Founder in 1809 with his father Thomas Campbell of a movement to unite Christians on the basis of the restoration of primitive Christianity. In 1832 this movement united with the Barton W. Stone movement to form the Stone-Campbell Movement. 

Founder in 1809 with his father Thomas Campbell of a movement to unite Christians on the basis of the restoration of primitive Christianity. In 1832 this movement united with the Barton W. Stone movement to form the Stone-Campbell Movement. 

1. Introduction: “The Greatest Promoter of This Reformation” 

When Alexander Campbell died in Bethany, West Virginia, in 1866, he had long been acknowledged as the “greatest promoter of this reformation.” He was one of its founders and had been its recognized leader for more than half a century. It was by then a respectable community that numbered upwards of half a million, and it enjoyed considerable international outreach. He was its representative speaker and debater. His journals and books reflected its ideals and mission. It could be said that the Movement was his alter ego. 

Campbell was as well known as any religious figure of the mid-frontier between 1830 and 1860. He traveled widely and attracted large crowds. More imposing than handsome, he stood almost six feet tall and bore the mien of a cultured European. He was urbane, intellectual, and eloquent. Those who heard him described him as “the master of assemblies.” 

1.1. Speaker and Preacher 

In keeping with his times, it was not unusual for him to speak for two or three hours — and without notes. Well read in the classics as well as history, literature, philosophy, and religion, he ranged widely over various areas of knowledge in his discourses, whatever the subject. He lectured nearly as easily on moral philosophy, the Anglo-Saxon language, the amelioration of society, phrenology, scientific farming, and the American republic as upon the Scriptures. He addressed skeptics as well as believers, and politicians as well as educators. His consuming themes, by both voice and pen, had to do with what he called “the new reformation” and “the ancient order of things.” 

While given to redundancy as a speaker as well as a writer, he was seldom, if ever, boring. While always serious, he was pleasant and affable. He was never given to levity in the pulpit. He was not a storyteller in the usual sense, and he did not talk about himself. He was always informative, usually interesting, and occasionally scintillating. 

A Presbyterian minister — who heard him out of curiosity and with a critical ear — conceded that Campbell’s discourse on Psalm 24, which was in exaltation of the risen Christ, was the most impressive display of divine eloquence he had ever heard. James Madison, former U.S. president — who often heard Campbell while they served together at the 1829 Virginia Constitutional Convention — revealed that he considered Alexander Campbell the best expositor of the Scriptures he had ever heard. 

A common response from his auditors was that they were unconscious of time, however long he spoke, and they were impressed that he was as poised in the pulpit as if he were in his own parlor. Those who expected eloquent oratory were surprised to find him conversational in tone and quiet in demeanor. Despite his erudition, he was disarmingly plain and simple. Once positioned before an audience, he never moved from that position — not even during a two- or three-hour discourse. In his latter years he would lean slightly on a cane that he took with him to the pulpit. His gestures were few, but he did sometimes emphasize a point with a sharp rap of his cane against the floor. He would also on occasion, in urging a point, bring his hand down lightly on his closed Bible on the lectern before him. 

He trusted the common person to comprehend his most seminal and profound concepts. He did not save his groundbreaking ideas for educators or the clergy, but freely shared them with the rank and file. He did not have one message for the elite and another for the ordinary folk. He wrote and spoke as if he would be understood by all. He was a man for all seasons and for all people. Whether in a mansion in New Orleans or a coal miner’s shack in Kentucky, his manner was the same. 

While we have few of his sermons — perhaps because he put few in print — his numerous travel letters, published in his journals, reveal some things about his preaching. One of his favorite sermons was “The Sun of Righteousness,” based on Malachi 4:2, in which he treated God’s revelation as a progressive unveiling of light. There was first the starlight age (Patriarchal), then the moonlight age (Mosaic), then the twilight age (John the Baptist), and at last the sunlight age (Christian) that brought the Messiah as the sun of righteousness. 

This was vintage Campbell. He preferred wide-ranging discourses that sought to integrate the various tributaries of God’s disclosure of God’s purposes. Another frequent topic was “The Philanthropy of God,” which, while based on John 3:16, was a broad sweep of Scripture in reference to what God has done for humanity. This was the sermon he gave before statesmen from both houses of Congress and their families in the House chamber in 1850. This has incorrectly been described as a sermon delivered before a called joint-session of Congress. 

1.2. Reaction and Opposition 

Campbell had such a reputation by this time that a former president of Amherst College wrote of him in 1850: “Mr. Campbell has for more than twenty years wielded a power over men’s minds, on the subject of religion, which has no parallel in the Protestant history of this country, nor of the Romish either.” He went on to say that no one else had ever made such inroads into other denominations. He explained that this was due, as he saw it, to Campbell’s rare combination of talents, which he listed as: a great knowledge of human nature, a superior education, smooth and captivating eloquence as a preacher, a skilled debater, an untiring industry of his pen and press, and his vast personal acquaintance in his wide circuits. 

But he had his antagonists. J. B. Jeter, a prominent Virginia Baptist, wrote disparagingly of him in 1855 in Campbellism Examined, a widely acclaimed exposure of the errors of “the current reformation.” A few years later — following a visit with Campbell in Richmond — Jeter gave his opinion of the reformer in a Baptist journal. He allowed that Campbell was a good man and that the principles he advocated were right in the main, but that he was visionary, erratic, and unpredictable. Moreover, he so often and so glaringly contradicted himself that he could only conclude that there was “a screw loose in his mental machinery.” This became more evident as Campbell grew older, Jeter insisted, until it terminated in “downright monomania.” Employing the derogatory tag of “Campbellism,” one Baptist journal remarked that the Movement was “spreading like a mighty contagion through the Western states, wasting Zion in its progress.” It complained that “one-half of the Baptist churches in Ohio have embraced its sentiments,” and added, “In Kentucky its desolations are even greater than in Ohio.” 

Campbell usually responded to his critics. Concerning the term Campbellism, he rejoined, “Men fond of nicknaming are usually weak in reason, argument, and proof.” As for Jeter, the response in part was, “Our brother Jeter — Brother, did I say? Yes, and I will not erase it, our brother Jeter.…” He did not pass up a chance to show that he could disagree with persons and still accept them as brothers or sisters — a basic principle of his plea for reformation. 1.3. Diverse Interests His interests were vast and diverse. He served as postmaster of the village of Bethany. With the accompanying franking rights he sent out free of charge over several decades nearly a million copies of his journals, books, Bibles, and hymnals. 

While at first reluctant, he entered politics long enough to serve as a delegate to the 1829 Virginia Constitutional Convention. He was also reluctant to debate, but eventually concluded that in some ways a week of debating was more effective than a year of preaching. He had five public debates that were published in book form and several written discussions. 

Considering that his father was an educator before him, it is not surprising that he was committed to education. Not only did he operate a boys’ school in his home as early as 1818, but he founded a college on his own farm in 1840. He not only served the college as professor, treasurer, and president for a quarter of a century, but helped fund it in its early years with his own money. Along the way, he worked out an impressive philosophy of education that became the source of numerous lectures across the country. 

It was hardly predictable that he would be an entrepreneur, something his father was not. Starting with 140 acres of land that his father-in-law had given to him and his wife to keep them from migrating to Ohio, he eventually owned 1,500 acres. He bought land as far west as Indiana. Part of the campus of Indiana University was once owned by Alexander Campbell, and most of the campus of Bethany College was once part of the Campbell farm. 

On those fertile acres he raised merino sheep imported from his native Ireland, which proved profitable. He was active in the American Wool Growers Association. He corresponded with John Brown, the abolitionist, who was also a wool grower. They had a common interest in defending the rights of the wool growers, which they believed were threatened by the wool buyers. But Campbell did not share Brown’s abolitionist views, even though he was anti-slavery and freed his own slaves. 

He also farmed those acres, doing some of the work himself, especially in his earlier years. Virtually all the food served at the family table, which included many guests, was raised on the farm. The food was prepared by hired help, and, until they were freed, slaves. 

He became known not only for his journals and debates, but also as a translator of the New Testament. His Living Oracles — the name it assumed, but actually published as “The Sacred Writings of the Apostles and Evangelists of Jesus Christ, Commonly Called the New Testament, Translated from the Original Greek” — was actually a revision of an earlier English translation. He later translated in full the book of Acts for the American Bible Union’s version of the New Testament. 

He was even a hymnologist, though he could hardly carry a tune. He published Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, Original and Selected, with 511 entries — lyrics only — four of which he composed. It too went through several editions, and, like most of his publications, was financially profitable. 

1.4. Wealth and Grief 

He became quite wealthy. His estate was valued at nearly $200,000, which would be several millions by today’s count. His will favored the heirs of his “second family,” leading to its being challenged in court and reflecting alienation in Campbell’s own family, surely a source of grief to Campbell in his later years. 

But Campbell was no stranger to grief. He lost his first wife when he was but thirty-eight, and eventually buried ten of his fourteen children — “six of them daughters, all young mothers,” he lamented. The bitterest loss of all, however, was the drowning death of his highly promising, 10-year-old son Wickliffe in 1847 when the reformer was in Britain. It afflicted the family with “superlative severity,” as Campbell described it. 

The Civil War compounded his sorrows. It not only divided his adopted country — which he had envisioned as the sanctuary of “the millennial church” — but it threatened the welfare of his reformation, especially in the South. It was a sad day when he could no longer send mail to his vast constituency in the Southern states. And once the war was over, he had to witness the trial of his son, Alexander Campbell, Jr., in nearby Wellsburg, who was accused of treason against the United States after serving as an officer in the Confederate Army. Although the son was pardoned by the president, it further intensified the pain of his aging father. 

His response to these losses was reflective of his piety and spirituality. As for the loss of Wickliffe, known for his “precocious piety,” Campbell admitted that he had never been afraid of evil tidings, but “in this case God thought good to take to himself the choicest lamb from my flock, and has not revealed to me the reason why.” But God is too wise to err and too kind to afflict his children without cause, he concluded. While God’s ways cannot be traced, he ventured that Wickliffe was “drafted” due to his unique character to serve elsewhere in God’s vast universe. 

1.5. Personal Piety: A Principle of Reformation 

He dealt with the mystery of the premature death of exemplary Christians in pietistic terms. “We must not think it strange,” he wrote following Wickliffe’s death, “if God will make all saints after death ministers of mercy or of public utility in some of the grand departments of this stupendous universe.” He went on to suggest that God needs noble souls to minister elsewhere in the universe as much as he needs angels to serve on planet earth. He was enough of a Calvinist to acknowledge God’s complete sovereignty over all his creation. God never acts without purpose in the life of his children. 

He included piety in his “essential attributes of the proposed reformation.” Reformation was not merely doctrinal but personal, and he insisted that “We all need reformation.” When he listed his “principal articles,” he included: “More piety and devotion — more power and praise — more private meditation and communion with God, than appears to obtain amongst the great mass of those called Christians.” He also called for self-denial and strict self-government. 

