Report on Forrest M. McCann, "Changes in Worship Music in Churches of Christ"

McCann, Forrest M. "'Time is Filled with Swift Transition': Changes in Worship Music in Churches of Christ." Restoration Quarterly 39 (Fourth Quarter 1997): 195-202.

This article was originally a speech, delivered at Abilene Christian University in 1997. Forrest McCann, a musician and historian, identifies and describes distinct episodes in the musical history of the Churches of Christ. According to him, they are as follows:

The Nineteen Century: The Campbell Tradition

No surprise, Alexander Campbell was the most significant influence on the worship music of the Disciples movement during the nineteenth century. Campbell had been raised a Presbyterian. Consequently, he favored the "metrical versions of the Psalms" well-known among the Presbyterians. His original hymnal of 1828 was republished a number of times. And, it served as the basis for hymnals produced by the American Christian Missionary Society between 1865 and 1882.

First Major Transition: Competition

In 1882, James Henry Fillmore published a song book that was much the same as the one produced by the ACMS. But, Fillmore's book was cheaper! Consequently, Campbell's dream of the the united Disciples having just one hymnal was crushed. Too, a new era of song-book competition began. Standard Publishing produced a hymnal in 1888, and in 1889, the Gospel Advocate came out with a hymnal whose lyrics were overseen and edited by E. G. Sewell. Interestingly, there was evidently no one among the Churches of Christ at the time who was qualified to oversee the music for the Gospel Advocate hymnal. So, a Methodist musician, Rigdon M. McIntosh who was on the faculty at Vanderbilt, did the job.

Second Major Transition: Advocate Books

Following the official separation between the Christian Churches and the non-instrument, non-society Churches of Christ in 1906, hymnals produced by the Gospel Advocate always had a non-instrument, Churches of Christ text editor. But, again, there was apparently no one in the group who was qualified to oversee the musical part of the hymnal. Consequently, an "instrumental" brother or someone like the Methodist Rigdon McIntosh edited the tunes. "The sad fact is that since the 1906 separation, Churches of Christ have never been a part of the mainstream of church song in America" (196).

Third Major Transition: Competition Again

Just as there was competition among Disciples hymnals in the 1880s, the emerging Churches of Christ witnessed similar competition. There were the Gospel Advocate hymnals, which competed with hymnals produced by the Firm Foundation, plus a large number of hymnals produced by independent editors. None of these hymnals featured songs whose words and music were consistently good.

Among the many hymnals published in the early 20th century, The Wonderful Story in Song (1917), by F. L. Rowe, was more substantial than most, and had some staying power (197). Some of the song books produced by the Churches of Christ in the first half of the twentieth century were of very low quality.

West of the Mississippi, Churches of Christ typically used the hymnals produced by the Firm Foundation headquartered in Texas. Hymnals were edited by G.H.P. Showalter, editor of the Firm Foundation magazine. The content of these hymnals was heavily influenced by F. L. Eiland, "the most prominent singing-school teacher among the Churches of Christ in Texas" and his proteges (197). Eiland's own Trio Music Company and subsequent Quartet Music Company produced several small, paperback hymnals, none of which lasted very long. These were filled with the words and music of Eiland and his students, songs which no one had ever sung before (and hardly since). Especially in the west, Churches of Christ were going their own way musically. This was a regional, mediocre tradition which produced very few songs which have lasted. Eiland's best-known book was The Gospel Gleaner (1901).

(FVB's guess is that the two best-known songs from this time and place are F. L. Eiland, "Time is Filled with Swift Transition," and a song by one of Eiland's students, Will Slater, "Walking Alone at Eve").

Fourth Major Transition: Great Songs

In May 1921, E. L. Jorgenson, a trained musician, completed Great Songs of the Church. Commendations poured in and were published in Word and Work, which had produced the new hymnal. Among Churches of Christ hymnals, the quality was unprecedented. And, this hymnal "reconnected the Churches of Christ with the great historic tradition of hymns and spiritual songs" (198). The book was a combination of Christian history and more-recent music produced by the Restoration Movement. Here was the best music from Christendom and from Restorationism. The musical isolationism of the Churches of Christ was coming to an end.

In producing Great Songs of the Church, Jorgenson was heavily influenced by the lesser-known W. E. M. Hackleman. For example, like Hackleman (and Fillmore), Jorgenson divided his collection into "Hymns" and "Gospel Songs."

Fifth Major Transition: The Dominance of Great Songs

The Gospel Advocate was silent about Great Songs, which was published by Word and Work, associated with R. H. Boll and premillennialism. Nonetheless, Great Songs became the standard everywhere, apparently because of its quality and despite its connections to "Bollism." By 1958, Jorgenson could say, "Nearly three million souls, in some 10,000 churches, now sing the Saviour's praises from its pages" (200). In the 50s, Jorgeson sold his standard-note edition of the hymnal to the Christian Standard, and the shaped-noted edition to Abilene Christian University. "The result of these transactions was that for the next decade and a half the heirs of the Stone-Campbell Movement again approached Alexander Campbell's dream of one hymnal for the churches" (200).

Sixth Major Transition: Imitation

Beginning in the mid-50s, producers of song books began simply copying songs straight from Great Songs of the Church. Sometimes the new books were 50 percent reproductions of songs from Jorgenson's work. They did so with impunity and apparently came to imagine that what they were doing was right. "His work, which has greatly elevated and standardized our hymnody, is now in its death throes because of inveterate copying. Perhaps my speech today is its requiem" (201). (Seems like this section should be called "Duplication" not "Imitation").

Seventh Major Transition: Current Events

McCann clearly saw the 1990s as an era of decline. A summary of his observations:

1. Only seventeen years later, it is astonishing to read McCann's assumption that part of the answer is to keep the best hymnals in print. (How many Christians sing from a printed hymnal anymore? They sing words projected onto a screen. In many cases, there is no musical notation).

2. Publishers of song books operate on the premise that more songs makes for a better book. McCann notes that by that time, there was a hymnal with over 1000 selections.

3. The advent of "so-called praise songs."

4. A trend toward performance music, music written for choirs and other trained musicians, not for "the average worshiper" (201).

In his conclusion, MaCann hints that the introduction of more-complicated music makes the adoption of instrumental music more likely. He quotes approvingly from a 1861 article by Isaac Errett in the Millennial Harbinger, which discusses the importance of music and singing.

See also, Forrest M. McCann, "Changing Our Tune: The History of Hymnals," Gospel Advocate 140 (December 1998), 12-16.

Abstract of Everett Ferguson on "Alexander Campbell's Sermon on the Law"

Ferguson, Everett. "Alexander Campbell's Sermon on the Law: A Historical and Theological Examination," Restoration Quarterly 29 (1987): 71-85.

This article explains the historical, religious, and polemical contexts of a sermon which, in printed form, became one of the seminal texts of the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, especially in connection with attitudes toward the Old Testament. Ferguson observes that statements from the sermon were later taken out of these contexts and applied in ways that had the effect of discounting the authority and usefulness of the O.T. Ferguson argues that Campbell did not intend to demean the O.T. Instead, he was interested in cutting off typical Protestant appeals to it for practices such as infant baptism, observing Sunday as a Christian Sabbath, national covenanting, and the establishment of civil law. He concludes that if someone wants a better understanding of how Campbell understood the O.T. and used it as Scripture, he should read Campbell's Familiar Lectures on the Pentateuch.

