The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement

By Douglas A. Foster

With roots in British and American endeavors to restore apostolic Christianity, the Stone-Campbell Movement drew its inspiration from the independent efforts of nineteenth-century religious reformers Barton W. Stone and the father-son team of Thomas and Alexander Campbell. The union of these two movements in the 1830s and the growth of the new body thrust it into a place of significance in early nineteenth-century America, and it quickly spread to other parts of the English-speaking world.

From its beginnings the Movement has developed into one of the most vital and diverse Christian traditions in the world. Today it encompasses three major American communions -- Churches of Christ, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), and Christian Churches/Churches of Christ -- as well as united churches in several other countries.

Over ten years in the making, The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement offers for the first time a sweeping historical and theological treatment of this complex, vibrant global communion. Written by more than 300 contributors, this major reference work contains over 700 original articles covering all of the significant individuals, events, places, and theological tenets that have shaped the Movement. Much more than simply a historical dictionary, this volume also constitutes an interpretive work reflecting historical consensus among Stone-Campbell scholars, even as it attempts to present a fair, representative picture of the rich heritage that is the Stone-Campbell Movement.

Scores of photographs and illustrations (many quite rare) enrich and enliven the text, and an extensive, carefully prepared index facilitates ready access to important information throughout the volume. The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement -- a standard reference work for religious, academic, public, and personal libraries everywhere.

Features of this encyclopedia:

• Presents over 700 articles on the people, events, churches, and beliefs that comprise the Stone-Campbell tradition
• Provides cutting-edge commentary on current topics of discussion as well as basic historical knowledge
• Written by more than 300 scholars from across the Stone-Campbell Movement
• Enlivened with photographs and illustrations (some quite rare) from around the world
• Includes an extensive index for rapid reference

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Release date: Dec 6, 2012
• ISBN: 9781467427364

Douglas A. Foster

Douglas A. Foster is professor of church history anddirector of the Center for Restoration Studies at AbileneChristian University in Abilene, Texas.

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Abilene Christian University

School established in 1906 in Abilene, Texas, by members of Churches of Christ. The founder and first president was Tennessee native A. B. Barret (1879-1951), trained under David Lipscomb and James A. Harding at Nashville Bible School. Barrett taught at Southwestern Christian College in Denton, Texas, in 1905, but was convinced a new school was needed in West Texas. The Church of Christ in Abilene along with members of the community offered financial backing to bring the school to the city. Initially named Childers Classical Institute after donor W. H. Childers, the school functioned at first as a preparatory school, providing elementary and high school classes.

The year of the school’s opening the U.S. Religious Census documented the division between Churches of Christ and Christian Churches/Disciples. Reflecting those tensions and the fact that most Stone-Campbell educational institutions had identified with the Disciples, the charter stipulated that trustees must be members of a Church of Christ which takes the New Testament as its only sufficient rule of faith, worship and practice, and rejects from its faith, worship and practice everything not required by either precept or example.

Bible classes were offered tuition free, but were not mandatory. Though in 1909-10 under President R. L. Whiteside (1869-1951) the school offered college-level training, James F. Cox (1878-1968) eliminated those courses in 1911. The school gained considerable financial and educational stability, however, under the presidency of Jesse P. Sewell (1876-1969) between 1912 and 1924. By the end of his first year the school had been granted provisional accreditation as a junior college, and within four years was fully accredited with an A plus rating by the Texas Association of Colleges. In the 1919-20 school year Abilene Christian College (the name was officially changed in 1919) became a fully accredited four-year liberal arts college, the first among Churches of Christ. Also beginning that year Bible classes were required of all students.

During World War I, despite pacifist leanings among many leaders in Churches of Christ, Sewell established a unit of the Students’ Army Training Corps at the college. Though the unit existed for only six months, the college’s cooperation with the war effort, in contrast to schools like Cordell (OK) Christian College, strengthened its image in the community.

One of Sewell’s most enduring contributions, though precedents existed from the early days of the school, was the inauguration of the annual Bible Lectures during the last week of February 1918. This Lectureship has grown to become one of the largest annual gatherings of members of Churches of Christ in the world and, along with similar gatherings at other schools, provides networking and formational functions supplied by more formal structures in other religious bodies.

