Meta Chestnutt in Tennessee, 1886-1889 (2)

Although there must have been some well-to-do members in Disciples churches in Nashville at the time, most of the people Meta Chestnutt worshipped with there were not the city's elite. According to research conducted by historian Don H. Doyle, in 1880, of the thirty-six economic leaders in Nashville whose religious persuasions are known, half were Methodists. The other half were either Presbyterians, Baptists, or Roman Catholics. Not one was a member of a Stone-Campbell congregation.[1]

Note

[1] Don H. Doyle, Nashville in the New South, 1880-1930 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985), 64-66. See esp. Table 2 on 65.

James J. Trott: Missionary to the Cherokees, 5

In spite of minimal help from congregations or from the Disciples' American Christian Missionary Society, by the end of 1859, James Trott had resumed his dream of working among the Cherokees, this time in Indian Territory. By then, Trott and his second wife had five sons and three daughters.[1] Not long before the outbreak of the Civil War, he was able to report:

We have already about 75 disciples in the Cherokee Nation, which we humbly hope and pray may be the first fruits of a glorious harvest. Some of these are the result of our humble efforts in the old nation more than twenty years ago. Some are the fruits of the able efforts of Bro. Graham, and the pious labors of Bro. Robertson; and some 50 were converted by the zealous efforts of brethren Goodnight and Phillips. We had the pleasure last fall of immersing three descendants of the red man, while on a visit to Grand Prairie, where we have a good prospect of establishing a High School. Having volunteered our humble efforts in this missionary field, free of charges to church or state, and having a large family to care for, we have not been able to devote as much time to preaching the word as we desired, and the cause demands.[2]

Trott's report indicates that he was enjoying at least some success in his mission. It also tells us that he worked among a network of fellow preachers. At least some of those men resided in northwest Arkansas and made trips across the border into Indian Territory in order to preach to Cherokees. 

But in 1862, troops entered the Cherokee Nation confiscating goods as they went. They helped themselves to provisions that belonged to Trott, and one of his sons, Timothy, was killed. At this, the family fled to Arkansas, and then to Missouri. Eventually, they found refuge in Kansas, but not before one of Trott's daughters, Elizabeth, died from exposure on Christmas Day 1862. 

One might guess that after the war, Trott would have stayed in Kansas, where the Disciples had made him the state evangelist, or gone back to Tennessee, where he had many friends and family. But in June of 1866, he returned to the Indian Territory to once again work among the Cherokees. Nevertheless, by that time deprivation and depression had taken their toll.

In 1868, James Trott set out for Tennessee, and died on December 19, 1868, not long after he arrived. He lies buried in Carmack Cemetery in Sumner County.[3]

Notes

[1] J. Edward Moseley, Disciples of Christ in Georgia (St. Louis: Bethany Press, 1954), 130.

[2] Report of the Proceedings of the Anniversary Meeting of the American Christian Missionary Society Held in Cincinnati, October 23, 24, 25, 1860 (Cincinnati: H. S. Bosworth, 1860), p. 16.

[3] Moseley, Disciples of Christ in Georgia, 130-31; Tolbert Fanning, "James J. Trott: Messenger of the Church of Christ at Franklin College, Tenn., to the Cherokee Nation," Gospel Advocate (March 25, 1869).

Religious Travelogue at its Best: American Evangelicalism in Recent Times

Balmer, Randall. Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey into the Evangelical Subculture in America. 25th Anniversary Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

In the prologue to his classic study of conservative Protestantism in late twentieth-century America, Randall Balmer writes: "This is a book about popular evangelicalism, a kind of travelogue into the evangelical subculture in America, a subculture that encompasses fundamentalists, charismatics, and pentecostals" (4-5). With that, he launches into a series of chapters, each one taking him to a different place, each one offering him a different slice of his topic. A few highlights:

Chapter 1, "California Kickback," recounts a 1987 visit to Calvary Chapel, an evangelical mega-church in Santa Ana, California. Under the leadership of pastor Chuck Smith, the church took off in the 1970s when leaders began preaching to washouts from the hippie counterculture in Southern California. As Balmer describes it, the church seems to have taken on certain aspects of the counterculture. At least some long-time members of the congregation are "Jesus people" from the 70s. Yet, Calvary Chapel attracts a remarkably wide variety of folks, attesting to the fact that the church is something much more than a big group of "hippies for Christ."

