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CHAPTER VIII
ORGANIZATION AND TENSIONS, 1849-74

As the Disciples grew and spread, the need of organization on a national scale was felt. There were still lingering doubts as to whether fidelity to the “ancient order of things” permitted such organization. But the prevailing decision was that meetings of “deputies, messengers or representatives” of the churches might properly be held if they would remember that they are “voluntary expedients” and “have no authority to legislate in any matter of faith or moral duty” but exist only “to attend to the ways and means of successful cooperation.” These words, quoted from a resolution adopted by a conference on cooperation held at Steubenville, Ohio, in 1844, express the policy that became permanent.

Mr. Campbell himself, laying aside any earlier prejudice against what he had called “popular schemes” among the denominations, urged “a more general and efficient cooperation in the Bible cause, in the missionary cause, in the educational cause.” But so long as the Disciples had no agency of their own for foreign missionary work he recommended (1845) that they support the Baptist Missionary Society. And when, in the same year, D. S. Burnet and other brethren in Cincinnati organized an “American Christian Bible Society,” he felt that this action was premature, that it was not sufficiently representative of the whole brotherhood, and that more could be accomplished 109 with the available funds by contributing them to the (Baptist) American and Foreign Bible Society. He was no isolationist, and he bore no grudge against the Baptists, in spite of the acrimonies that had accompanied the expulsion of the Reformers from Baptist churches and associations a few years earlier. He also endorsed the Evangelical Alliance as soon as it was formed in 1846.

The demand for a national convention that would represent the whole body of Disciples found voice through most of the influential journals. All who urged a convention spoke of it as a meeting of “delegates” appointed by the churches. To those who still objected that conventions and missionary societies were no part of the “ancient order,” Mr. Campbell replied that in such matters of method and procedure the church is “left free and unshackled by any apostolic authority.”