He appears to have been as pious as he was intellectual, which was part of his endowment from his deeply spiritual father and his Calvinistic upbringing. There were morning and evening devotionals in his home. His children memorized and quoted Scripture in the family circle. They sang and prayed together, and he talked to them of eternal verities in the simplest terms, drawing illustrations from things they understood. One visitor to the family circle tells how Campbell on one occasion stretched out his hand before the children, referred to it as an example of God’s majestic handiwork, and proceeded to point out amazing facts about the mechanism of the hand. Regarding the advantages of private prayer, he once wrote that prayer implies more than we express, even more than we are able to express. It implies that God hears what is to human ears inaudible whispers, and “he reads what we ourselves cannot read — the language of our agonies and unutterable sighs and emotions.” 

While he preferred kneeling in both private and public prayer, he granted that standing was “Divinely sanctioned” for both prayer and praise — including lifting up holy hands. It was when he saw congregations sitting in prayer that he was indignant — “a heart-chilling and soul-paralyzing spectacle.” “Sitting worshipers are lazy-bodies,” he complained, noting that if angels cast their crowns before the Lamb of God, we should be willing to submit our bodies in his presence. He applied this to giving thanks at the table at home. To “sit and address God is most indecorous and disorderly,” except for physical disability. “Shall a man arise to speak to a respectable friend, and sit down to thank God for his daily repasts?” he asked. 

1.6. The Jovial “Bishop” 

He was not as solemn and austere as he is sometimes depicted. Around Bethany he was seen as the jovial and friendly “Bishop.” He was sometimes seen in public in old farm clothes and a beat-up white hat, and he was known to wear jeans in the pulpit. He had a hearty appetite and slept soundly for seven hours each night, but was usually up by 4 AM in order to get in sixteen hours of work and study. He worked in the fields and repaired fences like any other farmer. He talked with his fellow farmers about their mutual problems. And on an 1858 visit to Washington he was the dinner guest of President James Buchanan in the White House, where he was equally at home. 

When he was 71 he anticipated travel as if he were half that age, and with the spirit of a poet: “We promise ourselves, the Lord willing, a visit to Iowa when the birds are singing, and the Prairie flowers are blooming in all their loveliness and beauty.” In the same travel letter he wrote of “those grand Christian excellencies” which prepare and purify the heart, and make it suitable for “the pure and Holy Spirit that condescends to become a guest in the Christian’s bosom.” It may have been this concern to make his body a temple of the Spirit that led him to give up tobacco. 

He had a sense of humor. While a house guest in Scotland, he bounded down the stairs on one occasion singing, “The Campbells are coming, Aha, Aha!” When a skeptic challenged him with, “Would you have me trust in the bare, bare, naked truth?” he retorted with, “Yes, as naked as two bares can make it!” When asked about what he thought of growing old, he said, “Well, considering the alternative.…” In defense of a crying baby, he granted that wailing was not his favorite music, but that the baby should be listened to, for it was claiming its rights: “There are rights for men, rights for women, and baby rights!” 

One gets an on-the-scene view of his good humor amidst difficulty when he was speaking in Martinsville, Indiana, in 1851, and was disturbed by crying babies. There were “some fifteen parts rending the air,” and he was so overwhelmed that, “Cried down, I sat down.” He called on John O’Kane — who was traveling with him and who had a powerful voice — to speak in his place. As O’Kane spoke, the babies were “allured into a speculative silence.” With the babies quiet, O’Kane motioned for Campbell to resume his subject. But he no more than began when the babies resumed their wailing, all in concert! With the mothers at their wit’s end, and with no one willing to give way, “I confessed myself wholly vanquished, drew to a close, and dismissed the assembly.” 

Campbell’s joy of living was rooted in his profound expectations of what God was about to do in and through America. That he named his journal The Millennial Harbinger is evidence of this. Especially in his earlier years Campbell actually believed that a millennial reign of peace and righteousness was in the offing, including a united church with America at its center. He saw his Movement as a harbinger to that end. He often gave expression to a favorite motto: “Expect great things, attempt great things, and great things will follow.” 

2. The Formative Years: Born of Calvinist Piety (1788-1807) 

2.1. Family Background 

Alexander Campbell was born to Thomas and Jane Corneigle Campbell on September 12, 1788, near Ballymena in the parish of Broughshane, County Antrim, Ireland. Thomas was by lineage an Argyle Scot, and Jane descended from the French Huguenots. Thomas was of medium stature and handsome, while Jane was tall, erect, and “remarkably retiring in her disposition and manners.” In a memoir to his mother in his old age, Alexander described her as “the beau ideal of the Christian mother,” and regardless of all the hardships she had to bear he never heard her complain. 

He esteemed his father not only the best teacher he ever knew, but the most pious as well. He was devoted to and never neglected the spiritual disciplines. When the father was widowed, aged, and blind, he lived with his son in Bethany. Alexander was sometimes in his father’s presence when he was unaware that anyone was around. He would often be whispering a psalm or quietly singing a hymn, interspersed with cries of “Glory be to God.” He saw his father as constantly in the presence of God. 

Alexander and his six younger siblings grew up in a home with “a family altar.” Morning and evening there were prayers, singing, and recitation of memorized Scripture. Later in life he credited both of his parents with urging him to memorize large portions of the Bible. Once he had a family of his own, he carried on the “family altar” tradition, long a part of strict Calvinist piety. 

2.2. Early Education 

Except for brief periods in a grammar school and an academy conducted by his uncles, Alexander was “home schooled” by his father. While as a young man he was more interested in sports than study, he eventually cultivated an insatiable appetite for books and ideas. He developed a remarkably retentive memory, which might explain how he could discourse for hours without notes. He memorized not only large portions of Scripture, but hymns and choice selections from world literature, especially the British poets. He also studied Latin, French, Greek, and moral philosophy, especially John Locke, whose ideas on civil and religious liberty substantially influenced his thinking. He also began a lifelong interest in John Milton. 

His father grew up an Anglican but eventually became an ordained minister in the Seceder Presbyterian Church. To supplement his meager income, he conducted private schools in his own home or in the homes of others, there being no public schools. When in 1804 he started a school in Rich Hill near Armagh in northern Ireland, Alexander, then 16, was academically prepared to serve as his assistant. Some of his siblings were among his students. He soon gained a reputation as an excellent teacher, and was largely responsible for the school’s growing enrollment. 

In 1798 his father had become pastor of the Ahorey Presbyterian Church a few miles from Rich Hill. It was a church destined to play a significant role in Campbell history. It now has a tower that honors Thomas Campbell and a stained-glass window that memorializes Alexander Campbell. 

2.3. Earliest Religious Experiences 

Becoming a teacher was a turning point in young Campbell’s life. While he was still taking advanced studies from his father, he was coming into his own. In his late teens he began to take both life and religion more seriously. While his father was urging him to consider the ministry, he was struggling with his religious faith. Unsure of his own salvation, he walked in secluded places and prayed for some assurance of pardon. 

From the time he first began to read the Bible he believed in Jesus as the Christ, but he did not have the feeling of his salvation that he supposed he should have. This caused him great distress of soul, and he had “the awakenings of a guilty conscience.” Recalling this in later life, he wrote, “Finally, after many strugglings, I was able to put my trust in the Saviour, and to feel my reliance on him as the only Saviour of sinners.” This gave him the peace he sought. He remembered that it never entered his head to investigate the subject of baptism, which, after a few more years, would demand much of his attention. 

Once he was received as a member of the Ahorey Presbyterian Church, he began to take more seriously his father’s desire that he devote himself to the ministry. He entered an extensive study of theology and church history. At the outset he was disturbed by things in the religious world that were to challenge him for the rest of his life — ignorance, superstition, priest-ridden oppression, and particularly divisions among Christians. 

His father had borne such concerns for years. He had sought to restore peace among the factions in his own Seceder church to no avail. He was also grieved that church doctrines were related more to creeds than to the Bible. And he was so concerned to instill spiritual discipline and to nurture people in the Scriptures that his church at Ahorey became known as the best educated in the presbytery. But his efforts — particularly his attempt to unite the warring Seceder factions — not only were unappreciated but brought painful opposition. His son was later to explain that his father’s failure was the result of having attempted the impossible, a reformation within the Seceder sects. 

2.4. Thomas’s Migration to America 

Besides such discouragement, Thomas Campbell’s health grew delicate. His doctor advised a lengthy sea voyage. He decided to sail to America — not only for health’s sake, but to search out what might possibly be a new home for his family in the New World. If it worked out, the family would join him. Alexander, almost 19, would administer the school, continue his private studies, and help his mother care for the children. 

Thomas Campbell embarked at Londonderry, Ireland, on the ship Brutus for Philadelphia on April 8, 1807. It was another turning point in the Campbell story. Thomas would soon have experiences on the American frontier that would lay the groundwork for the movement that he and his son would lead. At Rich Hill, with a covey of children at his feet, Alexander could hardly have imagined what was destined for him — some of it soon. 

3. Called to Be a Reformer (1807-23) 

3.1. Experiences in Scotland 

Thomas Campbell was in America for fifteen months before he finally decided that there was a future for him and his family in the New World. He had problems with leaders of the Seceder church in America similar to those he had back home, and he had difficulty locating an appropriate situation for the family. But he had met new friends, some of whom encouraged him in his efforts to effect change in the church, and he saw exciting challenges on a new frontier. 

He sent word for the family to join him in time for them to board the Hibernia at Londonderry for Philadelphia on October 1, 1808. Alexander had turned 20 the month before. After two days at sea the ship went aground in a storm near an island of the Hebrides. While probably no one was in any real danger, it seemed so at the time. They made it to shore safely, and Alexander was able to save his father’s books. More significantly, the trauma of the near-tragedy at sea settled the question of his life’s calling. He resolved that stormy night that he would follow in the steps of his father and devote himself to the service of the church as a minister of the gospel. 

Since they were not able to book passage on another ship until the following summer, the family took lodgings in Glasgow. This enabled Alexander to attend Glasgow University, which was then at the zenith of its fame. It was, moreover, the university his father had attended. He took courses with two professors who had taught his father twenty-five years earlier. 

The 300 days he spent in Glasgow appear providential, for he had experiences both in the university and in the area churches that were to influence his life’s work substantially. His studies at the university included Greek, literature, French, and philosophy. The latter course exposed him to the Common Sense philosophy that pervaded the Scottish universities at the time and that was to help shape his interpretation of Scripture. 

In the area churches he was exposed to various reformation efforts that were going on within the Church of Scotland, the state church. These included Independents affiliated with John Glas and Robert Sandeman and a movement led by James and Robert Haldane. These movements had separated from the state church mainly over the independence of each congregation and the freedom of private interpretation of Scripture. They had in view the restoration of primitive Christianity. 

