Our program lists this segment as a “moment” for historical reflection. Truth in advertizing requires that I inform you that actually I am planning to speak for about thirty minutes. Our topic in this moment, and again tomorrow and Saturday, is Stone-Campbell Spirituality.

Lest you think that you will have a hard time getting hold of Stone-Campbell spirituality, I want to offer a simple definition of spirituality: Spirituality is our understanding and practice of relationship with God. I address three questions to individuals and groups in the history of Christianity to tease out their understanding and practice of relationship with God. These are the questions: What is sin and what are its consequences? What is salvation and what are its consequences? And, how does one get from sin to salvation and are there side effects? When one asks these questions of the founders of the Stone-Campbell Movement one gets a coherent set of answers which disclose their spirituality—their understanding and practice of relationship with God.

Before engaging the founders with these questions, I want to say just a word about the religious background of the founders of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Barton Stone, Thomas and Alexander Campbell, and Walter Scott were Presbyterians from different parts of the world. Stone was from the southern United States, the Campbells were immigrants from Northern Ireland and Scott was an immigrant from Scotland. Presbyterians shared a spiritual tradition profoundly shaped by the Reformed Tradition, one of the major Christian traditions to emerge out of the sixteenth century reformations of Western Christianity. The theologian most identified with the Reformed tradition, John Calvin, whose personal motto was “the heart aflame,” was born five hundred years ago this summer. Three hundred years later, Thomas Campbell, standing squarely in the Reformed tradition, would pen his Declaration and Address in response to a scandal endemic to the Reformed tradition, the scandal of division among Christians. But, I am getting ahead of myself.

What is sin? Sin for the founding generation of the Stone-Campbell Movement was the failure to be in love with God. This definition implies something more than the statement that sin is the failure to love God. To be in love is to be attracted, to find delight in the object of one’s love. We speak of falling in love, for we do not experience this type of love as a matter of choosing. One might will to act toward God in a loving manner out of gratitude for some gift received or—more likely—to merit some future favor, but this is a far cry from being in love with God. To be in love with God is to love God for who God is. The New England theologian Joseph Bellamy illustrated this distinction as follows: “If I feel a sort of respect to one of my neighbors, who is very kind to me, and either do not know what sort of man he is or, if I do, yet do not like him, it is plain it is his kindness I love, and not his person; and so my seeming love to him is nothing but self-love in another shape.” In one of the earliest documents of the movement, a colleague of Barton Stone wrote: “The whole tenor of Scripture shows that [humanity] is made…to glorify God in an active manner; that knowing [God’s] nature, perfections, and astonishing works, [we] should render due praise to the divine name, and employ all [our] powers of body and mind, in doing the will of God.” Sin, for the founding generation of the Stone-Campbell Movement was the failure to be in love with God.

What are the consequences of sin? The consequences of sin were many and terrible. Preachers pointed to sin as the root of human unhappiness. Humans were created to love God. Not being in love with God, they constantly seek for some earthly good that will bring them pleasure; that will fill the place of God in their lives. James McGready, whose preaching awakened Barton Stone to his need for a love relationship with God, noted that some persons seek happiness through the satisfaction of their “animal nature,” others through the possession of “riches” and “honors,” while yet others seek happiness through a “religion of external duties” which is thought to secure the favor of a God who remains unknown and unloved. None of these substitutions, though, bring the ultimate happiness that humans were meant to know in a love relationship with God. One preacher likened the sinner’s search for happiness to chasing after phantoms. When one is seeking after a phantom, it seems quite real; when one embraces a phantom, one discovers that it was not what one thought it was. Barton Stone described the matter succinctly: “All are in want of what they were made to enjoy, which is God; and have a propensity to satisfy that want with meaner things. Hence arise the busy pursuits, the incessant labors, and the universal cry of a distracted, disappointed world, Who will show us any good?”

Another consequence of sin was the proliferation of sins against God and neighbor. Not loving God, persons do not obey God’s command to love their neighbor. Instead, they seek their own good without much regard for their neighbor. Stone stated that Jesus’ life and death save us “from the want of love to God and [neighbor], and all those actions which are the native fruits of that want.”

Yet another consequence of sin was hell or damnation. Hell was to be cut off from God. In an account of his conversion, Stone reported asking himself, “Are you willing to be damned—to be banished from God—from heaven—from all good—and suffer the pains of eternal fire?” Hell was not so much a place as an experience. Stone wrote of a time in his life when he could not believe that God loved humanity. On the contrary, it seemed to him, based on his interpretation of the Reformed doctrine of predestination, that God delighted in the damnation of humanity. Describing his experience of this time, he notes: “I was bereft of every good;” adding, “The fires of Hell got hold of me, and were kindling a flame against such a God.”

What is salvation? Salvation for the founding generation of the Stone-Campbell Movement was to be in a love relationship with God. It was not a reward that one received for living a holy life, but the holy life, itself. Consequently, it was understood to begin not at death, but whenever one became a Christian. Alexander Campbell spoke of “our individual enjoyment of the present salvation of God.”

