I find myself almost reluctant to write on the subject which clamors for discussion in this issue. I could wish that I might deal with what I regard as a mistaken view of the apostolic letters without reference to particulars because I have no desire to be critical of my brethren. Certainly I do not wish to appear supercilious. I realize that I am lacking in knowledge upon many things. I have much to learn.
But fairness and candor demand that I not speak in riddles or dark sayings. And this requires that I deal in specifics and provide examples of that to which I allude. I am convinced that all of the two dozen factions designating themselves as "Churches of Christ" feel that they have discovered and correctly interpreted "the pattern" set forth in the new covenant scriptures. They have argued and debated with one another, made charges and counter-charges, and all have thought they were loyal to the Book.
The fact is that our brethren defend some twenty-five different "patterns," and each disputant is thoroughly convinced that his alone is the pattern. The absurdity of men standing up and quoting the same passages, and finding justification for their varied and opposite views while proclaiming that the Word is so plain that even a blind man can see it, seems lost upon everyone except those thinking persons who are outside our movement.
I do not think that God intended to give us detailed prescriptions for every minute detail, so I can look with a great deal of charity and compassion upon those who become so worked up they cannot see their own inconsistencies. But this cannot cover up the fact that the party spirit is a work of the flesh and betrays men into all kinds of false ideas and unlovely attitudes. The great danger is that when men believe that God provided a specific detailed pattern they must find one for everything. To fail would be to charge God with neglect or imperfection.
I can recall how we used to stress that the priests and Levites had to count every tent peg in the tabernacle and they were responsible for seeing that everything was in its place according to the pattern shown to Moses in the mount. We compared that to our life under Christ and reasoned that we had to get every item just so, or fire would come out and consume us. But we overlooked the fact that the Lord pitched the true tabernacle, and not man, and we were not given a pattern in advance at all. Our heart is now the holy place. It is the sanctuary of our God. Our only pattern is a person!
Since God did not provide us a pattern we set in to provide him one. That is where we went astray. We took the apostolic love letters and warped them into a code of jurisprudence and immediately started judging our brothers and measuring them by ourselves. What we call "the pattern" is not really derived from God's revelation at all. We created the pattern and then searched the scriptures to find justification for what we already had.
Most of our patterns consist of a combination of elements derived from three sources: (1) Cultural and environmental factors; (2) Reactions to other religious groups whom we consider as apostates or compromisers; (3) Misconception and misapplication of scriptural passages lifted from their contextual setting and used to establish our preconceptions and presuppositions.
Few of my readers will remember it, but I well recall what a hassle arose in our movement when men began to stand for prayer. In the simple rural climate of our day, men always kneeled, regardless of which sect was conducting the revival. It was argued that no one would address an earthly monarch on his throne while standing proudly before him, and how much more should we kneel before God. Tracts and booklets were written on "The Posture of Prayer." I have some of these in my files even yet.
The scriptures were searched for passages showing that men kneeled and elaborate answers were prepared to refute those who declared that the bodily attitude made no difference. The three guns in the battery of restoration weapons--command, apostolic example, and necessary inference--were all trained on the dissenters. Prejudice was aroused by insinuating that pride was gripping men's hearts and they were becoming too haughty to kneel. Suspicion was created when it was pointed out that standing for prayer originated among us in "city churches" where men no longer wanted to risk soiling the knees of their expensive tailor-made trousers.
I remember a debate in which one disputant triumphantly read, "And Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the congregation of Israel, and spread forth his hands toward heaven" (1 Kings 8:22). The respondent could hardly wait to reply, "And it was so, that when Solomon had made an end of praying all this prayer and supplication unto the Lord, he arose from before the altar of the Lord, from kneeling on his knees with his hands spread up to heaven." Touche!
Once, in our little rural congregation, an evangelist came from elsewhere to hold a "protracted meeting." At the very first service he asked "Pappy" Davis, who always sat on the front seat, to lead in prayer as the audience stood. The old brother was equal to the occasion. "Sir, I'd rather kneel," he said. And kneel he did while the whole audience, with the exception of the preacher, followed suit. It threw cold water on the whole meeting. We realized that we had "a liberal" standing in the pulpit.
