The Stone-Campbell Encyclopedia

The latest issue of Restoration Quarterly (Volume 48, number 3) includes a review of the Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, edited by Douglas A. Foster, Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavant, and D. Newell Williams, and published by Eerdmans in 2004.

One of the things that makes this review interesting to me is that it’s written by a non-Campbellite historian, James D. Bratt, who teaches at Calvin College. It’s not that often that you get to hear how others see you and your family. Not only that, the review is wise and well-written, a fair and candid assessment of what used to be called the American Restoration Movement, and this new encyclopedia about it. For a taste, here’s the opening paragraph:

“This is a monument to a movement. As a monument, it tells of persons great and small, the beliefs that animated them, the organizations they formed, the works they accomplished. It is also a monument in the other sense of the term, orienting the traveler to a landscape that, beneath its surface simplicity, hides no end of twisting paths. The movement it memorializes aimed to be the final and definitive reformation of the Christian church, clearing out the thick underbrush of creeds that had accumulated over eighteen hundred years of history with the blade of the Bible plainly read and rationally understood under the fair sun of American liberty. That, the movement’s prophets hoped, would open the door to the one house of Christian unity.”

Nice, huh? Anyway, reading the review sent me back to my copy of the Encyclopedia. I had spent a lot of time looking through it when it first arrived last year. But since then, I’ve busied myself with a million other things and had almost forgotten it.

Thumbing through it again made me want to read it from beginning to end. (Yeah, I guess Michele is right. I really am one of those geeky people who would enjoy reading an encyclopedia). But this one really is a fine piece of work and belongs in the library of any student of American religious history. Which is not to say that it’s perfect. In fact, there are a couple of omissions that I want to mention next time.