Alexander especially identified with Greville Ewing, pastor of a large independent church in Glasgow that was reflective of the changes taking place. It was in small gatherings in Ewing’s home where lively issues were freely discussed that he began to take the issues of reformation seriously. 

The changes that Ewing called for included weekly Communion, the Bible to the exclusion of human creeds, congregational autonomy, plurality of elders in each church, the rights of lay ministers, the rejection of clerical privilege, and the practice of mutual ministry. Ewing also held the view that faith is based on testimony rather than being supernaturally induced. 

These views were to serve as foundation stones for Campbell’s efforts in America. But they did not include baptism by immersion. When the Haldanes finally adopted this view, Ewing disagreed, insisting that infant sprinkling was scriptural. Campbell’s high regard for Ewing may help explain his reluctance to adopt baptism by immersion. 

Nor did the Scottish reformers include unity as part of their reformation. This was the unique feature of what became the Campbell plea. While the Scots called for a restoration of primitive Christianity as if it were the end in view, the Campbells made it a means to an end — the end being the unity of all believers in Christ. 

The Scottish influence also helped to turn young Campbell away from a sectarian view of the church. In later years he recalled that he first “imbibed disgust at the popular schemes, chiefly while a student at Glasgow.” This “disgust,” a common trait of reformers, included his distaste for the sectarian bickering and factionalism that he experienced in his own Seceder church. He was exposed to a more loving and conciliatory spirit in the person of Greville Ewing. He knew that as a faithful Seceder he could not accept Ewing and the other reformers who were not Seceders as equals in the church. Even an exemplary Christian like Greville Ewing would not be allowed to break bread in the Seceder church. 

This is what was bothering him when it came time for his church’s semi-annual Communion service. He dutifully went before the elders to be examined as to his worthiness to take part. He obtained the usual leaden token that would allow him a place at the Communion table. On that fateful Lord’s Day in the spring of 1809, he waited in line to enter the Communion room, nursing his doubts about it all. He kept dropping back in line, trying to decide what to do. When he was at last seated at the table, he placed his token in the plate, but let the elements pass before him without partaking. 

This was a private expression of his repudiation of sectarianism. It was a defining moment in his life, a quiet but resolute turn in a new direction. He made no defiant speech; he did not walk out in protest. It might not even have been noticed by those near him that he had refused Communion. But he knew in his heart that it meant he would no longer be a sectarian. He was now a free person in Christ. It could be said that in that Communion service the movement he would soon launch in America was born. It was his call to be a reformer. 

It says something for his maturity that at only 20 he decided for the time being to be a quiet rebel. He did not reveal his feelings to the church authorities. He thought it best to arrive in America with his proper credentials as a member of the Seceder church in good standing. 

3.2. Migration to America 

The family sailed from Greenoch, Scotland, on August 3, 1809, aboard the Latonia, and arrived in New York on September 29. By stagecoach and wagon they made their way to Philadelphia. There they hired a wagoner to bear them across hundreds of miles of wilderness toward Washington, Pennsylvania, where their new home awaited them. They made some thirty miles a day, sometimes walking, sometimes riding in the wagon. Alexander marveled over the vast reaches of the frontier so different from his native Ireland. Thomas Campbell met the family with extra horses some three days from their new home, and the family was at last reunited after a separation of two years. 

Since father and son had both undergone substantial change in their thinking, they were at first hesitant to unburden themselves to each other. They soon believed, however, that providence had brought them to one mind in regard to the reformation of the church. Even before they reached their destination they talked of the need of a plea for Christian unity based on the Bible alone. 

Thomas’s reformation efforts had led to the creation of a society known as the Christian Association of Washington. It was a society — not a church — with a mission to work within the churches for peace and unity. As a manifesto for the society, Thomas had just written the Declaration and Address, which Alexander read while it was still in proof sheets soon after his arrival. 

These entities proved to be rich resources for their upcoming reformation. The society, consisting of thirty members, eventually became their first church contrary to its original intention. The church, which was simply called Brush Run church, was organized May 4, 1811. The Declaration and Address became their charter for Christian unity in setting forth what both Thomas and Alexander saw as irrefutable principles for the oneness of all believers in Christ. 

3.3. Ordination and Marriage 

Alexander spent his first two years in America continuing his studies, preaching his first sermon, being ordained to the ministry, getting married, and submitting to baptism by immersion, somewhat in that order. Now that he was committed to the Christian ministry, he placed himself under a rigid regimen of studies. He preached his first sermon on July 10, 1810, on Matthew 7:24-27, and went on to give 100 sermons over the next year. He was ordained to the ministry by the Brush Run Church with his father officiating on January 1, 1812. 

Since he had resolved to preach without pay, his father predicted that he would wear many a tattered coat. Instead, he married into a family of some means. John Brown, a farmer and carpenter who owned considerable acreage around what is now Bethany, had an 18-year-old daughter named Margaret, also born of Presbyterian piety. When Alexander came to their home to deliver some books Mr. Brown had borrowed from Thomas, he and Margaret met and fell in love. They were married on March 12, 1811. This was the beginning of Campbell’s fifty-five-year residency in Bethany. Mr. Brown deeded the home and farm to the young couple as an incentive to remain in Bethany when there was talk of their migrating to Ohio. 

3.4. Baptism by Immersion 

His first theological crisis came with the birth of his first child. He had to decide if she should be baptized as he and all good Presbyterians had been in their infancy. He not only searched the Greek New Testament for an answer, but also consulted those scholars who wrote in defense of infant baptism. His study led to more than he was expecting. He not only decided against baptism for his infant daughter, but also resolved that he himself should be baptized by immersion, which he now had concluded was the only valid baptism. Margaret joined him in his resolution. 

He asked Baptist minister Matthias Luce to immerse him simply on his confession that Jesus is the Christ. Luce was at first hesitant, saying it was contrary to Baptist practice, but he agreed to do so because he saw it as consistent with the New Testament. 

He and his father had discussed and questioned the validity of infant baptism on occasion, but passed it off as a matter of opinion. Concerning the question of the possible immersion of believers who had already been baptized as infants, Thomas observed that it would hardly be appropriate to go out of the church in order to come back in again. He expressed concern that rebaptism would tend to “dechristianize the whole Christian world.” 

When Alexander revealed his intentions to his father, he was told that he had to do what he saw to be his duty. He assumed that his father would, at best, be tolerant toward his decision. But when it came time for the baptism, Thomas Campbell and his wife not only came along, but brought a change of clothing with them. It was June 12, 1812. On that day seven persons were immersed in Buffalo Creek, which winds its way through Bethany. Thirteen more were immersed at the next meeting of the Brush Run Church. Alexander would later suggest that it may have been the first time in the new Republic that people were immersed simply upon their profession of faith in Christ. 

It was clearly a turning point in the Campbell story when father and son repudiated infant baptism by publicly being immersed. It was a defining moment in that it both separated them from their Presbyterian heritage once and for all and identified them with the Baptists, where they were “uneasily bosomed,” as Walter Scott put it, for the next two decades. It also catapulted Alexander into the leadership of the emerging reformation. Henceforth the son was the principal leader of the movement, though only 23. 

Alexander rejected his father’s fear that by being immersed after being sprinkled as an infant he had “dechristianized” himself or others. He had always been a Christian, he believed, but now that he had found more truth, he had obeyed it. He was himself an example of the definition of a Christian he was later to give: “A Christian is one who believes that Jesus is the Christ, repents of his sins, and obeys him in all things according to his understanding.” 

3.5. Among the Baptists 

For the next few years he tended his farm, watched over a growing family, conducted a school in his home, and itinerated among the Baptists. Since his repudiation of infant baptism and submission to baptism by immersion, he was increasingly accepted by the Baptists. Once he began to champion baptism by immersion in public debates, many Baptists deemed him a hero. 

While he never in any official way personally became a Baptist, he had become for all practical purposes a Baptist. The first two Campbell churches, Brush Run and Wellsburg, belonged to Baptist associations, and his people were first known as “Reformed Baptists.” His first journal was named the Christian Baptist. And he resolved early on that he would work among the Baptists as long as he could be free in Christ. 

This continued until well into the 1820s when his followers began to be “forced out” by Baptist Associations. Until his dying day he regretted that his people and the Baptists ever had to separate. And yet when Baptists in Kentucky were generously embracing him, he cautioned them, “I have almost as much against you as I do the pedobaptists.” And when the Brush Run church joined the Redstone Baptist Association, it prepared a document that set forth the conditions under which it would be a member, including the freedom to interpret the Scriptures as it understood them, apart from any creed. 

3.6. “Sermon on the Law” 

His reputation among the Baptists nevertheless grew steadily until 1816 when the Redstone Association had its annual meeting at the Cross Creek Baptist church only ten miles from his home. It was expected that he would be the keynote speaker. But the pastor of the church, who nursed prejudices against Campbell, blocked the move and put in his own man. But when that man became ill — which Campbell later described as “providential” — even the pastor agreed that Campbell should speak. 

This presentation, which became known as the “Sermon on the Law,” was another turning point in the Campbell story. Some historians have named this occasion the beginning of the Movement, and Campbell himself said thirty years later that had it not been for that sermon and the opposition it generated he might never have launched his reformation. 

“The Sermon on the Law” articulated a critical hermeneutical principle. Taking his text from Romans 8:3, he argued that the Old Testament and the New Testament reflect different systems and different covenants, and that the Christian is “not under law but under grace.” God has dealt with humanity through a series of covenants, he claimed, and when the law of Moses fulfilled its purpose as a covenant, it gave way to the new covenant of Christ. The Christian dispensation is not merely a continuation of the Mosaic law as was commonly taught in Calvinist theology, but a new system of grace. 

This was too much for some of the “law preachers,” as Campbell dubbed those who in his view wanted to bind Christians to the demands of the old Mosaic system. The pastor of the Cross Creek church quickly rallied opposition and moved against Campbell, insisting that “This is not Baptist doctrine,” and that it should be exposed as heresy. Since wiser heads prevailed, Campbell was spared public repudiation at the time. It was nonetheless, as he afterwards put it, the beginning of a “seven year’s war” with the Baptists. 

3.7. Buffalo Seminary 

In 1818 he started a school in his own home called Buffalo Seminary. He used the main floor for classrooms and the upstairs for a dormitory. This forced his growing family into the basement, a move he was later to regret, for he feared the dampness of the basement may have hastened the premature death from tuberculosis of his wife Margaret. This is unlikely, however, since all five of her daughters were also to succumb to the same disease at about her same age. 

Even though the school soon had more pupils than he could accept, he found himself serving as a caretaker for young students who did not share his spiritual interests. The school held little prospect of producing co-workers for his budding reformation, so after four years he closed it. Even so, some of his students became doctors and lawyers and were grateful for what he had done for them. 

3.8. First Two Debates 

While still conducting his school, Campbell launched a new dimension to his ministry: debating. It was not uncommon for Presbyterians to challenge Baptists to debate their differences on baptism. Since Presbyterians generally had a better-educated clergy, the challenges usually went unheeded. While the “Sermon on the Law” had established Campbell as controversial and as a different kind of Baptist, he was nonetheless deemed sound on baptism and singularly capable of defending the Baptists against the pedobaptists. 

