OERs: Right for Community Colleges (2) Things I Like about The American Yawp

I began teaching American History at Amarillo College in the Fall of 2018. Not long after that, I adopted The American Yawp as the textbook for the two-semester survey. There were several reasons behind that decision.

First, as I mentioned in the previous post, The AY is an online OER. It's freely available to anyone with a connection to the Internet.

Second, the textbook was written by credentialed American historians. So it's a legitimate survey, a worthy synthesis of what we know about America's past.

Third, after this resource became widely-used, Stanford University Press saw fit to print the secondary (textbook) material in two separate volumes. Chapters 1-15 of The AY correspond to the "first half" (up to 1877) of American history. Chapters 16-30 correspond to the "second half" (since 1877). The two printed volumes match up with that division. Again, they include all of what the historian-authors of this textbook wrote. So, if a student prefers or needs to read print on paper, the print edition is available at a reasonable cost. 

However, what the print volumes do not include are the primary sources featured in every chapter of the book. Those are available only in the online edition. To illustrate, the print edition contains all of the text that's visible when you access the online edition of Chapter 1.  But, the top of the chapter table of contents, note that section VI. is titled "Primary Sources." Clicking on that link takes the reader to a list of nine primary sources keyed to the subject matter of Chapter 1. Here's the link to the Chapter 1 Primary Sources. None of these appear in the online edition. So, when an instructor assigns some of the primary sources, those can be read only in the online edition.

OERs: Right for Community Colleges (1)

OER stands for Open Educational Resource. An OER is any educational resource that is either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a way that makes it permissible for anyone to use. In other words, it's free.

In January of next year, Dr. Eric Fauss, a history professor and one of my colleagues at Amarillo College, and I will be teaching other faculty at AC about "How to Adapt an OER Textbook to Your Class."

The idea for the session grew out of our practice of using an OER in teaching American History at AC. Specifically, we use a free, online textbook called The American Yawp. (The title was inspired by a line from Walt Whitman's poem "Song of Myself"--"I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world").

Something we want to bring out in our session is that one of the best things about OERs is the price. A 2018 article in The Atlantic magazine featuring AC and its president took note of something that Eric and I witness routinely: at this school "poverty intrudes into the classroom every day."

Back in the early 1980s, a few months after I graduated from high school, I experienced one of those American college-going rites of passage: sticker shock at the bookstore. As young and dumb as I was, I understood all about tuition. You had to pay to go to college. But I had no idea the textbooks for my classes would be so expensive. What made it relatively painless for me was that my parents and my scholarship could cover the cost.

But what about students who aren't as fortunate as I was? For them, the prices of textbooks can be a serious problem. Every member of the AC faculty has heard about any number of students who began a semester without a required course book. Student loans or grant money had not yet arrived. In other cases, no money was on its way, and the student simply couldn't afford the book.

Because it is an online OER, The American Yawp eliminates those kinds of problems. No paying. And no waiting for it to arrive.

Eva Heiliger's Book about Meta Chestnutt Sager (3)

Heiliger's book is replete with dialogue among the characters. This raises the general question of direct discourse in historical accounts. How can historians accurately report conversations and speeches for which there is no record? In some instances, the author actually heard the dialogue or the address, yet no one transcribed it. In other cases, the author was not present and only knows that something was or might have been said. The first historian to deal with this question in print was Thucydides. In a famous passage in The Peloponnesian War, he wrote:

As to the speeches that were made by different men, either when they were about to begin the war or when they were already engaged therein, it has been difficult to recall with strict accuracy the words actually spoken, both for me as regards that which I myself heard, and for those who from various other sources have brought me reports. Therefore the speeches are given in the language in which, as it seemed to me, the several speakers would express, on the subjects under consideration, the sentiments most befitting the occasion, though at the same time I have adhered as closely as possible to the general sense of what was actually said.[1]

Due to its practicality and often necessity, this approach has had many followers ever since. For example, in the "Introduction" to his 2008 memoir, Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley Jr. wrote:

The reader is entitled to ask if the material here is factually reliable. Reliable is the perfect word in this context. The book is not strictly factual, in that conversations are reported which cannot be documented as having taken place word for word. Yet it is reliable in that these words might well have been spoken. There are zero distortions here--no thought is engrafted in anyone that alters the subject's character or inclinations, or even habits of speech.[2]

Although Eva Heiliger never explained it as Thucydides and Buckley did, she seems to have taken the same approach. That leaves the question of the reliability of everything else in her book. Here, the reader is on much firmer ground. As noted earlier, she intended and worked to make her book "factual." No one else who actually knew Meta Chestnutt Sager did more research or wrote nearly as much about her. It is true that although Heiliger understood the significance of context in a historical accounts--her manuscript ends with a bibliography of four books--she did not have the training to write a critical biography.[3] Nevertheless, for the reasons cited here, aside from its occasional dialogue, the biography by Heiliger should be considered a reliable source.

Notes

[1] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 1.22.1, Charles Forster Smith translation, Loeb Classical Library.

[2] Buckley, William F. Jr. Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater (New York: Basic Books, 2008), xi-xii.

[3] Eva Heiliger, "Born to Meet Adversity," unpublished book manuscript, 203.

The Death of Jim Guy, Billy Kirksey, and two Roff Brothers, May 1, 1885

One deputy U.S. marshal killed in Indian Territory was James Harris "Jim" Guy, a Chickasaw Indian, published poet, nephew of Cyrus Harris, the first elected governor of the Chickasaw Nation, and a brother to William M. Guy, a future governor of the C.N.[1] His story reveals how, in I.T., the death of one or more law enforcement officers often meant injury or death for other people as well. On May 1, 1885, Guy and a posse of about ten men set out to arrest notorious criminals Dallas Humby, charged with killing his wife, and brothers Jim and Pink Lee, well known cattle rustlers.[2] The men were holed up at the Lee ranch house in the southern part of the Chickasaw Nation, not far from the Red River. According to Joe T. Roff, a brother to two of Guy's men who were killed that day, one of the outlaws inside the house indicated that he and the others were willing to negotiate their surrender. No one in the posse suspected that there were as many as a dozen men inside. Within seconds after the men outside relaxed, a shot was fired from the house, instantly killing Jim Guy. A moment later, a hail of bullets burst from the house killing two more men, Jim Roff and Billy Kirksey. Andy Roff was also hit, but was able to crawl to a nearby tree. The other members of the posse were able to escape. Andy Roff's body was recovered sometime later. Powder burns on his clothing made it clear that after the others had fled, he had been executed.[3]

Notes

[1] Joe T. Roff, "Reminiscences of Early Days in the Chickasaw Nation," Chronicles of Oklahoma 13, no. 2 (June 1935), 185. On James Harris Guy as a poet, see Robert Dale Parker, ed. Changing is Not Vanishing: A Collection of American Indian Poetry to 1930 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 141-46. On Cyrus Harris and William M. Guy as governors of the Chickasaw Nation, see Arrell M. Gibson, The Chickasaws (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), 297-99.

[2] Roff, "Reminiscences," 185-86.

[3] Ibid., 186-77.

Eva Heiliger's Book about Meta Chestnutt Sager (2)

In May 1979, Heiliger sent a form letter to several "Family and Friends of Aunt Meta," requesting information about her. "We need to receive from each of you a letter or a tape recording telling us as little or as much as you know. A sentence isn't too little and a long letter or 12 tapes isn't too much."[1] Heiliger wrote several more letters to Stenholm in 1979, going so far as to send her a few pages of a proposed film script. Finally, in September of that year, Stenholm wrote, "I wish I could be more encouraging about it, but I am afraid, judging from the material you have sent, that we could not use it for a film."[2]

At that point, Heiliger changed her plan. She wrote to Stenholm that she would, instead, write a book. She was still determined and had to be the best qualified person: "I find that I am the only one still living who really knew her (and that in her later years)."[3] Around the beginning of 1982, Eva Heiliger had completed her book manuscript. But it was rejected by three publishers.[4] She was encouraged by at least one editor to revise the book by turning it into something more like a historical novel: "The only route to go now is to add fiction to Aunt Meta's life story," she wrote to friends and family. But Heiliger made it clear she was unwilling to do it. The idea of adding fiction to her account, she said, "goes against my grain. . . . I am a factual writer."[5] 

Notes

[1] Eva Heiliger to "Family and Friends of Aunt Meta," May 1, 1979, box 1, folder 1, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection.

[2] Mrs. Katherine Stenholm to Mrs. Dick Heiliger, September 26, 1979, box 1, folder 4, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection.

[3] Mrs. Dick Heiliger to Mrs. Katherine Stenholm, October 29, 1979, box 1, folder 4, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection.

[4] Eva Heiliger to "Family and friends," April 4, 1984, box 1 folder 1, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection.

[5] Ibid.

