Rethinking the Disciples

The central body of opinion among Disciples cherishes the watchwords “union” and “restoration,” about which the whole movement has developed. But it recognizes that changed conditions and widened horizons may require a reconsideration of the program of union and of the meaning of restoration. It is not the impatience of youth but the voice of experience that rejects a static and unchangeable system. J. H. Garrison was editor and editor emeritus of the Christian-Evangelist for sixty years. In the last contribution written with his own hand, published on April 11, 1929, being then in his eighty-eighth year, he wrote:

Are we Disciples, who started out a century ago to plead for Christian unity, losing our zeal for this holy cause, or are we losing confidence in ourselves as fit instruments of our Lord for promoting it? I think it would be a good move for the president of our international convention to appoint at once a committee to study and report on the question: What changes in the way of addition or subtraction are demanded among the Disciples to make their plea more efficient, either in its substance or in the manner of its presentation to the world?

The religious world today is very different from what it was a century ago. Science has given us a different conception of nature and of the universe. 156 Biblical criticism has changed for most of us our view of the Bible, making it not a less but a more valuable book for the student of religion. This increase of light is evident in every department of knowledge. Is it possible that all these changes do not require any readjustment in the matter and method of a plea for unity inaugurated more than a century ago?

This suggestion bore fruit, a few years later, in the appointment of a Commission on Restudy of the Disciples of Christ. Since 1935, this commission has carried on a study of the past and the present with a view to finding what readjustments may profitably be made for the future. This is only one of many groups which are concerned that the Disciples shall not simply be “a great people,” as they sometimes proudly and truly claim that they are, but shall go forward to the fulfillment of their highest purposes. There is yet much light to break from God’s Word and from the teachings of their own experience.