First church of the Campbell movement. The Christian Association of Washington was formed under the direction of Thomas Campbell at Buffaloe, Pennsylvania, on August 17, 1809. The organization specifically stated that it was not a church; it was merely a group of voluntary advocates for church reform who were to meet twice a year, principally to collect money to support ministers who shared their vision of “promoting simple evangelical christianity, free from all mixture of human opinions and inventions of men.”
The Christian Association initially tried to form an ecclesiastical union with the Presbyterian Synod of Pittsburgh, but it encountered hostility and rejection. On May 4, 1811, the members of the Association met at Brush Run, appointed Thomas Campbell elder, licensed Alexander Campbell to preach, and chose four deacons. The next day, Sunday, the church held its first communion service. The congregation was made up of about thirty regular members. A meetinghouse was erected in the valley of Brush Run, about two miles above its junction with Buffalo Creek.
Alexander Campbell was ordained on January 1, 1812, and on the certificate registering his ordination at the Brooke County courthouse, Thomas Campbell identifies himself as “Senior minister of the First Church of the Christian Association of Washington, meeting at Cross-roads and Brush Run, Washington County, Pennsylvania.”
The congregation was aware of the seeming contradiction between its existence as an independent religious body and its belief that “the church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one,” so in the fall of 1815 it welcomed the opportunity to unite with an association of Baptist churches in western Pennsylvania, the Redstone Association, on condition that the Brush Run church “should be allowed to teach and preach whatever we learned from the Holy Scriptures, regardless of any creed or formula in Christendom.”
A minority of clergy in the Redstone Association opposed the influence of Alexander Campbell and organized a campaign to bring him to trial for heresy. To circumvent this movement, in 1823 Campbell and about thirty other members of the Brush Run church were issued letters of dismission in order to establish a new congregation in Wellsburg. The Wellsburg church then united with the Mahoning Association of Ohio, which was more sympathetic to the views of the Campbells. By early in the year 1824 most of the Brush Run congregation had transferred membership to the Wellsburg church, but services continued to be held in the Brush Run Meeting House for another few years.
In 1842 the building was sold, moved to West Middletown, and put to various secular uses. In later years what remained of it was removed to the grounds of the Campbell Homestead in Bethany, where it deteriorated until the last of the debris was cleared away in 1990. See also Declaration and Address
Bibliography Alexander Campbell, “Anecdotes, Incidents & Facts,” Millennial Harbinger (1848): 279, 344, 522, 552, 701 • Robert Richardson, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, 2 vols. (1868, 1870).
George F. Miller
Foster, Douglas A.. The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (pp. 384-387). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.
This entry, written by George F. Miller, 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 100-101. Republished with permission.