Eva Heiliger's Book about Meta Chestnutt Sager (1)

Although never published, a book about the life of Meta Chestnutt Sager has already been written. As early as the 1940s, Eva Heiliger, Sager's great niece, aspired to tell her story. Heiliger was a freelance writer with over a decade of experience as a reporter for a small daily newspaper.[1] Her mother had attended El Meta Bond College. Sager had visited in the Heiliger home on at least one occasion. And the two women carried on an extensive correspondence for several years, due mainly to Heiliger's fascination with her great aunt.[2] Even with that, Heiliger felt she knew far too little to write a book about her subject when Sager died in 1948. For the time, she contented herself that she had published an article or two about her illustrious relative. But thirty years later, at the age of sixty-three, Heiliger was thinking about film, not print, and she had new resolve: "It just seems that the life of Aunt Meta should be told." She wrote those words to Katherine Stenholm of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.[3] By then, Stenholm was well-known in American fundamentalist circles as the founding director of Unusual Films, a production company affiliated with BJU. In 1950, Bob Jones Jr. had announced to Stenholm, a speech instructor at the school, "Dad says we're starting a film program, and you're going to head it." Overwhelmed, Stenholm explained to Bob Jones Sr., the president of the school, that she would need training for a job like that. Soon, she was spending the summer on the west coast, where she took film classes at the University of Southern California and completed an internship in Hollywood with Stanley Kramer who would go on to produce High Noon (1952) and direct films like Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (1967). Upon returning to South Carolina, Stenholm devoted herself to the new challenge. She served as chairperson of the School of Cinema at Bob Jones from 1950 to 1989, during which time she produced dozens of Christian films, including five feature-length movies she directed.[4] In 1977, just two years before Heiliger first wrote to her, Stenholm had directed her magnum opus, Sheffey, a film about nineteenth-century, circuit-riding preacher Robert Sayers Sheffey (1820-1902).[5] Heiliger thought that if the life of Sheffey was worthy of a Christian film, then why not the life of Sager?

Notes

[1] Mrs. Dick Heiliger to Mrs. Katherine Stenholm, February 1, 1979, box 1, folder 4, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection.

[2] Several long letters from Sager to Eva Heiliger, written between 1940 and 1945, are in box 1, folder 10, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection.

[3] Mrs. Dick Heiliger to Mrs. Katherine Stenholm, Bob Jones University, January 16, 1979, box 1, folder 4, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection.

[4] Ellyn Bache, "Unusual Films started with Katherine Stenholm," Greenville (South Carolina) News, April 18, 2001, 57, 60; "Katherine Corne Stenholm," Greenville News, November 7, 2015, A10. On Stanley Kramer, see David Thomson, New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 6th ed. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), 574-75.

[5] Internet Movie Database page for Sheffey, accessed August 17, 2021, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278031/. Stenholm's movies flourished only in the world of distinctively-Christian film. There is no entry for her or any of her movies, for example, in Barry Keith Grant, ed., Schirmer Encyclopedia of Film, 4 vols. (Detroit, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007).

The Murders of Ben and Alex Clark, 1885

On May 30, 1885, a young man named Lincoln Sprole murdered Ben Clark and his eighteen-year-old son, Alex. The murderer and his victims worked as renters on the Sam Paul farm in Paul's Valley, Chickasaw Nation. Ben Clark had had a disagreement with Sprole about the watering of livestock on the property. On the day of the murders, the Clarks were returning from a trading excursion at White Bead Hill. Sproule hid in a thicket near the road. As the wagon approached, he shot Ben, the father, in the chest. He then pursued the fleeing son. Although he pled for his life, Sprole also shot him in the chest. Ben was dead within hours. His son survived for seventeen days. Deputy U.S. marshal John Williams eventually tracked down and arrested the suspect and brought him to Fort Smith. When the evidence was presented at trial, one newspaper commented: "It is only to be regretted that he has not two necks to break instead of one."[1] Judge Parker issued two death sentences to Sprole. He was hanged, just once, at Fort Smith on July 23, 1886.[2]

Notes

[1] Glenn Shirley, Law West of Fort Smith: A History of Frontier Justice in the Indian Territory, 1834-1896 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1957), 219.

[2] Indian Chieftain (Vinita, I.T.), May 6, 1886, 3; "Hangman Helped to Pave Statehoods [sic] Way," Oklahoma State Capital, April 12, 1908, 13.

Meta Chesnutt's Academic Success

When Meta Chestnutt was growing up, her brother, Isaac, teased her for being so tall and thin. He said she looked a bean pole and started calling her "Beany." The nickname apparently stayed with her. When someone at Bethel Academy, comparable to a modern high school, mailed her spring 1882 grade report, they addressed it to eighteen-year-old "Beny Chestnutt."[1] But there was nothing laughable about her school work. During the semester ending April 7, 1882, she was never absent or tardy. Her lowest grade was in Algebra: 94 percent.[2] Two years later, in June 1884, she graduated from Bethel, was named the class valedictorian, and delivered an address at the commencement ceremony. That fall, she began her studies at the Greenville Institute, later named the State Teachers' College, in Greenville, North Carolina. Upon graduating from the Institute in the spring of 1886, she was approached by her principal, J. W. Duckett, a former North Carolina State Superintendent of Schools, who had a surprise. Without her knowledge, Duckett had secured for her a full scholarship from the North Carolina State Board of Education and a place in the incoming class at the Peabody Normal School, later known as the George Peabody College for Teachers, in Nashville. By then, she was a confident twenty-three year old, well-prepared for the next academic challenge. During her student days at Peabody, she made time and was permitted to teach Bible classes that included young men at the South Nashville Christian Church.[3] David Lipscomb served as one of the congregation's elders until he died in 1917. South Nashville's first revival meeting was conducted by Larimore in 1887, during which 123 people confessed their faith in Christ and were baptized.[4] It was likely at the South Nashville Church that Chestnutt met Larimore, one of the best-known evangelists among the Churches of Christ in his generation.[5] Larimore learned about Chestnutt's dream of conducting an educational mission among Indians. He told her he knew W. J. and Annie Erwin, Christians and residents of Silver City, Indian Territory, a community that needed a teacher.[6]

Notes

[1] Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection, box 3, folder 1.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Eva Heiliger, "Born to Meet Adversity," 16-18.

[4] John Wooldridge, Elijah Embree Hoss, and William B. Reese, History of Nashville, Tennessee (Nashville: H. W. Crew, 1890), 496-97.

[5] Douglas A. Foster, "Larimore, Theophilus Brown (1843-1929)," in Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 452-53.

[6] Heiliger, 18.

Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen, 1848-1889

Belle Starr, Fort Smith, Arkansas, 1886

One well-known story from post-war I. T. featured Belle Starr, the infamous "bandit queen." Starr grew up in a family of ruffians. Two of her outlaw brothers were killed by lawmen. Her first husband, James C. Reed, had once been a member of Quantrill's Raiders. He was killed in 1874 while resisting arrest. After a relationship with Cole Younger, a member of the Younger Gang and sometime associate of Frank and Jesse James, Belle Reed married Sam Starr. Their family lived in a cabin along the Canadian River at a site known as Younger's Bend, near present Eufaula, Oklahoma. Younger's Bend served as a hideout for the couple's notorious friends, including the James Gang. In 1886, Sam Starr was killed after an argument. And in February 1889, just seven months before Meta Chestnutt arrived in I.T., Belle Starr was gunned down by an unknown assailant.[1]

Note

[1] Adriana G. Schroeder, "Starr, Myra Maybelle Shirley (1848-1889)," in Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, 2:1442; Paul I. Wellman, A Dynasty of Western Outlaws (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1961), 10. See also Bill O'Neal, "Younger Gang," in Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, 2:1664-65.

Outlaws and Lawmen in Indian Territory after 1866

The story of lawlessness in America is partly about the delayed arrival of law and order in areas of new settlement. The history of post-Civil War Indian Territory and early Oklahoma certainly fits this pattern. Following the war, neither the federal government with its few active army posts, nor the Indian nations with their undermanned units of law enforcement, could do much to effectively police Indian Territory. Government at the local level hardly existed. Organized criminals held free rein in many parts of I.T., which came to be known as Robbers Roost. The United States provided some relief beginning 1871, when it brought the territory under the federal jurisdiction of the Western District of Arkansas. In 1875, President Grant appointed Isaac C. Parker to the bench at Fort Smith. Over the next two decades, Parker, the so-called "hanging judge," heard nearly 9,000 cases and issued the death sentence to approximately 160 convicts, only about seventy of whom were executed.[1] The legend of the supposedly hard-nosed Judge Parker is well known. Yet the larger story involves the deadly business of bringing order to the territory. That the U.S. Marshals Museum is in Fort Smith, the place from which hundreds of lawmen were sent out, is no accident. In the years that followed 1875, approximately sixty-five deputy U.S. marshals lost their lives in Indian Territory.[2]

Notes

[1] W. David Baird and Danney Goble, Oklahoma: A History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), 126-27. See also John R. Lovett, "Lawmen and Outlaws in Indian Territory, 1866-1907," in Historical Atlas of Oklahoma, 4th ed., ed. by Charles Robert Goins and Danney Goble (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2006), 134-35.

[2] Glenn Shirley, Law West of Fort Smith: A History of Frontier Justice in the Indian Territory, 1834-1896 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1968), ix; H. D. "Dee" Cordry, Jr., "Deadly Business: The Early Years of the Crime Bureau," Chronicles of Oklahoma 63, no. 3 (Fall 1985): 250. See also Frank R. Prassel, "marshal, federal," in New Encyclopedia of the American West, ed. Howard R. Lamar (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), 678-79.

"For Five Years I Even Buried the Dead": Meta Chestnutt's Ministry, 1889-94 (1)

In a brief retrospective piece she wrote near the end of her life, Meta Chestnutt Sager spoke about her thirty years of work as an educational missionary in Indian Territory and Oklahoma: "Christian work was always paralleled by the intellectual and social training, for five years I even buried the dead."[1] The "five years" ranged from 1889, when she first arrived at Silver City, Chickasaw Nation, until 1894. By then, several more preachers affiliated with the Stone-Campbell Movement had come to the area and sometimes visited the congregation at Minco, the town along the railroad that replaced Silver City in 1890. Around the same time she penned those words, she also wrote her own funeral service. The document details the order of her funeral, Scripture selections, prayer leaders, the songs to be sung and who should sing them. It also includes five pages of her life story, a eulogy of sorts. It even provides specific directions for the committal service: "The three ministers standing at the head of the open grave, Brother Smith give the words, The others join him in the 'Amen'."[2] (Even in death, the old school teacher and college president would direct everyone and everything). In the eulogy section of the service, she wrote, "In that early day, beginning September 8, 1889, I taught school, I taught the Bible, I buried the dead, I set the Lord's table. There was no man to do it then."[3] There is no record of her officiating at a wedding or baptizing a new believer.

