, touch, cruel, cold-blooded Saul under law becoming the compassionate, gracious, gentle, warmhearted Paul under grace—the last bit of legal ice melted into tears, and as emotionally saturated and tender as a  good woman.

 Finally, my brethren, to give disproportionate importance to what we are doing for Christ as compared to what He is doing for us, thereby upsetting the inherent relationship between the divine and the human elements of Christianity, is, I fear, a more common and deadly perversion of the Gospel than we realize. There was the perversion that Christ corrected in the Seventy, and that Paul, knowing that in effect it made Christianity just another legal religion in which Christians try to earn merit and security before God by directly obeying law in their own natural strength, wrote the book of Galatians, with its stern warning against falling “Away from grace” (Gal. 5:4) to crush. This basic distortion of God’s Christianity, with its powerful, bewitching appeal to human pride and self-sufficiency, was departure enough from the Christian religion of grace and life toward the obsolete Mosaic religion of law and death to alarm Paul to his depths. And this enticing heresy, in modern dress, can just as subtly and effectually corrupt the only Christ-centered religion on earth today, with the power to forgiven sins and make men holy, into another of the countless, man-centered religions too “weak and beggarly” to take away sins, as it effected this corruption in its ancient [p. 112] Galatian dress. Here lurks an exceedingly insidious danger for any Christian, anywhere, anytime.

 Not until we cease trying to sanctify ourselves by misguided self-help, can we ever attain unto the “Sanctification of the Spirit.” Paul says that he had to die to law as a means of salvation before God could save him by grace (Gal. 2:19). Sanctification by legally meritorious works and moral character, and sanctification by Gospel grace and forgiveness are mutually exclusive—they simply will not mix. We must make our choice between the two, but the choice of either annuls the other. “But if it is by grace, it is no more of works: otherwise it is no more of grace” (Rom. 11:6). God made Christianity to work in this way, and it will not work in any other way. 

 Only God knows how much of the fleshliness, lukewarmness [sic], and lack of “Righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17), with their accompanying discouragement, fear of missing heaven at last, backsliding and despair among us today comes from our vain striving to do that which God never intended we should attempt to do in our own sin-corroded, disabled nature. Our very nature is against us; we must be born again of the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his” (Rom. 8:8,9).  When we, believing that “The things which are impossible with men are possible with God,” cooperate with God by freely using His freely given superhuman love, wisdom, and power, we shall be contributing to the restoration of Primitive Christianity.”

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Posted by John Mark Hicks

Rebaptism and the Division of the McGregor, Texas, Church (1897)

November 22, 2010

The story of the division of “The Christian Church of McGregor” in McGregor, Texas, near Waco, is of particular significance for several reasons. Organized on August 25, 1883, it divided on September 23, 1897. The division resulted in two groups: “The First Christian Church of McGregor” and “the Church of Christ” (the capital letters are conservatives own self-designation). The conservatives changed the locks on the building and prevented progressives from meeting in it. The progressives filed suit which was ultimately decided in favor of the progressives by the Supreme Court of Texas. This is a division initiated by the conservatives. The story is told in W. K. Homan’s The Church on Trial or the Old Faith Vindicated (1900) which contains court transcripts.  You can read the court decision here.

But, historically and theologically, the most interesting aspect of the division was the prominence of the rebaptism issue. G. A. Trott (1855-1930), who would later become one of the editors of the Firm Foundation in the first decade of the 20th century and then one of the founders of the The Apostolic Way (1913) which promoted the non-class viewpoint, played a prominent role in the division and the court case. Trott was one of three who secured the building with new locks. Trott, who was the preacher for the church, had only come to the city eighteen months prior and had been appointed an elder of the “The Christian Church of McGregor” without a congregational vote (Homan, pp. 51, 93-94).

The rebaptism question, whether one must believe that baptism is for salvation (“for the remission of sins”) in order to be scripturally baptized, was one of the significant issues in the division and in the court trial. Some were refusing to admit into membership those who had been previously immersed on faith in Christ. Elder R. M. Peace stated at the trial that “if one should present himself for membership in the church of which I am an elder, stating that he believed baptism to be because of the remission of sins, and not for an in order to the remission of sins, I would not regard him as a Christian” (Homan, p. 52). Peace explained that they “would receive persons baptized by preachers of other religious bodies, if they had been immersed for the remission of sins—that is, if they believed at the time of their baptism that baptism was for the remission of sins.” And though his lawyers were Baptists, Peace further remarked that “We do not recognize Baptists as Christians” (Homan, p. 50).