Report on "Second Great Awakening" article by Donald G. Mathews

In an ongoing effort to chronicle some of my reading, to preserve the work and make it accessible to mainly me, I'm posting a few notes like this. The articles and books I'm reporting on are typically seminal works, important secondary sources in my historical research.

Mathews, Donald G. "The Second Great Awakening as an Organizing Process, 1780-1830: An Hypothesis." American Quarterly 21 (Spring 1969): 23-43.

Mathews begins by suggesting that "present interpretations" of the Second Great Awakening may not be "sufficiently comprehensive" (23).

Scholars typically choose between two places of the SGA: the west or New England (24). And, it truly was not the same in those two different locales.

Mathews notes that the very term revival(ism), with its prefix "re," indicates that something (faith, churches, etc.) is already there.

Mathews says that there was a continuity between the "end" of the Great Awakening and the "beginning" of the SGA. The discontinuity between the two was that whereas the First "demanded a rethinking of church authority without subsequent general expansion of the churches, the Second Awakening was most noticeable in the undeniable quantitative fact that the Methodist and Baptist sects were not restructuring church life so much as extending it-- . . . by the tens of thousands" (26).

"It is . . . the thesis of this paper that one of the major determinants of the Second Great Awakening was irrelevant to theological issues and can be studied apart from them, that the Awakening in its social aspects was an organizing process that helped to give meaning and direction to people suffering in various degrees from the social strains of a nation on the move into new political, economic and geographical areas" (27).

The SGA characterized by unity

Mathews criticizes Perry Miller's interpretation of the SGA by saying that Miller investigated intellectual facets of the Awakening and (surprise, surprise) identified intellectual (theological) sources or causes of the Awakening. Miller's work "leaves out the social patterns and untidy non-intellectual events of the Second Great Awakening" (28). (Mathews appears to be speaking primarily about the Miller article, "From the Covenant to the Revival"). Mathews also says that Miller's analysis does not really account for all of the SGA, only for New England, not for "the South, West, and Chesapeake" (28).

The SGA as "a vast process of organization" (29)

Mathews has criticisms for W. W. Sweet, but also credits him for recognizing that religious expansion had to do with more than just religion (29). Likewise, an extension of and corrective to Sweet, the work of T. Scott Miyakawa (Protestants and Pioneers, 1964), "demonstrated how, in a mobile society, the churches could become" places of integration, where they found social unity (29-30).

The SGA as "a movement" (30)

H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (1937, footnote 8, on p. 30 of Mathews).

"We know that [the SGA] was a movement that converted hundreds of thousands of people and that it had some kind of profound social implications. But too often scholars have examined religion without taking its dynamism and stability seriously as social phenomena--a mistake that should be corrected" (30).

Toward that end, Mathews says that what he's going to say next is a suggestion, "a hypothesis" (31). Returning to the theme of organization, he points out that the SGA had to have been more than crazed activity and camp meetings. There was organization. Leaders at the local level had to define what it meant to be a member of a church. There was discipline and order established, etc. Boundaries were created, and observed, that distinguished insiders from outsiders, the saved from the damned (31).

Theory of social movements resulting from undefined social strain (32-33). Mathews suggests that the post-American Revolution era was characterized by social strain and that that "created a general susceptibility to social movements" (33).

As a result, the new U.S. became the scene of a specialized-society craze; all sorts of special interest societies. Mathews says that what emerged then was "a more persuasive and pervasive organizing force under which the societies themselves could be subsumed, i.e., the Second Great Awakening" (34).

In his book The Psychology of Social Movements (1941), Hadley Cantril said that people are open to suggestion when:
1. they have no adequate worldview for explaining the way things are (now? how they've come to be).
2. they experience a special event, something unique.
Cantril also said that the opposite is true. People are susceptible when everything is so very rigid as well as when they are painfully open-ended (34).

p. 35, Mathews continues to explicate how it was that the SGA was a social movement, and why that meant it was such a juggernaut.

The real question of the "success" of the SGA had to do not with the length of a camp meeting, but with how many viable churches came out of the revivalism. The SGA was a recruiting force. But what about subsequent devotion, organization, life together in the church. The group most ready and able to meet that challenge was the Methodists. They had the right sort of vision and organization for the job (36). No settled ministers. Mathews says the Methodists did not have a strong intellectual, theological tradition. What they had was a system and procedure that led to organizing people (36). Between 1781 and 1791, they went from approximately 10,000 members to 75,000.

Mathews gives more stats re. the growth of the Methodists (37) and says that the Baptists learned from the Methodists how it was done.  The incredible success and growth of the Methodists and Baptists in the the 1780s and 90s is quite a contrast to the dearth of religion in America in the wake of the Revolutionary War (37-38). Things had been in a shambles.

To an extent, Methodists and Baptists became more like each other; whatever accommodation there was had the purpose of organizing and nurturing the movement.

Methodists faltered in 1792, debates over the ecclesiastical elite, delegation of power (38-39) FVB wonders: is this a reference to the O'Kelly Schism only, or to more than that? Anyway, says Mathews, the Awakening itself did not falter. Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians all continued to thrive.

Mathews says that the essential sameness, the universality of the SGA made it a nationalizing influence. Its effect was anti-provincial.

"[T]he Revival helped make religion one of the major determinants of public discourse everywhere in the country. And it is not surprising that the period 1794-1825 was the great period of founding religious magazines and papers" (40).

SGA "as an organizing process and social movement" (42).

Mathews ends by saying there are other vistas of his idea that just can't be covered in an article:
1. class contours of the story. Specifically, it seems that who was being organized by the SGA was "a rising middle class."
2. More specifically, it seems that the SGA was "the greatest organization and mobilization of women in American history."
Other questions as well (42).

Conclusions:

1. SGA "began as an organizing movement, not as a Calvinist reaction"
1.b. was successful because it adopted the Methodist way of organization
2. SGA began in the 1780s, continued to grow for more than a generation and "enveloped the entire country" (42).
3. Related to point 2, the SGA generated a 'common world of experience' (42). A strong national organization was not its secret. It didn't have that. What it had going for it was that it was a network of churches "that shared common values and norms with their counterparts throughout the United States" (42-43).

Significantly, Mathews refers to his article as presenting a "new thesis" (43).

"To explain the Revival in this manner enables students to see the social impact of what is too often presumed to be a purely religious movement . . . " (43).

Note that this article by D.G. Mathews is one of seven sources in the bibliography of Thomas H. Olbricht, "Great Awakenings" in Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement.

Report on Bill Humble, "The Influence of the Civil War"

Humble, B. J. "The Influence of the Civil War." Restoration Quarterly 8 (Fourth Quarter 1965): 233-47.

In 1860, there were 1,241 congregations of Disciples in the North, and 829 in the South. Moreover, many of these congregations were in the Ohio Valley, and in border states like Kentucky and Missouri, where there was a good bit of internal division. These churches decided to stay completely out of politics because there were within the same congregation sympathizers on both sides of the slavery question. In time, preachers were completely hands-off regarding the War and its sources. The Disciples were determined to maintain the unity of their fellowship, unlike most denominations which had, by that time, already divided into North and South.