Notes

[1] The two-page document written in her hand is titled "Meta Chestnutt Sager," box 3, folder 12, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection.

[2] "Funeral Arrangements Written by Mrs. Meta Chestnutt Sager before Her Death," box 3, folder 13, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection.

[3] Ibid.

Meta Chestnutt Sager Genealogy and Early Life

By her own account, Meta Chestnutt "was born on a plantation near Kinston" in "Lenoir County, North Carolina, September 8, 1863."[1] Her earliest experiences included being "taught the Bible around the fireside in a Christian home."[2] Wiley Nobles, her maternal grandfather, was a planter and physician who served as a preacher among the Disciples of Christ. He became acquainted with Alexander Campbell during his visit to North Carolina. Her mother, Almeda Nobles Chestnutt, was "a charter member" of the Bethel church, a Disciples congregation.[3] Eventually, every member of Meta's immediate family became a member of that church, her father "being the last of the family to come in."[4] Her father, Lemuel Allen Chestnutt, was a believer who had perhaps been immersed before he became a part of the Bethel church. Meta notes that he entered the church "having dropped his denominational name."[5] At the age of twelve, in August 1876, she was baptized by a "Dr. H. D. Harper" in Contentnea Creek, while those gathered on the shore sang "On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand."[6]

Notes

[1] Meta Chestnutt Sager, undated manuscript, Meta Chestnutt Sager Collection, box 3, folder 12.

[2] Meta Chestnutt Sager, "Funeral Arrangements written by Mrs. Meta Chestnutt Sager before Her Death," MCS Collection, box 3, folder 13.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

Spreading the Lord's Table: History of an Idiom (3)

Naturally, the language of well-known hymns made its way into the common speech of people who sang them. For example, in his series "On the Breaking of Bread," published in 1825, Alexander Campbell quoted an English translation of John Calvin's monumental Institutes of the Christian Religion to the effect that "Every week, at least, the table of the Lord should have been spread for Christian assemblies; and the promises declared, by which, in partaking of it, we might be spiritually fed."[1]  In 1861, Isaac Errett noted that Restoration Movement congregations in his time would typically "spread the table in the name of the Lord, for the Lord's people, and allow all to come who will, each on his own responsibility."[2] According to David Lipscomb, the Lord's Supper is "a board spread with the food our Father has prepared for sustaining and developing the spiritual life of his children." In response to the Lord's intention, it is the duty of the church, "our mother," to "spread the table with the life-invigorating viands provided by the Father, and invite the children to partake of them at the regular interval."[3]

Notes

[1] Alexander Campbell, "A Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things. No. IX. On the Breaking of Bread. No. IV," Christian Baptist 3, no. 4 (November 7, 1825), 85.

[2] "Letter from I. Errett," Millennial Harbinger, Fifth series, 4, no. 12 (December 1861), 711.

[3] David Lipscomb, "The Lord's Supper," Gospel Advocate 10, no. 9 (February 27, 1868), 200.

Spreading the Lord's Table: History of an Idiom (2)

Two more hymns indicate that the language of "spreading the Lord's Table" remained current among the Churches of Christ and Christian Churches in America up to the dawn of the twentieth century. "Shepherd of souls, refresh and bless," was composed by James Montgomery (1771-1854), a Scottish poet and hymn writer. It appears in The Christian Hymn-Book (1865), The Christian Hymnal (1871), and The Christian Hymnal, Revised (1882). Its lyrics include the two following stanzas:

Be known to us in breaking bread,

But do not then depart--

Savior, abide with us, and spread

Thy table in our heart.

Then sup with us in love divine;

Thy body and thy blood,

That living bread and heavenly wine,

Be our immortal food.

Edward Henry Bickersteth (1825-1906), an Anglican clergyman, composed "Till he come, O let the words," which was included in the New Christian Hymn and Tune Book (1882). In this song, worshippers are reminded of the eschatological feast as well as the present one:

See, the feast of love is spread:

Drink the wine, and break the bread-

Sweet memorials-till the Lord

Call us round his heavenly board-

Some from earth, from glory some,

Severed only - "Till he come."

Spreading the Lord's Table: History of an Idiom (1)

Whatever the source of the idiom, British hymn writers popularized the language of "spreading the Lord's table" as a reference to preparing and serving the Lord's Supper. A number of hymns contain this language, including two by Isaac Watts (1674-1748), a nonconformist minister and one of the greatest of all composers of English hymns. "Jesus is Gone Above the Skies" expresses the greatness of the exalted Christ and refers to the experiences and the hope of his followers. In the third of six stanzas, worshipers sing,

The Lord of life this table spread,

With his own flesh and dying blood;

We on the rich provision feed,

And drink the wine, and bless our God. 

The song appears in at least six Stone-Campbell hymnals of the nineteenth century.[1]

Watts also composed "How Sweet and Awful is the Place," clearly in an age when awful did not mean what it means now. The hymn highlights the experiences of the gathered church, including their observance of the Lord's Supper:

Here every bowel of our Lord,

With soft compassion rolls; 

Here the new cov'in his blood 

Is food for dying souls,

While all our hearts and all our songs

Join to admire the feast

Each of us cry, with thankful tongues,

"Lord, why was I a guest."

"Why was I made to hear thy voice,

"And enter while there's room;

"When thousands make a wretched choice,

"And rather starve than come?

'Twas the same love that spread the feast,

That sweetly drew us in.

Else we had still refus'd to taste,

And perished in our sin.

The song appears in the 1815 and 1829 editions of The Christian Hymn-Book. Above all, Philip Doddridge (1702-1751), an important Independent minister, writer, and educator, composed a hymn titled "The King of heaven His table spreads." The first stanza reads:

The king of heaven his table spreads, 

And dainties crown the board;

Nor paradise with all its joys,

Could such delight afford. 

The final stanza calls believers to participate:

All things are ready, come away,

Nor weak excuses frame;

Crowd to your places at the feast,

And bless the founder's name."[2]

In time, this song would appear in dozens of hymnals, including no fewer than eleven published by adherents of the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement during the nineteenth century.[3] Naturally, the language of hymns like this one made its way into the common speech of people who sang them.

Notes

[1] The Christian Hymn-Book (1815); A Selection of Christian Hymns (1818); The Christian Hymn-Book (1829); Psalms Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1843); Psalms Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1853); and Fillmore's Christian Psaltery (1867).

[2] This wording appears in The Christian Hymn-Book, 3rd ed. (Cincinnati: Looker and Wallace, 1815), 167-68, hymn number 187.

[3] The Christian Hymn-Book (1815), A Selection of Christian Hymns (1818), The Christian Hymn-Book (1829), Psalms Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1834), Christian Psalms and Hymns (1839), Psalms Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1843), The Sacred Melodeon (1848), The Christian Psalmist (1850), Psalms Hymns and Spiritual Songs (1853), The Christian Hymn Book (1865), The Christian Hymnal: Revised (1882).

Gilded Age Reform and Education for Women

The Gilded Age (1865-c. 1900) brought a tremendous amount of change to American culture and society, including issues directly related to women. Based on the popular idea that they were morally superior to men, some women argued they were therefore better qualified to help cure society's ills. Reform in the mid-nineteenth century had allowed more women to venture outside the home. Nearing the end of the century, that trend only grew. Education in general, especially academic opportunities for women, also expanded during this time. In 1870, there were a total of 160 high schools in the entire country. In 1882, that number had grown to eight hundred high schools. By 1900, there were six thousand. Also, the number of female college students grew from "eleven thousand in 1879 to eighty-five thousand in 1900."[1] Without these trends, Meta Chestnutt's academic career in the 1880s is hard to imagine.

Note

[1] Gayle V. Fischer, "Women," in Encyclopedia of the United States in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Paul Finkelman (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2001), 3:402-03.

E. G. Sewell's Typological Interpretation of the Tabernacle, 1889

In an 1889 article titled "Information Wanted," E. G. Sewell responded to a question from "Wm. Jackson, Elk River Mills, Limestone county, Ala." Sewell wrote that "the tabernacle itself is understood to be typical of the church of God on earth, and of heaven." He further detailed that the Holy Place represented the church, and that the Most Holy Place was "typical of heaven itself." He also suggested that the candlestick represented the word of God, the table of shewbread pointed to the Lord's Supper, the altar of incense stood for prayer, and the brazen laver signified baptism. Here, Sewell commented that while the New Testament called on baptized believers to pray, the various Protestant denominations "in their prayer system of conversion" placed prayer before baptism. Sewell also suggested that the divine presence of the Lord in the tabernacle "is understood to be typical of the Holy Spirit, which filled the spiritual house, the body of Christ . . . and which dwells in the church, in Christians."[1]

Note

[1] E. G. Sewell, "Information Wanted," Gospel Advocate, October 2, 1889, 631.

News of Sand Creek in Eastern North Carolina

Across the nation, Americans heard about and condemned the crime at Sand Creek. The outcry could be heard in eastern North Carolina, where in 1865 Meta Chestnutt was a toddler. For example, a piece in the Newbern Daily Times, published in nearby Craven County, called it "the Chivington massacre."[1] An article titled "The Indians" in the Daily North Carolina Times in August 1865 spoke of "the massacre of the Cheyennes by Colonel Chivington."[2] An editorial piece in the very same issue of the paper pointed to the Christianized character of Americans and what at least some thought at the time:

The best statistics in possession of the Indian Office at Washington shows the number of tribes now extant in the States and Territories of the Government to be seventy-eight, numbering in population three hundred and fourteen thousand six hundred and twenty-two in the aggregate.

