[pg 326]
CHAPTER XXI.—Controversies and Peace.
Calvin Campbell, ordained in 1790, slowly rose to first place among all the preachers of Kentucky. His popularity was deserved. He was not only a great preacher, but a scholar, a patriot, and a modest, winsome and most unselfish Christian worker. His zeal was not smothered by a clammy conservatism and his work was of the highest order; though his hearers occasionally gave sensational physical manifestations of their conversion, there was nothing sensational about his preaching.
For the decade beginning with the Great Awakening in 1800, religious growth of all denominations in Kentucky had been phenomenal, exceeding a thousand per cent.
Churches having large congregations were organized and no ministers were available to preach to them. This was especially true of the Presbyterian Church, grown strong in a land suffering from a dearth of schools and colleges—a church which under its rules of government could only license and ordain for service candidates having classical and theological training. In Kentucky, as elsewhere, the growth of the kingdom does not wait for a preacher to be educated to grammatically enunciate the gospel of Christ.
The greatest growth from these revivals had been in the Cumberland country—a section taking this name because it embraced the Cumberland River valley in Kentucky and Tennessee, and which subsequently gave [pg 327] name to the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. The cause of its severance from the Presbyterian Church is not without interest.
Father Rice, the patriarch of Presbyterianism in Kentucky, visiting the Green River and Cumberland country, saw the need of preachers and, knowing of no other way to meet it, suggested to the Cumberland and Green River Presbyteries that they select pious and promising young men from their churches and prepare them for the ministry, saying: “You understand they should be trained to meet the requirements of the church rules, but the harvest is going to waste; there is no other way to save it, and such training is beyond our reach.”
This suggestion was adopted, and several young men, after a primitive theological course, were advanced to the ministry.
This was the beginning of a great controversy between the liberal preachers and those ministers who were sticklers for the old ecclesiastical order. The sticklers not only found fault with this method of supplying the demand, but criticised the revivals and their attendant demonstrations. There was also between the liberals and the conservatives some divergences in doctrinal belief centered upon that portion of the confession of faith and the catechism which it was claimed taught the doctrine of fatalism.
These divergences, protracted through several years, grew with time, until finally they became so serious that the Synod of Kentucky appointed a commission to meet at Gasper River Meeting House and endeavor to adjust them. The attempt failed, the controversy seemed unending. To end it, these two presbyteries were dissolved by order of the Synod, but they still continued to advance [pg 328] to the ministry men not up to the educational standard of the church, nor in accord with the doctrine of predestination. This was very offensive to the conservative membership and ministry of the church, while the liberal or revival party, deeming themselves oppressed and wronged argued: “There is no other way to supply our churches with preachers. Your doctrine of predestination is the fatalism of the ancients.”