The setting for Chapter 5, "Adirondack Fundamentalism," is thousands of miles from Southern California: Word of Life Fellowship on Schroon Lake in upstate New York. Balmer describes Word of Life's summer Bible camp for teens in the summer of 1987. He chronicles some of the awkward, anxious religious lives of kids growing up in a devout Protestant home. He also discusses the historic issue of transmitting a vibrant faith from one generation to the next.

Chapter 14, "Oregon Jeremiad," tells the story of Balmer's 1986 visit to the Oregon Extension of Trinity College. Trinity is located in the suburbs of Chicago, while the small Western extension school is in Lincoln, Oregon, at a former logging camp in the Cascade Mountains. The extension and small church there, as Balmer describes the community, is a refuge for smart but sort-of-odd people who wouldn't fit in very well in one of the power centers of American evangelicalism, and who wouldn't want to.

Chapter 15, "Prime Time" was written in 1998, ten years after Jimmy Swaggart's public fall from grace following the discovery of his voyeuristic involvement with more than one prostitute. Balmer visited the Family Life Center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Swaggart's church. According to the author's description, Donnie Swaggart, the son of the evangelist, became contentious when Balmer told him he was there on assignment to write an article for Christianity Today magazine. By contrast, Jimmy was very gracious and likable. (After the worship service, Balmer accidentally met up with the Swaggarts at a nearby restaurant). Balmer describes what the church and college campus looked like then. Only about 45 students attended Swaggart's college. Not many people attended the church services, and the sprawling campus of Jimmy Swaggart Ministries was poorly maintained.

Those were, in my opinion, some of the more engaging chapters. But there are over a dozen more. In the "Afterword: Twenty-Five Years Later," written in 2014, Balmer revisits some of the places he'd gone to and people he had spoken with a quarter century before. It's an interesting version of "Where are they now?"

I suspect that Balmer's work has appealed to so many readers through the years because it smoothly and consistently brings together four qualities: vivid description, historical context, penetrating analysis, and the author's own personal reflections.

There was one thing that I, involved with Churches of Christ all of my life, wondered about. In recent years, some scholars have asked about the degree to which Christians with roots in the Stone-Campbell Movement might be described as evangelicals. Along that line it might be significant that in this wide-ranging book, in which the author frequently draws connections between history and his contemporary subjects, the following names and terms do not appear in the Index: Campbell, Churches of Christ, Restoration, and Stone. I don't believe that's a mistake. Restorationists, Campbellite Disciples, Stoneite Christians, whatever you want to call them, are in a real sense not evangelicals. It appears that perhaps this book provides indirect evidence to support that conclusion.

Rice Haggard, Barton W. Stone, and the Christians of Kentucky

From the mid-1790s until the beginning of the 1800s, Rice Haggard was a preacher and leader among the former Republican Methodists. In August of 1794, the group adopted by name "the Christian Church."

It was likely in 1803 that Haggard made a trip westward from Virginia to Kentucky. One of his reasons for going there was to visit his brother David who, like Rice, had also served as a Methodist preacher. As early as 1791, David Haggard had been assigned to ride the circuit of Lexington, Kentucky. A few years later, he decided to settle in the newly-formed state.

Another of Rice Haggard's reasons for going to Kentucky was to arrange for the purchase of land, which he must have heard about from his brother. According to the records of Cumberland County, in 1798 David Haggard was granted 200 acres of land on the Little Renox Creek. The next year he was granted an additional 300 acres in the same vicinity. [1]

During his trip to see David, Rice Haggard met Barton W. Stone, a leader of the newly-formed Springfield Presbytery. The relationship between these two men, as well as the relationship between the former Republican Methodists in Virginia and the Christians in Kentucky, is not well known for the most part.

However, we do have the record of Joseph Thomas, known by his distinctive outfit and called by many in his day "the White Pilgrim." Thomas, a Kentucky preacher of the early 1800s, gives us some important first-hand information. Recounting the actions of Stone and the Springfield Presbytery in the early months of 1804, Thomas writes:

About this time R. Haggard, a minister of the christian church in Virginia, heard of them. At that time he found them a wise, candid people, enquiring after the plain simple truth as it was laid down in the scriptures. And at a great meeting held by them at Bethel he proposed to them publicly the name by which they should distinguish themselves as the followers of Christ. -- "And the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch."-- "And that the scriptures were all sufficient to govern the church of Christ, and that any other written rules or laws were spurious and only calculated to separate and keep apart the lambs of Christ." They then saw that the day of the redeemed had come, and that the day star, with all the shining beams of truth had shined into their hearts. With great joy and thankfulness they received this name, as being sent down from heaven for them to be called by. I will observe that in the time of the interview of R. Haggard with these people, I am induced to think that he received a greater and more perfect understanding of some of the doctrine of the gospel than he ever before received. . . .