One thing that kept the controversy heated up was the fact that the Gospel Advocate, commonly referred to as "The Old Reliable" was all for kneeling. David Lipscomb repeatedly pointed out that Smith's Bible Dictionary and other authorities "tell us that standing in prayer was introduced among Christians first on Easter." That did it! We never thought of questioning Smith's Bible Dictionary and other authorities. We'd as soon have questioned the Sears-Roebuck catalog. We never learned who the other authorities were, but that made no difference. If Brother Lipscomb said they were authorities they were. There was no other authority who could identify other authorities with such authority as Brother Lipscomb.
And when we learned that standing in prayer was first introduced on Easter, we became convinced it was simply another part of the world conspiracy of the pope to capture us lock, stock and barrel, by infiltrating our pure worship with a pagan ritual, such as standing to pray. We already knew that every monastery had a well-stocked arsenal of weapons, and that the Knights of Columbus constituted a secret order to train men for the great "takeover" when the Protestants were sufficiently hoodwinked and myopic. Not being either, some of us thought the Lord might work it around so they would kill each other off, and leave the whole landscape to us. So those brethren who stood to pray and stubbornly resisted the pattern were regarded as dangerous and unstable. They were the victims of German rationalism and "the social gospel," whatever that was.
All of this seems hilariously funny to our young people today, but it isn't so humorous to me. I cannot forget the great and good men who were attacked clandestinely, branded and hounded by those who were so inferior to them both intellectually and spiritually, that they were not even in the same class. I recall how patiently some of them reasoned and taught when the subject came up. I also recall the anger and ire of those who blurted out, "If we don't intend to follow what the Bible says about praying let's just tear everything else out of it and go to hell with the covers clutched in our hand."
All of that is gone now! We no longer fight stained-glass windows, spires, and carpeted aisles as signs of digression and worldliness. Some of our buildings even have crosses on them now. Once these things were symbols of departure from the simplicity that is in Christ Jesus. In every meeting they were assailed. We were warned to flee from them as Lot fled from Sodom. They were "the unfruitful works of darkness." We were not to have fellowship with them, but rebuke them.
We now stand in prayer without fear or qualm. The world about us changed and we changed with it. The Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians, ceased to kneel in their "revivals," so we quit kneeling in our "protracted meetings." Of course, what really happened is that with increasing enlightenment from God's word, and with better education, we began to see that ours is a life in the richness of the Spirit, and it is not necessarily affected by things. Not even such things as bodily posture.
It suddenly dawned upon us that we were fighting about aisle carpets, kitchens and baptisteries in church-owned buildings," and we had no pattern for "churchly real estate" at all. The first "church house" was not erected until 280 A.D., and then it was put up by some pretty shady theologians. It is very doubtful that it had a sign "Church of Christ--Romans 16:16" over the front door. No one knows where we got the pattern for a million dollar structure with the approved sign on the landscaped lawn. But it is a part of our westernized culture. We are doing our best to transport it to Africa and Japan so they will be sure to have the right name and the standard sign. But, at least we stand while praying for Africans and Japanese!
One of the amazing things about the restoration movement is the fact that it so rapidly developed an exclusivistic sectarian attitude which shut its adherents off from meaningful contact with even friends and relatives. Originally, the principal proponents of the restoration ideal were Presbyterians. They maintained a good relationship with all believers in the Son of God about them. The thought never occurred to them, as they gained new insights, to break their association with others who had not yet arrived at the same conclusions.
Late in life Thomas Campbell declared that philosophically he was a Calvinist and expected to remain such until he died. This made no flurry among those who came into the restoration movement holding other philosophies, for they could clearly distinguish between the good news which all held in common and their doctrinal deductions. The problem arose when lesser men, riding high in the saddle, began to draw lines and makes tests of union and communion out of opinions and interpretations.
By the time of my birth the partisan spirit was rampant. Men equated the restoration movement with the church of God, and to be in the church one must be in the new party in the community which had adopted as a distinguishing title, "Church of Christ." The preachers in demand were the "sect-killers." Some of them were tobacco-chewing, or snuff-dipping, Bible-quoting individuals who announced from the pulpit that they were going to "skin the sectarian preachers and tack their hides on the barn door with the bloody side out." Every night a challenge was issued for debate and notice was given that the sects were going to be run out of the community.
