Ecumenical and social justice leader and pastor.

Peter Ainslie was born June 3, 1867, in Dunnsville, Essex County, Virginia, the son and grandson of Disciples ministers. He enrolled in 1886 at the College of the Bible (now Lexington Theological Seminary) and Transylvania College in Lexington, Kentucky, studying under John W. McGarvey. Because of ill health, Ainslie left college in 1889 without graduating. For two years he supplied the pulpit of a congregation in Newport News, Virginia. In October 1891 he was called as minister of the fifty-member Calhoun Christian Church in Baltimore, Maryland. Under his leadership the congregation grew, relocated, and took the name Christian Temple. During Ainslie’s more than forty-year ministry, Christian Temple became a witness to Christian unity, world peace, racial inclusiveness, social justice, dialogue between Jews and Christians, and liberal Christianity. 

In October 1910 Ainslie served as President of the National Convention of the Disciples of Christ meeting in Topeka, Kansas. He had become convinced that the Disciples were in danger of losing their calling to serve the unity of all Christians. In an address titled “Our Fellowship and the Task,” he called on Disciples to reclaim their original ecumenical vocation. Under Ainslie’s guidance the Topeka assembly took two far-reaching actions. First, parallel to an action of the Episcopal Church meeting at the same time in Cincinnati, the Disciples called for “a world conference on Christian unity.” Second, they established a permanent national ecumenical agency named the Council on Christian Union (CCU) with the mandate of “promoting Christian union at home and throughout the world until the various Christian bodies are knit together in one organic life.” Ainslie was elected its first President. In 1911, with $20,000 provided by R. A. Long, Disciples layman and philanthropist, Ainslie and the CCU began The Christian Union Library (renamed The Christian Union Quarterly in 1913), which became the leading ecumenical journal of the day. 

The early Faith and Order Movement saw Ainslie emerge as a central figure. He served on a three-person delegation sent to Great Britain in 1913-14 to secure the participation of the Free Churches in the forthcoming world conference. He was a delegate in the meetings leading to the first World Conference on Faith and Order, including the international preparatory meeting at Geneva, Switzerland, in 1920. 

Ainslie represented Disciples in most arenas of the new Ecumenical Movement: the Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America (1908); Andrew Carnegie’s Church Peace Union (1914); the World Alliance for Promoting International Friendship Through the Churches, with conferences at Constance, Switzerland (1914), the Hague (1919), and Copenhagen, Denmark (1922); the first conference of the Universal Christian Conference on Life and Work at Stockholm, Sweden (1925); the American Conference on Organic Union (1918-20); and the first World Conference on Faith and Order at Lausanne, Switzerland (1927). 

In a time of doctrinal orthodoxy among Disciples, Ainslie pleaded for liberty of opinion. His critique of denominational divisions and sectarianism was severe but loving. Herbert L. Willett observed that Ainslie was “a singular compound of gentleness and inflexibility. In his championship of new and often unpopular causes he was fearless and aggressive.” Both because of his personal ecumenical witness and the climate of the times, Ainslie was often “in the eye of a storm of controversy.” Many conscientiously opposed the open pulpit, open communion, and open membership. Ainslie affirmed them as signs of the coming unity of all Christians, declaring that the divisive spirit is “the scandal of Christianity.” Controversy over such matters often focused on Ainslie, leading him in 1925 to resign from the presidency of the Association for the Promotion of Christian Unity (the new name given the Council on Christian Union in 1913). He attended the Lausanne World Conference on Faith and Order in 1927 not as a delegate but as a member of the Continuation Committee. 

After resigning his presidency Ainslie concluded that the divided churches were captive to the powers of denominational idolatry. The ecumenical problem required personal and practical solutions. Unity would be achieved not “from the top” — through high offices in the churches — but “from the bottom” — by the witness and leadership of courageous people in the congregations. So in 1927 Peter Ainslie created the Christian Unity League for Equality and Brotherhood, an association he described as: “A fellowship of adventurous Christians from nearly every communion in America, seeking a practical expression of equality before God in order to raise the standard of Christian brotherhood above every denominational barrier, and to win others into the brotherhood of Jesus Christ.” 

Ainslie was a prolific writer. His fifteen books focused primarily on Christian unity, world peace, biblical studies and the spiritual life. His titles include: Religion in Daily Doings (1903), The Unfinished Task of the Reformation (1910), The Message of the Disciples for the Union of the Church (Yale Lectures, 1913), If Not a United Church — What? (1920), The Way of Prayer (1924), and The Scandal of Christianity (1929). 

Ainslie was given honorary degrees by Drake University (1911), Yale University (1914), and Bethany College (1914). In 1925 he married Mary Elizabeth Weisel, a Christian educator and dean of a Presbyterian girls’ seminary in Baltimore. They had two children, Mary Elizabeth and Peter IV. This “flaming apostle of Christian Unity” died of cancer in Baltimore, February 23, 1934. When ecumenical leader John R. Mott addressed the first assembly of the World Council of Churches at Amsterdam in 1948, he included Peter Ainslie III as among the twelve apostles of the modern Ecumenical Movement. 

See also Council on Christian Unity; Ecumenical Movement, The 

Paul A. Crow, Jr.

Foster, Douglas A.. The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (pp. 149-153). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition. 

Photo Captions: Peter Ainslie (1867-1934) was founding president of the Council on Christian Union, the earliest name of the Council on Christian Unity. Ainslie was active in ecumenical pursuits at both the national and world levels. Courtesy of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society

This entry, written by Paul A. Crow Jr., was originally published in The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (Edited by Douglas A. Foster, Paul M. Blowers, Anthony L. Dunnavant, and D. Newell Williams; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), pages 21-23. Republished with permission.