A Tragic Event (Part 2) Continued from last week

 April 16, 2006

By: Sellers S. Crain, Jr.

    Mr. Rukala claimed the church of Christ was founded by Alexander Campbell 150 years ago.  Once again, he is misinformed.  Thomas Campbell, (Alexander's father) did not come to America until May 27, 1807.  At that time, he was a Presbyterian preacher.  It wasn't until August 17, 1809 that he made the break with the Presbyterian church.  Thomas only produced one major work, The Declaration and Address issued on September 8, 1808.  It was 54 pages long and contained 30,000 words.  Alexander and the rest of the family did not join Thomas in America until October 19, 1809.  Although trained to be a preacher and well educated, Alexander did not preach his first sermon until he was 22 years old on July 15, 1810.

    The reason these dates are important is because they prove that there were already churches of Christ established in America before Thomas or Alexander Campbell came to this country.  The church in Parksville, Kentucky was established in 1796.  There are thirteen more congregations which were established around the year 1800, among them the Pleasant Ridge congregation in Woodbury, Tennessee.  The Rock Springs church in Celina, Tennessee was established in 1805, and the Rocky Springs church in Bridgeport, Alabama in 1807.  The South Harpeth congregation, in which my mother grew up, was established in 1812.

    This writer visited the cemetery at Cane Ridge where Barton W. Stone, another great preacher of the Restoration Movement once preached.  On the grave marker of Samuel Rogers, another restoration preacher, is the inscription: "United with the Church of Christ in 1807."  How could Alexander Campbell have established the Church of Christ since congregations existed in this country before he came here?

    While Alexander Campbell was one of the more prominent advocates of the restoration of the Church of Christ as found on the pages of the New Testament, he was certainly not the one.  James O'Kelley was preaching the sufficiency of the scriptures for faith and practice in Virginia before 1779.  He said, "We will be downright Christians."  Another early restoration preacher was Rice Haggard, who worked with O'Kelley.  In a general meeting held in Surry County, Virginia on August 4, 1794, he said, "Brethren, this is a sufficient rule of faith and practice (the Bible; added SC).  By it we are told that the disciples were called Christians, and I move that henceforth and forever the followers of Christ be known simply as Christians."

    Elias Smith began preaching at the age of 21 in 1789.  By 1802, he had formed a church in Portsmouth, New Hampshire determined to wear only the name of Christian.  He wrote, "When our number was some short of twenty, we agreed to consider ourselves a Church of Christ, owing Him as our only Master and Lord, and lawgiver, as we agreed to consider ourselves Christians, without the additions of any unscriptural name."  By 1803 the church had grown to 150 members.

    Many others could be mentioned, but these will serve to prove that several men desired to return to the New Testament to find the church Jesus established and to restore that church to our world today.  Their work predated the work of Alexander Campbell.  None of these men, including Campbell had any desire to start another church or denomination.  There desire was, and our desire is, to go back to the Bible to restore the worship style, plan of redemption organization, and doctrine of that church established on the Day of Pentecost A.D. 33.

 Brotherly,

Sellers