Division in the American Restoration Movement: A Summary of Jonathan Woodall's Dissertation

Woodall, Jonathan Franklin. "The Post-Termination Rhetoric of the American Restoration Movment." PhD diss., University of Memphis, 2014.

In 2014, Jonathan F. Woodall, under the guidance of Professor Sandra Sarkela, completed a PhD in the field of Communication at the University of Memphis. The dissertation, “The Post-Termination Rhetoric of the American Restoration Movement,” combines rhetorical studies with historical investigation of what traditionally has been called the American Restoration Movement. 

As Woodall explains, the word termination is a technical expression that refers to the death of the founder of a movement. In this study, termination specifically points to the death of the religious pioneer and patriarch Alexander Campbell (1788-1866). Woodall seems to favor the older term American Restoration Movement because, apparently, he does not believe that Barton W. Stone (1772-1844), though prior to Campbell, provided critical leadership in what has more recently been called the Stone-Campbell Movement. To be clear, the author does not explicitly deny Stone’s influence—especially his influence in one of the post-termination factions—so much as he simply focuses on Campbell as the much more significant figure. Again, the all-important “termination” event featured in this study is the death of Campbell.

Woodall's basic research question involves the commonly debated issue of exactly what generated division within a once-unified American religious movement of the nineteenth century. Also, when did division occur? From the early 1830s until he died in 1866, Alexander Campbell presided over an impressive and growing movement that sought to reconstitute biblical Christianity. Today, three distinct religious bodies represent the movement associated with Campbell: the Disciples of Christ denomination, independent Christian Churches, and the acappella Churches of Christ. The first group, the Disciples of Christ, would be listed among several liberal, mainline Protestant denominations. The other two groups subscribe to a conservative theology and practice congregational autonomy. How and when did these three branches emerge?

Woodall argues that, from the standpoint of rhetorical analysis, four sermons included in an 1868 anthology, The Living Pulpit of the Christian Church, edited by W. T. Moore, represent a key to answering those questions. The author explains that rhetorical studies involve, among other things, “the identification of groups” which will be generated “during a period of termination” (1).  “[I]n a moment of termination, what is ultimately at stake is the movement's ideology” (2). Woodall asserts that in his exploration of American Restoration Movement texts, he has “located competing ideographs, or patterns, within the movement and discovered new leaders as they sought to organize their audience and convince them to support the ongoing efforts” (2). Significantly, he notes that a tension in the outlook of Campbell himself increased the likelihood of “competing ideographs” of the early post-termination period:

Campbell’s influence was far reaching, especially through the circulation of his perfecting ideology within his journal. However, Campbell’s ideology not only contained a perfecting myth, but a democratic view of religion with very little structure. In fact, there was no official leadership position outside the context of the local congregation; hence, Campbell’s leadership stood as a contradiction to the very ideology he promoted (12).

Woodall argues "that while the Restoration Movement of Campbell terminated at his death, new rhetorical leaders emerged using competing ideographs found within the work of Campbell to seek new inceptions leading to splintering." Close textual analysis of the four sermons he examines reveals "a widening diversity of ideas within the movement instead of a constant unity of beliefs, values, and practices" (20).

Paradoxically, Alexander Campbell’s compelling leadership of a movement committed to religious principles that were thoroughly democratic nearly guaranteed post-termination splintering. Either way, the heart of Woodall’s dissertation examines four leaders, all of whom knew Campbell, and all of whom contributed a sermon to Moore’s anthology. Following the Civil War and the death of Campbell, Moore wished to present a united front. According to his vision for the collection, all of the best-known preachers and editors of American Restoration Movement during the early post-termination period would speak with one voice. Yet, according to Woodall, it was not to be. In the pages of The Living Pulpit of the Christian Church he detects four competing ideologies. He provides a map of the four central chapters of his work when he writes,

The Movement had an emerging “association” ideology through the establishment of colleges and universities, fueled by the leadership of W. K. Pendleton; a “militant” ideology focused on the frontier and rural areas, fueled by Benjamin Franklin; a “purification” contingency in the South, fueled by Tolbert Fanning; and a “progressive” contingency in the North, fueled by the leadership of Isaac Errett. Each ideology can be traced back to Alexander Campbell’s own ideographs throughout his decades of leadership (30).