What becomes obvious in this trial is that the rebaptism issue was applied as a test of fellowship by Trott and others. Under cross-examination, Trott made this very clear as the extended quote below demonstrates (Homan, pp. 54-55).

I belong to the Church of Christ. I do not belong to the Christian Church…I would not hold membership in a church were such things are practiced music, missionary societies, conventions, etc. I regard all who engage in such things as in sin. I agree with what is called the Firm Foundation faction…..It is the view of those called the Firm Foundation faction that no one has been scripturally baptized unless he understood at the time of his baptism that baptism is for, that is in order to, the remission of sins. They do not regard as Christians those who did not so understand and believe at the time of their baptism…I do not regard Baptists, Methodists or Presbyterians as Christians, because they have not been immersed for the remission of sins—that is, with the understanding on their part that baptism is for the remission of sins. Should I find persons holding membership in the church who did not believe at the time of their baptism that baptism is for the remission of sins, I would insist upon withdrawing from them—that is, excluding them from the church. It is a fact that I found three such persons in the church at Rising Star, Texas, where I preached, and I advised the church to exclude them, and they were excluded on the sole ground that at the time of their baptism they did not believe that baptism is for the remission of sins.

Trott locked the doors of the building against the progressives partly because they would admit people to the church whom he did not believe were Christians and partly because they supported a visiting Christian Church evangelist, B. B. Sanders, in a recent revival. Up to that point, the church had not used the organ or participated as a corporate body in the conventions and societies, though some members did as individuals (for which they were rebuked but not excluded). The court case was largely argued in reference to the rebaptism question, though other issues were present and the practice of the “innovations” quickly emerged after the division of the church into two groups.

Historically, this points to the intense convictions held by some on the rebaptism question and their divisive—even sectarian—nature. Were David Lipscomb and Trott to serve the same congregation as elders, the church would divide because Lipscomb would admit those immersed upon faith in Jesus whereas Trott could not hold membership in a congregation that did such.

Rebaptism was a fellowship issue in the divisive discussions between what became the Churches of Christ and the Disciples of Christ or Christian Church in Texas. It was not a divisive issue between those two groups in Tennessee.

17 Comments | Stone-Campbell | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by John Mark Hicks

Privilege or Silence: Women in Churches of Christ (1897-1907) V

September 17, 2009

This is my last post on the historical situation of women in the assemblies of Churches of Christ from 1897 to 1907.  You may access the whole series from my serial page.

The Texas Tradition

While the mid and deep South seemed united in the Tennessee perspective, Texas reflected some considerable diversity, even among conservatives who opposed “digression.” J. W. Chism—a leader in the Texas Tradition throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Foy E. Wallace, Jr. as well as R. L. Whiteside were two of his pallbearers at his 1935 funeral)—contended, for example, that “Paul expressly” approved audible female participation in the assembly through prayer and prophesy in 1 Corinthians 11. While a woman may not “take the field as an evangelist, nor any other work of authority,” she may “in a subordinate place…sing, pray and prophesy, and that, too, in the assembly” (FF, 1897, 3).  Chism challenged the Gospel Advocate on the question. He interpreted 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 as a prohibition against disruptive women who interrupted the assembly with their questions. Women, husband permitting, are “at liberty to speak or instruct in the assembly” (GA, 1903, 450).

Another leader in the Texas Tradition, the co-author of the series of books entitled Sound Doctrine with R. L. Whiteside, was C. R. Nichol.  His book God’s Woman created quite a stir in 1938.  Though outside the time frame of this series, C. R. Nichol is an especially important representative of the Texas Tradition. Like Chism, he believed that 1 Corinthians 14 only prohibited those who interrupted prophets with their interrogatories (p. 137) and women did audibly pray and prophesy in the public assembly with covered heads in Corinth (p. 124).  In fact, Nichol explicitly rejects “publicity” as the key hermeneutical criterion since there is no prohibition against the female voice “on the ground that it is public” (p. 123; cf. p. 149). Nichol’s position was consistent with Daniel Sommer’s, including the promotion of deaconnesses (pp. 159-166) and female Bible class teachers even when men are present (pp. 153-54). Despite his stellar reputation among conservatives, he was attacked by both John T. Lewis (Tennessean) and Foy E. Wallace, Jr. (Texan) for these views.

