John Mark Hicks

James A. Harding, the namesake of Harding University and co-founder of Lipscomb University, placed as much emphasis on giving, tithing and trusting in God’s provisioin as he did any other topic.  The sin of covetousness is idolatry and it “hurts the church more than any other,” he wrote.  We hate the extreme, but we tolerate […]

John T. Lewis (1876-1967), a 1906 graduate of the Nashville Bible School and largely responsible for church planting in Birmingham, Alabama, in the first half of the 20th century, penned an interesting tract in 1952 entitled “The Lord’s Supper and the Lord’s Day.” It reflects on the correlation of the Lord’s Supper and the Lord’s […]

On September 30, 1915 A. B. Lipscomb, the editor of the Gospel Advocate, published a special issue on the Lord’s Supper. These articles, with various additions, were printed as a pamphlet by the Gospel Advocate Company five times from 1917 to 1972. As a guide to the meaning and celebration of the Lord’s Supper, including […]

We all live with multiple and varied calendars. My work life is regulated by an academic calendar—a schedule of convocations, breaks, exams and class schedules. My national life is regulated by a federal calendar that has declared certain days as “holidays”: Martin Luther King’s birthday, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veteran’s Day, […]

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 […]

  Last January I began a series surveying the privilege of women to speak or their restricted silence within assemblies of Churches of Christ from 1897 to 1907.  I never completed the series because Discipliana (the journal of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society) was interested in publishing an article on the topic.  That article […]

When we think that “rebaptism” issues were only debated within Churches of Christ, perhaps we need to see things more broadly (e.g., Southern Baptists rebaptize) and historically (can you say “Donatist“?). A blogpost entitled “Southern Baptists and Alien Immersion” was linked to my last post and it drew my interest. It illustrates that while there […]

Just as Zurich (“Zwinglianism”) and Geneva (“Calvinianism”) found sacramental common ground in the Consensus Tigurinus, my paper at the 2009 Christian Scholar’s Conference explored whether such a rapprochement is possible between Southern Baptists and Churches of Christ who, in many ways, are the credobaptistic heirs of Zurich and Geneva. Since there is presently a renewed discussion among […]

When the division between Churches of Christ and the Christian Churches was recognized by the religious census of 1906, the theological perspectives among the Churches of Christ were fairly diverse. While there was an ecclesiological consensus to separate from the Christian Churches, there was considerable diversity between the three major representative “traditions” among Churches of […]

Continuing my reading of Lipscomb in the first decades of the 20th century, I have lifted a few more what I regard as illuminating comments by the 80 year old editor of the Gospel Advocate. Publish Both Sides for Free Discussion. Lipscomb believed that fair, thorough and open discussion of a biblical issue was the […]