In 1820 he debated John Walker, a Seceder Presbyterian minister, in Mt. Pleasant, Ohio, and three years later he debated W. L. Maccalla, also a Presbyterian, in Washington, Kentucky. He was reluctant to engage in the first debate, but it proved to be such an effective venue for the promulgation of his ideas that he was the challenger in the second debate. While both debates were on the mode of baptism, they allowed him not only to defend the Baptist position on immersion but also to venture more deeply into the design of baptism. 

In the first debate he introduced Acts 2:38 — destined to be a pivotal passage in his reformation — but only in reference to his argument against infant baptism. At that time he did not see even his own immersion in reference to the remission of sins. It was in the second debate that he postulated for the first time that the purpose of baptism was to give the believer an assurance of the remission of sins. He distinguished between real and formal remission of sins, explaining that individuals are “really” saved when they believe, “formally” saved when they are immersed. “The water of baptism, then, formally washes away our sins. The blood of Christ really washes away our sins,” he said in the Maccalla debate. Seventeen years later, in response to some who were giving “an undue eminence” to baptism, he appealed to the Maccalla debate as correctly representing his position that baptism is “pardon-certifying” rather than “pardon-procuring.” 

These first two debates proved so effective in promoting his reformation that he went on record saying, “We are fully persuaded that a week’s debating is worth a year’s preaching.” Both debates were published, and thousands of copies were sold. This all served to popularize the name of Alexander Campbell and the cause of reformation that he represented. 

4. The Aggressive Years (1823-30) 

4.1. Campbell the Editor 

In 1823 he became an editor, the forte of his ministry for the rest of his life. If it was as a debater that he launched his reformation, it was as an editor that he solidified it. While some may have thought of Campbell as young and brash when editor of the Christian Baptist, he was in fact almost 35 when he began the journal and 41 when he concluded it — the mid-years of one’s career in his time. Nor was he brash or reckless, considering the maturity and sophistication of his writings during those seven years. But he was bold, aggressive, and sometimes offensive — or, as he put it, “tart and severe,” especially to the clergy. 

From the outset he more than hinted that the new journal would be a hard-hitting publication. In the prospectus to the Christian Baptist he announced that the “sole object” was not only “the eviction of truth” but “the exposing of error in doctrine and practice.” In the preface to the first issue he admitted that it was rare for an editor to do what he had in mind — to oppose the errors of those with whom he was identified and looked to for support. If such a one appears in any party, he ventured, he would be met with frowns, and would either have to lay his hand upon his mouth or be shown the door. He made it clear that he intended neither to keep his mouth shut nor to walk out the door. 

He suspected that his efforts might “be blasted by the poisonous breath of sectarian zeal and of an aspiring priesthood.” He was persuaded that the church had seriously departed from the apostolic faith and was in deep apostasy and that the clergy was largely responsible. He explained in later years that he sometimes spoke with “asperity” of the clergy, which he considered contrary to his nature, because he thought it took that to get their attention as to the seriousness of their transgressions. 

He sometimes wrote with the anger of an Old Testament prophet: “My very soul is stirred within me when I think of what a world of mischief the popular clergy have done. They have shut up everybody’s mouth but their own; and theirs they will not open unless they are paid for it.” He not only called them “hirelings” and “stall-fed clergy,” but even “antichrist.” He ventured that if he could not prove that the clergy “as a body collective” were not antichrist, then he could prove no proposition at all. 

The clergy, he suggested, “hanker after titles,” the D.D. degree in particular. When a Baptist clergy friend of his turned down the honor, Campbell commented: “When the degree was conferred on him, he, like a Christian, declined it.” In his “Third Epistle of Peter,” published in the Christian Baptist in 1824, he excoriated the clergy to the point of appearing to be deliberately offensive. He charged not only that the clergy “fleece the flock” for money, but also that they feigned to make the people think they cared for their souls while they did it. They also “make the people blind in the midst of light.” 

Some of his readers, including some of his supporters, saw this as unnecessarily offensive. Students in a New York seminary cancelled their subscriptions, charging that he was on “a confirmed course of ridicule and sarcasm.” A Baptist minister whom Campbell respected and often quoted urged that he be “not so strong and extreme,” observing that he had two personalities — gracious in the social circle, but otherwise when writing. Another respected correspondent wrote to him that “it is thought that your feelings are not of the most peaceful nature” and accused him of forgetting such Christian virtues as gentleness and kindness. His severest critics called up such adjectives as “mischievous,” “incendiary,” and “dangerous to our children.” His journal “sowed seeds of discord among brethren.” 

But Campbell did not retract or apologize, and he showed little interest in defending himself. He pointed out that there are instances in which a reformer may have to use severe language as did John the Baptist and even Jesus himself in order to alert the church to “the moral malady” that consumes its spiritual life. He did in time tone down his rhetoric, however, and became more conciliatory toward the clergy. 

The Christian Baptist was far more than the editor’s occasional anticlerical diatribes. It was concerned with the reformation of both the church and society — “the art of living well” as the editor expressed it. The source of such well-being is found in “the ancient gospel.” Campbell thus wrote series on “The Ancient Gospel” and “A Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things” in which he sought to correct the deficiencies of the modern church by way of a restoration of primitive Christianity. A restoration of “ordinances” — baptism, the Lord’s Supper, the Lord’s day, the Bible — received special attention. Restoration was a basic motif, such as restoration of pure speech, proper church discipline, church offices, the spirit of the primitive Christians, and even love feasts. 

The editor appears to have gone out of his way to be fair and open. He invited his readers to write to him their objections to anything in the paper. He promised to respond. Much of the journal is made up of letters from readers and his responses. He allowed “the other side” to be heard, including scathing criticism of himself. He was cooperative and conciliatory toward other religious papers, even when they were critical. He quoted from seventy-nine different journals during those seven years, often commending what they had to say. He was an editor sensitive to the church at large, one who had an ecumenical outlook. But he was always a reformer and an agent for change. 

4.2. Sectarianism Is “The Offspring of Hell” 

While he was sometimes caustic in the Christian Baptist, he was never sectarian in the sense that he saw his movement as exclusively the body of Christ and his people as the only true Christians. In 1825, in response to a reader, he made it clear that he had put that kind of thinking behind him: “I was once so straight that like the Indian’s tree I leaned a little the other way.… I was so strict a Separatist that I would neither pray nor sing praises with any one who was not as perfect as I supposed myself.” He went on to brand such exclusiveness as “Protestant monkery” and sectarianism as “the offspring of hell.” 

Throughout the seven volumes of The Christian Baptist he was eminently ecumenical in his plea for the unity of all believers. To a reader with whom he did not agree on a number of issues, he wrote: “I will esteem you and love you, as I do every man, of whatever name, who believes sincerely that Jesus is the Messiah, and hopes in his salvation.” To another correspondent he said: “I declare non-fellowship with no man who owns the Lord in word and deed. Such is a Christian. He that denies the Lord in word and deed is not a Christian.” 

Again in 1825, while yet with the Baptists, he explained: “I have no idea of adding to the catalogue of new sects. This game has been played too long. I labor to see sectarianism abolished, and all Christians of every name united upon the one foundation on which the apostolic church was founded.” He was confident that the church would one day be united again as it was in apostolic times, but only through a restoration of the ancient order of things. The reformed church would be a united church, and the united church would be “the millennial church.” 

When Campbell brought the Christian Baptist to a close in July 1830, he had already begun a new journal with a significant name change, the Millennial Harbinger. The journal would anticipate and help to usher in the coming millennium by pleading for the unity of all Christians through the restoration of primitive Christianity. The new journal would take up where the old one left off. He closed down the Christian Baptist partly to avoid the danger of the name compromising his nonsectarian plea: “Hating sects and sectarian names, I resolved to keep the name of the Christian Baptist from being fixed on us.” 

4.3. The Living Oracles: Translation of the New Testament 

In 1826 Campbell published a translation of the New Testament popularly known as The Living Oracles. It was based on a translation by Scottish scholars and included extensive critical notes. He made some daring changes, some of which did not go well with his own followers. One was the omission of Acts 8:37, a favorite Baptist proof text. The use of “immerse” for “baptize” might have pleased the Baptists, but “John, the Immerser” removed their name from the Bible. He used “congregation” for “church,” eliminated “thy,” “thou,” and “thine,” and changed “repent” to “reform” and “preach” to “proclaim,” making his translation too different from earlier ones for most people. 

While the new version went through several editions and revisions, even after his death it enjoyed only modest acceptance. Yet it further established Alexander Campbell as a reformer and strengthened both his reputation and his movement. It was, however, an achievement that on one occasion was turned against him. Three years later, when he served as a delegate to the Virginia Constitutional Convention, a fellow delegate opposed Campbell with: “Mr. Chairman, even the God of heaven cannot please this man, for he has a Bible all his own.” 

4.4. Virginia Constitutional Convention 

Campbell’s participation as a delegate to the 1829 Virginia Constitutional Convention, his only formal venture into politics, placed him in the company of two former presidents, James Madison and James Monroe, as well as Chief Justice John Marshall and Virginia Governor William B. Giles. While the experience had little bearing on his role as a reformer, it gave him the unique opportunity to preach in various churches while in Richmond those several months and to be heard by the great and the near great. 

James Madison was one who heard him, and while he spoke highly of Campbell’s role in the Convention, he added, “But it is as a theologian that Mr. Campbell must be known. It was my pleasure to hear him very often as a preacher of the gospel, and I regard him as the ablest and most original expounder of the Scriptures I have ever heard.” 

4.5. Campbell-Owen Debate 

It was also in 1829 that he had his third debate. This time his opponent was an eminent Scottish socialist named Robert Owen who was known for his denunciation of religion and Christianity in particular. As Campbell saw it, the debate was as much about hope as anything, for he held that however successful Owen’s socialist enterprises might be, one cannot be happy in this world without the hope of immortality beyond the grave. 

Observers were impressed that two men as radically different in their views as Campbell and Owen could be as gracious toward each other as they were. The debate gave prestige and visibility to the new church that was emerging, especially since Campbell was defending the entire Christian community against Owen’s charge that religion was opposed to the social good. 

4.6. Barton W. Stone 

Alexander Campbell first met Barton W. Stone in 1824 during the second of Campbell’s many visits to Kentucky. It was the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship. Together they forged a unity movement unique to American church history. Stone had priority in time in that his efforts had begun as early as the Cane Ridge Revival in 1801. Campbell had priority in leadership because of the strength of his public persona and because he exercised leadership for twenty years beyond Stone’s death. 

Stone recognized Campbell’s unique qualifications early in their work together: “I am constrained, and willingly constrained, to acknowledge him as the greatest promoter of this reformation of any man living.” Campbell, in turn, referred to Stone as “the honored instrument of bringing many out of the ranks of human tradition and putting into their hands the Book of Books as their only confession of faith and rule of life.” 

