An American Religious Movement : A Brief History of the Disciples of Christ

by Winfred Ernest Garrison

The Brush Run Church

Alexander Campbell, newly arrived on the scene of this nascent reformation, immediately settled down to a strenuous course of private study—Bible, Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and church history. He preached his first sermon on July 15, 1810, in a private house. He had no license to preach and he was a member of no church, for he had left his Presbyterianism in Scotland, and the Christian Association of Washington was not yet a church. He preached a hundred times during the next twelve months.

After Thomas Campbell had applied for admission to the regular (not Seceder) Presbyterian Synod of Pittsburgh, and had been rejected, the Christian Association of Washington constituted itself a church, on May 4, 1811. This became the first church among Disciples of Christ in the Campbell strain of their lineage. The new church chose Thomas Campbell as elder, elected four deacons, and licensed Alexander Campbell to preach. It observed the Lord’s Supper the next day, and thereafter every Lord’s day. A simple building was erected—the Brush Run Church—and the first service was held in it on June 16, 1811. Alexander Campbell was ordained on the first day of the next January.

The subject of baptism had not yet been seriously considered. Some members of the group, and some of its critics, doubted whether the principles of the Declaration and Address were consistent with infant baptism and sprinkling. Thomas Campbell was not disturbed about it. Stating his views to the Synod of Pittsburgh, he had said that infant baptism is not a command of Christ, hence not a condition of membership in the church, but that it is a matter of forbearance. Three members of the Brush Run Church, soon after its organization, refused to commune because they had not been baptized. These had not even been sprinkled, yet they had been admitted to membership. “Forbearance” had extended so far. At their urgent request, Thomas Campbell immersed them—somewhat reluctantly, it may be surmised, for he did it without going into the water himself. At that time Alexander Campbell said: “As I am sure it is unscriptural to make this matter [baptism] a term of communion, I let it slip. I wish to think and let think on these matters.”

Almost a year later, the birth of his first child forced the question of infant baptism upon his attention and drove him to a study of the whole subject. The result was the conviction that the sprinkling of infants was not baptism within the meaning of the New Testament. On June 12, 1812, Thomas and Alexander Campbell, their wives, and three other members of the church were immersed in Buffalo Creek by a Baptist preacher, on a simple confession of faith in Christ. Most of the members of the Brush Run Church soon followed this example. Those who did not, withdrew.

The adoption of immersion in this way, as the unvarying practice of the church and therefore as an item in the proposed platform for the union of all churches, radically changed the program of the movement. It had begun with the idea that the churches were divided by human opinions that had been added to a perfectly adequate common core of revealed truth and duty which all accepted. But now the Reformers could no longer say, as Thomas Campbell had said, that all the churches “are agreed in the great doctrines of faith and holiness and as to the positive ordinances of the Gospel institution.” To achieve union no longer required only persuading the churches to unite upon something that they already held. Now, it became necessary to persuade them also to accept one “positive ordinance” which only the Baptists believed to be commanded in the New Testament.

But if the adoption of immersion erected a barrier between the Reformers and the other churches, it brought them closer to the Baptists. In the autumn of 1813 the Brush Run Church applied for admission to the Redstone Baptist Association, at the same time submitting a full written statement of its position, including its protest against creeds. The application was accepted, over the protest of some of the Baptist ministers. For the next seventeen years, the Reformers were, as Walter Scott said, “in the bosom of the Regular Baptist churches.” But they did not lose their sense of mission or merge indistinguishably in the Baptist denomination.

CHAPTER VI
WITH THE BAPTISTS, 1813-30

After the Brush Run Church had joined the Redstone Baptist Association, Alexander Campbell began to preach more widely among the Baptist churches of the region. Thomas Campbell, who was more occupied with teaching than with preaching, rather rapidly dropped out of his position of leadership, which was taken over by his son. Alexander had married the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, and his father-in-law had deeded to him the farm which was to be the nucleus of his large Bethany estate, part of which became the campus of Bethany College thirty years later. Even at the age of twenty-five he enjoyed economic security and was well on the way toward becoming a substantial citizen.

At a meeting of the Redstone Baptist Association in August, 1816, Alexander Campbell preached his famous “Sermon on the Law.” There seems to have been some scheming to keep him off the program, and he was called in only at the last moment to fill a vacancy. But the content of the sermon, if not its form, had evidently been the subject of long and careful study. The central point of it was that the Christian system is not a continuation of the Jewish regime but is based on a new covenant which, though prepared for and prophesied in the religion of the Old Testament, is a radically new thing. Therefore, he said, no arguments can be drawn from the Old Testament about the nature or form of Christian institutions. The law of the Sabbath has nothing to do with the observance of the first day of the week; baptism cannot be understood by considering it as taking the place of circumcision; paying tithes and keeping fasts are no part of a Christian’s duty; and any alliance between church and state, as in the old covenant of God with the Hebrews, is alien to the spirit and nature of Christianity.

Some of these conclusions—especially separation of church and state and the denial of any analogy between baptism and circumcision—were pleasing to the Baptist audience. But the basis of the argument, the complete abrogation of the Old Testament law, seemed to many a dangerous doctrine. The preachers who heard the sermon went out to spread among the churches their fears that this bold and brilliant young man might be a disturber of Baptist usage. Thereafter he “itinerated less” among the Baptist churches and confined his labors to “three or four little communities constituted on the Bible, one in Ohio, one in Virginia and two in Pennsylvania.” But he also made one or two preaching trips a year among the regular Baptists. He opened in 1818, and conducted for four years, a boarding school for boys, especially with a view to finding and training candidates for the ministry.