Liberal Tendencies

Through all these agencies, the liberalizing effects of the newer learning were widely diffused. One aspect of this was that a great number of ministers accepted the so-called “modern view” of the Bible, based upon historical and critical methods of study, in place of the theory of inerrancy and level inspiration. Proof texts lost something of their finality. The pattern of the primitive church seemed somewhat less sharply drawn, and the duty of restoring it in every detail less axiomatic. Christian truth and duty were seen as far more extensive, and far less simple, than the conversion formula and the restoration of the ancient order as these had been conceived. In this atmosphere of opinion, the stress was upon union, while the concept of restoration seemed to require reinterpretation to give it continued validity. All this had begun to happen in the previous period; but now it happened on a large scale, reaching many important pulpits, the colleges, the missionary executives, the missionaries themselves.

149

It was no longer possible to say that only a little coterie of young men held and taught these disturbing ideas. Their spread could not plausibly be charged to the Campbell Institute, though this provided a free forum for its members. The Campbell Institute began in 1896 as a company of fifteen young men who had done some graduate work, or were still doing it. It was organized, as its constitution says, “to enable its members to help each other to a riper scholarship by a free discussion of vital problems; to promote quiet self-culture and the development of a higher spirituality both among the members and among the churches with which they shall come in contact; and to encourage productive work with a view of making contributions of permanent value to the literature and thought of the Disciples of Christ.” The young men grew older, and their number increased to several hundred. The institute’s meetings were all open to the public, its membership was opened to any college graduate who cared to enroll, and a wide variety of theological opinions found expression on its programs and in its organ, the Scroll. It never pulled a wire to get one of its members into a position of honor or leadership. Still, it was and is of some significance as an incentive to untrammeled thinking, an organization liberal enough to be equally hospitable to liberal and conservative opinion.

The Christian Century, immediately after C. C. Morrison became its proprietor and editor in 1908, became the exponent of a more liberal theology than had ever been voiced by any Disciples’ paper, an equally liberal social outlook, and the strongest possible emphasis upon the unity of all Christians. Gradually, and quite definitely from about 1920, it became an undenominational journal with a large constituency 150 among all communions. The prestige that it gained in the wider field and its complete editorial independence gave it great influence among thoughtful Disciples as a stimulus to their own thinking even if they did not go all the way with it.

The Association for the Promotion of Christian Unity, which grew out of a meeting called by Peter Ainslie at the 1910 Topeka convention, of which he was president, stressed the things which the Disciples held in common with other communions and, through many years, sought ways of cultivating this fellowship. While the association itself did not espouse open membership, it did not envision union by the universal acceptance of the Disciples’ “historic plea” for the immersion of penitent believers for the remission of sins and the restoration of the pattern of the New Testament church as they had understood it. But Dr. Ainslie, who was president of the association for many years, became an outspoken advocate of open membership, which he called “recognizing the equality of all Christians before God.”

Missionaries in certain foreign fields, especially China, were reported to be too little concerned with baptizing converts and too much involved in activities other than pressing the “distinctive plea” of the Disciples. Whether or not they actually received Chinese Methodists or Presbyterians who had no other church home, remained a disputed question even after a self-appointed investigator had gone to China and reported that they did.