Stone esteemed Campbell as having fewer faults than any man he knew, while Campbell referred to him as “the venerable Barton W. Stone.” While they were not side-by-side co-laborers, they were both editors who led parallel movements that eventually united. They corresponded, publishing their exchanges in each other’s papers, and they sometimes disagreed. When an opponent in a debate with Campbell took advantage of his differences with Stone, the reformer replied, referring to his relationship with Stone: “Our bond of union is not opinion, nor unity of opinion. It is one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” He went on to say that their relationship to each other and to their entire movement was “so sacred” and “so perfectly catholic” that anyone who loves Christ could unite with them. 

This was the genius of the plea advocated by both of them: Christians may differ on opinions and marginal issues and be united on the essentials. They exemplified this in their own rather uneven relationship. In spite of vigorous differences, they found oneness in their common devotion to Jesus Christ and in their mutual passion for the unity of all God’s people. It was because of this kind of example and leadership that the Stone and Campbell movements became one unity movement in 1832. 

5. Realization and Revision (1830-55) 

5.1. Harbinger of the Millennium 

While Campbell’s passion for a coming millennium expressed itself even in the name of his new journal, his position was quite different from the popular millennial views of his day. “Millerism” was the most spectacular, mainly because it dared to name 1843 as the year that the Lord would come and bring the world to an end. Campbell responded to this popular theory in a series on “The Coming of the Lord” that ran through twenty-six installments. It began in 1841 and ran through the year that the Lord was due to come. He referred to its promoter, New York Baptist minister William Miller, as a good and sincere man, though mistaken. 

Campbell pointed out that all the theories agreed that there would be a millennium and that the Lord would come. It was a question of whether he came before or after the millennium. Miller claimed the Lord would come before the millennium, which today is known as premillennialism. Campbell held that Jesus would come after the millennium, now referred to as postmillennialism. But he concluded his series with a surprising turn: the Lord will come “in a way which perchance but few of us either expect or are at all prepared for.” 

Campbell pictured here c. 1848 with three of his children (by his second wife Selina), Virginia, Decima, and William. Courtesy of Bethany College 

Campbell expected “great changes in the world” that would bring about the “amelioration” of society as well as the church. In a series on “Millennium” beginning in the first issue of his new journal (January 1830), he identified the changes he anticipated. It included the triumph of Christianity over the world, the end of sectarianism, and the union of Christians. It would be a time of extended prosperity around the world, and not necessarily limited to a literal 1,000 years. Wars would cease, and peace and goodwill would generally prevail. The Jews would turn to Jesus Christ as their Messiah. The weather would be mild. Crimes and punishment would cease. Health would be more vigorous, labor less arduous, lands more fertile. The knowledge of the Lord would cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. America, his adopted country, would be its epicenter. 

These were his expectations when at age 41 he began the Millennial Harbinger. Not only was a millennium on the horizon, but his journal was its harbinger. He was not only announcing its coming, but was an agent to effect its arrival. Yet it would be gradual in its unfolding. In the “Prospectus” to the new journal he detailed some things he hoped to accomplish. This included disquisitions on the treatment of African slaves as “preparatory to their emancipation, and exaltation from their present degraded condition.” There could not, of course, be slavery during the millennium, and yet freedom would come gradually. 

His chief concern as a harbinger of the millennium was the elimination of sectarianism. The gospel cannot triumph until Christians “bury the tomahawk of party conflicts.” He insisted that “No sect can be the basis of the Millennial Church.” He cried out like a prophet against sectarian establishments: “All the platforms, all the foundations of the sects are, therefore, too narrow and too weak to sustain the Millennial Church; and therefore must be pulled down.” 

He began his series on “Millennium” by asking, “Will sects ever cease?” His position was that sects have to end before there can be a millennium. And they will end only when religious parties cease making opinions a test of communion, and unite upon the simple facts of the gospel. When told that people cannot give up their opinions, his response was: “We do not ask them to give up their opinions — We ask them not to impose them upon others. Let them hold their opinions; but let them hold them as private property.” 

5.2. Essentials of Reformation 

For over three decades his plea as editor of the Millennial Harbinger was that the essentials of the gospel — the facts of what God has said or done through Christ — are clearly identifiable. Upon these all Christians can unite. Opinions were to be held as private property and are not to be imposed on others. Believers may be wrong in their understanding and still be accepted: “I never did at anytime exclude a man from the kingdom of God for mere imbecility of intellect; or, in other words, because he could not assent to my opinions.” 

Sure of his stand against sectarianism, he boldly asserted: “I will now show how they cannot make a sect of us. We will acknowledge all as Christians who acknowledge the gospel facts, and obey Jesus Christ.” He looked for no new sun or no new revelation of the Spirit, but only the ancient gospel, which must be “disinterred from the rubbish of the dark ages, and made to assume its former simplicity, sublimity, and majesty.” 

In the 1836 Harbinger he spelled out what he referred to as “the central attributes of the proposed reformation for which we contend.” They reveal a balance between doctrine and ethics: 

1. a more intimate acquaintance with the holy oracles of both Testaments; 
2. a weekly meeting on the Lord’s Day in honor of the risen Lord, with the Lord’s Supper the most cardinal and essential part; 
3. a stricter discipline in the church, and greater attention to good order and behavior; 
4. a more Christian morality in keeping promises, doing justly, and loving mercy; 
5. more gravity, temperance, moderation, more self-denial, and strict self-government; 
6. more piety and devotion, more prayer and praise, more communion with God; 
7. more cooperation among all churches in the work of converting the world. 

A year later he drew up “a synopsis of the grand items of the reformation for which we have contended and still contend.” While it included most of the same items as before, this time he listed his “essentials” under four chapter headings: (1) For the Healing of Divisions among Christians; (2) Principles and Objects of Church Reform; (3) Principles to the Proper Dispensation of the Gospel; (4) Personal and Family Reformation. Under the first heading he added as essential to unity: “The restoration of a pure speech, or the calling of Bible things by Bible names.” 

Under the second he identified the church as composed of those who confess Jesus to be the Messiah, the Son of God, and put him on in baptism. Under the third heading he was careful to identify the gospel not as theory or doctrine but “the proclamation in the name of God of remission of sins and eternal life through the sacrifice and mediation of Jesus Christ to everyone who obeys him in the instituted way.” In the fourth chapter he called for a personal reformation that included intelligence, purity, and happiness. He added: “We want and must have a radical and thorough reformation in family religion and family education.” 

He had reason in the 1830s to hold these as realistic goals. The preaching of the ancient gospel and the restoration of the ancient order of things he saw taking place would unite the Christians in all the sects in the millennial church and ameliorate all society. 

5.3. Rude Awakening 

Time was not on Alexander Campbell’s side. His vision of a triumphant future in a glorious new world of plenty gradually gave way to a rude awakening. Conditions in America were deteriorating, not improving. There were financial depressions. Slavery was not dissipating but growing worse. Sects continued to multiply. They were not burying the tomahawk of party conflicts. While his movement enjoyed impressive growth, it was not measuring up to his millennial expectation. Besides, it had problems of its own, which took much of his time and effort. In the years leading up to the Civil War he wrote less about a coming millennium. They were years of realization and revision. There was no millennium on the horizon, no millennial church, and no church uniting. If Campbell’s millennial views were correct, things would be improving. It was time for a midcourse correction. 

A telltale sign of a change in his thinking is when he began to refer to what had been “a movement” as a denomination. Such language as “our denomination” and “other denominations” in the Millennial Harbinger would not have appeared in The Christian Baptist. We have seen that he had no intention of starting another denomination. He had launched a “new reformation,” as he liked to call it, in the church. It was neither a sect nor a denomination. Yet in time he realized with regret that it had been necessary to add another denomination to American society. 

Though he and others in the movement continued to refer to their efforts as a reformation, and it was still a unity movement, it was now “a denomination” in the church. While accepting denominational status, Campbell was adamant about not being a sect. “Denomination” meant that they were a distinct religious body with clearly defined marks of identification, such as a particular name or names. A sect claims to be within itself the entirety of the body of Christ, to the exclusion of all other Christians. He therefore clearly distinguished between a sect and a denomination. But he was now issuing the denial in broader terms: “You’ll never make a sect of us, because we are catholic, very catholic.” In these years of revision catholic became a self-identifying term for Campbell. 

By 1849 Campbell’s new church had its own missionary organization, known as the American Christian Missionary Society, and he served as its first president. In Christian Baptist days not only was there no such organization, but he was critical of such innovations. 

Since a denomination by definition has a name, Campbell and Stone debated what name they should wear. Using Acts 11:26 as a proof text, Stone argued that they should call themselves “Christians” since it was a divinely given name, and that their congregations should be called Christian Churches or Churches of Christ. Campbell disputed Stone’s claim that the name “Christian” had been divinely appointed. He stated that he had “no objection to the name Christian if we only deserve it.” He preferred simply “disciples of Christ” because of its greater antiquity and modesty. The problem was resolved, by happenstance rather than by decree, by wearing all three names — Christian Churches, Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ. 

5.4. Church Organization 

In his earlier years there was little or no cooperation among the congregations. The polity was a radical congregationalism, with each church going its own way. By 1841 there were nearly 2,000 congregations representing almost every state in the union and several foreign countries. They could no longer function as a loose network of radically independent churches. Campbell began a series of essays on church cooperation that signaled a dramatic change from his Christian Baptist days. “Our organization and discipline are greatly defective, and essentially inadequate to the present condition and wants of society,” he wrote. He may have surprised his readers when he went on to say, “A book is not sufficient to govern the church.” He pointed out that one cannot simply hand a Bible to a congregation and leave it to its own devices. Laws are not self-enforcing but are executed through duly ordained agents. That is why God placed apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors in the church. Likewise, if congregations are to act in concert if they are to cooperate at all, it must be through some agency. Campbell identified five things that they could not effectively accomplish without “a more ample, extensive church organization”: the distribution of the Bible abroad, missionary work, improving Christian ministry, checking and removing impostors in the ministry, and church-wide cooperation. 

When some of his people questioned the creation of agencies, seeing it as contrary to their plea for “a restoration of the ancient order,” Campbell complained that “There is too much squeamishness about the manner of co-operation.” One is not to look to the New Testament for a “model” for every detail of the church’s work such as Moses’ specifications for the building of the tabernacle. It would be impossible for the New Testament to provide details for every aspect of the church’s mission, he insisted. One may as well ask for a precept for translating the Bible from Greek to English or for the building of a meetinghouse. He lamented that some of his people would rather do nothing, even withholding the gospel from the masses, for fear that they might do something the wrong way. 

Many of his followers had no problem in forming agencies and learning to cooperate. Not only did they have a missionary society by 1849, but by the 1840s they had numerous local, area, and state agencies. By 1845 there was the American Christian Bible Society and a Sunday School and Tract Society. By 1849 there was a national convention. And by 1845 there were three colleges, counting Campbell’s own Bethany College. 

