Journal begun in January 1830 by Alexander Campbell to promote his ideas of religious reform.
The previous year Campbell had decided that his first journal, the iconoclastic Christian Baptist, had served its purpose. He feared that the paper’s title was becoming a denominational name for the followers of his reform and was convinced that his readers were ready for something more constructive. Since he was still completing his “Search for the Ancient Order” series in the Christian Baptist, however, Campbell continued that journal through July 1830, publishing both it and the Millennial Harbinger for seven months.
The Millennial Harbinger became the most important forum for shaping the thought and practice of the Stone-Campbell Movement before the Civil War. In the prospectus Campbell explained that the paper would have two purposes: to destroy sectarianism, infidelity, and anti-Christian doctrine and practice; and to introduce “that political and religious order of society called THE MILLENNIUM, which will be the consummation of that ultimate amelioration of society proposed in the Christian Scriptures.” Campbell, along with many other Americans, believed that in America, with God’s help, Christians would eradicate earthly problems and usher in the millennial age. In Campbell’s view this would be the result of a restoration of the primitive church, which would in turn effect Christian unity and the conversion of the world. He saw the Millennial Harbinger as key to the dissemination of ideas that would usher in the millennial reign of God.
Like the Christian Baptist, the Millennial Harbinger included correspondence from friends and critics, reprinted articles from other journals, and carried news items concerning the advance of the reform. Yet its substantial discussions of matters of theology and polity were extremely important for giving a discernible shape and direction to the fledgling Movement.
In the early 1830s the journal actively reported on the progress and difficulties of the union with the churches of Barton W. Stone’s Christian movement. Campbell used the Harbinger to deal with internal opponents like John Thomas, later founder of the Christadelphians, whose insistence on rebaptism of Christians from other immersionist groups provoked a controversy in 1837. In 1853 Campbell used the pages of the Harbinger to attack the ideas of Jesse B. Ferguson, popular preacher and editor in Nashville, Tennessee, who had embraced unitarianism, universalism, and spiritualism. Written debates with Dolphus Skinner in 1837-39 on the doctrines of universalism and with Barton W. Stone in 1840-41 on the nature of the atonement showed Campbell’s “orthodoxy” on key Christian doctrines.
Extremely important in the Movement’s development was Campbell’s series published between 1842 and 1849 advocating increased cooperation between the churches and a more extensive organization. In August 1849 Campbell called for a national meeting of delegates selected by the churches of the Movement. The first national convention was convened in October 1849 in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was not, however, a body of elected delegates but a mass meeting open to all. The convention approved the creation of the American Christian Missionary Society with Campbell as its president. The constitution of the ACMS and a full report of the meeting appeared in the Harbinger, and its pages reported on subsequent conventions throughout its publication history.
The Millennial Harbinger was also important in the efforts to avoid fragmentation in the Movement over slavery. Though Campbell opposed slavery and severely chastised slave traders in his earlier writing, his materials in the Harbinger were geared toward averting polarization over the issue. When the Methodist and Baptist denominations divided over slavery in 1844 and 1845, Campbell wrote an eight-article series titled “Our Position to American Slavery.” He concluded that, though he regarded slavery as out of harmony with the spirit and genius of the age, “the relation of master and slave is no where condemned in the Holy Scriptures as morally wrong.” Furthermore, he contended, “no Christian community can religiously make the simple relation of master and slave a subject of discipline or a term of communion.” He refused to allow inflammatory articles from either side in the Harbinger.
One of Campbell’s eccentricities is reflected in the way he numbered the volumes of his journals. In keeping with the biblical significance of seven as perfection or completeness, he began a new series after every seven volumes. This started with the completion of the seven volumes of the Christian Baptist and continued through five series of the Millennial Harbinger. Only after he relinquished the journal to his son-in-law, W. K. Pendleton (1817-1899), in 1864 did this practice stop. Campbell’s active participation in the Harbinger gradually diminished in the 1850s, with Pendleton taking on increasingly more of the editorial work. Pendleton used a considerable amount of material from Isaac Errett, who became editor of the Christian Standard at its beginning in 1866, and brought in Charles L. Loos as coeditor in 1864. When Campbell died in 1866, supporters persuaded Pendleton to continue the paper because it was the “powerful directing journalistic organ of our Reformation.”
Yet the days of the Harbinger’s prominence were past. Even before Campbell’s death his position on slavery had affected circulation, especially as sectional tensions increased in the 1850s. When the outbreak of the Civil War disrupted mail service and virtually eliminated the Harbinger’s Southern subscription base, the editors were forced to reduce the number of pages per issue from sixty to forty-eight between 1862 and 1866 to cut expenses. Though the journal returned to sixty pages in 1867, the editors could never restore it to its previous prominence. Pendleton was simply not as dynamic and interesting an editor as Campbell. Competition from several weekly religious papers like the Christian Standard that carried material of a more popular nature had begun to cut into the strongly theological monthly’s support before the war. Pendleton decided to cease publication at the end of 1870.
The success of the Millennial Harbinger depended greatly upon and reflected the skill of Alexander Campbell as a religious controversialist and reformer. When Campbell died in 1866, the Harbinger’s influence and support was already waning. Yet it and its predecessor had been essential vehicles in the formation and development of the Stone-Campbell Movement.
See also American Christian Missionary Society; Christian Baptist, The; Eschatology; Pendleton, William Kimbrough; Slavery, The Movement and
Bibliography A reprint of the full forty-one volumes of the Millennial Harbinger was done in the 1950s and 1960s by the Old Paths Book Club of Rosemead, California. Also in 1976 and again in 1987 College Press of Joplin, Missouri, produced reprint editions. The Millennial Harbinger Abridged (2 vols.), published in 1902 by Standard Publishing Company of Cincinnati, was itself reprinted in 1965 by the Old Paths Book Club. Each volume of the journal contains an index based on article titles. An Index to the Millennial Harbinger by David McWhirter was published by College Press in 1981. In addition, a fifty-page “Index to the Forty Volumes of the Millennial Harbinger” is included in volume two of The Millennial Harbinger Abridged (1902) and in the final (1870) volume of the College Press reprints of the entire set.
Douglas A. Foster
This entry, written by Douglas A Foster, 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 517-518. Republished with permission.