Significantly, not only did each of these post-termination leaders contribute a sermon for Moore’s anthology, each one served as the editor of an important serial publication of the time. Pendleton, a son-in-law to Alexander Campbell, took over the editorship of the Millennial Harbinger, which Campbell had begun in 1830. Franklin was editor of the American Christian Review, which promoted biblical primitivism and the common man, and exuded the popular myth of the wisdom of the rustic. Fanning was the founding editor of the Gospel Advocate magazine. Published from Nashville by a southern pacifist, the Gospel Advocate espoused a radical resistance to all human government and championed the kingdom of Christ alone. Errett, editor of the Christian Standard, espoused a progressive outlook which highlighted the fact that God had not written one book, but two. The church, said the Standard, should interpret both biblical and natural revelation in order to gain the understanding necessary for the advancement of the kingdom of Christ.

Not only does Woodall’s work help to explain the sources and trajectory of division in the American Restoration Movement, it also provides an answer to the question of chronology. Specifically, the dissertation takes a side on the question of when division occurred. Did it happen at or near the time of the Civil War, or did the break come in the decades that followed? In his review of some of the pertinent literature, Woodall notes that scholars like Douglas A. Foster and Bill Humble have insisted that the movement divided in the 1860s. On the other hand, Earl I. West, the father of distinctively Churches of Christ historiography, said that almost everyone in the movement was attempting to hold it together, and that they succeeded in maintaining unity for some time following the war. Siding more with Foster and Humble, Woodall writes, “From the point of the Living Pulpit publication in 1868, it is almost impossible to view the Restoration Movement holistically” (170-71).

“The Post-Termination Rhetoric of the American Restoration Movement” represents a solid contribution to the study of the rhetorical range and history of the Campbell tradition. Although the dissertation was done in the field of Communication, specifically Rhetoric, historians of the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement can learn much from it.

Rice Haggard's Influential Pamphlet

This is the last post I'll do about Rice Haggard, for now anyway. I hope that this series helps to show that his role in early American Restorationism is probably more significant than our surveys usually suggest. For one thing, although younger than and not as prominent as James O'Kelly, Haggard was significant in the break with Francis Asbury and the Methodists. Later, he provided leadership among the Republican Methodists who became the Christian Church. Too, though he has not been remembered as a leader among the Kentucky Christians of the Stone movement, the facts speak otherwise. In addition, as this post helps to show, Haggard provided some help to the New England movement, associated with Elias Smith and Abner Jones, which came to be known as the Christian Connexion.

A short, far-from-complete list of resources for further study (with links) can be found at the end of this post. I'd be glad to hear your reactions to any of this.
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The call for a return to the Bible and undenominational Christianity spread during the early years of the newly-formed United States. An early-American "restoration plea" was heard not only in places like Virginia and Kentucky, but also in the New England states.

One prominent reformer in the Northeast was Connecticut-born Elias Smith. A preacher and publisher, Smith drank deeply of primitive restorationism. In 1803--when Alexander Campbell was about 14 years old and still in Ireland-- Smith was excommunicated by the Baptist Church of Woburn, Massachusetts. On that occasion he said:

If you wish to know what denomination I belong to, I tell you, . . . I am a Christian; as a preacher, [I am] a minister of Christ; calling no man father or master.

In 1816, he wrote:

The Holy Scriptures are the only sure authentic and infallible rule of faith and practice; the name Christian is the only proper one of the believer; in all essentials the scriptures are plain to be understood.

Smith has been remembered for his founding of the Herald of Gospel Liberty, often touted as the world's first religious newspaper. When Smith started the newspaper in 1808, his list of subscribers numbered only 274. But within just a few years that number had grown to 1,500. In the issue for Friday, August 18, 1809, Smith wrote:

We have received a small, but valuable work, from one of our Brethren in Virginia . . . which we think will be read with pleasure by many.