Christian Pacifism

Almost all of the Disciple leaders of the era (with the evangelist Walter Scott as a notable exception) argued for strict non-participation, either as a matter of conviction or in the practical interests of unity. J.W. McGarvey was an outstanding advocate of pacifism. This position was strong in Middle Tennessee, influenced by and reflecting the words of David Lipscomb.

At the same time, there were participants among the Disciples: both Alexander Campbell Jr. and Barton Stone Jr. wore the Confederate gray. James A. Garfield was a Union major general. And, in spite of the pacifists in the middle, brotherhood journals spanned the spectrum: from pro-Union abolitionists, to defenders of the Confederacy.

Franklin and Fanning: Sectional Symbols

Benjamin Franklin and Tolbert Fanning were mirror images of the other. Both were pacifists who mentioned their belief that the North (Franklin) and the South (Fanning) were in the right. And, they both believed as an expedient that, for the sake of unity, the only right course was for editors and preachers and churches to completely stay away from the war question.

On Record for the Union

During the first wartime meeting of the American Christian Missionary Society in 1861, there were no Southerners in attendance, and a pro-Union resolution was passed, encouraged by an out-of-session speech by James A. Garfield, wearing a blue uniform. In the pages of the Gospel Advocate, shortly before it discontinued publication, Tolbert Fanning reacted in shock and anger. Earlier, in 1859, Fanning had attended a meeting of the Society, announcing that congregations could and should conduct missionary activity, but also saying that he and others were one with those who supported the missionary society. It was when the society adopted the explicitly pro-Union statement that Fanning's language completely changed.

A Declaration of Loyalty

From the other side, there were abolitionists among the Disciples who felt strongly that the missionary society had not gone far enough, and that the organization should pledge an oath of loyalty to the Union. In 1863, the society formally made its pledge.

A Problem of Historiography

In 1866, Moses Lard confidently stated that the tensions of the Civil War had not broken the unity of the Disciples. Humble notes that a line of various restoration historians accepted and reported Lard's declaration:

1. W. E. Garrison, Religion Follows the Frontier
2. Garrison and DeGroot, The Disciples of Christ
3. Earl I. West, The Search for the Ancient Order, Vol. 1
4. James DeForest, Christians Only

Only David Edwin Harrell, in his 1962 Vanderbilt dissertation, "A Social History of the Disciples of Christ to 1866," challenged the assumption that the Disciples remained united through the Civil War.

"The assumption that the Disciples escaped a Civil War division requires drastic revision, perhaps a complete repudiation for the evidence proves that the Civil War did play an important role in the Disciples' schism" (245).

Humble observes that David Lipscomb, editor of the Gospel Advocate for decades starting in 1866, was even more bitter in his asides against the North than Fanning had been before the War. That is, the end of the war marked the beginning of wider division.

"The Civil War had so shattered the sense of brotherhood between northern and southern Christians that they could never again be called 'one people' in any meaningful sense.  . . . What had happened was that two threads of alienation--sectional bitterness and antagonistic understandings of the restoration principle--had become tangled together and had shattered the Christians' oneness" (246).

Humble says that if the Disciples had had a denominational structure, then the group would have divided into two distinct churches, much like other groups which did have a denominational structure. The Disciples told themselves that their unity had survived the war. In 1906, the United States Census Bureau said otherwise.

South Thornton Church of Christ in Piggott, Arkansas: From Early Beginnings to the Mid-20th Century

The historical roots of the South Thornton Church of Christ in Piggott, Arkansas go back to the small band of Christians who first began meeting together in the Haywood community around 1917. The first building was erected on a plot of ground donated by Jake Haywood. About the same time, another small church was meeting in homes and in a theater in Piggott. Around 1932, the Haywood church decided it would be better for them to meet in town. The two churches merged.

The newly-formed congregation first met in a lodge hall at the corner of Front and Court Streets. Occasional preachers for the church in those early years were A. B. Shaver, Elvis Huffard, Cecil Wright, Thetus Pritchard, Thomas Pack, and B. G. Hope. Several special efforts to evangelize the community by public proclamation were conducted by C. L. Wilkerson, Joe Warlick, and G. C. Brewer. The consensus of recollection is that the most notable of these efforts was a 1931 tent meeting in which the preaching of G. C. Brewer attracted much attention and during which many were baptized.

In November of 1940, the plot of ground at the corner of South Thornton and Bruce Streets was donated to the church by Randall Davis. Soon, a frame building was erected, utilizing lumber from the old Haywood building. In May 1948, continued growth necessitated more space. A brick auditorium was built. The old building was turned ninety degrees, placed at the back of the new auditorium in the early 1950s. In 1963, a large auditorium was constructed adjacent and parallel to the existing one. The older building was partitioned to provide classrooms and a remnant of the old auditorium was retained as a fellowship area in the center.

In many respects, the most notable character who contributed to the tremendous numerical growth of the 1940s was Harbert D. Hooker. At first, Hooker commuted to Piggott from his home in Poplar Bluff, Missouri in order to preach and to promote the gospel. Around 1945, Hooker became the first full-time preacher employed by the congregation. His five years of work with the church were very fruitful.

Note: The bulk of this brief overview, which I wrote in November 1991, comes from histories recorded in several South Thornton Church directories, and from C. Ray Miller, "Church of Christ: Its History in Piggott," Piggott Times, Vol. 1, February 29, 1968. For a sketch of the lives of A. B. Shaver and C. L. Wilkerson, see Boyd E. Morgan, Arkansas Angels (Paragould, AR: College Bookstore and Press, 1967), pp. 93-94 and 136-38, respectively.

Ap Bac: The Event and Interpretation of a "Miserable Damn Performance," January 2, 1963

In his recently-published Historical Dictionary of the War in Vietnam, Ronald Frankum includes the following in his entry for “Ap Bac”:

On January 2, 1963, the 7th Division of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) engaged the 261st Main Force Battalion near the village of Ap Bac and the 415th Regional Battalion in Ap Tan Thoi. The American advisor to the 7th ARVN Division, Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann, had encouraged the move in order to achieve a quick and decisive victory against an enemy that had hurt the morale of the ARVN forces earlier in an October 1962 defeat of an ARVN ranger platoon.  . . . In previous encounters with helicopters, the troops of the National Liberation Front (NLF) had fled or exposed themselves to ground and air fire . . . In this instance, the NLF practiced strict fire discipline and stood its ground along a tree and canal line, maintaining a strong defensive position.  . . . It was not until early evening that the ARVN forces reinforced the troops fighting on the ground to such an extent that they forced the NLF to leave the battlefield.  . . . Ap Bac was a lesson for the South Vietnamese military and American advisers who were filled with frustration at opportunities lost. It also marked the beginning of more pronounced media criticism of the ARVN and the American military role in the war after Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, commander General Paul Harkins declared that the operation was a success, because the ARVN had secured Ap Bac. (54-55)

During the half century since that battle, American military advisors in Vietnam, journalists on the scene, and historians of the war have weighed in on a number of related questions. What exactly happened at Ap Bac? Why did the engagement unfold as it did? What were the keys to the Viet Cong victory? Why was the ARVN so soundly defeated in spite of its having what seemed to be every advantage? How did Gen. Harkins’ ridiculous, upbeat reports on the battle expose and perhaps reinforce inconsistencies within both the ARVN and American military? And how did those inconsistencies damage the relationship between American military leaders and the international press?