In 1927 under the presidency of Batsell Baxter (1886-1956) the college purchased land northeast of Abilene with plans to relocate because of increased enrollment — around 600 in 1925. By the time of the move in 1929, however, the Great Depression had decimated the school’s financial support base, threatening the college with bankruptcy. Enrollment declined by 25 percent over the following three years. In 1932 Baxter left to become president of David Lipscomb College in Nashville, Tennessee, and James F. Cox again assumed ACC’s presidency. Creditors were moving to force the school into receivership in late 1933 when Baptist philanthropists John and Mary Hardin agreed to provide a loan of $160,000, averting the school’s bankruptcy.

1920 women’s physical culture class at Abilene Christian College. Courtesy of the Center for Restoration Studies, Abilene Christian University

As it had in the previous war, the school administration supported U.S. action in World War II. Though the number of male students dropped significantly during the war, at its conclusion ACC experienced rapid increases in student enrollment aided by the GI Bill and increased national prosperity. Between 1945 and 1955 the student body grew from fewer than 500 to over 2,000.

Under the administrations of Don H. Morris from 1940 to 1969 and John C. Stevens from 1969 to 1981, the school expanded academic programs, achieved regional accreditation, undertook major construction projects, and added a graduate school. In 1976 the name was changed to Abilene Christian University. William J. Teague served as President from 1981 to 1991, followed by Royce Money.

Anti-intellectual sentiments in Churches of Christ viewed all efforts at higher education — especially in religion — with suspicion. Nevertheless, Abilene Christian provided the first graduate theological education in Churches of Christ between 1918 and 1924 under President Jesse P. Sewell and the leadership of George A. Klingman (1865-1939) and William Webb Freeman (1887-1954). Strong opposition to seminary-educated ministers by leaders like J. D. Tant and Daniel Sommer led to the demise of the program and the departure of its chief supporters. Charles Roberson, Paul Southern, and J. D. Thomas chaired ACC’s Bible Department from the mid-1930s through 1978, an era of increasing emphasis on academic credentialing of faculty. Scholars such as Everett Ferguson, Abraham Malherbe, J. J. M. Roberts, and William Martin were products of the school’s instruction in the 1950s.

Graduate studies were reintroduced in the early 1950s. In 1985 the University organized the College of Biblical Studies that houses both undergraduate and graduate theological education, including a Marriage and Family Therapy Program and Graduate School of Theology accredited by the Association of Theological Schools.

Like most Southern schools, ACC was racially segregated during much of its existence. In 1961 it began admitting African Americans to the graduate school, and by 1963 it had opened all its programs. In 1999 President Royce Money publicly confessed the school’s sin of racism and pledged its commitment to reconciliation to a large gathering of black members of Churches of Christ at Southwestern Christian College in Terrell, Texas.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century ACU’s student body numbered almost 5,000 from all fifty states and scores of nations. Though its constituency is also increasingly religiously diverse, the University administration has publicly committed to maintaining its strong connections to Churches of Christ. A Center for Restoration Studies was established in the mid-1980s as a library and archives for the Stone-Campbell Movement and Churches of Christ. In 2000 ACU Press began publishing The Heart of the Restoration series, theological studies designed to address major issues faced by Churches of Christ in the twenty-first century. The school continues to be a major force in Christian liberal arts education and theological training in Churches of Christ and beyond.

See also Cordell Christian College; Harding, James Alexander; Lectureships; Lipscomb, David; Lipscomb University; Sommer, Daniel; Southwestern Christian College; Tant, Jefferson Davis

BIBLIOGRAPHY William Slater Banowsky, The Mirror of a Movement: Churches of Christ as Seen Through the Abilene Christian College Lectureship (1965) • Michael W. Casey, The First Graduate Theological Education in the Churches of Christ, Part 1, Restoration Quarterly 44 (Second Quarter 2002): 73-92 • Part 2, Restoration Quarterly 44 (Third Quarter 2002): 139-57 • Douglas A. Foster, An Angry Peace: Race and Religion, ACU Today (Spring 2000): 7-20, 39 • Don H. Morris and Max Leach, Like Stars Shining Brightly: The Personal Story of Abilene Christian University (1953) • John C. Stevens, No Ordinary University: The Story of a City Set on a Hill (1998) • James W. Thompson, The Formation of an Academic Tradition in Biblical Studies at Abilene Christian University, Restoration Quarterly 45 (First and Second Quarter 2003): 15-28 • M. Norvel Young, A History of Colleges Established and Controlled by Members of the Churches of Christ (1949).