Another interesting window into the Texas Tradition comes through the public disagreemnt between Joe S. Warlick and his wife, Lucy, in the Gospel Guide which Grasham highlighted in his 1999 article “The Role of Women in the American Restoration Movement” (Restoration Quarterly 41.4 [1999] 211-240, esp. 223-225). Though outside the dates for this series, their discussion in 1920 was symptomatic of a continuing move to exclude the female voice in the assembly from the Texas Tradition (and Churches of Christ as a whole). While Mr. Warlick contended that women should be silent in the assemblies, Mrs. Warlick believed women should be permitted to speak to men for “edification, exhortation and comfort” just as women prophesied in the Corinthian assembly. Though Mr. Warlick in 1927 adopted his wife’s position that a woman may speak in “her naturally modest way in any assembly of the saints where rule and authority are not to be administered,” he still contented that leading “public prayer” was not her privilege.  “I have never heard a Christian woman lead a public prayer,” he wrote, “and I hope I never shall.”

One eighty year old father in the faith, William Wise, pleaded for the continued practice of women praying: “I would go farther to hear a devoted sister pray than I would to hear a hired preacher or digressive preacher preach” (FF, 1904, 3). He defended his position with 1 Timothy 2:8-10 where the phrase “in like manner” includes, according to Wise, women in the praying described.

But this was far from unanimous among Texas conservatives (George, FF,1897, 1), and even some, like the editor of the Firm Foundation, objected to appointed deaconesses (Savage, FF, 1903, 4). While Texas as a whole ultimately came to similar conclusions as the Tennessee Tradition regarding female participation in the assembly, the Texas situation was complex than Tennessee and Indiana. It was fluid rather than stable. The Texas Tradition finally closed ranks with the Tennesse Tradition, and the more conservative and now traditional (silence in the assembly except for singing and baptismal confessions) position became the norm in Churches of Christ in the mid-20th century.

Conclusion

The Tennessee Tradition was radically and deeply shaped by the “Cult of True Womanhood” that reigned in the deep South many years past the Civil War. This cultural atmosphere influenced how they read the Bible. It was their fundamental cultural assumption about female inferiority (e.g., will power) that grounded their understanding of male leadership. It seems that this cultural undercurrent did not allow—it was not within their worldview—alternative understandings of the two restrictive texts in the New Testament to get a hearing. The deep cultural mold in which the Tennessee Tradition was forged on the “woman question” was as at least as substantial as any cultural phenomenon that the heirs of this perspective insist inspire contemporary discussions. The “Cult of True Womanhood” in the late 19th century shaped the perspective of Tennessee Tradition as deeply and as radically as any “Feminist” cultural agenda shaped gender debates in the late 20th century. Of course, the truth is that we are all, both past and present interpreters of Scripture, deeply impacted by our cultural context. The value of looking back into this interpretative history is to remind us that they were as culturally situated as we are. This ought to engender humility.

The Tennessee Tradition ultimately won the day, even though it moderated its assault on women in society so that one hears little opposition to female doctors, lawyers and CEOs today. In essence, and quite effectively, the Tennessee Tradition silenced the female voice in the public assemblies of Churches of Christ. Sharing a similar legal hermeneutic that stressed decontextualized positive injunctions/prohibitions and a similar fundamentalist idealization of domesticity, the Texas and Tennessee Traditions converged in the 1910s-1940s on a common front to exclude the female voice from the assembly except for singing and baptismal confessions of faith.  The openness that characterized the northern Sommer-influenced congregations died the death of marginalization as the Southern Churches of Christ overwhelmed them in number, influence and institutional power. Sommer’s position, though largely forgotten except by a few historians, has been unwittingly renewed in some quarters of Churches of Christ in the late 20th century as a via media between the traditional and egalitarian positions.

References

J. W. Chism, “The Church of God—Her Purposes and How Accomplished—The Woman in the Assembly,” Firm Foundation 13 (7 September 1897) 3.

A. M. George, “That Vexed Question,” Firm Foundation 13 (21 September 1897) 1.

John T. Lewis, “There is Death in the Pot,” Bible Banner 1 (July 1939) 12.

George Savage, “Deaconesses,” Firm Foundation 19 (27 October 1903) 4.

Foy E. Wallace, Jr., “God’s Women Gather,” Bible Banner 2 (November 1939) 15.

Mrs. Joe S. (Lucy) Warlick, “May Women Teach? When? Where?” Gospel Guide 8 (August 1923) 2.

Mrs. Joe S. (Lucy) Warlick, “The Things ‘In Part’ Considered and the Restriction upon Women,” Gospel Guide 11 (May 1926) 3.

Joe S. Warlick, “Editorial,” Gospel Guide 12 (May 1927) 4.

Joe S. Warlick, “Let Your Women Keep Silent in the Churches,” Gospel Guide 5 (August 1920) 2.

William Wise, “Woman’s Work in the  Church,” Firm Foundation 20 (3 May 1904) 3.

28 Comments | Stone-Campbell | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by John Mark Hicks

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