In what follows, my goal is to discern some answers to at least a few of those questions by exploring an array of important contributions to the historiography of the battle of Ap Bac, and to see how each source compares to and contrasts with the others. Is it possible to see a defined picture, one that fits with a coherent interpretation of the rest of the war?

A good place to begin is with the Pulitzer-prize winning book A Bright Shining Lie, by journalist Neil Sheehan. First published in 1988, Sheehan’s work is essentially two books which the author names in the subtitle: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. Basic to his widely-read account is Sheehan’s idea that the life of John Vann, an incredibly talented yet deeply flawed American military officer, is a powerful lens through which to view the much larger landscape of the war.

For my purposes here, the most significant aspect of Sheehan’s work is that he devotes all of Book III to “The Battle of Ap Bac.” Beyond that, the first several pages of Book IV, “Taking On the System,” recount the aftermath of the battle. In all, Sheehan provides 80 pages directly focused on Ap Bac (i.e., 203-83). Something else makes his narrative especially important: Sheehan was himself part of the press corps in Vietnam at the time, and actually traveled to the scene the morning after the battle. Years later, along with his interviews with several military leaders who were involved in the battle, the author consulted the finest of primary sources: “John Vann’s exhaustive after-action report” and “the equally thorough Viet Cong report that was later captured,” which, Sheehan notes, “tended to corroborate each other” (805-06).

Sheehan’s account establishes, or at least identifies and reinforces, several important particulars associated with the Battle of Ap Bac. First, regarding its relative significance, Sheehan not only devotes an entire section to Ap Bac, he calls it “the first great battle of the American war in Vietnam” (199), one “that would affect the course of the war” (205).

Second, the Viet Cong at Ap Bac had the advantage of excellent intelligence. They “knew that an attack was coming on the morning of January 2, 1963” (206). Consequently, according to Sheehan’s account, they had established the best possible positions. They were dug in so deeply and camouflaged so well that not even their muzzle fire revealed their positions. To top it all off, they also had a solid escape plan. By contrast, the American planner who served under Vann estimated that there would be no more than 120 Viet Cong regulars, if that many, protecting the target, a VC radio transmitter located at nearby Tan Thoi. In fact, there were approximately three times that many guerillas waiting (205).

Third, by the time of Ap Bac the Viet Cong were trained in tactics designed to neutralize the ARVN advantage of using American helicopters and M-113 armored personnel carriers. They had been training to lead and shoot moving aircraft (218-19), a technique at which they apparently had become well-practiced. From Sheenan’s description it also seems clear that the VC had some idea of how they might slay the “green dragons,” their name for the feared M-113s. Their tactic was to shoot at the exposed, unprotected machine gunners and drivers of the M-113s once they came within range. Then, after the machines had stopped, the guerillas would explode grenades thrown onto or just above the carriers, wounding and demoralizing the troops inside (255-57).

Fourth, a hesitancy that often appeared to stem from sheer cowardice undermined the ARVN “attack” throughout the day. Sheehan tells, for example, how ARVN lieutenants refused to allow American advisor Sgt. 1st Class Arnold Bowers to use their radios, sometimes feigning that they could not understand English. It became clear to Bowers that if he were allowed to use the radio, the lieutenants might be ordered to do something they didn’t want to do (224-25).

Fifth, in the aftermath of the Ap Bac catastrophe, the relationships between the American military, the press, and the American people began to change. Hours after the Viet Cong had been permitted to make a clean getaway, John Vann did not attempt to hide his rage, even in the presence of the international press. What made matters even worse was that Gen. Harkins seemed to believe the duplicitous reports of the ARVN’s General Huynh Van Cao. Too, Harkins did not appreciate Vann’s withering post-battle write up, and he resented the colonel’s angry conviction that what the ARVN turned in at Ap Bac was “a miserable damn performance” (277). It soon became clear to some observers that, although Harkins was not the only one, he was the most prominent example of an American military leader involved in Vietnam who saw only what he wanted to see. Sheehan, speaking for himself and other representatives of the American press in Vietnam, says that until that time, they “believed in what our government said it was trying to accomplish in Vietnam, and we wanted our country to win this war just as passionately as Vann and his captains did” (271). But by then, things had changed: “Ap Bac was putting Vietnam on the front pages and on the television evening news shows with a drama that no other event had yet achieved” (278).

On the question of relationships between the American people, the press, and the U.S. military in Vietnam, perhaps no other scholar has conducted more research than William M. Hammond. In two early books, Hammond provided exhaustive treatments of the military and media in Vietnam during the years 1962-68 and 1968-73. Later, he condensed all the material from those two previous volumes and produced a smaller, more manageable work designed for a broader audience: Reporting Vietnam: Media and Military at War, published in 1998. Hammond relates that in the aftermath of the battle of Ap Bac, editorials and commentaries that appeared in American newspapers “were biting.”

"The Washington Daily News, for example, termed Ap Bac a ‘humiliation.’ The Baltimore Sun described the enemy ‘slipping away . . . ahead of a half-hearted Vietnamese pursuit.’ The Detroit Free Press wondered how Diem’s harsh dictatorship could give peasant soldiers any motive to fight at all" (9).

Consequently, in spite of Gen. Harkins’ defense of the ARVN and his upbeat assessment of the progress of the mission in Vietnam, Ap Bac “marked a divide in the history of the war.  . . . After it, [American reporters] decided their government was lying and withdrew” (9).

In an environment that became more and more poisonous over time, the U.S. government held at least a temporary advantage: the administration largely controlled the information on which the news media depended. Hammond observes that what eventually broke the ensuing stalemate between the government and the news media was the American public, which chose to go “its own way.” Americans, he says, followed “their own third course, exercising their own independence of mind, and displaying a substantial measure of contempt for all those in the press and government who had sought to manipulate them over the years.” The American people, weary of reading about the “many deaths and contradictions . . . moved to repudiate the earlier decision.” When they did, it was relatively easy for the American press to follow. By contrast, the U.S. military “lacked the ability to do the same.” Wanting to retain whatever honor they could, emotionally tied to the prospect of some sort of victory, leaders of the U.S. Armed Forces “fixed their anger on the press, the most visible element of the society that appeared to have rejected them” (296). A disappointing story, Hammond’s account basically confirms Sheehan’s view that the battle of Ap Bac marked a true turning point in America’s involvement in Vietnam.