What are the consequences of salvation? First, one experienced the sheer joy and fulfillment of being in love with God. In a letter written in 1844, Thomas Campbell exclaimed, “Now can there be happier persons under heaven, than the believing and obedient worshippers, who are thus divinely assured of the constant enjoyment of the Divine Presence!”

Another consequence of salvation was that one desired to honor God by doing God’s will in all matters. This is the origin of Thomas Campbell’s commitment to address the scandal that had particularly marred his own Reformed tradition, the scandal of division among Christians. He had overheard Jesus praying in John 17: 20-23: “I ask…on behalf of those who will believe in me through [the word of the disciples] that they may all be one. As you Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

Desiring to honor God by doing God’s will extended to social issues. Barton Stone, though reared in a slaveholding family, early became an opponent of slavery. The earliest writing that we have from Stone is a letter arguing against scriptural defenses of slavery on the grounds that the destruction of families and the suffering caused by slavery could not be the will of the God revealed in scripture. Note if you will his principles of interpretation: that scripture interprets scripture and that no interpretation of scripture can be authoritative if it stands in conflict with the Biblical revelation of God’s love for all. Stone observed that it was often said by white Christian that it was not a good policy to set the slaves free “amongst us.” Many, he responded, thought otherwise. In any case, he continued, “Christians ought not to let civil policy oppose the express will of God. If we know God’s will, we are not to enquire whether it will be [in] our interest to do it.” For several years Stone supported the Colonization Society. Disillusioned with the Colonization Society’s failure to end slavery with its promise of removing free Blacks to a colony in Africa, Stone became an advocate of the immediate abolition of slavery without any provision for the removal of formerly enslaved Blacks. Alexander Campbell’s discernment of God’s will with regard to war, led him, along with Stone, to embrace passivism.

Alexander Campbell believed that the cumulative effect of the present salvation of individuals, accelerated by the restoration of apostolic practices and the unity of Christians, would be the dawning of a this-worldly age of peace and justice; what he and other Christians called the Millennium. In the prospectus for the journal he launched in 1830, aptly titled, The Millennial Harbinger, Campbell stated that the new journal “shall have for its object the development and introduction of that political and religious order of society called THE MILLENNIUM, which will be the consummation of that ultimate [improvement] of society proposed in the Christian Scriptures.” Among the subjects that readers could expect to see addressed was “The injustice which yet remains in many of the political regulations under the best political governments, when contrasted with the justice which Christianity proposes, and which the millennial order of society promises.”

Yet another consequence of salvation was heaven. The founders of the Stone-Campbell Movement did not have much to say about the details of life in heaven. The central aspect of life in heaven would be the continuation of the joy of salvation. Thomas Campbell wrote of our present experience of salvation, “What can be more blissful than the exercises of heaven; namely, the contemplation, admiration, adoration, and worship of God? What more desirable than the enjoyment of the Divine Presence?” This view of heaven is echoed in the literature of the Cumberland Presbyterians, a group that had much in common with the followers of Stone. Peggy Davidson Ewing was the seventy-six year old widow of Finis Ewing, a leading preacher among the Cumberland Presbyterians who had been a successful lawyer before entering the ministry. She was also the daughter of the family for which Davidson County Tennessee was named. It seems that a development officer, probably wanting to talk with Mrs. Ewing about a planned gift, asked Mrs. Ewing, “Do you not anticipate a happy meeting with those loved ones who have gone before?” To which Mrs. Ewing answered, “O yes; and it will be joyful, but nothing like seeing my precious Saviour: without Him heaven would be no heaven to me.”

How does one get from sin to salvation? For the founding generation of the Stone-Campbell Movement one got from sin to salvation by the grace of God. Wrote Thomas Campbell: “It appears that we are as dependent upon the will of God for our salvation, as for our creation; for we can no more new create, or regenerate ourselves, than create ourselves first. Nay, it appears more difficult, if there can be any difficulty with God, to effect [our recreation] than [our creation]. For the dust could have no dislike to become a [human being], not so the sinner to be saved.” Do you hear what he is saying? I don’t think I fully appreciated this comment until my wife, the Rev. Sue McDougal, and I began having children. For us, thanks be to God! procreation was, with the exception of nine months of morning sickness and eight hours of labor, fairly easy. Well, at least, fairly easy for me. The more challenging part, we discovered, came after our children were born, as each came into the world with a will of his or her own. For the founding generation of the Stone-Campbell Movement, our salvation was not ultimately something we accomplish, but something God accomplishes.

