Union and Growth

By 1830 the Christian churches west of the Alleghenies had, it is estimated, seven or eight thousand members in Kentucky, somewhat fewer in Tennessee, and smaller numbers in all the states to which migrants had been going from these two. There were district conferences in Ohio and Indiana, in Alabama and Mississippi; a Christian church organized in Missouri in 1816 was only the first of several; and there were two conferences in Iowa by 1828.

The growing acquaintance and sympathy between Christians and Disciples led to a number of consultations between their leaders at various places in Kentucky, and finally to a meeting at Lexington, January 1, 1832, attended by prominent representatives of both. It was unanimously agreed that they should unite. 99 Since neither group recognized any church authority superior to the local congregation, actual union could be accomplished only by going to the congregations and persuading them to unite. “Raccoon” John Smith (Disciple) and John Rogers (Christian) went out as a team to carry this message to the churches. Others took it up. Stone’s Christian Messenger and Campbell’s Millennial Harbinger supported it. Within three years the greater part of the Christian churches in the area mentioned had joined the merger. On the points of difference, especially baptism and evangelistic method, the practice of Campbell and Scott prevailed. The Christians contributed a revived emphasis upon liberty of opinion and upon union, which the Reformers had been in danger of subordinating in their zeal for the restoration of “a particular ecclesiastical order.”

There had been, up to this time, no organizational connection among the three great groups of “Christian” churches. Those in New England and those in the southern Atlantic states were not affected by the merger with the Disciples. They tightened their denominational organization and continued their separate existence until, nearly a hundred years later (1930), they united with the Congregationalists.

It is not possible to give a clear picture of the numerical growth and geographical expansion of the Disciples in their first twenty years. There were at first no organizations to promote the movement, no headquarters to project plans, no agencies to collect statistics, no yearbook to list churches and preachers. The energy of the movement was tremendous. As a plea for union, its appeal was to Christians of all faiths; therefore there was no hesitation about proselyting. As a presentation of the way of salvation, its 100 message was to the unconverted. Both classes responded in large numbers. This “Gospel restored”—Scott’s five steps in conversion—and the call to union on that basis were a simple message. One had only to hear it to believe it, and almost anyone who believed it could preach it—and a great many did. Most of those who evangelized went out on their own initiative and responsibility. The frontier was open, and there was a steady flow of migration to the west. Among the migrants were many preachers, who were often farmers also. But if there was no preacher in the new community, laymen might carry the message and plant the seed of a church. The distinction between ministers and laymen was often very vague. One who could preach became ipso facto a preacher. Besides farmer-preachers, there were lawyers, doctors, teachers, and merchants who preached, won converts, baptized them, and established churches.

The need of some simple and efficient method of cooperation was soon felt. Some doubted whether any organization of the churches was scriptural. But the decision of most was that organized cooperation among the churches to spread the gospel—but not to exercise authority over the churches—was a proper expedient. A meeting of representatives of several churches at New Lisbon, Ohio, in 1831, and another at Wheeling, West Virginia, in 1835, reached this conclusion and considered ways and means of cooperation. A few glimpses, almost at random, at the beginnings of churches and organizations in certain states will indicate something of the method and rate of expansion during these two decades.

In Indiana, several local movements, some beginning as early as 1810, contributed to the stream of the 101 Reform. Some Free Will Baptists, regular Baptists, Dunkers, and “Christians” had arrived independently at similar ideas, and presently the Christian Baptist helped to unify them, and the merging of the Disciples and Christians completed the process. Their first cooperation for a specific purpose was when five churches joined in supporting John O’Kane as an evangelist, and his first work was to organize the First Church in Indianapolis in 1833. Indiana’s first state convention was held in 1839, with fifty preachers present and reports of 115 churches with over 7,000 members. The state missionary society was formed ten years later. But the growth in numbers and churches—and it was rapid and substantial—was due to the work of individuals, local churches, and county cooperation more than to the state organization.

The first Disciples in Illinois came from Kentucky and Indiana in 1830. Stone visited Jacksonville in 1832, preparatory to moving there two years later. He found a Christian church and a Disciple church, and persuaded them to unite. In 1834 a group of churches in that vicinity voted to employ an evangelist and issued an invitation to a state meeting. But the first state meeting was not held until 1842.

To Missouri came the Christian preacher, Thomas McBride, from Kentucky in 1816, followed soon by Joel Haden, T. M. Allen, and others. By 1820 there were eight churches. State meetings began, irregularly, in 1837. In that year a church was formed in St. Louis, but it did not persist and was started again in 1842. Missouri was, from the start, a “strong state” for the Disciples.

Texas was still a part of Mexico when Collin McKinney, a devout “Christian” layman from Kentucky, came to the vicinity of Texarkana in 1824 and then 102 moved on to what became Bowie County, where he spent the rest of a long and active life. He did not have a church there until a preacher came in 1842; but when there was a church, McKinney was a pillar of it, as he was of the republic, and then the state, of Texas. The first church in Texas was one that came in a body from Tennessee, with reinforcements from Alabama and Mississippi, in 1836, and settled at Clarksville. Lynn D’Spain and Mansil W. Matthews were the preachers who came with this church. David Crockett accompanied this caravan on part of its journey. At that time the Mexican constitution prohibited the exercise of any religion except the Roman Catholic, but the agencies of enforcement were weak, the seat of government was far away, and the revolution which made Texas an independent republic was imminent.

California had two churches, at Stockton and Santa Clara, within two years after the discovery of gold. They were established by Thomas Thompson, a Disciple preacher who went west with the forty-niners but preferred to evangelize, at his own expense, rather than to seek gold. This falls just beyond the limits of our period, the first two decades, but it illustrates the promptness with which Disciples followed the frontier. There is a report of a congregation organized in Oregon Territory in 1846, three years after the beginning of the “great immigration” and the very year in which American title to the territory was settled by treaty with England.