When it comes to the question of how and why the Viet Cong could have been so well prepared at Ap Bac, very few other books would be able to match the penetrating insight provided by Larry Berman’s, Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter & Vietnamese Communist Agent, published in 2007. Berman, a good researcher and a fine writer, tells the riveting story of Pham Xuan An, a bright young Vietnamese who officially became a Communist in 1953, and was sponsored and guided by the party to become a spy, likely the best to ever work for the North Vietnamese government. After he attended Orange Coast College in California during the late 1950s, An returned to Saigon and developed relationships with a large number of Americans as well as high-ranking officials in the Diem regime and the South Vietnamese army. Having gained the trust of so many important, well-connected people, An was able to learn the information that only they would know, and acquire copies of documents that he would, in turn, pass along to fellow spies who eventually delivered it to Hanoi. It was in this context that An was able to provide the Viet Cong with the information they needed in order to learn how they could fight against the helicopters and armored personnel carriers which the Americans were providing to the ARVN. “For weeks beforehand,” says Berman, “in order to calculate the most effective shooting range, [the People’s Liberated Armed Forces] had been practicing in the nearby Plain of Reeds by attaching to bamboo poles cardboard models of Shawnee and Huey helicopters that emulated their flight characteristics” (141). Three months after Ap Bac, the CIA observed that “the Viet Cong evidently have been able to maintain intelligence coverage of virtually every level in the South Vietnamese military and civil establishment” (143). An’s clandestine work in behalf of Hanoi was the essential substance behind that report.

Interestingly enough, however, An himself attributed the VC victory at Ap Bac to more than the preparations of the underdogs. He suggested that the Diem regime’s paranoid emphasis on loyalty to the virtual exclusion of professional competence was the undoing of the ARVN. “Diem had generals who should have never received their assignments,” said An, “but they were promoted because they kissed the hand of Nhu and Diem” (142). Here we see a corroboration of especially two parts of Sheehan’s extended narrative. First, the Viet Cong at Ap Bac were prepared far better than anyone among the ARVN or American military ever would have guessed. Berman’s account provides a large part of the explanation for how they could have achieved such a high level of preparedness. Second, Berman’s book also corroborates and helps to explain the obstinate, sluggish responses of ARVN commanders and troops, as well as the frustrations of American military advisors like Vann and Bowers.

Among the more-recent accounts of the Vietnam War, perhaps no project has been more controversial than the one initiated by Mark Moyar in Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1968. The author explains that this book, published in 2006, is the first in a proposed two-volume work covering the entire war. The division between the two comes at July 28, 1965, when President Johnson announced a massive American build up in Vietnam (xi). Moyar candidly explains that his work represents a particular, minority view of the war known as the revisionist school. Orthodox, conventional scholars, who make up the majority, see the war as “wrongheaded and unjust.” Moyar and his revisionist cohort, on the other hand, see it as “a noble but improperly executed enterprise” (xi).

Within this context, Moyar goes to great lengths to overturn the typical reading of Ap Bac. Still in the “Preface,” he asserts that John Paul Vann, the central figure in Sheehan’s Bright Shining Lie, “was more dishonest in dealing with the press than Sheehan ever acknowledged” (xvi). As part of his project to dismantle the reigning orthodox view of the war, Moyar insists that Ho Chi Minh was not a frustrated Vietnamese nationalist who hated the Chinese and adopted Communism only after he was rebuffed by the Americans. In fact, Ho became enamored with the dream of international Communism when he studied and worked in France and Russia while still a young man (1-31). Ngo Dinh Diem, by contrast, was a bright cultural conservative who welcomed advances in technology. Diem was a great man who bravely endured culturally-insensitive, dim-witted Americans (37-38), who turned out to be disloyal to him (115-16). Had it not been for their treacherous meddling, Diem likely could have led South Vietnam to victory. “Supporting the coup of November 1963” which resulted in the deaths of Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, “was by far the worst American mistake of the Vietnam War” (xvi). And, the much-maligned domino theory expressed by President Eisenhower and adopted by his successors was essentially sound (138-39).

Given his very different take on the main outline of the Vietnam War, it comes as no surprise that Moyar also reads the Battle of Ap Bac in a contrasting light. In his chapter devoted to the battle, Moyar offers an alternative view of at least four features in the story. First, John Paul Vann’s strategy for the battle was deeply flawed from the beginning. In the hours and days after the battle, Vann, a deceitful self-promoter, placed virtually all of the blame for the loss on the ARVN leadership and troops in order to cover his own responsibility. The Saigon troops were not guilty of complete cowardice and ineptitude. Second, when Vann bitterly complained about the ARVN, and also about his superior officers, young newsmen like David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, none the wiser, took in his half-truths and reported the misrepresentation to the world. Moyar points out that journalist Richard Tregaskis, who had become famous for his World War II diaries, offered a different, much more positive and accurate view on what was happening in Vietnam. But tragically, the reports that came from the likes of Halberstam and Sheehan were read and believed by a large majority of Americans. This marked a significant difference between the foreign press that American military leaders dealt with during the Second World War and in Korea. While still a U.S. Army General, Dwight Eisenhower preferred to keep the news upbeat and optimistic, and the press, for the most part, cooperated. By contrast, the representatives of the press in Vietnam assumed that U.S. military leaders were either deluded or were cynically attempting to pull the wool over their eyes. Third, says Moyar, in spite of their victories at places like Ap Bac, the Viet Cong would never be strong in the Mekong Delta. Going up against superior fire power in rice paddies added up to an insurmountable problem for the VC. Moyar insists that the real theater of potential victory for the Communists was in the central highlands, much closer to North Vietnam (186-205).

Moyar concludes that, as it was with the entire Vietnam War, so it was with Ap Bac: the problems did not relate to the legitimacy or the fundamental goals of the United States. Rather, the decisive problems related to the execution of the war and its portrayal in the popular media.

With his title, Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War 1945-1975, published in 2009, John Prados unmistakably identifies himself as an orthodox historian of the war. What’s more, Prados insists that the critical points in his three-decade span of time were the early years:

"As will become evident, the core argument advanced here is that, whatever the intentions and aims of American leaders, the United States acted within a context defined along political, military, foreign policy, social, and economic dimensions--in effect, an “envelope”--and that envelope narrowed over time due to developments in all those fields" (xi).

Prados also believes that the wide variety and large number of histories related to the Vietnam War are essentially "atomized." They do not report a "unified field theory." Instead, one discusses U.S. presidential politics, another deals with a certain important battle, another examines the Diem regime, and so on. (In his bibliographical essay at the end of his book, Prados seems to indicate that if one of his predecessors had done a good job of writing something that approximated a unified field theory, it was the late Stanley Karnow).

Because Prados is convinced that whichever way the war turned, it was largely doomed by the end of the Eisenhower years, he does not give nearly as much attention to Ap Bac as does Moyar. Prados situates Ap Bac in the context of Diem’s incompetent behavior and decline, which led to his being murdered as U.S. officials stepped away from him:

"In January 1963 a fight took place at a village called Ap Bac in the delta. This time, despite ARVN’s considerable numerical superiority, as well as mechanized troops and helicopters courtesy of the United States, the PLAF unit not only stood its ground but actually defeated the attackers, who suffered many casualties. . . . Diem replaced neither of the responsible commanders. Kennedy had to notice. If strategic hamlets were to work, they had to be shielded by the ARVN. As for the adversary, the Liberation Front wasted no time exploiting Ap Bac as a psychological success, with propaganda to emulate, or replicate, the victory.  . . . Had Diem spent as much effort prosecuting the war and making his government a dynamic alternative to the NLF as he did countering antipathy toward the Ngo family, the military would have been no problem. Instead, the palace openly played with officer assignments and posts made desirable by opportunities for corruption" (75).