Not long after this, at a memorable meeting, held at Cane Ridge in 1804, the Springfield Presbytery dissolved their body by a mutual and unanimous consent. [2]

Here, Thomas confirms for us two important facts about the Springfield Presbytery. First, Rice Haggard's counsel at the meeting at Bethel in April 1804 led to their adoption of the name Christian. Second, Haggard's influence among the Presbytery contributed to its eventual demise. It was no mere coincidence that the Bethel meeting took place in April and that the breakup came two months later on June 28th. In fact, the words of Stone himself relate that Haggard directly influenced him and his colleagues:

Under the name of the Springfield Presbytery we went forward preaching, and constituting churches; but we had not worn our name more than one year before we saw it savored of a party spirit. With the man-made creeds we threw it overboard, and took the name Christian--the name given to the disciples by divine appointment first at Antioch. We published a pamphlet on this name, written by Elder Rice Haggard, who had lately united with us. Having divested ourselves of all party creeds, and party names, and trusting alone in God, and the word of his grace, we became a byword and laughing stock to the sects around. Yet from this period I date the commencement of that reformation, which has progressed to this day. [3]

Notice how Stone acknowledges the leadership of Haggard in that "reformation" with which Stone was associated.

Finally, the place of Haggard as a leader among the Kentucky Christians--not only in his suggestion of the name Christian, but also in more-general teaching--is confirmed for us by the remarks of Robert L. Davidson, a historian of the Presbyterian Church, who sarcastically wrote:

Filled with the pleasing dream of an approaching universal kingdom which was to embrace the whole earth, they proposed to establish a grand communion, which should agree to united upon the simplest fundamental principles according to a plan drawn up by Rice Haggard, such as worshiping one God, acknowledging Jesus Christ as the Saviour, taking the Bible for the sole confession of faith and organizing on the New Testament model. To this union, all disciples of Christ, they gave the name "The Christian Church" and would recognize no sectarian appellation. Their views were communicated to the world in the promised "Observations of Church Government" and An Address to the Different Religious Societies on the Sacred Import of the Christian Name. [4]

That Davidson knew of what he spoke is verified by a comparison of his description of the "plan drawn up by Rice Haggard" to what Haggard actually published in his pamphlet in 1804.

Of course, no one doubts that the leading personality among the Kentucky Christians was Barton W. Stone. But what hasn't always been recognized is that, in 1804, when Stone and his brethren were searching for answers, the veteran reformer Rice Haggard offered biblical counsel and timely suggestions. Indeed, it is said by Davidson that it was the plan drawn up by Haggard which was approved and adopted by the Springfield Presbytery.

Considering that description, a person has to wonder how the Stone Movement might have been different had it not been for the timely influence of Rice Haggard.
___________________

[1] For more about this, see the outstanding article by R. L. Roberts, "Rice Haggard (1769-1819) 'A Name Rever'd'," Discipliana 54 (Fall 1994), pp. 67-81.

[2] Joseph Thomas, The Travels and Gospel Labors of Joseph Thomas (Winchester, VA: J. Foster, 1812), p. 26.

[3] Barton W. Stone, Biography of Eld. Barton Warren Stone (Cincinnati: J. A. and U. P. James, 1847), p. 50.

[4] Robert L. Davidson, History of the Presbyterian Church in the State of Kentucky (New York: R. Carter, 1847), p. 198.

Rice Haggard Among the Methodists

The beginning of the Rice Haggard story takes us back at least as far as December 1784, when the Christmas Conference of the Wesleyan Societies in America was held in Baltimore. At that conference Thomas Coke, who had been sent to America by John Wesley (pictured here), ordained Francis Asbury. Then, both Coke and Asbury were elected general superintendents in America, and the Methodist Episcopal Church began. In the last paragraph of his letter to the conference, John Wesley said:

As our American brethren are now totally disentangled both from the State and from the English hierarchy, we dare not entangle them again either with one or the other. They are now at full liberty simply to follow the Scriptures and the primitive church. And we judge it best that they should stand fast in liberty wherewith God has so strangely made them free. [1]

The words of Wesley electrified the conference, especially those freedom-loving preachers among the Methodists like James O'Kelly who would later write:

We perceived the counsel in the circular letter to be good; because we were directed to follow the Scripture and the primitive church; and to stand fast in our liberties, seeing we were free from the power of kings and bishops. [2]