We were generally poor, limited in education and resources, and it gave us a sense of status to realize that our little group was the special object of God's love and mercy, and that, in the last great "roundup in the skies" we would march triumphantly through the pearly gates while our neighbors, from whom we borrowed flour or sugar when company came, would all be driven to the flaming pit. They had hearkened to their preacher instead of to ours. I do not think we worried that so many would go to hell. It was God's will. They deserved to be punished because of their ignorance. We could not tolerate ignorance!
One result of all this was a development of a pattern as a reaction to sectarians. Those who came in with us under the kind of preaching which was popular knew little about grace and mercy. They knew less about the Holy Spirit. They were not so much led into "fellowship with the Father and Son," as into membership with the Church of Christ. They were fleeing from sectarianism, renouncing everything pertaining to it. Anything which "sectarian churches" practiced was wrong, or they would not practice it. We purposely chose other methods which thereupon became right or we would not have adopted them. All that remained was to search the scriptures to find where God authorized what we were doing. I do not recall any failure to find endorsement for our action.
A good example has to do with the method of "taking up the offering." Few among us in this day recall what a furor was caused in some areas when brethren began to pass offering plates. Early restoration congregations never did this because it was sectarian. The sects all "passed the hat." This was literally true. In my childhood days the Baptist and Methodist folk would send their collectors among the audience passing felt hats lifted from the hat-rack for the purpose. When they became a little more stylish they passed collection plates with felt noise-arresters to deaden the sound of dropping quarters.
When time came for this "item of worship" in our congregations, the brothers and sisters all marched up to the front, singing "There's An Eye Watching You," and laid their contribution on the Lord's Table, returning to their seats by the way which they came. It was quite a procession. Sometimes there was a great deal of milling around in front when they converged on the table from two aisles. It was further complicated in some places by the fact that the marchers all took time to shake hands with the brethren on the front seat as a sign of fellowship.
As we grew in number and in sophistication, and began to crave less noise and more solemnity, changes began to be advocated. These did not come easily. Brethren mounted the pulpit to show that God had a pattern for doing everything, and we dare not deviate. We were reminded that the ark had to be made of gopher wood. We were again told of what happened to Nadab and Abihu when they offered strange fire. When such brethren were asked for scriptural grounds for marching up and laying their money on the table they were undaunted.
One of them pointed out that the symbol on all of our currency was the eagle, and that we were plainly taught that, "Where the carcass is, thither shall the eagles be gathered together." He elaborated upon the fact that a carcass is a dead body, and the body of our Lord was upon the table. A schoolteacher spoke up and asked, "How will this affect other nations and countries where they have a lion or unicorn on their coinage?" The speaker was stumped. He probably did not know what a unicorn was. It had never occurred to him that God had a people elsewhere. America was the promised land, the special area of divine favor.
Later, when we were discussing the problem, one skeptic referred to the argument and said that in order to justify the speaker, the passage would have to read, "Where the carcass is, thither shall the buffaloes be gathered together." He never gave more than a nickel at a time, and our five cent pieces all had a lordly buffalo engraved upon them in those days.
I was present in one meeting where a preacher who specialized in lecturing upon and explaining the Revelation letter was asked to express himself about the encroaching sectarianism as evidenced in passing the hat. He arose and said that he was perfectly willing to abide by the scriptural pattern. Here was his argument. "My Bible says upon the first day of the week let everyone of you lay by him in store. Where is him? Him is Christ, and his body is on the table. My advice is to continue to lay by him. If God had wanted a hat passed, he would undoubtedly have said so, for they had hats when Jesus was on the earth."
Gradually we began to overcome our provincial and parochial attitudes, and to outgrow our fears of becoming like sectarians. We began to get bathrooms in our homes and the demand began to be heard for rest rooms and toilet facilities in our meetinghouses. When children began to sleep in their own little beds at home we began to put in nurseries and cry-rooms like the sects. Our babies became angry and screamed as loudly as sectarian babies, even in holy places.