In this way, then, Prados’s discussion both assumes and advances his unequivocal judgment about the war in general. Clearly speaking directly to Moyar, he writes: “Triumph was not forsaken in Vietnam, nor victory lost; there was no day that the war was won, except for Hanoi on April 29, 1975, when its troops marched into Saigon” (546).

Historians will continue to debate the event and significance of the Battle of Ap Bac. It is also certain that they will continue to see the battle as either a turning point in the war or, giving it less significance, at least a reflection of larger, even more important movements as a tragic story in twentieth century military history unfolded.

Works Cited

Berman, Larry. Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent. New York: HarperCollins/Smithsonian, 2007.

Frankum, Ronald B., Jr. Historical Dictionary of the War in Vietnam. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011.

Hammond, William M. Reporting Vietnam: Media and Military at War. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998.

Moyar, Mark. Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

Prados, John. Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945-1975. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 2009.

Sheehan, Neil. A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Job 38: A Brief Annotated Bibliography

A few days ago, I told a friend that he really shouldn't bookmark "Frankly Speaking."

So why would a blogger like me tell a friend that he'd be better off to stay away? Because, I told him, these days I'm using the blog as sort of a digital filing cabinet. What I've tucked away in draft form for a long time, I'm now posting for whatever it might be worth to someone else. As you'll see, this post fits that category.

What follows here is an annotated list of resources on the Book of Job in general, and on chapter 38 in particular. This is a bit spade work I took on several years ago while a student at Yale Divinity School. My goal was to provide a summary of and categorize a number of articles, book chapters, and commentaries. With that, here's what I came up with . . .

A. Journal Articles/Book Chapters I Found Helpful

1. Fox, Michael V. "Job 38 and God's Rhetoric," Semeia 19. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981.

The author begins by arguing, in general, for the exegetical goal of identifying a text's authorial intent (ala E. D. Hirsch). The second half of this article shows how, in Job 38, the rhetorical style of God's questions has the effect of drawing in the listener. The result is that Job is able to "accept the speaker's claims out of his own consciousness rather than having the information imposed on him from the outside" (58). For what it's worth, this article points to an important question regarding the rhetorical purpose of the divine speeches at the end of Job. Do the divine speeches have the effect of obliterating proud Job? Or do they function to reorient the mind of confused Job? This question often comes up in the secondary literature. Also, the remainder of Semeia number 19 is dedicated to the study of Job 38 in the light of Paul Ricour's hermeneutics. As it turns out, the other articles in this volume do not have much at all to do with the exegesis of Job 38. That's why they aren't listed in this bibliography.

2. Jamieson-Drake, David W. "Literary Structure, Genre and Interpretation in Job 38." In The Listening Heart, edited by Kenneth G. Hoglund. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1987: 217-35.

A detailed, penetrating analysis of the literary structure of Job 38. Some fine points on how the form of this text complements its function in the larger context of the Book of Job. Provides a table that shows the close verbal parallels between Job 38 and Psalms 104 and 147.

3. Vall, Gregory. "'From Whose Womb Did the Ice Come Forth?' Procreation Images in Job 38:28-29." Catholic Biblical Quarterly 57 (1995): 504-13.

Vall convincingly argues that the correct answer to God's first question in Job 38:28 is, "No, the rain has no father" (512). Further, "the three questions in our text should be answered as follows: 'No one begat the dew drops. The ice came forth from no one's womb. No one gave birth to the rime.'" (p. 512). The point of the text is that God is "directly responsible for bringing about these forms of water (cf. the verses immediately preceding our passage, 38:25-27), but his mode of bringing them about has no true analogue in the realm of human (much less animal) procreation" (p. 513). A splendid piece of exegetical work!

4. Wilcox, Karl G. "Who Is This . . . ? A Reading of Job 38:2" Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 78 (1998): 85-95.

Alas, the YDS copy of JSOT 78 could not be found. But, according to Old Testament Abstracts, here's what this articles is about: "Takes the third-person construction of Job 38:2 into account in order to show that it is Elihu that God judges as darkening counsel at the beginning of Job 38 and not Job. This reading argues that Elihu is judged at 38:2, and that the narrative supports God's final assessment of Job as one who has spoken the thing that is right. Job's repentance is viewed as an acknowledgment that while Job has been correct in his attempt to justify himself, he has erred in his demand that God must justify himself to man. In condemning Job, Elihu assumes the divine prerogative; consequently Elihu's justification of God results in a divine condemnation and exclusion from the closing sacrifices made by Job for the three friends."

B. Journal Articles/Book Chapters that were Interesting, but not as Helpful

1. Allison, Dale C. "What Was the Star that Guided the Magi?" Bible Review 9 (1993): 20-24, 63.

Takes Job 38:7 to be "synonymous parallelism" (i.e. morning stars = sons of God, or angels) which serves to advance the author's theory that the star that led the magi to the place where Jesus was born was an angel. The article is better and more convincing than you might imagine.

2. Cornelius, Izak. "The Sun Epiphany in Job 38:12-15 and the Iconography of the Gods in the Ancient Near East -- The Palestinian Connection." Journal of Northwest Semitic Languages 16 (1990): 25-43.

Asserts that Palestinian iconography was the link between the iconographies of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Throws light on Job 38:12-15 by comparing its description of God with representations of the divine in art of that place and period.

3. Fox, Michael V. "Egyptian Onomastica and Biblical Wisdom." Vetus Testamentum 36 (1986): 302-10.

Argues, contra A. Alt and G. von Rad, that in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia there were no genuine onomastica (i.e., lists of nouns which would summarize a certain field of study like geography or zoology). The so-called Egyptian onomastica did not function as lexicons or encyclopedias, but as primers for those who were learning to write. At any rate, "There is no evidence for a 'science of lists' in ancient Israel" (308). Thus--and here's the exegetical point--such lists do not provide source material for passages like Job 38 or 1 Kings 5:10-14.

C. Four Big Modern Commentaries on the Book of Job

1. Gordis, Robert. The Book of Job. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1978. xxxiii + 602 pp.

Wow! Contains the Hebrew text and an English translation of the entire Book of Job. Too, in the comments sections, quotations from the text are in Hebrew (i.e., not transliterated). The arrangement of the commentary is also very nice. For each section of Job, the Hebrew text and English translation are followed by notes, each note beginning with the chapter and verse numbers. Using this commentary, one could work through the text by translating one verse, comparing the translation by Gordis, reading his comment, and so on. Also, for quick reference, one can easily find the author’s comments on a particular verse. On Job 38, the Hebrew text, translation, and commentary amount to approximately sixteen pages. At the end of the book, there is a section (75 pp.) of 42 "Studies on the Language, Structure and Contents of Job." Here one will find such entries as "Special Note 33-The First Speech of The Lord (38:1-40:2)" (pp. 563-65). If price were no object, I would buy this one without thinking twice.

2. Habel, Norman C. The Book of Job. Old Testament Library. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1985. 586 pp.

Sets out to provide "a literary and theological study of the text" (p. 9). Notwithstanding the alleged pre-history of the text, Habel treats the Book of Job as a literary unit. Offers a translation plus, I. Textual Notes, II. Design, and III. Message in Context. On Job 38, these four sections add up to about 25 pages. Does not offer a lot by way of comparative Semitics (like Pope), but will be much more helpful for those interested in literary and theological analysis.