He also softened his anticlerical rhetoric. He had always allowed for a special class of preachers sent out and supported financially by the congregations. They were to be evangelists, preaching to the lost and organizing churches. Likewise he had held that local elders, supported financially by the congregation, and deacons were to care for established churches, insisting that it was a “satire” on a church to hire someone from outside the congregation to preach for it. He had always been concerned about “wandering stars,” preachers who were unsent and unwanted, and sometimes ill-prepared or morally irresponsible. While he had earlier been critical of seminaries, he now looked to the colleges, including his own, as an answer to an uneducated ministry. 

5.5. Mid-Course Correction 

Equally significant was his mid-course correction in reference to his plea for unity. By the 1840s he was referring less to a unity based on “a restoration of the ancient order” or a restoration of primitive Christianity. In an 1839 essay, he stated that while unity had been his “darling theme” all along, “it was some time before we could see clearly the ground on which all true Christians could form one visible and harmonious union.” 

In an ecumenical gathering in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1841, he set forth what that ground was: “the catholic rule of union.” It read: “Whatever in faith, in piety, and morality is catholic, or universally admitted by all parties, shall be adopted as the basis of union.” He submitted this as a resolution before the large audience, which gave its approval by an overwhelming standing vote. It recognized that while people will differ to the point of disunity on what constitutes a restoration of primitive Christianity, they can unite on the basics of the faith that they hold in common. 

While Campbell advocated this revised catholic approach to unity for the rest of his life, he is remembered for his earlier emphasis on unity through restoration. He often expressed the catholic rule for unity in terms of “the seven facts” of Ephesians 4:4-6, which he sometimes reduced to three, “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” We unite on the facts themselves, not theories or opinions about the facts. He also sometimes expressed the catholic rule in terms of uniting upon the universal principles of the faith centered in Jesus Christ while allowing for differences in particulars. He cultivated a fondness for the term “catholic.” “We are catholics,” he liked to say — not Greek or Roman Catholic — just catholic. They had a catholic rule of faith and practice, the Bible; they wore a catholic name or names; they practiced a catholic baptism; they served a catholic table; they had a catholic plea for unity. 

5.6. More Debates 

He continued to debate during this period of his life. His 1837 debate in Cincinnati with Roman Catholic Bishop John Baptist Purcell established him as a representative and defender of Protestantism, perhaps even as a religious statesman. Not only were the disputants charitable toward each other, even brotherly, they became lasting friends. And yet one proposition that Campbell affirmed was that the Roman church was “the ‘Babylon’ of John, the ‘Man of Sin’ of Paul, and the Empire of the ‘Youngest Horn’ of Daniel’s Sea Monster.” It was a charge made by Protestants since Luther. 

Campbell esteemed Purcell as the fairest man he had debated, while Purcell described Campbell as “a most lovable character who treated me in every way and on all occasions like a brother.” He thought history would be kind to Campbell, giving him a place alongside Luther, Calvin, and Wesley. 

In 1843 he debated yet another Presbyterian, Nathan L. Rice of Paris, Kentucky. Three issues were discussed: baptism, the Holy Spirit, and creeds. In published form it ran 912 pages, with more than half of these given to baptism. The disputants went after each other four hours a day for sixteen days, and it got personal. When Campbell referred to the clergy as “venal,” Rice fired back that there was not a single Presbyterian minister that had one-tenth the wealth Campbell had. And when Campbell suggested that the position he had taken was an unpopular cause, Rice assured him that he had gained much more popularity than if he had remained a Presbyterian. Henry Clay, one of the most widely known statesmen of the day, served as moderator of the debate at the Main Street Christian Church in Lexington, Kentucky. This debate, like the previous ones, was well attended, and, once in book form, widely read. It opened still more doors for Alexander Campbell. 

Besides his five major debates, all of which were published, there were lesser skirmishes that also played a role in defining his ministry. It was his practice when lecturing to invite local clergy to respond to his presentation. A respondent might talk for an hour while he listened. He would then give a rejoinder, all in good grace. Such sessions would begin at candlelighting or around 4 PM and continue for three hours or more. There were often also morning sessions. Conversation, often with the same disputants, would continue on into the evening at a “repast” in a home. Some observers saw Campbell most “in his element” as a conversationalist, and he was always as gracious as he was informed. 

One such disputant was Obadiah Jennings, Nashville lawyer and Presbyterian minister. Their 1830 confrontation in that city evolved into a full-blown debate, with moderators and all. Not long after the debate, Jennings died. Campbell wrote a conciliatory obituary in his journal. Jennings’s nephew, editor of a religious journal unfriendly to Campbell, published what he claimed to be an account of the debate, titled Debate on Campbellism, which he sold for 75 cents. In a review that ran for three installments, Campbell charged that it was a fraud in that it did not even discuss the debate in Nashville, and was written by one who was not even present. He thought it should be titled Seventy-five cents worth of slander against Alexander Campbell. 

This was typical of some of Campbell’s opposition in those days. There were numerous tracts, pamphlets, and books either examining or exposing “Campbellism.” Campbell considered them studied efforts to misrepresent his position. The most notable was Campbellism Examined by J. B. Jeter, an influential Baptist minister, in 1855. Campbell took it seriously enough to ask Moses E. Lard, one of his brighter students at Bethany and a gifted scholar, to respond to it in a volume titled A Review of Campbellism Examined. 

Some of his debates were not oral or public, but appeared only in written form in his own journal and in some journal representing the other side. One such debate was on Universalism with Dolphus Skinner, a minister of the Universalist Church. Beginning in 1837 after the Purcell debate, it ran for three years and there were forty exchanges. They did not mince words. Campbell told Skinner that his doctrine “makes Satan a metaphor, hell a fable, and punishment after death a mere bugbear.” Skinner told Campbell that in previous debates he had had the advantage in that he was on the side of truth. In this debate, however, he had espoused “the cause of endless malevolence, sin, and misery,” and that he would therefore provide him every advantage. 

They had agreed that one of them would publish the debate in book form. Campbell deferred to Skinner, hoping it might circulate well among Universalists. Since only 1,500 copies were issued, it soon became a collector’s item. The Universalists claimed victory, accusing Campbell of not wanting it published. Thirty years later, a year after Campbell’s death, the Universalists were still claiming victory. W. K. Pendleton, Campbell’s successor as editor of the Harbinger, felt it necessary to set the record straight by republishing the agreement that Campbell and Skinner had made in 1837. He explained that anyone who knew Alexander Campbell would know he was never reluctant either to defend his opinions or to publish his defense. 

5.7. Extensive Traveler 

Campbell was one of the most traveled people of his day. For forty years he traversed virtually every nook and corner of the new republic, especially its heartland. He grew with his adopted country, traveling first by horseback, gig, and stagecoach; then by steamboat and railway. He claimed to have traveled on the first railroad built in this country. He was impressed that “the cars” could move along on steel rails at forty miles an hour. His travel letters tell of accidents on rivers and rails alike. He took a sleigh ride through the streets of Chicago when it was but a village. 

Except when the river was too shallow, he would take a steamer at Wellsburg, six miles from Bethany, for his frequent visits to the South, first on the Ohio River, then on the Mississippi, all the way to New Orleans. The river was too shallow for travel when he was to be in Ohio for the Maccalla debate. He made the 300-mile journey on horseback in company with future Mormon Sidney Rigdon. It took them ten days. Carriages and stagecoaches were not all that much faster, and hardly less arduous. But there was comfort, sometimes even luxury, on the rails and especially the steamers. He did much of his writing on board a steamer and sometimes preached upon request. 

As his five daughters, the children of his first wife, grew older, he would take them, one at a time, on some of his appointments, usually in the South. It was not unusual for an enterprising young man to ask the father for the daughter’s hand in marriage without ever approaching the young lady. 

His journeys were frequently incredibly extended and demanding, taking him away from home for months at a time, and on a schedule that would overwhelm most people. In 1836 he wrote concerning a trip to the Northeast: “After an absence from home of 94 days, in which I delivered 93 discourses, averaging one hour and twenty minutes, and traveled about 2000 miles, I arrived safely at home.” He added that some seventy people were immersed into Christ. On such trips there would be in addition to his public discourses hundreds of hours of conversation in homes, which were actually further discourses, only less formal. Those present may have had questions to ask, but they wanted him to do the talking. 

He sometimes found himself in a place where he had no appointment and where no one knew he was in town. One such place was Zanesville, Ohio, in 1830. After checking in at the local hotel and getting permission from the sheriff to use the courthouse, he hired a boy to go to the homes in town and announce that Alexander Campbell would speak at the courthouse at candlelighting. That is all it took to have a full house for preaching. He often spoke in buildings of other churches. 

From his travel letters we learn something of what he talked about. He chose the expository method over what he criticized as “textuary preaching,” exploiting a verse of Scripture to support a topical sermon. Preferring to preach on entire chapters, he had his favorite portions of the Bible, such as 1 Samuel 15, Acts 2, 1 Corinthians 13, Ephesians 1, Hebrews 1, and Revelation 20. One young man who heard him discourse on Hebrews 1 in reference to the glory of Christ wrote of it decades later after he had become a distinguished physician: “I never had heard anything that approached the power of that discourse, nor have I ever heard it equaled since. That speech on Hebrews lifted me into a world of thought of which I had previously known nothing. It has been 45 years since I heard that public discourse, and it is as vivid to my memory, I think, as when I first heard it.” 

5.8. Jailed in Scotland 

In 1847 he made a trip to England, Scotland, and Ireland, his only visit abroad except for occasional excursions into Canada. He took funds with him raised by some of his churches for famine-stricken Ireland. He bore a letter from Henry Clay introducing him to British dignitaries, which he used for visits to both the House of Commons and the House of Lords. He spoke in large halls all across England. In Liverpool 2,500 heard him speak on the Holy Spirit. He gave several addresses in a Baptist church in Banbury. He had audiences of 3,000 in such places as Manchester, Wigan, and Halifax. He was the honored guest at the annual convention of the British Churches of Christ, then made up of twenty-seven congregations. 

In London he gave fifteen lectures in quick succession, and was afterwards so exhausted that he stole away to Paris for a few days of rest. He returned to London to address a society of skeptics at the “Hall of Debate” on Has God Ever Spoken to Man? The address set off such a stormy and prolonged debate among the skeptics that Campbell finally gave up on them and quietly excused himself. By midnight the skeptics had settled down to the extent that they passed a resolution thanking Mr. Campbell for his visit. 

All went well for him until he got to Scotland, the country from which he had left for the New World thirty-eight years before. While he was engaged in speaking to large crowds in various cities, including an enthusiastic assembly at a Church of Scotland, the Anti-Slavery Society of Scotland posted notices derogatory of Campbell wherever he spoke. The notices read, “Beware! The Rev. Alexander Campbell of Virginia, United States of America, has been a slaveholder himself and is still a defender of manstealers.” 

