Leading evangelist, editor, and debater among Churches of Christ outside the South in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Born in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, of German immigrant parents, he lived for almost half a century in Indianapolis, Indiana. His life spanned the important and often neglected “middle period” of Stone-Campbell history. 

Raised under Methodist influences, Sommer was converted to the ideals of restoring New Testament Christianity and was baptized in 1869, after hearing preaching by D. S. Burnet (1808-1867) and A. T. Crenshaw of Middletown, Pennsylvania. Attending Bethany College shortly after Alexander Campbell’s death (from 1869 to 1872), Sommer became disenchanted with both doctrinal and social trends he saw emerging among the part of the Movement that would become the Disciples of Christ and became enamored with the conservative views of Benjamin Franklin (1812-1878). Sommer began preaching in Baltimore in 1872, moving in 1874 to Kelton, Pennsylvania, where he began to write for Franklin’s American Christian Review. In 1880 he moved to Ohio, first preaching at Reynoldsburg, just outside Columbus, then moving in 1884 to Richwood, where the church ceased its use of instrumental music under Sommer’s preaching. 

In 1894 Sommer moved to Indianapolis, where he lived until his death, serving for many years as an elder and evangelist at the North Indianapolis Church of Christ when not traveling to keep a steady stream of preaching appointments elsewhere. Sommer thus represents an urban, Northern, or Midwestern perspective among Churches of Christ that, while a significant minority, differed in important respects from the largely rural and Southern Churches of Christ. Sommer proved a trenchant observer of social forces that contributed to divisions in the Movement too often described in purely doctrinal or theological terms. 

Photo caption: Devout restorationist and chief author of the controversial Sand Creek “Address and Declaration” (1889), Daniel Sommer became more conciliatory toward the end of his life toward those with whom he had strong ideological differences. Courtesy of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society 

In 1886 Sommer purchased the American Christian Review, which under Benjamin Franklin’s editorship had been one of the most important journals in the Stone-Campbell Movement after Alexander Campbell’s death. When Franklin died in 1878, the paper declined in influence under other editors, but under Sommer the journal became influential among readers in Churches of Christ. Despite several name changes (in 1887 to Octographic Review after the eight authors of the New Testament, and in 1913 to Apostolic Review), extant subscription lists demonstrate the journal’s growth from approximately 7,300 subscribers in 1884 to nearly 10,000 from 1904 to 1925. 

Sommer participated in several debates during his lifetime, the first a published debate in 1889 on triune immersion with Robert Miller, renowned debater among the German Baptist Brethren or “Dunkers.” Other debates occurred in narrower contexts with other members of the Churches of Christ, including J. N. Armstrong in 1907 and one of Armstrong’s faculty members at Western Bible and Literary College (Odessa, Missouri), B. F. Rhodes, in 1908, both over whether Christians could scripturally operate colleges in which the Bible was taught. Sommer’s last debate, at age 76, was with J. N. Cowan at Sullivan, Indiana, on Christian participation in warfare, rebaptism, and Bible classes. 

Sommer was one of the first to advocate separation of those who opposed instrumental music and church-supported missionary societies from churches that would not abandon such practices. He was one of the authors of the Sand Creek “Address and Declaration,” which reflected Sommer’s belief that many had reversed course from Thomas Campbell’s intent in his Declaration and Address. The document was read at a mass meeting of about 5,000 Christians at the Sand Creek church near Shelbyville, Illinois, on August 17, 1889, and was subsequently published in Sommer’s paper and elsewhere. The document’s declaration that if those advocating “digressive practices” would not cease and desist after a period of time “we cannot and will not regard them as brethren” was one of the first public calls for division over such issues. Sommer also served as a witness in several lawsuits over church property in the Midwest, including one over the Sand Creek property that went to the Illinois Supreme Court, with the noninstrumental defendants retaining possession of the property. 

Following years of estrangement from many with whom he differed, Sommer was involved during the last decade of his life in significant efforts to reestablish relationships. He became friends with Frederick D. Kershner (1875-1953), dean of the Butler University School of Religion in Indianapolis, and with influential Disciple Peter Ainslie (1867-1934), visiting with Ainslie in his home in Baltimore and preaching for the Disciples congregation Ainslie attended. Sommer spoke several times on the program of Butler’s Midsummer Institutes, organized by Kershner to bring together a variety of differing speakers, and other such efforts, which culminated in several meetings in the 1940s commonly known as the “Murch-Witty Unity meetings.” Sommer also sought better communication and renewed discussion with members of Churches of Christ in what he called the “Southland” from whom he had been estranged over the college issue, writing and endorsing a document he published in the Apostolic Review called the “Rough Draft for Christian Unity.” 

Sommer’s later moves alienated him from some of his followers, even his own family. His son D. Austen Sommer started a rival publication, and his wife gained control of the Apostolic Review and refused to allow him to write for it. Sommer continued his evangelistic trips nearly until his death. He suffered a stroke at age 90 during a train trip from Indianapolis to a preaching appointment. Put on a return train home by a conductor who recognized him, Sommer lingered a few days, then passed away on February 19, 1940. He is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis. 

See also Ainslie, Peter; American Christian Review; Franklin, Benjamin; Kershner, Frederick D.; Murch, James DeForest; Sand Creek “Address and Declaration” 

Bibliography Matthew C. Morrison, Like a Lion: Daniel Sommer’s Seventy Years of Preaching (1975) • Daniel Sommer, “A Record of My Life,” in William E. Wallace, Daniel Sommer (1969). 

James Stephen Wolfgang

This entry, written by James Stephen Wolfgang, 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 692-694. Republished with permission.