And so it came to pass that we began to take up the collection in shiny plates. It did not come easy. In one congregation, two families I knew, always passed the plate by in cool indifference. After dismissal they marched up and laid their money on the table. They were resolved that when Jesus came he would find faith on the earth. After about a year of this they decided that their action bespoke stubborn pride. They "went sectarian" like all the rest of us.
This all seems ridiculous to the "new people" and the "now generation" among us, and of course it is. But please do not get me started. I think I can point out several things to which we cling simply because of a reactionary policy. These constitute a negative pattern on an affirmative basis. In decades to come perceptive minds will look back upon our day and conclude that we had not come completely "out of the bushes" in 1970. It is a little risky for any generation to assume that it has arrived while all others have departed.
I doubt that anyone would argue against the proposition that when men resort to misuse of the scriptures to sustain a position, that position is indeed weakly defended. And the more scriptures must be wrested from their context to make a point seem plausible, the weaker that point is. In spite of the fact that hundreds of my beloved brethren will disagree violently with what I say, I must confess that I do not think God intended to provide a pattern for the way a congregation should give instruction in the word.
It is my very honest conviction that the debate about classes and Sunday schools is over an artificial issue. It is a "tempest in a teapot," a contrived issue without foundation. The fact that it has been blown up to such proportions as to rend the saints of God into two actual camps is almost unbelievable. I have several debates on the matter in the long shelf reserved for such volumes of controversy. I have a drawer full of tracts and booklets on both sides. I have read them all. Some of them I have read more than once, some many times.
I have tried to be honest in my reading. As always I have sought to place myself in the place of the writer or speaker, to understand his motivation as well as his reasoning. And I always come up with a feeling of sadness that such matters must become walls between brethren and barriers to sharing. I do not really take one side or the other. I cannot see that the Holy Spirit created either by anything he said or intimated. I rejoice when the Word is taught, whether with classes or in one group. Those who teach in either fashion are my brothers.
Once when I was in Georgia a brother attended one of my studies. He insisted on going to the same place that I went for luncheon. He wanted to share with me a great truth he had found. After years of preaching he had come to see the full force of Paul's statement in Ephesians 2:6, "But God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us . . . hath raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places." Paul was laying down a principle which made it a sin to have classes. The "heavenly places" were the houses devoted to worship. Here God ordained that we sit together and not divide the assembly.
For a little while I thought he was joking, making a parody out of foolish arguments he had heard. Then I saw he was dead earnest, presenting this as undeniable proof that classes were sinfully wrong. I pointed out that the context was wholly out of line with his view and told him I was "sitting together in heavenly places" with Christ while lying on my bed or standing on the street corner. He became intensely worked up because I did not have sense enough to distinguish between sitting, standing or lying down.
Years ago, out in Kansas, a brother came to talk with me about the grave sin of dividing into classes to study the Word of the Lord. He quoted for me, Deuteronomy 32:2, where God says, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass." He contended that we should teach as it rained, showering it upon every one and letting the little ones assimilate what they needed and could get, while the older ones drank in more. I asked him if he thought that the mode of teaching was the point at issue with Moses. He thought it was the very reason the passage was included in Deuteronomy. God foresaw there would be people like myself who would take little children aside to teach them and he "showered" his disapproval upon such a method through Moses.
I would not think of debating with my brethren on the so-called "class question." To me there appears to be nothing which should command such time or effort. I do not think God is concerned with whether we teach in one class or a dozen. In our primitive one-room meetinghouses it probably would have been better to study in one group. It was difficult to concentrate with four classes going at the same time, especially with wasps flying around, or an occasional sparrow flitting about just over your head. But this was also the day of one-room public schoolhouses. When better school buildings were erected and more efficient educational methods were discovered we simply appropriated them and made them applicable to Biblical pedagogy.
I can honestly say I am not perturbed by the oft-cited fact that the Sunday-school movement began with Robert Raikes, and not with the apostles. I have no doubt that this great and generous man established the first such schools at Gloucester in 1780, as a means of furnishing both secular and religious education to children whose employment in the factories made it impossible to attend weekday schools. I am glad that he did what he could for these poor waifs who were chained like galley-slaves to the whirring looms.