But such liberty within the newly-formed church would soon be lost. Not long after the Methodists became an independent group, Francis Asbury emphasized the monarchical aspect of their church government (as opposed to the democratic aspect), and set out to seize control. In defense of Asbury it might be argued that he had been sent by Wesley with some measure of authority. Yet these later actions were a step beyond what Wesley himself had in mind. Sometime later, he sent a rebuke to Asbury, the self-proclaimed bishop:

How can you, how dare you suffer yourself to be called bishop? I shudder, I start, at the very thought. Men may call me a knave, a rascal, a scoundrel, and I am content; but they shall never, by my consent call me a bishop. For my sake, for God's sake, put a full end to this. [3]

History bears the sad testimony that Francis Asbury rejected Wesley's appeal.

It was during this period that Rice Haggard converted to Methodism in 1787, then only eighteen years old. Two years later, he delivered his first sermon. A year after that, in 1790, he received an assignment to ride the Bedford circuit in Virginia. In 1791, he was ordained by Francis Asbury and rode the Cumberland circuit; in 1792, the Micklenburg circuit. [4]

Rice Haggard worked hard and made a good bit of progress among the Methodists. So it was natural for him to attend their Baltimore conference of November 1792. By that time, Francis Asbury had made great strides in his quest to control the church. But there was among the Methodists a group who believed that Asbury had stepped over the line, and they wanted to be controlled by no one but God.

At issue in 1792 was the right of a Methodist minister to reject the assignment given to him by Bishop Asbury. Though that was the particular point, men like James O'Kelly believed that there was a much larger question at stake. Would they be free to follow the Word of God, or would their first allegiance be to a man? During the sessions of debate, Rice Haggard looked on as James O'Kelly, brimful of passion, took a New Testament in hand and said,

Brethren hearken unto me, and put away all other books, and forms and let this be the only criterion and that will satisfy me. [5]

But soon the conference turned not on the authority of the Scriptures, but on the question of Asbury's character. This was a natural move for the Methodists. Their short history had been the story of the leadership of Wesley. It seems that their implicit reasoning went as follows: If, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Methodists had entrusted themselves to the benevolent rule of John Wesley, then why couldn't they do the same in America under Francis Asbury? With that question on the table, an elder stood up and asked,

[W]here is the man that will say [that Francis Asbury] ever injured a preacher?

After the question was repeated, a young man whose name was Rice, assured the conference that he had known two preachers who were injured by Asbury. Later, Haggard said, I am the man he has injured. After the right of appeal was rejected by the council, Rice Haggard walked out of the Baltimore Conference along with James O'Kelly and others. [6]

Nine months later, on August 2, 1793, O'Kelly and his colleages met at Piney Grove in Chesterfield County, Virginia, and sent a letter to Asbury. They requested a meeting at which everyone could examine the existing form of church government in the light of the Scriptures. On Christmas Day of that year, the O'Kelly group convened at Manakin Town to receive Asbury's reply. It read:

I have no power to call such a meeting as you wish, therefore if 500 preachers would come on their knees before me I would not do it. [7]

It seemed that Asbury assumed the power to make binding appointments, but had no such power to call a meeting to discuss the policy! It was then that O'Kelly, Haggard, and like-minded leaders saw no other option but to separate entirely from the Methodists and form another religious group which they called the Republican Methodist Church.

By 1801, they had not only adopted the name Christian for themselves as individuals, but had come to call the new body the Christian Church. [8] Interestingly enough, besides James O'Kelly, the only dissenter among the former Methodist preachers to stay the course was Rice Haggard.
______________

Notes:

[1] As quoted in Colby D. Hall, Rice Haggard: The American Frontier Evangelist Who Revived the Name Christian (Fort Worth, TX: University Christian Church, 1957), p. 24.

[2] Hall, Rice Haggard, p. 24.

[3] Hall, Rice Haggard, p. 24.

[4] Hall, Rice Haggard, p. 23. See also R. L. Roberts, "Rice Haggard(1769-1819) 'A Name Rever'd'," Discipliana 54 (Fall 1994), pp. 68-69.

[5] Roberts, "Rice Haggard," p. 69.

[6] Roberts, "Rice Haggard," p. 69.

[7] Roberts, "Rice Haggard," p. 69.

[8] Earl I. West, Search for the Ancient Order, vol. 1, reprint ed. (Germantown, TN: Religious Book Service, 1990), p. 10.