Members of the society had interviewed him on the subject of slavery, and were not satisfied with the distinction he drew between being anti-slavery, which he was, and being an abolitionist, which he was not. Even though he had freed his slaves, it was indictment enough that he had ever been a slaveholder. They not only launched an attack on him but challenged him to debate their champion James Robertson on the subject. He informed the public through an Edinburgh newspaper that he would be pleased to accept the challenge so long as this Robertson was not the one who was excluded from a Baptist Church for “violating the Fifth Commandment in reference to his mother.” Robertson sued for libel. Campbell in turn labeled the attacks as both false and calumnious. 

The affair so excited the public that Campbell had even larger audiences wherever he spoke. Not being one to walk away from a fight, he devoted one lecture to the subject of slavery, fully explaining his position. It aroused considerable interest and became a bit stormy, considering the disturbances caused by his enemies. But he continued his lectures throughout Scotland until a warrant was issued for his arrest in Lanark. He was returned to Glasgow and incarcerated in the renowned Bridewell Prison. 

His friends offered to make bond for his release, but he refused, explaining, “I thought it might be of great value to the cause of my Master if I should give myself into the hands of my persecutors.” He was convinced that the slavery charge was but a ruse, and that the real reason for the persecution was his plea for reformation. 

His ten days in prison were not all that bad, though he did contract a cold that limited his speaking schedule after his release. Sisters in the church were allowed to wait on him and to spruce up his cell. And the jailer placed no limitation on the number of visitors, with as many as eleven in his cell at a time when the law allowed but two. It turned out that in Scotland he lectured not only to full halls and full churches, but even to a full prison cell. 

The judge at last ruled that the warrant against him was illegal, and the perpetrator fled the country, forfeiting his bond. The money was given to Campbell, who passed it along to Scottish charities. 

However grievous all this may have been to him, it did not compare with the devastation he was to experience once he returned home. It was during this time that his son Wickliffe drowned. 

5.9. Bethany College 

When he founded Bethany College on his own farm in 1840, he intended it to be part of his reformation, even if it was late in coming. After a decade as the college’s president he wrote of it: “It was in its conception, is now in its existence, and will ever be in its fortunes, identified with the cause of the Reformation, and essential to its prosperity.” He lived to see the college produce some of the Movement’s most eminent leaders, including J. W. McGarvey and Moses E. Lard, and such political figures as Champ Clark (Speaker of the House) and Joseph L. Clark (US Supreme Court). Future President James A. Garfield served as a trustee of the college. 

He believed that education must touch the heart as well as the head and that it is “the art of living,” not simply a preparation for living. Its disciplines are literature, science, music, and religion. The college may have reflected that philosophy, but it was a constant problem to him. By the time he was in his sixties, then serving as professor and treasurer as well as president, he complained that the college had been “a perpetual incubus and trouble.” Since “incubus” means nightmare, it must have been a heavy burden in his old age — and that was before the college burned and had to be rebuilt and before a student uprising over slavery. 

5.10. Publications 

During these two and a half decades he was a prodigious publisher. With his Millennial Harbinger’s monthly forty-eight pages of small type, plus reams of “Extras” and other publications, he turned out what was virtually a book a month. 

Christianity Restored (408 pages, 1835) bore a title that he did not choose (perhaps a mistake of the publisher) and that embarrassed him, for he did not claim that Christianity began only with his reformation. While it was a compilation of principal “Extras” from the Harbinger, he added a revealing preface about his work. He went on record to say that he agreed with some others that he had best expressed his principles of reformation in the Christian Baptist — the very venue that some criticized as expressive of his immaturity. He also expressed a desire for “rectifying some extremes” of some of his followers, including what he referred to as “ultraist” views on baptism.

In that preface he also spelled out what he called the “capital principle” of his plea for unity drawn from twenty-five years of controversy. He said the principle was “inscribed upon our banners when we withdrew from the ranks of the sects.” It read: “Making faith in Jesus as the true Messiah and obedience to him as our Lawgiver and King, the only test of Christian character, and the only bond of Christian union, communion, and cooperation, irrespective of all creeds, opinions, commandments, and traditions of men.” 

He sometimes published his own books and even printed them on his presses in Bethany. This was the case with The Christian System in Reference to the Union of Christians and a Restoration of Primitive Christianity (313 pages, 1839). This volume, popularly known as The Christian System, was a revision of the earlier Christianity Restored and had a telling influence on the theology of his people for generations, remaining in print through the twentieth century. He wrote at length on such themes as the kingdom of God and the remission of sins. 

His 1827 version of the New Testament, popularly known as The Living Oracles, continued in print through the 1850s and beyond. A fifth edition appeared in 1872 in a large-print, artistically embossed volume of 452 pages of text and 111 pages of helps. 

His Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, Original and Selected, originally published about 1835, continued to be used by many churches. He issued a fifth edition with a gilded, designed cover in 1856. Three of his co-laborers — Walter Scott, Barton W. Stone, and John T. Johnson — joined him as editors, all four described as “Elders of the Christian Church.” This handsome volume with the simple title Christian Hymn Book in gold lettering was also printed on his presses, as were all forty-seven volumes of his two journals. 

His presses also produced Christian Baptism: With Its Antecedents and Consequences in 1851. All five of his published major debates stayed in print during most of these years. 

These publishing ventures not only furthered his cause, but they were financially profitable. As noted earlier, his franking privileges as postmaster of the village of Bethany allowed him to mail all these items free of charge. At least some of the profit went to his favorite charities, one being the American Christian Missionary Society. 

He continued to write and publish into his sunset years. 

6. The Sunset Years (1855-66) 

6.1. A Book Dedicated to His Wife 

In 1861, at age 73, Campbell authored an impressive volume of 647 pages titled Popular Lectures and Addresses, issued by a Philadelphia publisher. While the essays were selected from those he had already published, primarily in the Millennial Harbinger, the book is witness to a continuing demand for his writings even in his declining years. In the preface the publisher refers to the author as “one of the most original minds and profound thinkers of the age,” and as one who “throws new light upon whatever he touches.” He went on to say that Alexander Campbell had “entered the great harvest fields of truth and observation and has brought home the riches of his herculean labors.” 

The essays selected bear witness not only to the wide range of Campbell’s interests and areas of competence but to his trust in ordinary people to apply their minds to weightier matters. The subjects included moral philosophy, capital punishment, war, demonology, phrenology, life and death, and philosophy of memory, as well as more common subjects like public schools, colleges, woman and her mission, and a Fourth-of-July oration. 

He dedicated the book to “Selina Huntington Campbell, My Dutiful and Affectionate Wife, Who Has Greatly Assisted Me In My Labors In The Gospel, At Home and Abroad.” This makes for an interesting footnote to Campbell history in that some historians have seen the second wife as overshadowed by the first. 

Campbell married his first wife, Margaret, in 1811, only to lose her sixteen years later. She left five young daughters for someone else to care for. Selina was Margaret’s younger friend, who helped care for her and the children during her prolonged illness. Margaret deemed it appropriate to suggest to her husband, in case he chose to marry again, that he consider Selina. He considered it. Less than a year later, in 1828, he and Selina were married. He therefore dedicated the book to his wife of forty-three years. In 1882 Selina would write a book about her husband, Home Life and Reminiscences of Alexander Campbell by His Wife. 

6.2. Memoirs of Thomas Campbell 

Another volume he published in these later years was Memoirs of Elder Thomas Campbell (1861), in which he revealed some intimate scenes from the life of his father, who spent his last years in the son’s home. Now blind, “Father Campbell,” as they called him, would sit alone and quote psalms and other favorite scriptures for hours. He would ask visitors and family members to check him for accuracy as he quoted the Bible. J. W. McGarvey, then a student at Bethany, was one of the visitors who afterwards recalled that “Father Campbell” quoted lengthy portions of Scripture without missing a single word. 

Campbell used this book to put his father’s Declaration and Address, first published in 1809, back in print, and he used the occasion to comment on that founding document. It was “the embryo” of the principles that forged their reformation, he asserted, and he claimed that he had never read or heard the first objection “plausible in the least degree” to any position set forth in the document. He believed that it took the only plausible ground for the realization of the unity for which Christ prayed. He also used the book to tell of how when he had decided to be “evangelically baptized” in 1812, his father joined him. It was a watershed event in their lives together. 

6.3. Translation of Acts 

Through the years writing was apparently easy for Campbell. Usually he would have written enough before breakfast to keep his typesetters busy all day. This was not the case with his translation of the book of Acts, published in 1858. He worked so long and so arduously on this assignment that it substantially impaired both his mental and physical health. He complained in a letter to a family member: “I have been more oppressed and broken down with hard labor this year past than at any period of my life.” He not only had the task of translating the Greek into English that corrected perceived errors of the Authorized Version (KJV), but he had to supply copious critical notes. 

He gave up his farming duties for the time, depriving himself of his usual exercise, and limited his work at the college and other duties. This went on for “many months” until his friends began to notice a change in his behavior. In his public speeches he faltered for words and appeared to forget. In private conversation he was confused about events of the past, and at the college and the Harbinger office he had difficulty performing as usual. 

While improvement came with his return to travel, which he always found to be a respite from pressures at home, it was the beginning of what some historians have referred to as his years of senility, particularly in the early 1860s. But his senility may not have been as prominent or permanent as supposed. In spite of some episodes of mental fatigue, he did some of his most meaningful travel and some of his most effective writing in this last decade of his life. 

Even while he was working on Acts, he stole away long enough in 1855 for a trip to Nashville with his wife. But it was not exactly a vacation. His mission was not unlike that of a “bishop” caring for an erring parish. Jesse B. Ferguson, popular young minister of the Christian Church in Nashville, was teaching universalism, unitarianism, and spiritualism, and Campbell hoped to save both him and the church by open discussion. Yet Ferguson claimed to have received a message from the late W. E. Channing, noted Boston Unitarian, telling him to have nothing to do with Alexander Campbell. 

In spite of being unable to confront Ferguson personally — “thwarted by a ghost,” Campbell quipped — the aging reformer succeeded in convincing much of the congregation to repudiate Ferguson’s leadership. The crisis affected all of Nashville, making it appropriate for Campbell to address a huge crowd at the Methodist Church as well as to minister to his own people at the Christian Church. Writing about this crisis afterwards in the Harbinger, he penned one of his most sublime essays about the sufficiency of the Christian faith. He asked how anyone “believingly immersed into Jesus Christ” could turn from the great Teacher sent from God, the Light of the world, and consult with spirits of the dead on the pretense of more light. 

6.4. Travel in Old Age 

Until the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, Campbell traveled extensively in spite of his advancing age. In 1855 he was in Canada, eastern Virginia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. In 1856 he visited churches in Kentucky for forty-eight days, then went to Ohio for annual meetings of the churches, and from there to New York City for the annual meeting of the American Bible Union, which had commissioned his translation of Acts. He hurriedly filled an appointment in Danbury, Connecticut, and then traveled to Cincinnati to address a literary society and attend meetings of the American Christian Missionary Society. 