This furnishes a ruinous commentary upon the doctrine that 'all men are free and equal,' or else augurs a fearful accountability for the Anglo-Saxon race in America, at the final day of accounts. They are either not free and equal with the white man, or else the white man has committed great sin, for if equal they should now number several millions instead of only a third of one million.[3]

This was certainly not the only perspective on Indians reported in North Carolina newspapers in 1865. But it was one.

Notes

[1] Newbern Daily Times, May 12, 1865, 1.

[2] "The Indians," Daily North Carolina Times, August. 5, 1865, 2.

[3] Daily North Carolina Times, August. 5, 1865, 2.

The Origins and Character of Grant's Peace Policy

The lyrics of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," written by abolitionist Julia Ward Howe in November 1861, make clear that the Civil War was, among other things, a religiously-charged event.[1] Yet, once the war had ended, America's reforming spirit was still alive. Its interests now turned toward justice for American Indians. More than anything else, news of the 1864 Sand Creek Massacre sparked public interest in real change. It symbolized a long series of American misdeeds. Acknowledging those misdeeds meant a new demand for national repentance. As Francis Paul Prucha describes the reaction, America experienced "an upsurge of Christian sentiment demanding Christian justice for the Indians that would be proper to a Christian nation."[2] The practical answer has been called "Grant's peace policy." But its ideas antedated the Grant Administration (1869-77), and lasted till the end of the century. It was, essentially, "a state of mind" according to which an old, inhumane, and ineffective system would be replaced by new one characterized by "kindness and justice."[3]

Notes

[1] Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 1:479, refers to the Civil War as "a great Christian crusade."

[2] Ibid., 480.

[3] Ibid.

Religious Aspects of the Post-Civil War Peace Policy

After the war, the powerful reform impulses stemming from the Second Great Awakening were no longer directed against slavery. At least some of the old interest in reshaping American society for the betterment of humanity and the glory of God was now focused on the Indian "problem."[1] In that era, the Protestant establishment and the party of Lincoln saw a good deal of cooperation, and this can be heard in the summary of the Peace Policy by Columbus Delano, Grant's Secretary of the Interior. The policy, said Delano, set out to place Indians on reservations where they could be taught "such pursuits as are incident to civilization, through the aid of the Christian organizations of the country now engaged in this work, cooperating with the Federal Government." A central part of the policy was to 

establish schools, and through the instrumentality of the Christian organizations, acting in harmony with the Government, . . . to build churches and organize Sabbath schools, whereby these savages may be taught a better way of life than they have heretofore pursued, and be made to understand and appreciate the comforts and benefits of Christian civilization, and thus be prepared ultimately to assume the duties and privileges of citizenship.[2]  

Notes

[1] Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., The White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978), 166. Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War (New York: Harper & Row. 1957) makes the case that antebellum evangelicals did not disdain reform movements. On the contrary, mid-nineteenth century evangelists were in the vanguard of reformers who railed against slavery and other aspects of American society they deemed ungodly. In fact, they laid the foundation upon which the post-war Social Gospel was built.

[2] Columbus Delano, Secretary of the Interior, Annual Report, in Executive Documents, 1873-74, vol. 4 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1874), iii-iv, as quoted in Berkhofer, White Man's Indian, 169.

Sand Creek: The Immediate Aftermath

Upon hearing the news of Sand Creek, citizens of Denver celebrated. When Chivington and his troops returned they were hailed as heroes. But in the months that followed, those who testified before a U.S. military commission, the House of Representatives, and the Senate were not so flattering. One Congressional report concluded that Chivington had planned and carried out "a foul and dastardly massacre which would have disgraced the veriest savage among those who were the victims of his cruelty." The soldiers had "indulged in acts of barbarity of the most revolting character; such, it is to be hoped, as never before disgraced the acts of men claiming to be civilized."[1] The reports, quoted and summarized in newspapers and magazines, made the Sand Creek Massacre a powerful symbol "of what was wrong with United States treatment of the Indians, which reformers would never let fade away."[2] Once the Civil War had come to an end and the nation had buried President Lincoln, most Americans were ready for a major change in U.S. Indian policy.

Notes

[1] Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father, 1:460.

[2] Ibid., 1:461.

The Sand Creek Massacre

The discovery of gold in the Territory of Colorado in 1858 attracted thousands of prospectors and miners whom settlers called "Pike's Peakers." The sudden influx and blatant encroachment of such a large number of whites during the early 1860s irritated and troubled Cheyenne and Arapaho leaders. It also widened the gap between Indians who favored peace and those who favored war. Meanwhile, Governor John Evans was aware of events unfolding in Minnesota and Dakota Territory. When Indian leaders in eastern Colorado refused to cede land, Evans viewed their decision as veiled hostility. When the governor decreed that all Indians were to remain in their villages, Arapahos and Cheyennes mostly complied. Still, anxiety among Evans's constituents about a growing alliance of hostile Indians, all evidence in Colorado to the contrary, made preemptive war seem attractive. Cheyenne leader Black Kettle, an advocate of peace, clearly understood the stakes and did what he could to calm white fears. But by the late summer of 1864, there was nothing more he might have done. Colorado had already called up a special Third Cavalry whose members would serve for just one hundred days and whose only mission was to fight Indians. Their commanding officer was the former Methodist minister Colonel John M. Chivington, "the Fighting Parson" (pictured here). Given the relatively peaceful conditions in Colorado, Chivington's first challenge was to find something to do. As weeks turned into months, and with the end of a hundred days drawing closer, the local press ridiculed the idle Third Cavalry and their commander. With pressure growing, Chivington brought his troops to Fort Lyon in southeastern Colorado, from which he staged an attack.[1] 

In the early morning of November 29, 1864, the Third Cavalry and new enlistees of the First Cavalry, seven hundred men in all, charged into Black Kettle's camp at Sand Creek. The night before, five hundred Cheyenne men, women, and children had fallen asleep, confident they were safe. Yet they were attacked without warning and without mercy. Upon spotting the approaching troops, Black Kettle quickly raised an American flag and a white flag at his tent. White Antelope, another peace chief, "stood with his arms folded in a peaceful gesture as the whites advanced, but to no avail."[2] He was shot down in the opening volley. The panicked Cheyennes scattered and looked for cover, while cavalrymen killed men, women, and children, sometimes scalping and mutilating the victims. By the end of the day, between one hundred and fifty and two hundred Cheyennes, most of them women and children, lay dead in the valley of Sand Creek. The residents of Denver celebrated and the Rocky Mountain News announced, "Colorado soldiers have again covered themselves with glory."[3]

Notes

[1] Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 1:457-59; Robert Utley, The Indian Frontier, 1846-1890, rev. ed. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), 85-92; Roger L. Nichols, American Indians in U.S. History (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 134-35.

[2] Prucha, The Great Father, 1:459.

[3] Ibid. Prucha estimates the number of victims at "about one hundred and fifty." Utley, The Indian Frontier, 92, says "some two hundred."

The Minnesota Sioux War of 1862

Around the time Meta Chestnutt was born in 1863, several early stories of the so-called "Indian wars" made their way east, horrifying many American citizens. In Minnesota during the summer of 1862, hungry and desperate Dakota Sioux Indians, frustrated by callous treatment from the U.S. government, killed hundreds of white settlers. Governor Alexander Ramsey quickly summoned the state militia. But before the fighting came to an end that year perhaps a thousand on each side had been killed. In the aftermath, U.S. military courts issued a death sentence to 303 Indians. President Lincoln insisted on a review of the legal proceedings in each case, and finally issued a pardon to most of the condemned. Still, when the army hanged thirty-eight men on December 26, 1862 at Mankato, Minnesota, it was the largest mass execution in American history. Sporadic warfare between the two sides spilled over into Dakota Territory to the west and dragged on during the years that followed.[1]

Note

[1] Francis Paul Prucha, The Great Father: The United States Government and the American Indians (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1984), 1:437-447; Robert Utley, The Indian Frontier, 1846-1890, rev. ed. (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2003), 76-81; Roger L. Nichols, American Indians in U.S. History (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003), 133-34. For a map detailing the Sioux wars from 1862 to 1868, see Utley, 119.

Thomas Moore's "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp"

Nothing in Moore's introduction or in the poem itself demands that the "maid" is an Indian. However, it might be said that Moore suggests as much since the maid "paddles her white canoe," while her beloved, in order to search for her, hollows "a boat of the birchen bark."[1] Whatever Moore's intent regarding the ethnic identity of the two--assuming he had an intent--a distinction between them certainly is part of the poem's reception in America. Evidence for this derives from, of all things, an Indian phantom.

In a monograph titled Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America, historian Molly McGarry reports that in 1853, Powhatan, the great Algonquian leader of tidewater Virginia during the early seventeenth century, spoke through "a thirteen-year-old medium in Lebanon, New Hampshire."[2] McGarry notes that Spiritualists would sometimes conjure the apparition of a famous historical figure. As one would expect, the expertise or unique experience of that person served as the basis for his or her message to people of the present. When the spectral figure was an American Indian, the message was often "much more ambiguous and, indeed, haunting."[3] In such cases, the apparition typically would cast blame on whites for the disappearance of Indians. Sometimes these indictments were followed by notes of resignation and reports of the happiness of Indians in the afterlife.[4] When in 1853 Powhatan spoke through the teenager in New Hampshire, he not only seemed familiar with Moore's poem, but also designated the ethnicity of the maid:

There are but few left to lament the departure of a once powerful race, none to sit by the council fire, to seek friendship or to plot revenge. No daring footsteps now climb the hills and precipices of our native land. And where is now the Indian maiden, who roamed through the glens and valleys, or skimmed o'er the lake in her swift canoe?[5]

In all likelihood, then, Meta Chestnutt did not imagine, but rather received this part of her interpretation of "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp."