I suspect that God wants us to discover new ways by which to make his truth known to the culture in which we labor. Just as the economic state in England in the last half of the eighteenth century gave rise to the Sunday-school movement, I think our own will probably gradually discard it. I will not mourn its demise as I do not deplore its inception. It is simply a tool devised to fit a need. Other and better tools will have to be created to get our task done in this age. In many places the standard Sunday-school is childish, immature and invalid. It is a place to retreat from reality by monotonous mouthing of irrelevant material.
The fact that the apostles did not advocate this approach is of little real significance. They simply adopted the methods of teaching then in vogue and employed them without intent to bind them irrevocably upon all ages and climes. The synagogue was primarily responsible for the system which was continued in the Messianic communities. That system was not intended to be a pattern but a practical expedient for that time and place. None of us know how Paul would outline the work if he could return to Louisville or Lansing in our day. We must do our best to meet the demands of our day and to supply the deep needs of men and women whom we daily meet, using such tools as are available unto us.
So long as brethren think that God intended to provide us a microscopic pattern with all details filled in, we will be searching through our factional microscopes and arguing minutiae. If we realize that we have general guidelines and not a rigid set of regulations we will be free to work as best we can in whatever situation we confront. If I believe this I cannot bind a "must be thus" as to a method of teaching upon others, because God has bound none upon me.
If my brethren in a certain place deduce from the scriptures that they should not have classes, I will accept this and will not try to undermine or proselyte from them. It may be God's will for them that they work in this fashion. I will help them in every way that I can. My love for them will not be affected by the method they use to teach his blessed truth. Certainly I will not put up some of the silly and ridiculous arguments about when "the worship" begins and when it ends, that have been advocated and indulged by partisan class defenders in the past. Such nit-picking is not for me!
If my brethren in another place sincerely believe they can best instruct those who come to them, through use of classes, I will accept this as God's will for them. If they ask me to teach in any group I will share what I have learned and seek to edify those who listen. I will gain nothing by whetting their prejudice against brethren who do not have classes. I shall seek to help them overcome such feelings and regard others of God's children with love and kindness, allowing them the liberty to work in the manner that commends itself to them as best.
I believe that a great part of such problems stems from an anti-intellectual attitude which resulted from our frontier heritage. We were afraid of men who broadened their intellectual capacity. I can recall when a man was suspect who had even a lesser college degree. Formal education belonged to the world, the realm which one must not love or court. "Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise." We ridiculed those who were not satisfied to remain untutored without realizing that such ridicule was a subtle form of praise for those whom we could not confine in our own narrow caskets.
This was what caused simple brethren among us to oppose with such venom "uninspired literature" in our corporate study. Even little children must be taught the Bible only. No colorful aids could be used. Anything printed within the leather covers was acceptable, including concordances, dates or dictionary. It did not come from "another book." As always, this created a lot of casuistry. Much of it was freely practiced by the preacher's who cried loudest and longest about usage of uninspired helps.
Men who would not dare to take a volume of The Complete Works of Flavius Josephus into the pulpit, could copy from it and quote from it as part of a sermon outline. There was a difference made between a printed book and a hand-written copy of some of its contents. It never occurred to us that there was not one bit of difference between what a preacher said orally, and what he would include in a quarterly which he wrote. The sects used quarterlies. That placed them under a ban for "the Lord's church."
There are some factions among the heirs of the restoration movement to this very day whose members are discouraged from reading anything not produced by "loyal brethren," that is, by men approved by the party "somewhats." In some cases there are so few men who are qualified to write that many of the members never read anything except the partisan journal which is the official mouthpiece. A great deal of the space is taken up in each issue reporting a weary round of "gospel meetings" by the same preachers, men who have been approved by the editor, and who will indulge in back-patting for one another. There are generally articles dealing with the "major issue," written by some who want to prove they are still sound, and rehashing the same worn-out and frazzled arguments based upon a misunderstanding and misapplication of the same scriptural passages.