DOUGLAS A. FOSTER

Abolitionism

The belief that American slavery was inherently evil and therefore must be abolished immediately and unconditionally. Abolitionists opposed the American Colonization Society because of its gradual approach to emancipation of the slaves. Members of the Stone-Campbell Movement held a variety of positions on the issue. Alexander Campbell (1788-1866) urged Henry Clay to submit to Congress in 1832 a proposal that would have used the federal surplus to fund the emancipation and colonization of all slaves. Abolitionists such as Jane C. McKeever, Alexander Campbell’s sister, viewed such plans as too slow. John Fee (1816-1901), founder of Berea College, declared that the Colonization plan to settle freed slaves in the new African nation of Liberia was rooted in unholy prejudice. Barton W. Stone (1772-1844) was a member of the Colonization Society who later endorsed immediate abolition.

A prominent abolitionist in the Stone-Campbell Movement was John Boggs (1810-1897), editor of the antislavery North-Western Christian Magazine published in Cincinnati from 1854 to 1858. Boggs was indefatigable in portraying the inhumane face of American slavery.

When the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 adopted the doctrine of popular sovereignty, Kansas became the scene of a moral struggle between pro-slavery and abolitionist forces. Evangelist Pardee Butler (1816-1888) determined to enter Kansas as a church planter and abolitionist activist. Despite threats to his personal safety, Butler traveled throughout Kansas establishing churches and campaigning to make the Territory a free State. Once he was tarred and cottoned by a pro-slavery mob and later put in a river on a raft to drown. Butler appealed to the American Christian Missionary Society for support but was refused because of his abolitionism. Stung by the rejection, he, Ovid Butler (after whom Butler University was named), and John Boggs led in establishing the openly abolitionist Christian Missionary Society in Indianapolis in 1859.

While at Williams College, future president James A. Garfield (1831-1881) was moved by an abolitionist editor’s address to throw his life into the struggle to eradicate slavery. But in the shadow of impending war, Garfield joined other members of the Ohio Legislature in efforts to keep Kentucky in the Union. For this he was deemed a traitor to the abolitionist cause. Garfield, like many others who strongly opposed slavery, had foreseen what he perceived to be an even greater evil: the prospect of a nation divided against itself.

See also Butler, Ovid; Butler, Pardee; Christian Missionary Society; McKeever, Jane Campbell; North-Western Christian Magazine

BIBLIOGRAPHY John Boggs, Northwestern Christian Magazine (1854-58) • John Fee, Anti-Slavery Manual: Or the Wrong of American Slavery Exposed by the Light of the Bible and of Facts; With a Remedy for the Evil (1848) • Robert Oldham Fife, Alexander Campbell and the Christian Church in the Slavery Controversy (Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1960) • James A. Garfield, Papers (Manuscript Division, Library of Congress) • Rosetta B. Hastings, Personal Recollections of Pardee Butler, With Reminiscences by His Daughter (1889) • Harold L. Lunger, The Political Ethics of Alexander Campbell (1954), pp. 193-232 • D. Newell Williams, Pursuit of Justice: The Anti-Slavery Pilgrimage of Barton W. Stone, Encounter (Winter 2001): 1-23.

ROBERT O. FIFE†

Abortion

Abortion has become an increasingly controversial issue engendering division along social, political, and religious lines. The United States Supreme Court’s 1973 landmark legal decision in the case of Roe v. Wade escalated the controversy. The court’s ruling had the dual effect of expanding abortion rights for women and provoking a reaction, albeit delayed, from conservative Christians across the religious spectrum. The latter phenomenon was reflected most clearly in the growing coalition between the Roman Catholic Church and conservative Protestant groups and in the development of such organizations as the National Right to Life Committee.