In 1857 he traveled widely in the South as far as New Orleans and returned home by way of Richmond and Washington, D.C., a total of 6,000 miles. He said the trip had two purposes: to plead the cause of original Christianity and to promote the interests of Bethany College. Later that year he traveled to Cincinnati again, then to Illinois and Iowa. In all these places he addressed churches filled to capacity, those of other denominations as well as his own. 

Near the end of 1857 the main building of Bethany College was destroyed by fire. Though classes continued uninterrupted, he was forced to travel even more to raise funds for the erection of an even better edifice. By now he admitted that he was tired and would rather stay home, but “I cannot rest from my labors till I am called also to rest with my fathers.” He called on W. K. Pendleton, vice president of the college and his son-in-law, to go with him. 

For the next several months they traveled far and wide among the churches, both preaching and raising money for the college. In a letter to his wife from Kentucky in 1858, he revealed something of their method: “He preaches for the college, and I for the church.” That must have meant that the vice president made the pitch for funds, while he preached the gospel. They succeeded in their mission, and in 1859 the cornerstone was laid for one of the most impressive college edifices in the nation at that time. Old Main, as it is now called, is registered as a national historic site. 

While they were in Louisville, the editor of the Louisville Journal wrote an editorial titled “Alexander Campbell.” He described him as “venerable and distinguished,” and as “unquestionably one of the most extraordinary men of our times.” He went on to say that “His personal excellence is certainly without stain or a shadow,” and that “No poet’s soul is more crowded with imagery than is his with the ripest forms of thought.” He concluded, “In his essential character, he belongs to no sect or party, but to the world.” 

With Selina at his side, he continued his extensive visits among the churches from the spring of 1859 until the spring of 1861, when the outbreak of the Civil War brought his travels to a virtual standstill. In 1859 he was in the South again, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, and in Kentucky he again addressed the American Christian Missionary Society for which he still served as president. They went on to Missouri and even as far as Kansas. He was always in demand and always had full houses, those of other churches as well as his own. 

In 1860-61 Isaac Errett accompanied Campbell and Selina on a demanding schedule in Indiana. It lasted for eight weeks, and Campbell averaged more than one address each day. He was now 72. This long, arduous journey of 2,000 miles seemed to improve his health and vigor. 

6.5. Impact of Civil War 

Isaac Errett was again with the two of them in the spring of 1861 on a trip to eastern Virginia, a journey cut short by the outbreak of war. When Campbell heard on April 12 that Fort Sumter had been fired on, he cancelled all further appointments and returned to Bethany. On his way back to western Virginia he was grieved to see ample preparations for the bloody conflict. He was by conviction a pacifist and had long opposed his nation going to war. But he was not surprised. As early as 1840 he had predicted that it was inevitable. “The South will never surrender the institution of slavery without bloodshed,” he had told a friend. 

The war was devastating to Alexander Campbell. It did far more than curtail his travel, which was the heart of his ministry. Since much of his patronage was in the South, it decimated his outreach. There was no longer postal service to the South, greatly reducing his mailing list for the Harbinger, though it continued to be published. The enrollment at the college, also heavily dependent on Southern patronage, was reduced to a shadow of what it had been. Both college and journal were in fact threatened with extinction. And, as noted above, he had a son involved in the conflict. 

Moreover, his church was threatened by division into North and South, as were other churches. And what was to become of his dream of “the millennial church” in this new republic, his adopted country, called of God to usher in a new age of unity and peace in society and church alike? 

6.6. In Spite of Old Age 

He persevered through four years of war. He continued to travel, though now nearer home. He continued his morning lectures at the college, at least for a while longer, and he continued as president, at least in name, until death. He continued to do his part of the preaching at the Bethany church. And he continued to write for the Harbinger, and served as its editor until 1864. 

He still had a commanding and venerable appearance. His abundant hair and ample beard were now of silvery whiteness. He was still tall and erect, but by his mid-70s he began to appear tremulous and enfeebled. He became increasingly forgetful. He would start to leave for the college for his morning lecture, only to be reminded that he no longer had to do that. Once in the pulpit at the Bethany church he was so confused that W. K. Pendleton urged him to step down and give place to Dr. Robert Richardson. But still he sat and listened to his physician friend with rapt attention. When his daughter Decima Barclay recounted her experiences in Cyprus and the Holy Land, he responded as if he himself had been there. He would occasionally sit up in bed during the night and utter prayers and sermons as if he were in a public service. 

Even in his last year he wrote letters and published essays in the Harbinger. He made a trip to Louisville where he addressed two churches with such vigor and presence of mind as to surprise his friends. And when he gave what proved to be his last sermon, at the Bethany church only a few months before his death, his mind seemed “unusually alert and vigorous.” His sermon, drawn from Ephesians 1, was on one of his favorite themes — the eternal purpose of God as fulfilled in Jesus Christ. It was described as “one of the most interesting and animated discourses of his life.” 

His Harbinger articles during this time also indicated that he was still focused on his life’s mission. An 1862 essay on “Union, Union, Union” once more issued an urgent call for the unity of all Christians, and he once more appealed to “the seven superlative facts” of Ephesians 4:4-6 as the grounds for that unity. These seven facts are not opinions, theories, or speculations, he insisted, but they are “the die and cornice of the house of God” and the foundation of Christ’s church. Unity on this foundation is practicable, he urged, but on any other foundation it is impracticable. Yet these seven facts unite only in an atmosphere of forbearance and longsuffering. He drew an illustration from the dreadful war that was raging between the states. Just as a nation cannot find peace without these virtues, so a church cannot preserve unity. 

He had a penchant for writing prefaces, and they were often autobiographical, even self-searching. In the 1864 Harbinger, two years before his demise, he wrote his last preface, and it was introspective. “For forty years we have not been an unfaithful nor an unwatchful sentinel upon the walls of Zion,” he mused. He had cherished the hope of ending his service beneath peaceful and hopeful skies, but how could he expect his “wily foe” to ever sleep in his work of evil and mischief? “The times are full of corruption,” he wrote, “and the church is contaminated with the times.” We must remember that we, as the people of God, are not of this world, he urged. 

“Shall we see our long labors go down in the storm of an hour, and give ourselves and our charge, without an effort or struggle, up to the devouring elements?” he asked his readers. He had his answer. While he and his followers were in a perpetual war to the end, they would not give up. He issued a challenge: “Who are the faithful ones, that stand ready to help us in this work?” While a weary veteran, he wrote as if he had just begun to fight. 

6.7. Last Essay 

He wrote his last article in November 1865, four months prior to his death. Simply titled “The Gospel,” Campbell reiterated “the seven Facts that constitute the whole gospel.” These are the birth, life, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and coronation of Christ. These had always been the identifiable core of the New Testament for Campbell, “the Apostles’ testimony,” and the basis for Christian unity. In an interesting way Campbell’s insight anticipated some twentieth-century scholarship, particularly the work of C. H. Dodd, who outlined the apostolic kerygma from diverse texts across the New Testament. 

Campbell’s plea for unity since Christian Baptist days had been related to the distinction he made between preaching the gospel and teaching the apostle’s doctrine. The gospel consists of facts that we accept or reject, while doctrine involves theological opinion over which we can and will differ. Campbell never understood believing facts to be simple intellectual assent to information but a transforming appropriation of the reality to which the facts point. In the case of the gospel the facts point to the proposition that God is love. Campbell had long maintained that this proposition alone had the power to unite believers to God and one another. Believing and obeying the gospel unites us in Christ and is the basis of our unity and fellowship. The apostles’ teaching is the curriculum we study once we are enrolled in Christ’s school. In that school we are in different grades and we can and will differ in understanding. 

This distinction was so vital to Campbell that he presumed one could not have a proper understanding of the New Testament without recognizing it. It is not surprising, then, that he made it part of his last essay. 

6.8. New Heavens and a New Earth 

In the last paragraph of his last essay he briefly details his view of the eternal state. The present material universe will be wholly regenerated. Of this we can be sure, he said, for he who sits upon the throne has promised, “Behold, I make all things new.” Consequently, there will be new heavens and a new earth. This means, as he saw it, “new tenantries, new employment, new pleasures, new joys, new ecstacies.” Then in his final line he recognized a limitation that included himself: “There is a fullness of joy, a fullness of glory, and a fullness of blessedness, of which no living man, however enlightened, however enlarged, however gifted, ever formed or entertained one adequate conception.” 

Hope was a constant theme in his essays and discourses all through the years. He often reminded his audiences that the “one hope” of the world was the seven facts of the gospel, and that it is faith, hope, and love that endure forever. It was an assurance that served him till the end. 

His longtime friend and physician, Robert Richardson, called on him shortly before his death. He told him that the Reformers — meaning their people — and the Baptists were meeting in hopes of effecting a union between the two groups. “There was never any sufficient reason for a separation between us and the Baptists,” Campbell responded. He went on to say, “We ought to have remained one people, and to have labored together to restore the primitive faith and practice.” Another visitor during this time, Joseph King, a fellow minister, reported that when he talked to Campbell about the unity meeting with the Baptists, Campbell openly wept with joy over the prospects of such a union. 

It seemed appropriate that even at death’s door Alexander Campbell would be praying and talking — even weeping — about the unity of God’s people. 

Bibliography Selina Campbell, Home Life and Reminiscences of Alexander Campbell (1882) • Louis Cochran and Leroy Garrett, Alexander Campbell: The Man and His Mission (1965) • Alger M. Fitch, Alexander Campbell: Preacher of Reform and Reformer of Preaching (1988) • Winfred E. Garrison, Alexander Campbell’s Theology, Its Sources and Historical Setting (1900) • Perry E. Gresham, ed., The Sage of Bethany: A Pioneer in Broadcloth (1988) • Richard T. Hughes, “From Primitive Church to Civil Religion: The Millennial Odyssey of Alexander Campbell,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 44 (1976): 87-103 • Jesse Kellems, Alexander Campbell and the Disciples (1930) • D. Ray Lindley, Apostle of Freedom (1957) • Harold L. Lunger, The Political Ethics of Alexander Campbell (1954) • Thomas H. Olbricht, “The Relevance of Alexander Campbell for Today,” Restoration Quarterly 30 (1988): 159-68 • Robert Richardson, Memoirs of Alexander Campbell, 2 vols. (1868) • James L. Seale, ed., Lectures in Honor of Alexander Campbell Bicentennial, 1788-1988 (1988) • Mark G. Toulouse, “Campbellism and Postmillennialism,” Discipliana 60 (2000): 78-96. 

Leroy Garrett

This entry, written by Leroy Garrett, 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 112-144. Republished with permission. 

Foster, Douglas A.. The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement (pp. 415-484). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Kindle Edition.