Notes

[1] "A Ballad. The Lake of the Dismal Swamp," appears in Thomas Moore, Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (Philadelphia: John Watts, 1806), 33-35.

[2] Molly McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past: Spiritualism and the Cultural Politics of Nineteenth-Century America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 66.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 69.

[5] "An Indian Spirit's Speech," Spiritual Telegraph 1 (1853): 20-21, as quoted in McGarry, Ghosts of Futures Past, 68. See notes 1 and 7 on 197-98.

Baptists and Disciples in North Carolina, 1840s-90s

Beginning in the late 1840s and culminating in the '70s, the Churches of Christ in North Carolina and certain leaders among liberal Baptist churches in the state set out to promote the unity of all believers through greater cooperation.[1] At the 1849 meeting of the Disciples held at Kinston that year, the delegates appointed John P. Dunn and Josephus Latham, both considered "irenic" ministers, to attend the next gathering of the Chowan Baptist Association. The same meeting of the Disciples was attended by Dr. S. J. Wheeler, a leader among the Baptists of the region. Wheeler announced plans for the opening of a Baptist girls' school. The news was welcomed by the Disciple delegates who recommended patronage of the school, offered to supply two trustees, and invited Wheeler to solicit support among Disciple congregations. In 1854, John T. Walsh, a Disciple itinerant minister, preached for many of the Baptist churches in the Chowan Association by their invitation. Yet nothing like complete merger ever occurred. Not all Baptist leaders favored these developments. Staff writers for the Biblical Recorder, an arm of the Baptists in North Carolina, published several articles criticizing the Disciples. Walsh fired back in the pages of his monthly magazine.[2]

The relationship between Disciples and Union Baptists in North Carolina presents a different picture. Between the late 1850s and early '90s, Disciple beliefs completely took over most Union Baptist congregations. In 1858, ten counties in eastern North Carolina were home to a total of fifty Union Baptist congregations with 4,300 members. By 1892, only thirteen of those churches survived with 442 members. The majority of the congregations and individuals lost by the Union Baptists had been absorbed by the Disciples.[3] And most of the Union Baptist ministers defected to the Disciples. Among them was Isaac L. Chestnutt, Meta's older brother.[4]

Notes

[1] Charles Crossfield Ware, North Carolina Disciples of Christ (St. Louis, MO: Christian Board of Publication, 1927), 98. Ware explains that at the time, members of these congregations were called Disciples of Christ, while congregations were called Churches of Christ.

[2] Ibid., 98-100.

[3] Ibid., 101-02.

[4] Ibid., 106.

Isaac Lamar Chestnutt (1851-1907), Part 1

In the records of the Disciples of Christ in North Carolina, Isaac Chestnutt appears for the first time among the delegates who attended the denomination's annual state convention in 1877, held that year at Salem. The "List of Preachers" indicates he was minister for the church at Johnson's Mills in Pitt County.[1] Chestnutt delivered the "Introductory discourse" to the assembled representatives on the first day of the convention, no small honor for a minister just twenty-six years old. Also, he was appointed to serve on a three-man committee that would report on "Lord'sday [sic] Schools" in the state.[2] The recommendation of his committee included the following: "We respectfully recommend to this Convention, the importance of urging upon our preachers the necessity of laying this matter before their respective congregations without delay, making the subject of Lord'sday Schools a specialty." The committee also recommended curricula by Isaac Errett in Cincinnati, and by the Transylvania Publishing Co. in Lexington, Kentucky, trusted sources among the Disciples.[3] 

The annual reports from the years 1877 to 1895, after which Isaac Chestnutt no longer appears, reveal a pattern of frequent moves. During the fifteen years from 1877 to 1892, he and his family moved six times, never staying with a congregation longer than about three years. They went from the church in Johnson's Mills to the church at Maple Cypress, and from there on to Kinston, Farmville, Snow Hill, New Berne, and back to Snow Hill again. Their life seems to have combined social prominence with a good measure of hardship.[4]

Notes

[1] Minutes of the Annual Convention of the Disciples of Christ in North Carolina, Held with the Church at Salem, Pitt County, N. C., October 11th, 12th, and 13th, 1877 (New-Berne, NC: N. S. Richardson, 1877), 2. Chestnutt's name is misspelled twice as "Chesnutt." 

[2] Ibid., 3, 6. The expression Lord'sday appears more than once in this document.

[3] Ibid., 6.

[4] See the various Minutes, sometimes called Proceedings, from the annual gatherings of North Carolina Disciples of Christ.

Origin of the Baptists in America

What is now the Baptist denomination emerged from English Puritanism around the dawn of the seventeenth century. Similar to the sixteenth-century Anabaptists on the continent of Europe, English Baptists insisted on the immersion of penitent believers, as opposed to the sprinkling of infants.[1] True to their Puritan ancestry, the early sect took up the motifs of restoration. For example, early Baptist leader John Smyth (1570-1612), a radical dissenter from the Church of England, said he was seeking to restore "the worship and ministry of the Church, to the primitive Apostolic institution from which as yet it is so far distant."[2] Thomas Helwys (1550-1616), another leader among the early English Baptists, claimed that baptizing believers by immersion was the practice of the first-century church and, therefore, met the standard of apostolic Christianity, a conviction that led to the group's name.[3]

Early Baptists divided into two distinct groups. Particular (sometimes called Regular) Baptists upheld a Calvinist doctrine of salvation according to which God chose and predestined certain people to be saved and all others to be damned. By contrast, General Baptists embraced an Arminian doctrine of salvation according to which Christ died for all people, and individuals determined for themselves whether they would be saved or lost. The same distinction can be described from the standpoint of Christ's atoning sacrifice on the cross. Particular Baptists subscribed to a doctrine of limited atonement; the saving power of Christ's death was reserved for those predestined to be saved. General Baptists subscribed to the doctrine of general atonement; Christ died for everyone, so all could be saved.[4]

Through the seventeenth-century, the Baptist movement remained weak in America. Puritanism dominated New England, and Anglicanism controlled most of the colonies further south.[5] There were notable exceptions. In 1639, Roger Williams (1603-83), rejected by the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony, established the first Baptist congregation in America at Providence, Rhode Island. Also, in the early 1650s, Henry Dunster (1609-59), the first president of Harvard College, adopted Baptist beliefs about the ordinance of baptism. His change of mind led to his removal from office.[6]

Around the turn of the eighteenth century, Baptist destiny in America began to change. In 1707, five Particular or Regular Baptist congregations representing the colonies of New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania came together to form the Philadelphia Baptist Association.[7]  As Baptist historian Harry L. McBeth explains, an association "is a regional grouping of churches designed for fellowship, mutual guidance and cooperation in missions and other endeavors," and forming one is a Baptist tradition that reaches back to in England in the 1640s.[8] The association at Philadelphia, which still meets to this day, was not the first in America. Yet, it was significant for three reasons. First, it enabled American Baptists "to launch a vigorous missionary effort."[9] It also gave definition to the Baptist movement in America by publishing its Philadelphia Confession of Faith, "a modified version of the Westminster Confession, along with A Short Treatise of Church Discipline."[10] Finally, in 1764, the association sponsored the founding of a Baptist college in Rhode Island, today's Brown University.[11]. By then, the riveting sermons, ecstatic revivals, and published works of what was later called the Great Awakening had long since sparked incredible growth among Baptists in America so that congregations in the Philadelphia Association reached from southern New England all the way to Virginia.[12]

Notes

[1] Sydney E. Ahlstrom, A Religious History of the American People, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004), 171-72; Richard T. Hughes and C. Leonard Allen, Illusions of Innocence: Protestant Primitivism in America, 1630-1875 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 82; Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (New York: Viking, 2009), 653.

[2] Hughes and Allen, Illusions of Innocence, 82. See also B. L. Shelley, "Baptist Churches in U.S.A." in Dictionary of Christianity in America, ed. Daniel G. Reid (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990), 110.

[3] Hughes and Allen, Illusions of Innocence, 82; Shelley, "Baptist Churches in U.S.A.," 110.

[4] Ahlstrom, Religious History of the American People, 171-73; Hughes and Allen, Illusions of Innocence, 82. Although Calvinism held sway in seventeenth-century France, Switzerland, and Scotland, the picture was different in the Netherlands and England. In England, according to Philip Benedict, Christ's Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002), 314, Arminianism had been anticipated by Peter Baro who “left behind at Cambridge a number of loyal, if cautious, disciples, notably Lancelot Andrewes and the Regius professor of divinity John Overall.” As time went on, “positions . . . bearing the labels Arminian and Calvinist would wage a continuing and roughly equal struggle for supremacy within English theology” (316). This helps to explain the competing positions among early English Baptists.

[5] Edwin Scott Gaustad and Philip L. Barlow, New Historical Atlas of Religion in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 357.

[6] Shelley, "Baptist Churches in U.S.A," 110-11; Ahlstrom, Religious History, 174. On Roger Williams, see Henry Warner Bowden, Dictionary of American Religious Biography, 2nd ed. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 155-56. On Henry Dunster, see Ibid., 155-56.

[7] Hughes and Allen, Illusions of Innocence, 83; Shelley, "Baptist Churches in U.S.A.," 111.

[8] H. L. McBeth, "Philadelphia Baptist Association," in Dictionary of Christianity in America, ed. Daniel G. Reid (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1990), 895.

[9] Shelley, "Baptist Churches in U.S.A.," 111.

