CHRISTIAN STANDARD AT 140: 140 Years of Leadership

By Henry E. Webb

Seven score years ago (to borrow Abraham Lincoln”s reckoning) CHRISTIAN STANDARD was launched in Cleveland, Ohio. It was at a time when the nation was facing a critical period of transition. The terrible Civil War had just ended. The South was defeated, demoralized, and impoverished. In contrast, the North was on the brink of a new era that would bring vigorous industrial expansion and technological leadership to part of the nation. If the South faced postwar depression, the North entered a time of prosperity and progressive expansion. Hitherto divided over slavery and war, the nation would soon be divided economically.

Our churches also faced a time of crisis at the end of the war. Alexander Campbell lay on his deathbed, and the journal he had edited, the Millennial Harbinger, which had been a major cohesive factor in the Restoration Movement, was declining in influence. To address this leadership vacuum, several men, including James A. Garfield (the future president), met in the home of T. W. Phillips Sr. in Newcastle, Pennsylvania, in December 1865 to launch a new journal to be published weekly instead of monthly. It would carry news from the churches and articles on a broad range of subjects of interest to the whole family.

Isaac Errett, a minister in Detroit, Michigan, who had served briefly as coeditor of the Millennial Harbinger, was selected editor of the new journal to be named CHRISTIAN STANDARD.

The first issue was published April 7, 1866, and carried news of the death of Campbell. In its early years, the journal encountered such financial problems that the incorporators were glad to turn it over to Errett if he would assume the debts. In 1869, a publisher in Cincinnati agreed to publish the journal if Errett would move it to that city.

Unity, Fidelity, Insight

Errett set an editorial policy for the new journal that has continued substantially unchanged to the present. The primary focus of CHRISTIAN STANDARD would be the unity of all believers in Christ on the basis of fidelity to the New Testament, the major emphasis of the Stone-Campbell Movement. This basic tenet has ever since been the cornerstone of the journal”s editorial policy.

Errett shared the progressive, expansionist, forward-looking spirit of the postwar North. Postwar prosperity inevitably had an effect on the churches in that part of the nation. Old log and clapboard buildings were replaced by larger, brick structures, some designed by architects and incorporating such innovations as stained glass windows, gas lights, carpets, furnaces, and musical instruments. Few of these “innovations” were affordable in the devastated regions of the former Confederacy. Soon more Northern “innovations” were added.

These changes were condemned by the churches in the South where, as Martin Marty points out, the prewar defense of slavery had imposed a distinctive, rigorous Biblicism on Southern preaching.¹ Here “biblical precedence” was regarded as “biblical authority.” The war had settled the issue of slavery, but obviously these innovations were postwar developments and could be condemned by the new “pattern hermeneutic.”²

Isaac Errett held these changes were not matters of “faith,” had no bearing on one”s salvation, and ought not be made tests of fellowship among brethren whose unity is in Christ. This view was adopted by most of the churches in the nation, except for those in the South.

CHRISTIAN STANDARD gave leadership, insight, and guidance, helping the churches cope with this confusing subject. It gave a measure of coherence for those who refused to break fellowship over an issue that was not considered to be a matter of faith. Informing the people of the churches on the meaning and nature of the movement to restore the faith of the early church continued to be a valuable ministry of CHRISTIAN STANDARD in decades that followed.

Errett and CHRISTIAN STANDARD championed the rising missionary cause. The old American Christian Missionary Society was floundering due to Civil War controversy, and the women in Northern churches were agitating for some action in behalf of missions. Errett”s editorial “Help Those Women”³ is credited with providing momentum for formation of The Christian Women”s Board of Missions in 1874. The Foreign Christian Missionary Society for men was organized the next year with Errett as president, a position he held until his death in 1888. Christian Standard became the brotherhood”s leading 19th-century exponent in behalf of the missionary cause.

