A Preview

Stone was a native American of old colonial stock, born in Maryland, educated in North Carolina after spending most of his boyhood in Virginia. He did his most important work in Kentucky. Thomas and Alexander Campbell, father and son, were born in North Ireland, were educated at Glasgow University, and came to America only a short time before the launching of their reformatory movement. The influences seen in their work are those of a British background and an American environment. The center of their activity was the southwest corner of Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, and the narrow strip of Virginia (now West Virginia) that lies between them. Walter Scott, born in Scotland and educated in the University of Edinburgh, came to America as a young man and was a teacher in Pittsburgh when he received the impulse which led him into the Campbell movement while it was still in its initial stage.

Soon the followers of the Campbells, most of whom had recently been Baptists, and the associates of Stone, many of whom had been Presbyterians, discovered the identity of their programs, and the two movements 11 flowed together into one. Stone’s “Christians,” chiefly in Kentucky and Tennessee, plus the Baptists who had joined Campbell’s “Reformers” and were beginning to call themselves “Disciples,” plus the hundreds of converts who had already responded to the faith-repentance-and-baptism evangelism of Scott and the others who had learned to preach as he did, added up to twenty or thirty thousand by the time of this union in 1832. From that point, growth was rapid, by persistent and persuasive preaching, by propaganda in print, and by the constant movement of population to new frontiers farther and farther west carrying with it the nuclei of new churches in the new settlements.

This was at first a popular movement, unorganized and uncontrolled, with no high command, no common treasury, no general machinery for either promotion or direction. But the increasing magnitude of the enterprise, the changing social conditions as the Middle West grew out of its frontier stage, and the realization that such a religious body as this was coming to be had some responsibilities other than propagating itself—all these things made organization inevitable. Then followed colleges, missionary societies, conventions, and the other apparatus of an organic fellowship. But still, and always, there was fierce resistance to anything that seemed to threaten encroachment upon the liberty of the Christian individual or of the local congregation. Cooperation must always be voluntary.

So the Disciples of Christ have become “a great people.” It is to their credit that there has always been some confusion about their name. Aiming to promote union, they wanted a scriptural name that all Christians might use. They found in the New Testament certain terms applied to the undivided church 12 or to its members. Alexander Campbell liked the name “Disciples.” Stone preferred “Christians.” A local church is commonly called a “Christian Church,” or a “Church of Christ”; less frequently a “Church of Disciples of Christ.” The name “Churches of Christ” (in the plural), as the designation for a group, generally refers to the conservative or antimissionary-society churches which became completely separated from the main body in 1906.

But, though it is well to have unsectarian names which any Christian or any Christian church can use, it is highly convenient to have some designation which others do not generally use, so that the public will know what is meant when reference is made to the churches or members of this movement. Its objective may be the unity of all Christ’s followers, but meanwhile it is a specific group, if not a denomination then a “brotherhood”—and a brotherhood is just as distinct an entity as a denomination. So, as a term that will be generally understood to mean us, the term “Disciples of Christ” has come into common use.