So, how does God accomplish our salvation? The founding generation of the Stone-Campbell Movement knew that God must somehow get our attention. This is what Presbyterians referred to as God’s “awakening” of sinners. And, they were adamant that it involved the sinner’s conviction that he or she was a sinner. In their view, this was the necessary first step in God’s work of salvation. Our Stone-Campbell forebears believed that awareness of our own sin was part of being a Christian, but were not at all sure that this awareness was the necessary first step on the way to salvation. In the words of Barton Stone, “We…do not prescribe to God the particular means by which [God] shall bring [sinners] to faith and repentance.” In any case, the founding generation of the Stone-Campbell Movement, like other Presbyterians, understood that God’s getting our attention does not amount to falling in love with God.

For the founders of the Stone-Campbell Movement, as with other Presbyterians, God causes us to fall in love with God’s self through our encounter with the Gospel of Jesus Christ—the Good News that God has acted in Jesus Christ that we might know the forgiveness of our sins and receive the Spirit by which we are enabled to live new lives. James McGready, who described the sinner’s encounter with the Gospel as a “view” of “the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus,” put it this way: “No sooner does the ‘light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus,’ shine into their souls, then [sinners] are enraptured with [God’s] excellency, and their hearts are filled with [love toward God].” In his earliest theological statement, Stone declared what Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists would have affirmed: [The sinner’s] “fears may be awakened by the thunders of Mount Sinai [a reference to the Ten Commandments]; but it is only a view of the holiness, goodness, love—and the free, unmerited grace and mercy of God, which produces true conviction [of sin] and true repentance, and which humbles the soul, slays the enmity of the heart, and makes [the sinner] willing to depart from all iniquity.”

In the parlance of the time, it was said that persons who fell in love with God through their encounter with the Gospel would “come to Christ” for the forgiveness of their sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit, which would sustain and strengthen their new relationship with God. Baptists and Methodists, and to a lesser extent, Presbyterians, believed it was important to have an assurance that Christ had forgiven their sins and granted them the Holy Spirit. Hence, the popular nineteenth-century practice of directing penitent believers to pray to God for an experience that would assure them of the forgiveness of their sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes penitents were invited to come to a “mourners’ bench,” where the saints would lay hands upon them and add their prayers to those of the penitents beseeching God to grant them assurance of the forgiveness of their sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. The founders of the Stone-Campbell Movement appreciated the desire for assurance of the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit, but believed the Apostles had provided a more certain way to that assurance and the gift of the Holy Spirit though the baptism of penitent believers—an apostolic practice they sought to restore.

Walter Scott, the great evangelist of the first generation of the Stone-Campbell Movement, could state this distinctive view of how one got from sin to salvation on the fingers of one hand. Faith in the Gospel of Jesus Christ transforms one’s affections and leads to repentance, which leads to baptism, which is followed by assurance of the forgiveness of one’s sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The practice of the founders of the Stone-Campbell Movement differed from that of Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists in another way, as well. All of these traditions valued the Lord’s Supper, which re-enacts the central drama of the Christian gospel. The Stone-Campbell founders, however, were convinced that a restoration of what they believed to be the apostolic practice of every Lord’s Day celebration of the Supper was critical to the spiritual health of the Christian community. So critical, that when an ordained minister was not available, congregations were to select qualified persons from among the membership to lead in the celebration of the Supper.

The Stone-Campbell founders also encouraged the restoration of other practices of the church as means of bringing the gospel before the minds and hearts of believers, including: study of the scriptures, prayer, meditation, observance of the Lord’s Day, fasting, confession of sins, and praise.

Is there a side effect with this process of moving from sin to salvation? There is: humility. Thomas Campbell stated that humility, the attitude born of the believer’s absolute dependence upon God for every aspect of salvation, rather than something like faithfulness or integrity, is the “fundamental ingredient in Christian character.” Barton Stone wrote that Christians are well convinced of their “natural poverty of divine things, such as holiness, righteousness and peace,” of their “spiritual weakness to withstand evil, and to do good” and of their “ignorance of God, and divine glories….” He asserted that upon seeing wicked sinners Christians exclaim, “Who made me to differ from them? God only, in [God’s] matchless grace.”

The answers of the founders of the Stone-Campbell Movement to the questions of sin, salvation, and how one gets from sin to salvation disclose an understanding and practice of relationship with God that focuses on knowing and loving God. Thus, I have often referred to this spirituality as theistic. The main contours of this spirituality are expressed in a well-known eighteenth-century hymn.

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
    [the sound of the gospel]
That saved a wretch like me
    [a person who never forgets that salvation is by grace].
I once was lost [apart from God],
But now am found,
Was blind [did not see the excellence of God]
But now I see.

‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
    [the grace that got my attention]
And grace my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
    [the gospel of Jesus Christ]
The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares
    [temptations to turn away from the love relationship with God]
I have already come
‘Twas grace hath brought me safe thus far
    [the grace of the Holy Spirit]
And grace will lead me home.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the sun,
We’ve no less days [to do what?] (people respond: to sing God’s praise)
Then when we first begun.

Tomorrow we look at distortions of Stone-Campbell spirituality.