[10] Hughes and Allen, Illusions of Innocence, 83. See also McBeth, "Philadelphia Baptist Association," 895.

[11] McBeth, "Philadelphia Baptist Association," 895.

[12] Shelley, "Baptist Churches in U.S.A," 111.

The Great Dismal Swamp

The Great Dismal Swamp, known by that name since the early eighteenth century, is a forested marshland in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina. Although it has been shrinking over the centuries, it still covers about 175 square miles. Gazetteers and travel writers often note that it was surveyed in 1763 by George Washington. A vast wilderness, the area once served as a haven for Native Americans avoiding colonists, and as a hiding place for runaway slaves, the theme of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1842 poem "The Slave in the Dismal Swamp."[1] At its center is Lake Drummond, sometimes called the Lake of the Dismal Swamp. Writer John Tidwell has described the lake as a place that "feels ancient and dreamlike," where "huge cypresses form prehistoric-looking islands in the black, shallow water."[2] It must have made a similar impression on the Irish poet Thomas Moore. In late 1803, Moore was taken to see the Dismal Swamp and Lake Drummond by John Hamilton, the British consul at Norfolk, Virginia, and Moore's host in America. Hamilton told Moore the story he used as the inspiration for a ballad he titled "The Lake of the Dismal Swamp," first published in 1806. Moore's introduction to the ballad reads as follows:

They tell of a young man, who lost his mind upon the death of a girl he loved, and who, suddenly disappearing from his friends, was never afterwards heard of. As he had frequently said, in his ravings, that the girl was not dead, but gone to the Dismal Swamp; it is supposed he had wandered into that dreary wilderness, and had died of hunger, or been lost in some of its dreadful morasses.[3]

According to Howard Mumford Jones, Moore's biographer, the ballad was "greatly admired" by "that sentimental epoch."[4] The poem's popularity in the nineteenth century and the close proximity of the Dismal Swamp to Meta Chestnutt's home in Lenoir County, North Carolina, helps to explain why she would have memorized the poem in her youth.

Notes

[1] William S. Powell, North Carolina Gazetteer: A Dictionary of Tar Heel Places (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968), 145;  Archie Hobson, ed., Cambridge Gazetteer of the United States and Canada (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 176; Saul B. Cohen, ed., Columbia Gazetteer of the World, ed. Saul B. Cohen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 1:839. Ridwaana Allen, "Wild Paradise: Hope in the Great Dismal Swamp." Southeastern Geographer 61, no. 1 (Spring 2021): 1-4, reports that in 2021 the swamp covers 112,000 acres, which comes out to approximately 175 square miles. For Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem "The Slave in the Dismal Swamp," see Poems on Slavery, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: John Owen, 1842), 18-20.

[2] John Tidwell, "The Great Dismal Swamp," American Heritage 53, no. 2 (April-May 2002), 68.

[3] Thomas Moore, Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (Philadelphia: Hugh Maxwell, 1806), 28. For Moore's trip with John Hamilton to the Dismal Swamp and its lake, see Howard Mumford Jones, The Harp That Once--A Chronicle of the Life of Thomas Moore (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1937), 69-70; B. J. Lossing, "Tom Moore in America," Harper's New Monthly Magazine 55 (September 1877), 537-41.

[4] Jones, The Harp That Once, 70.

Thomas Meredith's Reaction to the Success of B. F. Hall at Edenton, North Carolina, 1833

In a scathing article against the Edenton Baptist Church, where he had served as pastor and would eventually resume that role, Thomas Meredith wrote that a majority of the congregation had recently discovered that their forefathers "in many important particulars" had been "entirely mistaken," and that their ministers had been guilty of "'darkening counsel by words without knowledge'," a quotation from Job 38:2, in which the Lord describes and challenges uninformed Job. Furthermore, the congregation had recently determined "that some of the distinctive principles of the Baptist Church are entirely unauthorised by the scriptures;" that "Articles of Faith, Church Covenants, Church Constitutions, Rules of Decorum, Systems of Discipline, &c. are unnecessary, unscriptural, and hurtful." They had also concluded "that the practice of receiving members into the church on the ground of a religious experience is unauthorised, and ought to be abolished," and that "any person is qualified for baptism who will say that he believes in Christ, loves God, and is desirous for the ordinance."  If the congregation were continue on its present course, wrote Meredith, the world would finally have "at least one genuine Apostolical Church!!"

Thomas Meredith, "Something New," North Carolina Baptist Interpreter 1, no. 7 (July 1833), 161-62.

Religious Journalism in the Nineteenth Century

A 1926 article appearing in The Outlook claimed: "Less than one hundred years ago the religious journals had more influence than any other papers in this country. In 1830 the circulation of church papers in New York City exceeded the circulation of all secular periodicals. The church press maintained its important position all through the nineteenth century."

Sources

"The Church Press," The Outlook 143, no. 3 (May 19, 1926), 90-91. (The quotation comes from page 90). The article was reprinted as "The Church Press," The Living Message 4, no. 21 (May 27, 1926), 329, 332.

W. T. Moore and Earl I. West on Editors as Bishops

In his 1909 Comprehensive History of the Disciples of Christ, W. T. Moore wrote: "The Disciples have no Diocesan Bishops, and consequently their leading religious periodicals have practically occupied that place."[1] Among historians of the Stone-Campbell Movement, this passage has been paraphrased to say: "The Disciples do not have bishops, they have editors."[2] Moore noted that the editors of the most popular journals and magazines of the movement "came to be practically general bishops, and exercised nearly as much power as the bishops do in some of the religious denominations."[3] Consequently, "there can be no doubt about the fact that, from the beginning of the movement to the present time, the chief authority in regard to all important questions has been the Disciple press."[4] Forty years later, Churches of Christ historian Earl I. West reflected on the significance of periodicals in the history of the Restoration Movement and issued the same judgment: "The chief forces of opinion and policy in the brotherhood have always been the brotherhood publications. Here the issues are discussed. Here the merits of any issue are weighed. Here the opinions are finally fixed."[5]

First and foremost, this observation applies to Alexander Campbell. After his Christian Baptist magazine was discontinued in 1830, its successor, the Millennial Harbinger, became "the chief organ of the movement." Until he died in 1866, Campbell's editorial direction "was generally accepted without question."[6] In addition, Barton W. Stone published his monthly journal, the Christian Messenger, from 1826 until 1845. The journal was plagued by financial troubles and Stone sometimes had to suspend publication, the longest break stretching from January 1837 through August 1840. Nevertheless, as Carl W. Cheatham describes its influence, the Christian Messenger "was an invaluable means of expression and communication for Stone's followers. In the absence of any general organization among the churches, it became the chief instrument of their unity."[7]

Notes

[1] William Thomas Moore, A Comprehensive History of the Disciples of Christ (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1909), 12.

[2] In fact, that particular wording, which does not appear in Moore's history, has become something of a written and oral tradition among Restoration historians. It seems that the creator of the written tradition is Richard T. Hughes. See, for example, his Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of the Churches of Christ in America (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1996), 10; Hughes, Part One: The Churches of Christ: A History, in Richard T. Hughes and R. L.  Roberts, The Churches of Christ (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001), 115.

[3] Moore, Comprehensive History of the Disciples, 523.

[4] Ibid., 699.

[5] Earl Irvin West, The Search for the Ancient Order, vol. 2, 1866-1906 (Indianapolis, IN: Religious Book Service, 1950), 461.

[6] Moore, Comprehensive History of the Disciples, 522-23.

[7] Carl W. Cheatham, "Christian Messenger," Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 194.

Barton W. Stone on the Lord's Supper

Query.--By Elder John Scott of Indiana. "Did the ancient Christians take the Lord's supper every Lord's day.

Answer.--It is evident that from the institution of this ordinance as recorded by the Evangelists, nothing decisive can be adduced as to the frequency of receiving it. The same institution as recorded by Paul, who received it from the Lord, is more decisive as to time. I.Cor. 11. 25,26. "This do ye, as oft as you drink it, in rememberance [sic] of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come." Yet it cannot from this be determined, how often, whether once, twice, or a dozen times a year. Some have thought that Acts 2. 42, 46, refers to the Lord's supper; but others have thought differently. It cannot be determined, which opinion is most correct. I incline to think with the latter, though I am not positive.

Acts 20. 7, seems to me to decide how often the ancient christians received the supper, "And upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came together to break bread, Paul preached to them." From this it is plain that the disciples came together on the first day of the week, and the great end of their coming together was to break bread. This was the principle part of their worship, mingled with songs of praise, with prayer, reading the scriptures and exhortation or preaching. This is further confirmed by I. Cor. 11,20, "When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord's supper." The meaning of the Apostle, doubtless, is this "you come together professedly to eat the Lord's supper; but your abuse of this holy ordinance, is a profanation of it rather than anything else." These [229] are all the passages in the N. Testament on this subject,& these plainly to my mind prove that the practice of the ancient christians was, to take the Lord's supper every first day of the week. This, we are informed by church historians, continued to be the constant practice of the church for the first three centuries after Christ. Whenever the church shall be restored to her former glory, she will again receive the Lord's supper on every first day of the week. Certainly, then, christians should seriously take this subject into consideration and reform.

EDITOR.

Barton W. Stone, Christian Messenger 4, no. 10 (September 1830), 228-29.

Who May Eat the Lord's Supper?

Long before the early twentieth century, leaders in the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement more or less agreed on two points related to the question, who may partake of the Lord's Supper? First, the Supper was for Christians. Second, it was no one's place to identify and prevent someone from eating the Lord's Supper. Again, nineteenth century thought leaders were the ones who had established these two principles. The two following quotes from an early twentieth century source indicate its standing among the Churches of Christ at that time:

“The table of the Lord is for those in his kingdom, for those who cherish him in their hearts and who believe in his sacrificial death. Others should not presume to eat.”