Within the Stone-Campbell Movement, divergent views are represented by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) official resolution on abortion (1975), with an accent on women’s rights and individual conscience, and Churches of Christ and Christian Churches/Churches of Christ that have placed the emphasis on protecting nascent life. The latter groups lack formal bodies to formulate official statements, but the tendencies are nonetheless pronounced and readily discernible from periodical literature, pamphlets, and sermons.

There is a wide diversity of thought within each stream of the Movement, with perhaps the greatest spectrum to be found among Disciples. Among the most vocal Disciples opposing the positions adopted by the General Assembly over the years were members of Disciple Renewal who were also supportive of the group Disciples for Life.

In the 1980s, opposition to abortion rights by members of Churches of Christ and Christian Churches/Churches of Christ grew. As involvement in the public arena increased, many members became more involved in cooperative efforts with other Christians, especially evangelicals. This type of collaboration has been especially characteristic of Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, but has increasingly typified the activity of many in Churches of Christ as well.

In addition to becoming more vocal in their opposition to abortion, many members — both advocates and opponents of abortion rights — have actively promoted alternatives to abortion including the development of adoption agencies (Christian Homes of Abilene, in Abilene, Texas, for example) and various crisis pregnancy centers. In the midst of divergent views on abortion, many members can unite on the need to broaden concern for fetal life to include an awareness of the need for pastoral care for young women considering abortion as well as enhancing the lives of babies born out of wedlock.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Craig Churchill, Churches of Christ and Abortion: A Survey of Selected Periodicals, Restoration Quarterly 38 (3rd quarter 1996): 129-43 • John P. Marcum, Family, Birth Control, and Sexuality in the Christian Churches (Disciples of Christ): 1880-1980, Encounter 52 (Spring 1991): 105-45 • J. Gordon Melton, The Churches Speak on Abortion: Official Statements from Religious Bodies and Ecumenical Organizations (1989) • Elizabeth Phillips, Abortion and the Ethics of American Christianity (M.A. thesis, Abilene Christian University, 1999).

CRAIG CHURCHILL

Africa, Missions in

1. Nineteenth-Century Missions

2. Twentieth-Century Missions

2.1 Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

2.2 Churches of Christ

2.3 Christian Churches/Churches of Christ

1. Nineteenth-Century Missions

Stone-Campbell missions to Africa began in 1853; however, attempts to work in Liberia (1853), Congo (1885), and Nigeria (1895) ended soon after initial efforts. In partnership with African Christians, a later effort to conduct mission work in Congo (1897) became the first successful mission of the Stone-Campbell Movement in Africa.

In 1849, when the American Christian Missionary Society (ACMS) began, the Movement had inspired no mission efforts on the continent of Africa. Yet the appeal of mission to a continent many Westerners viewed as thoroughly exotic in its land and peoples soon registered itself among American Protestants, including constituents of the Stone-Campbell Movement. The first missionary from the Stone-Campbell Movement to Africa was Alexander Cross (c. 1811-1854). Cross was a slave when ACMS Vice President D. S. Burnet (1808-1867) heard him deliver an address on temperance in 1853. Burnet encouraged several churches in Christian County to buy Cross’s freedom so that he could go as a missionary to Liberia. After the churches led by the Hopkinsville congregation contributed to his work and made commitments for one year’s support, the ACMS sent him to Liberia. Cross reached Monrovia, Liberia, in January 1854. Two months later he fell ill and died, and the ACMS mission to Africa died with him.

In 1885, the Foreign Christian Missionary Society (FCMS) appointed S. M. Jefferson (1849-1914) as a missionary and sent him to London to explore the feasibility of a mission in the Congo Free State. Jefferson consulted with British Baptist missionaries as well as Henry Morton Stanley. At the time, he was advised that it would cost $25,000 in the first year to establish a mission station. As this was prohibitively expensive, he returned to the United States, and the Board of the FCMS decided to postpone the project. Barely two weeks after Archibald McLean (1849-1920) announced the decision, an editorial in the Christian-Evangelist (July 23, 1885) indicated disapproval of the plan to send missionaries to Africa. On the other hand, the Christian Standard had already published articles supporting missionary endeavors in Congo.