3. Hartley, J. E. The Book of Job. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988. xiv + 591 pp.

This commentary stands in the tradition of evangelicalism. Though conservative, it acknowledges and explains other points of view. Very well researched. As with all the commentaries in this series, this work is heavily footnoted, which is bothersome to people like me who want to read everything the author has to say. Provides a ton of good bibliography.

4. Pope, Marvin H. Job. Anchor Bible. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1965. 409 pp.

A series of detailed notes which follow the author’s translation of the text. Translation and Notes on Job 38 take up sixteen pages of smaller print. The strength of this commentary is its philological analysis. On the other hand, if you’re looking to see something on the literary qualities, rhetoric, and theological import of the text, you’ll have to look elsewhere. For a good overview of the entire Book of Job, see the "Summary of the Content of Job," pp. xv-xxiii. As with the other sections of introduction, this is very helpful.

Meta Chestnutt and the Sunny South School

Sunny South School and Church, Minco, Indian Territory, early 1890s. Teacher Meta Chestnutt at left. At right is Kansas preacher D. T. Broadus (?) Click on the photo for a better view.

Online Resources for the Study of Biblical Hebrew

The Internet contains a good number of sites designed to help students of Hebrew.  The following is a list of some of the better ones for beginners. Happy studying!

http://prophetess.lstc.edu/~rklein/

This is the homepage for Dr. Ralph Klein of the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago. Under his link to Biblical Studies, select Hebrew for some good links.

 

http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0.htm

The entire Tanakh in Hebrew and English! Click on the book and then the chapter that you want to read. You can click on a tab to hear the passage read in Hebrew. So this site is great for practice.

 

http://www.animatedhebrew.com/

This looks to be a great website. It includes a comic-book version of the Book of Jonah with Hebrew text that you can see and hear. Lots of other interesting links too.

 

http://www.ualberta.ca/~ebenzvi/teaching.html

This is the homepage of Dr. Ehud Ben Zvi of the University of Alberta in Canada. Click on the “Hebrew Bible” link. Then go to “Studying Biblical Hebrew” for a list of several links that should prove helpful.

Notes on "Divisions in North America: The Emergence of Churches of Christ and Disciples of Christ," Chap. 5 in The Stone-Campbell Movement

"Divisions in North America: The Emergence of Churches of Christ and Disciples of Christ," Chapter 5 in The Stone-Campbell Movement: A Global History (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2013): 76-93.

Overview of Contents

The chapter begins by noting that 1866 saw three important events:

(a) the death of Alexander Campbell
(b) the resumption of the Gospel Advocate
(c) the beginning of the Christian Standard.

For many years Campbell had worked to smooth over rifts in the Movement he presided over. But division, signaled by the content of the Advocate and the Standard, led to the recognition of two separate bodies: Churches of Christ and Disciples of Christ, a division "documented by the 1906 U.S. Census of Religious Bodies" (76).

Tolbert Fanning imbibed the "apocalyptic" worldview of B. W. Stone, and the biblical primitivism of A. Campbell. Fanning, in turn, deeply influenced young David Lipscomb. Their outlook, combined with a strong sectional bias, generated among the Southern churches an opposition to

(a) missionary societies
(b) instrumental music in Christian worship
(c) the called, resident preacher system.

By contrast, Disciples, those in the North, misunderstood and rejected the Southern emphasis on what appeared to be doctrinal tests of fellowship based on identification of and adherence to scriptural positive law. Northerners emphasized a theme found in both The Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery and Thomas Campbell's Declaration and Address: that "compulsory confessions of faith" are "a source of religious tyranny and division" (80).

"Two events symbolized the growing divergence of outlook in the Movement" (81). Those two events were

(a) the 1889 publication of the Sand Creek, Illinois, "Address and Declaration." Closely connected with the leadership of Daniel Sommer, this document wrote out those guilty of embracing and retaining "innovations." Significantly, both J. H. Garrison, editor of the Christian-Evangelist and Lipscomb, editor of the Advocate, condemned the document.
(b) the General Christian Missionary Convention held in Nashville in October 1892. Lipscomb attended and came away with much to criticize. As he put it, the event was "an open, defiant rejection of God and his holy word" (81).

Those in charge of the U.S. Religious Census perceived the rift and began to ask questions. When Lipscomb published an official query and his own responses in the Gospel Advocate, J. H. Garrison responded in disbelief in the pages of the Christian-Evangelist. Lipscomb defended himself by insisting that he had simply answered a direct question posed by a government official and had provided clarity for readers of the Gospel Advocate. But to Garrison, Lipscomb's editorial represented a power grab and a throwing down of the gauntlet.

The authors note that "[t]he division reflected in the census data cut across racial lines" (82). They tell the stories of two black leaders, Alexander Campbell and S. W. Womack. Both parted from the society/instrument Christian churches in Nashville and eventually began the Jackson Street Church of Christ, "the 'mother church' of African American Churches of Christ" (83). Campbell and Womack recruited G. P. Bowser, an A.M.E. Church minister, who, beginning in 1897, left the Methodists for the Christian Church, and finally united with the Jackson Street Church. Bowser initiated the Christian Echo, and was involved in the establishment of the Silver Point Christian Institute at Silver Point, TN in 1907. From Jackson Street came one of the great evangelists of black Churches of Christ, S. W. Womack's son-in-law, Marshall Keeble.

The authors observe that the 1906 Census both defined the previously-existing division and prompted congregations to choose a side. "In the impoverished and defeated South, most members of the Stone-Campbell Movement identified faithfulness to Christ as obedience to the positive commands of the New Testament. In the prosperous and victorious North, most Stone-Campbell Christians identified faithfulness as trust in the person of Christ" (84).

Several intellectual and social currents (e.g., Darwinism) were felt most strongly in the prosperous, urbanizing North. Perhaps most significant among these was biblical higher criticism. In response to higher-critical theories, conservatism was personified by J. W. McGarvey. On the left were leaders like E. B. Cake, Alexander Procter, and most notably, Robert C. Cave. In December 1889, Cave preached a sermon, published in the St. Louis Republic under the title "Clerical Sensation," in which he denied the virginal conception and bodily resurrection of Jesus. J. H. Garrison, who had taken a moderate view on matters of higher criticism, believed that Cave has crossed a line. While condemning Cave's views, Garrison attempted to maintain both faithfulness to the core message and healthy spirit of inquiry. 

Another moderate like Garrison was Isaac Errett. He was willing to affirm Christ as "the foundation of faith," and believed that the Bible was "a reliable guide." But notably, Errett would not affirm that the Bible was free from error, and refused to apply the word "infallible" to the Scriptures.

Such struggles among the predominately-northern Disciples generated "conservatives, liberals, and moderates." Some, like B.B. Tyler, W. T. Moore, and Samuel H. Church, the grandson of Walter Scott, were much more liberal and ecumenical in outlook than were others, like J. A. Lord, editor of the Standard, and H. G. Allen, editor of the Old Path Guide.

Churches of Christ also exhibited three distinct groupings:

(a) "the Tennessee Tradition, led by David Lipscomb and James A. Harding"
(b) "the Indiana Tradition, led by Daniel Sommer"
(c) "the Texas Tradition, led by Austin McGary" (89).