Because each person should “examine himself” (1 Cor. 11:28), no “man or set of men has the right to sit in judgment and determine who shall and shall not eat the supper. The Lord has not conferred police powers on any one to stand guard over his table” and turn away “those who may be judged as unworthy.”

Source

C.R. Nichol and R.L. Whiteside, Sound Doctrine, 6th ed. (Clifton, TX: Nichol Publishing Company, 1920), 1:167, 169.

Brevard Childs on the Biblical Tabernacle

In his monumental 1974 commentary on the Book of Exodus, Yale professor Brevard Childs provided an overview of the long history in which both Jewish and Christian interpreters have sought to understand the tabernacle.[1] Childs noticed a consistent and common fascination with this unique place of worship. The biblical description of the tabernacle, he wrote, "has been regarded from the beginning with the greatest possible interest by Jewish and Christian scholars alike."[2]. And what has been the reason for this? Childs offered a two-part explanation:

First, the dimension of the tabernacle and all its parts reflect a carefully contrived design and a harmonious whole. The numbers 3, 4, 10 predominate with proportionate cubes and rectangles. The various parts--the separate dwelling place, the tent, and the court--are all in exact numerical relation. The use of metals--gold, silver, and copper-- are carefully graded in terms of their proximity to the Holy of Holies. In the same way, the particular colors appear to bear some inner relation to their function, whether the white, blue, or crimson. There is likewise a gradation in the quality of the cloth used. Finally, much stress is placed on the proper position and orientation, with the easterly direction receiving the place of honor.[3]

In addition, Childs highlighted how in the biblical account it is the Almighty who issues each one of the many directions for the construction of the Tabernacle. "Every detail of the structure reflects the one divine will and nothing rests on the ad hoc decision of human builders."[4] Consequently, both Jewish and Christian scholars assumed that these details are rich in meaning, laden with significance. And this naturally led those interpreters to take a figurative, symbolic approach. In the post-Reformation period, Christian studies of the Tabernacle reveal a distinctive effort "to demonstrate the typology between the kingdom of God in the symbolism of the tabernacle and the church."[5]

Notes

[1] Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary, The Old Testament Library (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), 537-50.  I refer to this work as "monumental" because, with only a handful of possible exceptions--most notably Karl Barth's commentary on Paul's Letter to the Romans--very few twentieth-century commentaries on any book of the Bible made a greater impact than did Childs's work on Exodus. Much of its prominence stemmed from the author's construal of the task of commenting on a biblical text. At the outset, Childs revealed his intention to break new ground by reclaiming what was essentially old ground. Compared to "the majority of scholars within the field," he set out to present "a different understanding of the role of biblical interpretation." While the majority apparently considered historical-critical scholarship an end in itself--particularly investigations of the so-called depth dimensions of the text--Childs intended to use higher criticism as a means whose end was nothing short of what he often referred to as "the recovery of theological exegesis" (ix). And this explains the subtitle he gave to his commentary.

[2] Ibid., 547.

[3] Ibid., 537-38

[4] Ibid., 540.

[5] Ibid., 548.

Silas Kennedy and the Christian Church at Davis, Oklahoma

In August 1897, Silas Kennedy established a congregation of the Christian Church at a community in the Chickasaw Nation known today as Davis in Murray County, Oklahoma. He served as one of the congregation's first elders and beginning in 1898, led the church to start construction of its first meeting house.[1] Kennedy took an active role in the civic life of early Davis. Beginning in 1900, when the growing town had ten doctors and three dentists, he served on the local Board of Health.[2]

Davis became home to the Kennedy family. Silas died there, at age 69, in the spring of 1918. He was still serving as minister and his funeral was held at the church he had established over twenty years before. His wife, Charlcy Dockary Kennedy survived until 1933. One of their three sons, Luke M. Kennedy, became a dentist and had practices in Davis and, later, Elk City, Oklahoma, where he died in 1943.[3] No fewer than eleven members of the extended family lie buried in a plot at the Greenhill Cemetery in Davis.

Notes

[1] Theresa Gabel, ed., Davis, Oklahoma (Davis, OK: Arbuckle Historical Society, 1981), 168. See also D. C. Gideon, Indian Territory (New York: Lewis Publishing Company, 1901), 197, which indicates the existence of a Christian Church at Davis around the turn of the century.

[2] Ibid., 192; R. W. Chadwick and Sharon Chadwick, “Davis,” The Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=DA015.

[3] "Gone to His Reward. Rev. S. E. Kennedy," Davis News, April 25, 1918; "Mrs. S. E. Kennedy Buried Here Monday," Davis News, January 26, 1933; "Dr. L. M. Kennedy Buried Here Tuesday," Davis News, January 21, 1943.

My Dissertation

The following paragraph might show up in my dissertation. It's my partial attempt to define and explain the project:

While it does present a biographical narrative, it is not a biography per se. It is, instead, what might be called a series of case studies based on one life, all related to a wide range of topics and sub-fields of history. These include American religion, especially the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement; Native Americans, narrowed to the Five Tribes of Oklahoma, especially the Choctaws and Chickasaws; biblical studies and Christian theology; the history of Indian Territory, Oklahoma Territory, and the State of Oklahoma, especially Grady County and the towns of Silver City, Minco, and Chickasha; women's and gender history; education and educational theory in the United States; North Carolina's Coastal Plain, where Meta Chestnutt was born and raised, and the city of Nashville, Tennessee, where she attended the Peabody Normal College and the University of Nashville, and where she worked among the Churches of Christ and Christian Churches during the late 1880s.

John D. Benedict (1854-1946)

John Downing Benedict was born in Clermont, Indiana, in 1854. His family moved to Vermillion County, Illinois, in 1869, and it was there that he graduated from high school. He went on to complete a degree at the University of Illinois. In 1881, the year he turned twenty-seven, Benedict became superintendent of schools in Vermillion County. During his eight years at that post, he developed a uniform educational program for the state's rural schools. The curriculum was so popular it was later adopted by the State of Kansas and by Oklahoma and Indian Territories as well. Benedict's record of success in the field of education was no doubt what led to his being appointed the first U.S. superintendent of schools in Indian Territory in 1899.[1] 

The new position had a remarkable background. Prior to the passage of the Curtis Act of 1898, the Five Tribes of Oklahoma had complete jurisdiction over their respective school systems. But Section 19 of the Curtis Act stated that

no payment of any moneys on any account whatever shall here after be made by the United States to any of the tribal governments or to any officer thereof for disbursement, but payments of all sums to members of said tribes shall be made under direction of the Secretary of the Interior by an officer appointed by him.[2]

Apparently, the U.S. government intended and took the phrase "under direction of" to mean that the Secretary of the Interior would have to approve of the activities for which the tribes received money. And that meant, among other things, federal oversight of schools in Indian Territory.[3] And so it was that Benedict arrived in Muskogee, Indian Territory, on February 27, 1899, to begin his challenging work.[4]

Notes

[1] Carolyn G. Hanneman, “Benedict, John Downing,” Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture, accessed March 25, 2021, https://www.okhistory.org/publications/enc/entry.php?entry=BE016. See also Grant Forman, "John D. Benedict, Pioneer Educator in Oklahoma," Oklahoma Teacher 27 (May 1946), 17-18.

[2] An Act For the protection of the people of Indian Territory, and for other purposes, Chap. 517, 55th Cong, 2d. sess. (June 28, 1898).

[3] This interpretation stems from Benedict's own view. See John D. Benedict, "Excerpt from Manuscript of 'My Educational Experience'," Indian-Pioneer Papers, Western History Collections, University of Oklahoma, accessed March 25, 2021, https://digital.libraries.ou.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/indianpp/id/3907/rec/1

[4] Ibid.

D. T. Broadus on El Meta Christian College in 1895

The college at Minco is moving on. The building is not complete yet. It will require patience and perseverance to complete the building and get the school in good running order. W. J. Erwin, J. H. and R. S. Tuttle are trustees, and will push it to completion as fast as they can. They now have three teachers, including the music teacher. There are now about ninety pupils and others ready to start as soon as they get more of the boarding department ready. Brethren, let us all encourage this much-needed work. Some good brethren who have money can do a grand work by contributing some of it immediately to assist in finishing up the boarding department. Send your money to either of the trustees, or to Miss Meta Chestnutt, who has labored so faithfully for five long years in bringing the school up to what it is now. She began with a small number of children in a little schoolhouse on the wild prairie, but all the time with this work in view. She has, by persevering until now, brought it to where it is. She is a graduate of Peabody Normal, of Nashville, Tenn., and is a practical, energetic teacher. She begins a thing to succeed. She has but little use for the word fail. Other good teachers will be added as fast as they are needed. One other will be added soon.

D. T. Broadus, "Kansas Notes," Gospel Advocate 37 (January 3, 1895), 14.

The Letter to the Hebrews: Some Basics

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews describes it as a "word of exhortation," a sermon (13:22). The anonymous writer was a thoroughly-Hellenized Jewish Christian steeped in the language of the Septuagint, an ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. Also trained in rhetoric, he wrote some of the finest Greek to be found anywhere in the New Testament.[1] Hebrews bears a number of marks suggesting it was written to a house church in an urban setting, perhaps Rome. Like the writer, the intended audience had roots in the Hellenistic synagogues of the Jewish Diaspora. The congregation had endured persecution for their Christian faith and, in the eyes of the author, had now become spiritually sluggish. They were in danger of drifting away from their commitment.[2] The community stood in need of pastoral rebuke and encouragement, which is exactly what this sermon in written form was intended to provide.

