From all these circumstances there arose a vigorous campaign of criticism against all the agencies that seemed implicated in this liberal tendency. The attack upon Transylvania University and the College of the Bible, long a citadel of orthodoxy but now manned by younger men of university training, was spearheaded by the Bible College League in 1916. It failed to accomplish its purpose. The “Medbury resolution,” passed by the 1918 convention, demanded that the Foreign Society forbid the reception of unimmersed persons into mission churches in China. An explanation by Frank Garrett that what looked from a distance like open membership in China was really not that, because the mission communities were not fully organized churches, brought the repeal of the Medbury resolution.
But criticism was only checked, not silenced. The “restorationists” organized the New Testament Tract Society to spread “sound doctrine.” The Board of Managers of the new United Society adopted an affirmation of allegiance to the “historic position” of the Disciples, including immersion, signed it themselves, and required all missionaries to sign it. The 1922 convention adopted the “Sweeney resolution,” which approved this action and put teeth into it. A “peace committee,” in 1924, failed to agree, and the Christian Standard led in organizing the Christian Restoration Association and began to publish the Restoration Herald. The Oklahoma City convention of 1925 adopted a resolution by which it ordered the recall of any missionary who “has committed himself to belief in the reception of unimmersed persons into church membership,” and voted to send a commission to the Orient to find the facts. The commission reported that it found no open membership in China, and the Board of Managers officially interpreted the Oklahoma City resolution as “not intended to invade the right of private judgment, but only to apply to such an open agitation as would prove divisive.” The critics repudiated both the report and the interpretation and, when defeated in the 1926 Memphis convention, called the first “North American Christian Convention” for October, 1927. This convention, repeated annually, has continued to be the rallying place of the opponents of the United Society.
While open membership has been thrust into the foreground in the controversy between the United Society and its critics, the society does not avow sympathy with that practice and refuses to admit that this is the real issue. But it cannot be doubted that there are two contrasting views as to the basis of the Christian unity which Disciples seek and the nature and scope of the restoration at which they aim. Under this difference lie two views of the Bible, and from it flow differences of emphasis upon baptism. The admission of the unimmersed is openly defended by relatively few, but quietly practiced by a good many. Still more are restrained from it, not by their own convictions, but by the feeling that at present it would promote division rather than unity.
An Ecumenical Outlook
All Protestantism has been seeking ways of cooperation and dreaming of unity during the past forty years. In these efforts the Disciples have had their full share, and their hope of unity has been more than a dream. The revived conception of an ecumenical church is congenial to their best tradition and has stirred them to reconsider the ways in which they may help in its realization.
The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America has been the foremost cooperative agency since 1905. A Disciple suggested that name, and Disciples had a part in its organization and have been well represented in its leadership. Jesse Bader has been at the head of its department of evangelism for many years. Herbert L. Willett was in charge of its Midwestern office for a considerable period. Edgar DeWitt Jones has served as its president. The Disciples have entered heartily into cooperative educational work in foreign missions and into comity arrangements both at home and abroad for the allotment of fields and the distribution of forces to prevent duplication and competition. A Disciple missionary, Samuel Guy Inman, has been the leading spirit in the Committee on Cooperation in Latin America. The Interchurch World Movement, which aimed at a revival of Christian work and the strengthening of all Christian institutions immediately after World War I, was overambitious and became a costly fiasco. Disciples shared in this, too, and paid their part of the staggering deficit.
What is more explicitly called the Ecumenical Movement began with a World Conference on Foreign Missions, at New York City in 1900. This led to a similar conference in Edinburgh in 1910. The Disciples were not represented in the organization or on the program of either of these. In the minds of the promoters of these conferences, they were still an unknown people, or a minor sect. Some Disciples attended, however, as unofficial observers. Beginning with the problem of unity in missions, the Ecumenical Movement expanded to become “Life and Work” (Stockholm, 1925, and Oxford, 1937) and “Faith and Order” (Lausanne, 1927, and Edinburgh, 1937). The problems of Christianity in relation to other world religions were studied at the Jerusalem Conference, 1930, and those of the “younger churches” of the mission lands at Madras, 1939. In all these ecumenical gatherings, the Disciples have had a recognized place and have taken an active part. They have also recorded their adherence to the World Council of Churches, which grew out of the Oxford and Edinburgh conferences of 1937.
Sunday school work had an undenominational aspect at its very beginning, early in the nineteenth century. Disciples took part in the International Sunday School Association, organized in 1872, and adopted its uniform lessons. B. B. Tyler was its president in 1902. Other organizations arose to develop more modern phases of religious education. Robert M. Hopkins was prominent in the Sunday School Council from the start, and he was chairman of the executive committee of the International Council of Religious Education for eleven years after its formation by the union of the old International Association and the Sunday School Council in 1922. Roy G. Ross is now executive secretary of the International Council. Many other Disciples, experts in various phases of this work, have borne heavy responsibilities in these organizations, especially in the latest and most comprehensive one.
In brief, no communion has been more active in all the cooperative enterprises of the churches in recent years, or more sympathetic with the ecumenical trend toward thinking less of the churches and more of the Church.
The bitter experiences of World War II have accentuated the common responsibilities of all the churches in the face of a resurgent paganism and world-wide suffering. Disciples have participated in the counsels of Christians on the problems of war and peace and have not shunned their special burdens. They raised a million-dollar emergency fund, furnished their quota of chaplains with the armed forces, made provision for their conscientious objectors. The Drake Conference on “The Church and the New World Mind” was part of their contribution to the study of postwar problems.