Destined to become the center of the Disciples mission in Congo, the missionary station at Bolenge on the Congo River was purchased by the Foreign Christian Missionary Society (FCMS) from the American Baptist Missionary Union in 1899. The building on the left was the home of pioneer Disciples missionaries Royal John Dye and Eva Nichols Dye. The station supply house is on the right. Courtesy of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society

After the ill-fated ACMS mission to Liberia and the aborted FCMS mission to Congo, there were some early independent mission efforts in Africa. For example, S. M. Cook was in Lagos, Nigeria, in the mid-1890s. There is limited evidence of other independent missionaries and proposals for mission work in Africa. Interest on the part of the Movement’s mission societies in sending missionaries to Africa continued, and by the 1890s the Christian-Evangelist joined the Christian Standard and the Missionary Intelligencer in promoting missions to Africa.

With support from the students of Eureka College, the FCMS appointed Ellsworth E. Faris (1874-1953) as a missionary to Congo on July 19, 1895. On January 1, 1897, the FCMS appointed Henry Nicholas Biddle (1872-1898) of Cincinnati, Ohio, as a medical missionary to accompany Faris. Faris and Biddle met in Cincinnati, traveled to Boston, and sailed from Boston on March 5, 1897. After a few weeks in England making arrangements and consulting with more experienced missionaries, the two young men sailed for Congo, landing on May 28, 1897. The FCMS missionaries were eager to establish themselves and begin work, and they located a potential site at Mushie on the Kwamouth River. Due to outspoken Baptist and Presbyterian missionaries outraged about human rights abuses, officials of the Congo Free State were reluctant to have any new Protestant mission stations, and they delayed approving a site for the American Disciples.

By the end of 1897, Faris and Biddle had traveled extensively, including visiting Bolenge, a Baptist station located where the equator crosses the left bank of the Congo River. About the same time the American Baptist Missionary Union (ABMU) decided to sell their station at Bolenge to the Disciples. Biddle became seriously ill, and Faris made arrangements for him to return to the United States and then made his way to Bolenge, arriving on February 1, 1899. On his return voyage to the United States, Biddle died in a hospital in the Canary Islands on October 8, 1898. Biddle’s death in missionary service both shocked and inspired Christians in North America.

While studying for mission work in New York, Royal John Dye (1874-1966) and Eva Nichols (1877-1951) heard of Biddle’s death. They volunteered to go to Congo, returned home to Ionia, Michigan, where they were married one day and ordained the next, then left soon for Congo. On April 17, 1899, the Dyes arrived at Bolenge with documents authorizing the transfer of the ABMU station to the FCMS missionaries. There they met their colleague Ellsworth Faris.

Four years after Faris was appointed to missionary service and over two years after Faris and Biddle left Boston for central Africa, the FCMS mission had a base on the banks of the Congo River. In addition to the three American Christians, there were three African Christians at Bolenge: Ikoko, a carpenter; Ikoko’s wife Bokama; and Josefa, a crippled fisherman of the Lokele tribe. With the support of these Christians, Faris began educational work and itineration; Royal Dye began medical work; and Eva Dye began working with women. Although the Americans had come a long way and were dedicated to their work, Josefa would turn out to be the most important member of the small Christian community at Bolenge.

The evangelistic success of the Disciples in Congo was largely the result of the work of Congolese Christians, including the six Bolenge evangelists pictured in this photograph. Back row, center, is Iso Timothy, one of the earliest Congolese Christian leaders to emerge from the Disciples of Christ Congo Mission. Courtesy of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society

John Sherriff (1864-1935) from Churches of Christ in New Zealand came to South Africa in 1897, working as a stonemason to support himself. He began mission work in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) in 1898, evangelizing among the Europeans, Coloreds, and Africans in and around Bulawayo. Over the next fifty years nearly twenty missionaries followed him not only from New Zealand but also the United States to open mission work across southern Africa. In 1897, Australian A. M. Ludbrook planted the first congregation of a Cape Town network that would later, with the help of British Disciples, include churches in Johannesburg as well. The Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902) disrupted this ministry expansion.