Notes

[1] William L. Lane, Hebrews 1-8, Word Biblical Commentary 47A  (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1991), xlvii-li.

[2] Ibid., liii-lx. For this reconstruction of the historical situation, Lane points to passages like Hebrews 2:1, 5:11, and 10:32-35.

E. G. Sewell on the Tabernacle (3)

In a follow-up article, "The Altar of Incense, the Brazen Laver, Etc.," which appeared in The Gospel Advocate for February 3, 1886, E. G. Sewell continued his Christian, symbolic interpretation of the biblical tabernacle. In his first article, he had written about the table of shewbread and the candlestick.

Altar of Incense

In his second article, he turns to another item in the Holy Place, the altar of incense. Sewell notes that the priests of ancient Israel were to burn incense on this altar "every morning and evening continually." In this way, they constantly sent up to the Lord, as it were, a fragrant scent. And what does this image typify? Sewell answers that "the general understanding is that the offering of incense was a figure of prayer," and he cites a handful of passages from both the Old and New Testaments in which the burning of incense and prayer are related. For example, in the first half of Psalm 141:2 the writer says to God, "Let my prayer be set before thee as incense." In Revelation 5:8 and again in 8:3, the offering of incense is analogous to the prayers of the saints.[1]

Brazen Laver

This item stood "near the door of entrance into the tabernacle of the congregation," but was "on the outside." There the priests washed themselves before entering the tent. And this, wrote Sewell, "is understood to be figurative of baptism. And as the priest upon washing entered . . . into the tabernacle, so now those who obey the gospel, enter Christ by baptism." Conversely, "as the priest was not allowed to enter the tabernacle without washing at the laver, so no one can enter the church now without being baptized into Christ." Sewell highlights an inference that can be drawn from this interpretation: baptism, represented by the laver on the outside of the tent, comes before prayer, represented by the altar of incense which was inside the tent. Any priest who burned incense on the altar had to first cleanse himself at the laver. "So also if any one wishes to attend at the altar of prayer in the church of God, he must be baptized, must have his body washed with pure water at the door of entrance" into the church. Baptism, which brings the penitent believer into the church, comes before the life of faithful prayer.[2]

Moreover, wrote Sewell, this indicts "those people who teach alien sinners to pray to God for pardon, without baptism, without washing first." Such teachers are guilty of "reversing heaven's order." Sewell goes so far as to compare them to Nadab and Abihu of Leviticus 10. They were two of Aaron's four sons and were thus among the first priests in ancient Israel. Nevertheless, when the brothers "offered strange fire before the Lord, which he commanded them not," they were destroyed by fire that went out from the Lord (Lev. 10:1-2). Again, wrote Sewell, preachers who promote "a reversal of God's order" can be compared to Uzziah, King of Judah. According to 2 Chronicles 26:16-21, though he was not a priest, Uzziah burned incense upon the altar. Consequently, he was stricken with leprosy, a skin disease he had for the rest of his life. Only when people are "washed" and thus "sanctified, justified" do they remove all doubt about their being prepared to officiate at God's altar in all spiritual things," including prayer to God through Christ.[3]

Here, Sewell clearly reflects significant differences between the doctrine of Christian initiation according to the Stone-Campbell tradition and that of most other conservative Protestants, like Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians. Much earlier in the nineteenth century, Barton Stone, Alexander Campbell, and like-minded leaders concluded that according to the New Testament, people who came to believe in Jesus as the Christ were to turn from their sins in repentance and be immersed into him for the remission of their sins.[4] Their teaching generated a noticeable change in the way that preachers in the Stone-Campbell Movement concluded their evangelistic sermons. Unlike many other Protestant preachers, whose sermons ended with an invitation for individuals to walk to the front of the assembly in order to anxiously pray for salvation at the mourner's bench, preachers among the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ invited those who believed the gospel message to come forward as an indication that they were turning from their sins and turning to the Lord in repentance, and that they desired to be immersed into Christ.[5] When emphasizing the significance of baptism, however, Sewell guarded against the idea of baptismal regeneration: "Not that baptism is the only prerequisite by any means. Faith and repentance must precede baptism, or no one is ready to be baptized. Everything in its proper place."

Altar of Burnt Offering

Nearing the end of his second article, Sewell refers to the Torah instructions regarding the altar of burnt offering: "two lambs should be offered to the Lord every day."[7]  This, writes Sewell, is "another indication of continued sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving and of prayer to the Lord on the part of Christians." The sacrifice of two lambs each day at the tabernacle was the standard under the Old Covenant. If that was so, then should not "we that enjoy the reality, the New Covenant, the fullness of God's love and mercy . . . with a loving, a joyful heart approach God daily with our sacrifices" of thanksgiving and praise?[8]

Apparently, Sewell did not notice or did not care that in making these comparisons he seemed to contradict the principle he had established earlier: it is only after being baptized that the believer, now a member of the priesthood, inside the Holy Place, can fittingly participate in spiritual activities. If confronted with this apparent inconsistency, Sewell would no doubt have clarified that it is altogether fitting for all people, in or out of Christ, to praise and give thanks to God. His earlier concern involved the virtual substitution of prayer for baptism. And it is baptism, according to his view, to which all penitent believers must submit in order to receive the forgiveness of sins, the gift of the Holy Spirit, and entrance into the church that Christ established.

Notes

[1] E. G. Sewell, "The Altar of Incense, the Brazen Laver, Etc.," Gospel Advocate 28 (February 3, 1886), 65.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] See, for example, Barton W. Stone, "The Christian Expositor," Christian Messenger 1 (January 25, 1827), 56-63; Alexander Campbell, "Ancient Gospel--No. I. Baptism," Christian Baptist 5, no. 6 (January 7, 1828), 121-24; "Ancient Gospel--No. II. Immersion," Christian Baptist 5, no. 7 (February 4, 1828), 158-63.

[5] Thomas H. Olbricht, "The Invitation: A Historical Survey," Restoration Quarterly 5, no. 1 (First Quarter 1961), 6-16.

[6] Sewell, "The Altar of Incense," 65.

[7] Ibid. The reference is to Exodus 29:38-43 and Numbers 28:3-8, according to which a lamb was to be sacrificed every day, one in the morning and one at twilight.

[8] Sewell, "The Altar of Incense," 66.

E. G. Sewell on the Tabernacle (2)

Candlestick

Next, Sewell interpreted the candlestick which, like the table of shewbread, stood in the Holy Place. The purpose of the literal, Old Testament candlestick was obvious. "The tabernacle was without windows, or any means of admitting light from without, and hence the lamps in the candlestick were the only light." And what does this symbolize? It stands for "the light-bearing attitude" of the church. "The light that shone out from the golden candlestick fitly represents the word of God, as the only light to guide people in the service of God. As the tabernacle had no other light by which to guide its work, so the church has no other light for its work, for its guidance of men to heaven, but God's word." Because this is true, Bible reading, Bible study, and Bible teaching are vital to the life of the church if it is to honor God and bless the lives of people.[1]

Note

[1] E. G. Sewell, "The Tabernacle," Gospel Advocate 28 (January 27, 1886), 49.

E. G. Sewell on the Tabernacle (1)

In 1886, the same year that Meta Chestnutt came to Nashville to begin her studies at Peabody, E. G. Sewell, coeditor with David Lipscomb of the The Gospel Advocate magazine, based in Nashville, published two front-page articles that gave a symbolic interpretation of the biblical tabernacle.

Sewell began by establishing the tabernacle's New Testament counterpart. Not surprisingly, he identified what Protestants had favored for hundreds of years: "That the Jewish tabernacle, in many of its leading features foreshadowed the church of God, is admitted by all." From there, he submitted that the second room, the Most Holy place, should be understood as "a figure, or type of heaven," with "the divine presence upon the mercy seat to foreshadow the eternal presence of God himself in that blessed abode." The first room, or Holy Place, is "a type of the church of the living God on earth." This stood to reason, because in the same way that one entered the Holy Place before going further into the Most Holy Place, so one enters the church before finally reaching heaven. Consequently "all the articles of furniture" in the Holy Place "and the acts performed here are figurative of the worship of the Lord's house on earth."[1] This orientation--with the Most Holy Place as heaven, the Holy Place as the church on earth, and area outside the tent as preliminary--provided the template for Sewell's biblical exposition.

Table of Shewbread

The remainder of Sewell's first article interprets the symbolic meaning of two items in the Holy Place: the table of shewbread and the candlestick. "The table," he wrote, "foreshadows the Lord's table in the church of God on earth." In the same way that the twelve loaves were replaced every week, so it is that every week, Christians are to partake of the Lord's Supper. And in the same way that the priests removed the loaves each Sabbath day, so there is a "specified time" for Christians to observe the Lord's Supper, "the first day of the week." Sewell emphasized that just as divine directions were not to be neglected by the Old Testament priests, "so the breaking of the loaf must not be neglected by the children of God now in the congregations of the Lord." In fact, fidelity to the will of God should, if anything, be stronger in the Christian age. "While the Jewish priests cold only consider the table and shewbread as a formal ordinance, Christians can now see in the broken loaf of the Lord's table an emblem of the actual, real body of the Son of God that was broken, mangled upon the Roman cross, that poor sinners might live."[2]

Notes

[1] E. G. Sewell, "The Tabernacle," Gospel Advocate 28 (January 27, 1886), 49. See also "Temple Building," Gospel Advocate 31 (August 21, 1889), 536, where Sewell writes that the tabernacle "was figurative of the church of God, the spiritual temple on earth now," and "Information Wanted," Gospel Advocate 31 (October 2, 1889), 631. For a brief biography, see David H. Warren, "Sewell, Elisha Granville (1830-1924)," in Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement, 680-81.

[2] Sewell, "The Tabernacle," 49.