Conservative Reaction

From all these circumstances there arose a vigorous campaign of criticism against all the agencies that seemed implicated in this liberal tendency. The attack 151 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 152 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.