Alexander Campbell

Irish-born American religious leader

• Born: September 12, 1788
• Birthplace: Balleymena, County Antrim, Ireland
• Died: March 4, 1866
• Place of death: Bethany, West Virginia

Campbell led a Protestant religious movement that attempted to restore the original structure of the Christian church of the first century, helping spawn both the Disciples of Christ and the Churches of Christ in the process.

Early Life

The son of Thomas Campbell and Jane Corneigle Campbell, Alexander Campbell grew up in Ireland in a highly religious household that emphasized study of the Bible. When he was young, Campbell preferred the outdoors to academics and spiritual reflection but eventually developed a phenomenal memory and overcame his loathing of study. Around age sixteen, Campbell accepted the teaching of Christianity and began to fulfill his father’s and his own dream of becoming a preacher. He read moral philosophy and church history. Although a Presbyterian, Campbell was especially impressed by the ideas of independent ministers such as John Walker and James Alexander Haldane, who suggested that creeds and denominational structures were made by humans.

These early encounters, augmented by his own reading of scripture and history, led Campbell to believe that the existing arrangement of Christian churches into various denominations was contrary to divine teaching and was the source of disunity. If the biblical principles of church membership, worship, and organization alone were the basis for church polity and practice, then a genuine unity among Christian people would be possible.

During this time, Thomas emigrated to the United States and eventually invited the rest of his large family to join him there. Circumstances permitted Campbell to attend the University of Glasgow for one year before moving to Pennsylvania in 1809. At Glasgow, Campbell was formally exposed to a set of assumptions called Scottish Common Sense Realism, according to which the human mind possessed the capacity to interpret right from wrong and could, therefore, determine which religious doctrines were true and which were false. Further, this approach to knowledge was inductive, so that one ascertained the great principles from religion by examining specific moral, ethical, and scriptural issues before drawing any general conclusions.

After joining his father in the United States, Campbell helped establish the Christian Association of Washington in 1809. The association was actually an independent church whose principles were articulated in a document called the Declaration and Address. Its purpose was to spread the Campbells’ ideas about Christian Union and approaches to studying the Bible. The Campbells’ creed and mode of divining appropriate Christian practices was “where the scriptures speak, we speak; where they are silent, we are silent.” They hoped that these ideas would spread and that the divisive denominational labels of other Christian faiths would disappear and cause churches to restore the original organization and practice of Christianity of the first century, as depicted in the New Testament book of Acts. Campbell devoted the remainder of his long life to the realization of this cause.

Life’s Work

Campbell’s physical traits made him suitable to confront the labyrinth of Christian ideas in the moral landscape of the antebellum United States. He was tall, perhaps six feet, with powerful shoulders that he had developed by doing farm labor as a youth. He moved with vigor and grace. His face was of fair complexion and somewhat irregular in shape. A long, thin nose gave it some symmetry, but it was his cheerful expression that gave it order. He possessed remarkable powers of concentration, great personal discipline, and skill as a speaker.

Campbell began to proclaim his ideas as a traveling preacher in 1810. He began to preach regularly at the Brush Run Church in Pennsylvania, which was organized along Campbell’s principles. During this period, he became convinced that full immersion was the only appropriate mode of baptism, and he and his new wife, Margaret Brown, were baptized in 1811. He later came to conclude that baptism was not merely an ordinance or a symbol but actually part of the process of salvation and that immersion of the body was necessary for the remission of one’s sins. This moved Campbell quite far from his Presbyterian roots and from the beliefs of many American Protestants and Catholics.

Campbell established the Buffalo Seminary at Bethany, Virginia (now in West Virginia), in 1818 to train young ministers and spread his own religious ideas. Students from the surrounding countryside boarded with Campbell, and he instructed them in the morning and evening, leaving much of the day free for farming, from which Campbell drew his living. He operated the seminary for several years.

In addition to teaching and preaching, Campbell spread his ideas in a series of well-attended debates with a variety of people. In the nineteenth century, debates were a form of outdoor theater that extended for hours in front of an always raucous and sometimes attentive audience. In 1820, he debated John Walker, a Presbyterian, on the subject of baptism. Campbell held that in New Testament times infants were not baptized, that immersion was the only mode for baptism, and that baptism was necessary for the forgiveness of sins.

In 1823, Campbell debated W. L. McCalla in Washington, Kentucky, again on the subject of baptism. Like many of the public exchanges and discourses of the nineteenth century, this one was eventually published. Campbell explained that salvation came through faith but baptism was a formal and necessary part of the process of faith. In 1829, Campbell debated Robert Dale Owen, a utopian socialist who had recently established a model community in Indiana. Owen was a skeptic who asserted that religion was a fruit of human ignorance. Campbell held forth for what he believed was the truth of religion as revealed in the Bible. At the conclusion of the debate, which about twelve hundred people attended, Campbell asked for all those who favored the spread of Christianity to move to one side. All but three in the audience did so. This debate elevated Campbell’s standing from that of an obscure frontier preacher to that of a well-known controversialist.

In 1837, Campbell debated Bishop John B. Purcell. The real issues of debate pitted Roman Catholicism against American Protestantism, which was itself doctrinally divided. Unlike his other debates, Campbell did not emerge a clear winner, but both he and Purcell conducted themselves with equanimity so that the stature of both men was elevated in the public eye. In 1843, Campbell debated N. L. Rice, a Presbyterian. Henry Clay, an eminent politician, moderated the debate. Campbell and Rice argued about baptism, the Holy Spirit, and religious creeds, with Campbell holding that the scriptures plainly described and defined these terms. He believed that by looking at them in context, one could inductively arrive at the truth.