The article that followed was not complete. It was merely the first installment of a series. More sections appeared in the months that followed until the anonymous work was concluded in the issue dated February 2, 1810.

It wasn't until a century and a half rolled by that someone finally realized what Smith had published in the pages of the Herald. John W. Neth, Jr., then a budding church historian, identified who had written the series of articles. Years before, Neth had taken a church history class in which the professor noted that Rice Haggard's pamphlet on the sacred origin of the name Christian was no longer available. Neth turned to a classmate and bragged that he would someday discover the lost pamphlet. It turned out to be a prophecy.

Years later, as he worked his way through old issues of the Herald, Neth suddenly suspected that the series of articles was a reprint of the long-lost Rice Haggard pamphlet. Careful research in the early 1950s confirmed the identity of the articles, and Haggard's pamphlet was republished in 1954--along with an interesting preface--by the Disciples of Christ Historical Society in Nashville.

Haggard titled his work, An Address to the Different Religious Societies, on the Sacred Import of the Christian Name. Throughout, Haggard focused on the blight of religious division and importance of Christian unity. As he saw it, nothing was more harmful to the cause of Christ than the disunity of His followers:

To me it appears, that if the wisdom and subtlety of all the devils in hell had been engaged in ceaseless counsels from eternity, they could not have devised a more complete plan to advance their kingdom than to divide the members of Christ's body.

Haggard also believed that a vital step in restoring Christian unity was for all to wear the name Christian. But this was not merely a practical thing. It was primarily a matter of ascribing to our Lord the honor that only He deserves:

If our religion be the religion of Jesus Christ, both justice and propriety demand, that it should be called by his name. Otherwise, he will be the author of a good, and other will have the honor of it.

In another passage, Haggard spoke against the practice of wearing a man's name simply because one embraces what that man taught:

I believe some things which great and good men have believed and taught; but I believe them not on their authority, but solely on the authority of Jesus Christ. It would therefore be iniquity in me to rob him, in order to compliment them.

The tested reformer fully realized that Christian unity would never come merely as the result of all believers adopting the Christian name. Unity would come as the result of everyone standing together in truth:

Would to God, that those distinctions, which have so long abounded and troubled [the church], were vanished away, never to return! and that union, the church communion, were every where established upon the original simple principles of the gospel!

Confident that Christian unity would take hold and ultimately prevail, Haggard concluded on a note of hope: 

Brethren, we are expecting happier times than the church has ever yet seen; when she shall "look forth" as the morning, fair as the moon, "clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners."

Haggard's pamphlet was first published in 1804 by Joseph Charless of Lexington, Kentucky. After it appeared in serial form in the Herald of Gospel Liberty, it was reprinted in pamphlet form in 1815 at Dayton, Ohio. It was, thus, one of the most widely-circulated religious tracts of the early 1800s, and no doubt made an impact for the cause of uniting believers under the name Christian.

One of the more remarkable things about the pamphlet is that it was lost for so very long. At the very beginning, Haggard reveals only this about himself:

Some may, perhaps, be anxious to know who the author of the following pages is, his name, and to what denomination he belongs. Let it suffice to say, that he considers himself connected with no party, nor wishes to be known by the name of any -- he feels himself united to that one body of which Christ is the head, and all his people fellow members.

I used to believe that those words were motivated by pure modesty on the part of Haggard. Since then, however, I have learned that his tract has at least two antecedents:

1. A booklet by Benjamin Grosvenor (1676-1758), An Essay on the Christian Name: It's Origin, Import, Obligation, and Preference to all Party-Denominations. London: John Clark and Richard Hett, 1728.

2. A sermon by Samuel Davies (1724-1761), later president of Princeton University, titled "The Sacred Import of the Christian Name."