Such factions become inbred in their thinking. They develop a kind of sterility. They dare not think fresh thoughts. They abdicate the human family to take on the nature of parrots. The only thing which keeps them going is the flurry caused when someone learns something new and worthwhile and is "written up" as a liberal by the defenders of the status quo. These groups are seeing a gradual erosion of their forces. Young men and women can no longer engage in the kind of dishonesty which causes one to close his eyes to facts in order to remain "high and lifted up" on the sectarian totem pole.
There will come a great realignment of our forces which will ignore the battle lines of yesterday. Young people are coming to realize that most of the tests of fellowship have no validity at all. They are activities in absurdity. Brethren will gain the courage to reject the narrow and provincial limits prescribed for the kingdom of heaven by religious politicians whose financial and social well-being depend upon keeping Christians apart.
The Holy Spirit will come to be recognized as the divine agent to promote "peace on earth to men of goodwill." The great crises which demand the best all of us can give will drive us to find the path to unity. More and more we will come to see that God has not imposed upon us a rigid and stereotyped pattern, but has given us guidelines within a historic situation. We must use these as a starting-point. We must work toward maturity within their framework.
I am moved to insert here a statement by Fenton John Anthony Hort, in his book entitled "Lectures on the Early History and the Early Concepts of the Ecclesia." Dr. Hort is best known as a collaborator in the Wescott and Hort New Testament in the Original Greek. Will you thoughtfully read the following?
In this as in so many other things is seen the futility of endeavoring to make the apostolic history into a set of authoritative precedents to be copied rigorously without regard to time or place, thus turning the Gospel into a second Levitical code. The apostolic age is full of embodiment of purposes and principles of the most instructive kind, but the responsibility of choosing the means was for ever left to the Ecclesia, and every Ecclesia, guided by ancient precedent on the one hand and adaptation to present and future needs on the other. The lesson-book of the Ecclesia, and every Ecclesia, is not law but history. (The Ecclesia, pages 232, 233).
We are coming to see that, in many cases, the pattern we have espoused is not derived from the sacred scriptures at all. It is merely an unwritten creed, hallowed by usage and hardened by debate. As the Word is read and searched through eyes from which the scales have fallen, there will dawn on the consciousness of students that the whole so-called pattern for our two dozen minor sects has been conjured up in the imaginations of men, being read into the scriptures rather than found in them.
Members of the Church of Christ should face up to the question of what the apostle Paul would do if he returned to earth and came to the United States. With which of our partisan factions would he identify or "place membership"?
To which partisan journal would Paul report his preaching tours? Which one would he join as a staff writer? The Gospel Advocate? The Firm Foundation? The Old Paths Advocate? Gospel Tidings? Gospel Guardian? The Christian? The Christian Standard?
On which college lectureship would he participate? Abilene Christian College? Florida College? Would he address the North American Christian Convention? The World Convention of Churches of Christ?
Would Paul and Silas create a separate and exclusive patty over Bible classes, individual container's, support of Herald of Truth, or instrumental music? Would they set at nought a brother over orphan homes? Would they destroy a brother for whom Christ died over the use of fermented wine in the Lord's Supper? Would they fracture and splinter the heirs of heaven into clashing clans and rival parties?
Would they spend their time emphasizing the same issues which we elevate above the cross and count as more worthy than the blood of the Son of God?
Is it not time to crucify within our hearts that work of the flesh which causes us to hold aloof from so many thousands of God's precious children, and to build bridges across our senseless chasms? Let us ignore our silly walls and barriers. Let us cross freely back and forth through them. Why should we perpetuate the stupid and asinine feuds into which our father's were lured by the siren call of pride and ambition. Why should we continue our futile and farcical clashes, martialed for civil war by the sound of rival trumpets?
Let me make it clear again to all who read this, that I am in the glorious fellowship of the Spirit, with every child of God in this whole wide world. No partisan leader will con me into believing that he alone has discovered the key of all knowledge and that his faction has a copyright on the real Simon Pure, unvarnished truth of heaven, to the exclusion of all others. I shall allow no one to do my thinking on earth who cannot be responsible for it at the judgment. This is my declaration of independence, and "if this be treason, make the most of it!"