Campbell also busied himself for over forty years as an editor. In 1823, he founded the Christian Baptist , a religious periodical through which he attacked ideas and practices in American Christianity that he found contrary to scripture. In 1830, he ended the Christian Baptist and began a periodical called the Millennial Harbinger . Like many Americans, Campbell was fascinated with the idea of the Second Coming of Christ. Soon, however, the publication became the major medium for spreading Campbell’s ideas about the Bible, baptism, and church organization. Campbell’s list of subscribers for his publications was so large that the town of Bethany was given a post office and Campbell was made postmaster.

Although Campbell, like most ministers, typically eschewed formal involvement in politics and public issues, he did allow himself to be elected to serve as a delegate to the constitutional convention in Virginia in 1829-1830. The major issue confronting the convention involved political apportionment and whether all people—including slaves—should be counted while determining legislative districts. If slaves were included, the Tidewater region of Virginia would continue to have significantly greater political clout. Campbell and other upcountry constituents preferred to only count white people.

In the course of his service, Campbell debated John Randolph of Roanoke, Virginia, on the practical effects and morality of slavery. Campbell believed that slavery not only impoverished the slaves but also elevated the planter above the mass of laboring white people. Although he, like many white Christians, believed that the Bible did not condemn slavery per se, he believed that it specifically condemned many of the abuses of power and people perpetrated by white slave owners. Therefore, he worked for laws providing for the emancipation of slavery and spoke out against the abuses in the practice of the system. Although not an abolitionist in the manner of William Lloyd Garrison, he was increasingly antislavery in his opinions.

Ironically, however, Campbell’s greatest achievement ran counter to his stated goal of effecting Christian unity. He, in the end, helped to found a sect called the Disciples of Christ. Initially a Presbyterian, Campbell broke with that denomination because he did not believe in infant baptism but in the immersion of those old enough to respond to the teachings of Jesus as contained in the New Testament. He then affiliated with the Baptists, but they did not find his emphasis on baptism for the remission of sins acceptable. Thus, he founded a loose association of like-minded people that he preferred to call the Disciples of Christ. Their goal was not to become a denomination—although that is what eventually happened—but to work with other groups of other people who also hoped to reform American Christianity and improve American society by restoring the fundamentals of New Testament doctrine and practice. Some of these people used the term “Christians” to describe themselves, and the Christians and the Disciples of Christ worked closely together, especially in the upper Ohio River Valley.

The restoration movement—nineteenth century efforts to effect Christian unity by adhering to the primitive teachings of the Christians of the first century—did not achieve its goal. Campbell’s Disciples of Christ became just another denomination, which itself fractured over issues raised by the American Civil War and questions of biblical interpretation. Many southern and literalist members termed themselves Churches of Christ, while more northern and less legalist brethren adhered to the name Disciples of Christ.

Campbell continued his labors to win adherents to his ideas and create a basis for Christian unity. In 1840, he established Bethany College in Bethany, which has been in continuous operation since that time. He traveled throughout the eastern half of the United States raising money for its endowment. His excursions even took him to Canada, France, and Great Britain. He also taught courses at the college in inductive biblical interpretation and moral philosophy.

In 1865, Campbell’s health broke. He was bedridden for a time, after which he slowly regained the energy to continue his ministerial labors. He recovered enough in December, 1865, to deliver what is commonly called his “last discourse,” which was based upon a fresh reading of Ephesians I. However, he caught a cold and was bedridden again through early 1866. He died in West Virginia on March 4 of that year.

Significance

Despite his failure to effect Christian unity, Campbell nonetheless played a major role in the vigorous religious climate of antebellum America, which has been described as a “spiritual hothouse.” His views on scriptural interpretation blended well with the democratic ethos prominent in the United States. By virtue of possessing a human brain, one could ferret out truth in both the Constitution and the Bible. Moreover, the Disciples of Christ continued to function more than one century after he founded the denomination.

Bibliography

Casey, Michael W., and Douglas A. Foster, eds. The Stone-Campbell Movement: An International Religious Tradition. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002. Collection of twenty-six essays about the religious reform movement, including discussions of its origins, influence on the U.S. presidency, and multicultural aspects.

Garrett, Leroy. The Stone-Campbell Movement. Joplin, Mo.: College Press, 1981. An accessible history of the restoration movement, appraising Campbell’s role in it.

Hughes, Richard T., ed. The American Quest for the Primitive Church. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988. An excellent anthology of secular historical scholarship that places Campbell’s restoration movement in historical context.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Reviving the Ancient Faith: The Story of Churches of Christ in America. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans, 1996. Describes the evolution of the nineteenth century restoration movement, from its origins in the theology of Campbell and Barton W. Stone to its current denominational status.

Imbler, John W. Beyond Buffalo: Alexander Campbell on Education for Ministry. Nashville, Tenn.: Disciples of Christ Historical Society, 1992. A thirty-four-page booklet examining Campbell’s ideas for educating prospective ministers.

Richardson, Robert. Memoirs of Alexander Campbell. 2 vols. Cincinnati: Standard Publishing, 1897. The basic source of Campbell’s life by a longtime ministerial associate. Includes some of Campbell’s writings.

Seale, James M., ed. Lectures in Honor of the Alexander Campbell Bicentennial, 1788-1988. Nashville, Tenn.: Disciples of Christ Historical Society, 1988. Contains scholarly appraisals of Campbell’s life and work and their meaning for subsequent U.S. history.

Webb, Henry E. In Search of Christian Unity: A History of the Restoration Movement. Abilene, Tex.: ACU Press, 2003. Examines the movement from its origins in the theology of Campbell and Barton W. Stone to its current incarnation.

West, Earl Irvin. The Search for the Ancient Order. 3 vols. Nashville, Tenn.: Gospel Advocate Company, 1974. This larger work looks at the successes and failures of Campbell’s attempt to forge a truly national Christian unity movement.