It's clear that Haggard's ideas, and even their specific wording, were not his own. Any credit, I believe, belongs to Grosvenor. Upon reading Haggard's work, one realizes that he knew how to document his ideas. He even does it a few times. But for him to truly document his reliance on Grosvenor and/or Davies, he should have placed a footnote and Ibid. after many of his sentences.
Of course, that would have been quite a distraction in a pamphlet that Haggard believed was vital. If he was going to do so much copying, he'd have to do it anonymously. That's my theory for now, anyway.

Rice Haggard died in 1819 somewhere around Xenia, Ohio, and was buried in an unmarked grave. He was only 50 years old. Appropriately enough, at the time of his death he was doing what he believed was most important, taking the gospel of Jesus Christ to the people of what was then the western frontier of the United States.
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For Further Study: In addition to the Haggard pamphlet, I have quoted from various parts of The Centennial of Religious Journalism, edited by J. Pressley Barrett, Dayton, OH: Christian Publishing Association, 1908. This is a fascinating source for people who enjoy reading about Restoration History. It includes, for example, a short biography of Elias Smith, from which I've quoted here, on pp. 314-16. Remembrances of Haggard, stemming from various sources, can be found on pp. 15-21 and 269-83.

Also, P. J. Kernodle's book Lives of Christian Ministers (1909) contains a short biography of Rice Haggard.

The obituary notice for Nancy Haggard, the widow of Rice, was submitted by Isaac T. Reneau and can be found in the Millennial Harbinger, vol. 6, no. 2 (February 1863), pp. 94-95.

The only book-length treatment is Rice Haggard: The American Frontier Evangelist Who Revived the Name Christian, by historian extraordinaire, the late Colby D. Hall.

I've mentioned already the article by R. L. Roberts, "Rice Haggard (1769-1819) 'A Name Rever'd'," in Discipliana 54 (Fall 1994), pp. 67-81. Because Roberts used the oldest and best authorities available, his article is by far the best secondary biographical source.

Remembering Rice Haggard

On Monday, August 4th, 1794, a group of about thirty preachers met at the Old Lebanon Church near Surrey, Virginia. There just a few miles from the James River they searched together for truth.

The first and most important question before them was, "What should we call ourselves? By what name should we be known to the world?" Less than a year had passed since the group had adopted the name Republican (meaning "free" or "independent") Methodists. But standing by their commitment to the authority of the Scriptures, they searched for a name that was biblically approved. In the course of their meeting, they considered and debated several resolutions. Finally, a young man named Rice Haggard stood up with a copy of the New Testament in his hand and said:

Brethren, this is a sufficient rule of faith and practice, and by it we are told that the disciples were called Christians, and I move that henceforth and forever the followers of Christ be known as Christians simply.

The conference unanimously adopted the proposal, and from that time on they wore no other name. [1]


Most of the standard textbooks on Restoration history associate Rice Haggard with the Republican Methodists and their leading figure, James O'Kelly. And it is the story just told for which Haggard's name has barely been remembered. [2]

But the larger picture of Haggard's life and influence have all but been forgotten. Few people recognize his name. Even fewer recognize that of the three earliest attempts to return to primitive Christianity on American soil, he alone exerted a direct influence on each one. More than two centuries later, it's time we rediscovered this giant of faith to whom we owe so much.

More next time. . . .

Notes:
[1] Wilbur E. MacClenney, The Life of Rev. James O'Kelly (Raleigh: Edwards and Broughton, 1910), pp. 115-16.

[2] See, for example, Earl I. West, The Search for the Ancient Order, vol. 1, reprint ed. (Germantown, TN: Religious Book Service, 1990), p. 10, and Everett Ferguson, Church History, Reformation and Modern, 2nd ed. (Abilene, TX: Biblical Research Press, 1967), p. 68.
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The historical markers pictured above are located along Virginia Route 10 (also known as Colonial Trail West) near present-day Surrey, Virginia in Surrey County. Click for map.

Also, you can click on the lower photo in this post to get a better look at the text on the monument. I took these photos in the summer of 1998.

This post and the ones to follow about Haggard are an updated version of my article, "Rice Haggard: Unsung Hero of the Restoration," Gospel Advocate (March 1997), pp. 26-31.