These three--named for origin, but not necessarily designating territorial dominance--vied for influence among Churches of Christ as the twentieth century unfolded. Each held sets of values that sometimes overlapped with one or both of the others, but on other points stood opposed.

The Tennessee Tradition "represented a fusion of the apocalyptic and positive law traditions of the Stone-Campbell Movement" (89). Indiana "shared the Tennessee Tradition's antipathy toward sophistication, worldliness, and the power of industrialists" (90). But unlike both Tennessee or Texas, Indiana took an even stronger stand against institutionalism, while upholding what were called the "rights, privileges, and duties" of women in Christian assemblies. The Texas Tradition was best-known for its rejection of any baptism that was not known by the candidate to be "for the remission of sins."

The chapter closes with the note that some leaders, like T. B. Larimore and Frederick D. Kershner, maintained a commitment to ignoring what they regarded as divisive issues.

Comments and Questions

1. When it comes to the historiography I'm acquainted with and presentations I've heard, it's clear that this chapter picks up and applies the term "apocalyptic" as it was used by R. Hughes in Reviving the Ancient Faith (1996). Hughes employed the term to describe the worldview of the Stoneite Movement. Similarly, the chapter borrows the three-fold variety (Tennessee, Texas, and Indiana) within emerging Churches of Christ that has been noticed and so named by J. M. Hicks and B. Valentine.

2. For reasons I have a hard time articulating, I've never thought that "apocalyptic" was the best word for what Hughes was describing. Now nearly twenty years later, in the wake of cultural items such as the spoof film This is the End, I like "apocalyptic" even less. Has/can anyone suggest an alternative word or phrase that would be a better fit and supplant the old term that is now semantically beyond the point of popping?

3. Significantly I suppose, this chapter ignores Hughes' suggestion in Reviving the Ancient Faith that the two branches described are partially the result of a change in A. Campbell. In 1837, he debated the Roman Catholic Bishop Purcell and thus became a popular defender of Protestantism over against Catholicism. As I recall, Hughes sees Churches of Christ as the heirs of the pre-1837 "sectarian" Campbell, with Disciples being the heirs of the post-1837, "ecumenical" Campbell (my terms in scare quotes, not necessarily Hughes'). To what extent is that an accurate and useful interpretation of the division?

4. It's much safer to agree that the authors have rightly picked up and used the work of D. E. Harrell, Jr. regarding sectional aspects of the division.

5. If I could add a potential footnote to the final section of the chapter, it would be the cooperation in Indian Territory between Meta Chestnutt (a North Carolina Disciple who received assistance from the ACMS) and R. W. Officer (an evangelist from Tennessee who opposed the societies and who was published more in the Octographic Review than in any other journal). As I recently discovered, they both knew and had significant contact with T. B. Larimore, who traveled to I.T. in order to encourage them and their work.

Meta Chestnutt Sager, Notification of Selection for the Oklahoma Hall of Fame

The following is (1) a transcript of a letter sent from Scott P. Squyres, Secretary of the Oklahoma Memorial Association to Meta Chestnutt Sager. Dated Aug. 1, 1939, the letter notifies her that, later that year, she would be inducted in the Oklahoma Hall of Fame. (2) Sager then responded with a hand-written letter dated Oct. 5, 1939.

If have transcribed these two letters "as is," with typographical errors, misspellings, etc. as they appear in the original. The photo above pictures Meta, at right, and a friend.  --Frank Bellizzi
___________________________________________

Aug. 1, 1939

Mrs. Minta Sager,
Chickasha, Okla.

My dear Mrs. Sager:

It is my happy privilege to inform you that the Oklahoma Memorial Association has chosen you as an Oklahoman whose outstanding service and achievements in helping to build Oklahoma and advance humanity entitles you to a place in Oklahomas' Hall of Fame.  The Oklahoma Memorial Association sponsors this selection to Oklahomas' Hall of Fame each year for Statehood Day on November 16.

This honor comes to but few.  Please acknowledge receipt of this message and your acceptance to be honored.  We are inviting you to be our guest at the Statehood Day Banquet on Thursday November 16, 7:30 P.M. at the Oklahoma Builtmore Hotel, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  During the evening through impressive and proper ceremony you will be inducted into the Oklahoma's Hall of Fame.

Your immediate reply will be very much appreciated, together with a Thumbnail Biography Sketch of your life activities together with a picture for publication in the press.  Also please advise us just how you desire your name to appear upon the certificate to be presented to you at this ceremony.

May we caution you not to give out for publication, or to anyone, any information that you have been chosen. We make this request for the reason that we want to give this information to all the papers throughout the State at once, then they will all publish it at one time, while if your local paper gives it out the other papers will likely not publish the story.

Please be sure to state if you can be present for this ceremony because we want to make proper plans.

May I congratulate you upon this honor.  We will expect an early reply.  With kind good wishes, I am

Most sincerely,

Scott P. Squyres,
Secretary.

SPS:am

___________________________________________

1528 South 7th St.
Chickasha, Okla.
Oct. 5, 1939

Scott P. Squyres,
Secretary,
1202 Ramsey Tower
Oklahoma City, Okla.

Dear Sir:

Yours of Aug. 1st is received. I assure you that its unexpected offer to bestow upon me such an honor fairly shocked me.

I have tried never to bring reproach upon my father's name, nor upon the name of my adopted state. I have sought no renown, but always considered the reward to be in the dowing.

Most assuredly I will gratefully accept such a royal honor from such an august body.

Most respectfully,
Mrs. M. C. Sager

P.S. I had to write longhand. I have been in bed ill since July 4th. Still in bed but sit up in bed and do some little things. Improving rapidly now.

I'll be 76 Sept. 8, 1939

Been waiting on the photographer to find a negative. If he cant find a recent negative can you make a reduced size to suit your purpose? I have the picture I would like you to use, it is 3 yrs. old, but a perfect likeness.
Mrs. Sager.

P.S  could send that right away

Lord's Supper Meditation for Tomorrow Morning

This being the last Sunday before Christmas, all of us have been recently reminded that God the Son took on flesh, that he physically became a part of our world. This time of year, we remember that Christ was born.

This season of remembrance, however, does not teach us why Christ was born. But we need to know and recall the reason. Which is why Jesus himself gave to us the Lord's Supper, this blessed time of remembrance.

We would never want to downplay what Christmas is supposed to commemorate. After all, wonderful events surrounded the birth of our Lord. Scripture reports those things with a spirit of celebration and wonder. At the same time, it is worth pointing out that Jesus never told his disciples to observe something called Christmas. But of the Supper, Jesus said, "This do in remembrance of me."

On several different occasions, Jesus explained to his disciples the reason for his birth. One time he told them, "The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Matthew 20:28). When Paul interpreted the significance of this feast, he emphasized that it always announces that Jesus gave his life: "For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes" (1 Corinthians 11:26).

This can only mean that the rough wood of the manger in which the baby Jesus was laid pales in significance when compared to the rough wood of the cross on which he was crucified. The manger was incidental. But the cross was essential.

Why was the cross essential? Why did Jesus have to give his life? Hebrews chapter 9 gives the answer: Because "without the shedding of blood there can be no forgiveness" (22).  . . . Therefore, Jesus "appeared once for all at the culmination of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself. Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him" (26-28).

That is what we now remember and celebrate!