Resistant, Cohesive, Courageous

As the 20th century dawned, new issues confronted the churches of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Radically different views about the Bible and theology had developed in Europe. These soon made their way to the United States, taking root in the universities and seminaries of New England. They moved westward and threatened to overtake our ministerial colleges.

CHRISTIAN STANDARD early alerted our churches to this peril by publishing “Biblical Criticism,” a series of articles by J. W. McGarvey from 1893″“1904. This rising tide of modernist theology wreaked havoc in most of the older Protestant denominations and won most of the older colleges of the Christian churches. CHRISTIAN STANDARD was in the vanguard of conservative resistance to this threat that could have seriously transformed the movement.

Christian churches/churches of Christ have no authoritarian, unitive body above the local church. Thus, they need cohesive factors to hold them together as one body. CHRISTIAN STANDARD has filled this role for more than a century. It was a major factor in creating another important cohesive institution. It supported the call in 1927 for a North American Christian Convention. Through the decades since, the journal has promoted this national gathering of the movement.

It also encouraged the Bible college movement, a new direction in education for ministers. It is only reasonable to say that without the support of the Standard, these institutions would not exist.

As disenchantment grew over policies adopted by the United Christian Missionary Society, CHRISTIAN STANDARD took the lead in promoting an alternate method of doing missions, sending support directly from the churches to the missionaries. This gave new vitality to missionary activity, resulting in what has become the second-largest world mission force among all Protestant bodies.

Throughout its decades of service to Christian churches, CHRISTIAN STANDARD has been fortunate in having editors of remarkable ability, men who have perceived the issues confronting the churches, faced them courageously, and guided the thinking in the churches with skill and fidelity. Among the editors deserving mention are George P. Rutledge, W. H. Mohorter, and Edwin R. Errett, for the guidance they provided during the troublesome decades of the 1920s and “30s.

Edwin R. Errett (nephew of Isaac Errett) sought to preserve unity within the larger brotherhood despite problems of dissatisfaction with the new policies of the United Missionary organization. Errett found no fault with the National Benevolent Association, the Board of Church Extension, or The Pension Fund. He held the brotherhood was not to be defined by support of the missionary agency. Active in the Commission on Restudy of the Brotherhood (1934-49), he strove until the end of his life to maintain unity within the Stone-Campbell Movement.

Edwin Errett was followed by Burris Butler, editor in the difficult days of separation of Christian churches/churches of Christ and Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ). It was a time of militancy in the developing conflict and resulted in painful separations in many of the congregations, some of which were submitted to civil litigation.⁴ Butler came to deplore this and counseled against resort to civil law.⁵ Complete separation came with the restructure of the Disciples of Christ in 1968.

Butler”s successor, Edwin Hayden, was genuinely committed to the historic position of the movement, which he sought to preserve, as did his successor, genial Sam Stone. The current editor, Mark Taylor, is sensitive to new areas of interest and ministry that are emerging among the churches in these times of changing interest. CHRISTIAN STANDARD offers helpful insights in the developing new areas of service.

The 140 years of continuous service to the church by CHRISTIAN STANDARD is witness to the vital role the journal has filled in the fellowship of the Christian churches/churches of Christ. It is deserving of the respect and gratitude of the more conservative churches that are very much in its debt.

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¹ Martin Marty, Righteous Empire (New York: Dial Press, 1970), 64, 65.

² Many a sermon was preached on the texts Exodus 25:9, 40, which was applied to the worship in the church.

³ Isaac Errett, “Help Those Women” CHRISTIAN STANDARD, 11 July 1874, 220.

⁴ A summary of these cases was prepared by Lewis Foster and found in James North”s Unity In Truth (Cincinnati: Standard Publishing, 1994), 336.

⁵ Burris Butler, “Christianity on Trial in the Civil Courts,” CHRISTIAN STANDARD, 29 September 1951, 3.

 

 

Henry E. Webb is retired history professor from Milligan College, Tennessee, and author of In Search of Christian Unity: A History of the Restoration Movement.