Thus, at the end of the nineteenth century, missionary work in Congo was firmly established, the work in Liberia was no longer existent, and although there was work in Rhodesia and South Africa, the age of independent or direct support missions in Africa had only just begun.

PAUL A. WILLIAMS

2. Twentieth-Century Missions

2.1. Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Disciples mission work in Africa has especially focused on Congo (from the days of the Congo Free State, 1885-1908, through the era of the Belgian Congo, 1908-1960, and through the various phases of the independent Democratic Republic of Congo, known as the Republic of Zaire from 1971 until 1997). Until the 1960s, the mission in Congo was known as the Disciples of Christ Congo Mission (DCCM). The American Disciples partnership with Congolese Christians produced the largest Disciples church outside of the United States, the Community of Disciples of Christ in Congo (CDCC). In addition to a strong presence in Congo, there has also been much work done in Liberia, South Africa and neighboring nations, and more recently in other African countries.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, FCMS missionaries Ellsworth Faris, Eva Nichols Dye, and Royal John Dye were at work in Bolenge, a mission station located where the equator crosses the left bank of the Congo River. The Congo Free State was in the midst of great turmoil and the missionaries were largely restricted to the area close to Bolenge. From the beginning, the DCCM work was organized in four parts: building, healing, teaching, and preaching. Missionary recruits were assigned to one or more of these tasks, with some missionaries also assuming the critical role of constructing grammars and lesson books and translating the Bible into Lonkundo, an important Bantu language. In addition to the proclamation of the gospel, the DCCM consistently maintained schools (e.g., Congo Christian Institute at Bolenge), hospitals (e.g., the Lockwood-Kinnear Memorial Hospital at Monieka), and industrial work. They also published periodicals, schoolbooks, and Bibles, and engaged in ecumenical relations and projects through the Congo Protestant Council. The DCCM and the Congolese Christians built a foundation on which the CDCC continues to work.

Mark Njoji, son of a witch doctor and chief, was the first ordained minister of the Stone-Campbell Movement in the Congo. He is pictured while on a 1908 trip to Michigan with medical missionaries Royal and Eva Dye and their children. Courtesy of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society

Although facilitated by the missionary community, the success of the DCCM, especially the process of evangelization, was largely the work of Congolese Christians. Three baptized Christians, Ikoko, Bokama, and Josefa, were living in Bolenge when the FCMS missionaries arrived. Soon, other leaders of the small community of Christians and inquirers emerged, most notably Iso Timothy and Mark Njoji. Josefa was largely responsible for the first group of inquirers to be baptized in November 1902, leading to the organization of the Church of Christ at Bolenge on March 5, 1903. After Josefa’s death, Mark Njoji emerged as the most important church leader for many decades. One of many local evangelists, Njoji was instrumental in the expansion of the church, becoming the first ordained minister of the Church of Christ at Bolenge on July 4, 1920.

From Bolenge, the Disciples community grew and expanded eastward up a series of tributary rivers establishing stations at Longa (1908), Lotumbe (1910), Monieka (1912), Mondombe (1920), Wema (1925), Bosobele (1945), and Boende (1957). Through the challenges of two World Wars, the Great Depression, and uncounted health problems, the missionary community worked closely with the African Christians to build a self-supporting, self-governing, and self-propagating church. By the end of the colonial period, they had not succeeded in fulfilling that vision, but they continued to make progress.

Congolese Christians had increasing leadership roles through the colonial period; however, national independence in 1960 inspired church leaders to assert greater authority in the work of the church in Congo, with missionaries as their partners. Changes in the relationship between American and Congolese Disciples communities were paralleled by the transition from the Congo Protestant Council to the Church of Christ of Congo, an ecumenical confederation of Protestant church communities. Although the transition from doing mission in a colonial context to a partnership in ministry after independence has not been without difficulties, the American Disciples of Christ continue to work closely with the CDCC, a church with almost one million members.

The establishment of a major institution of higher education in the country, the Protestant University of Congo, was greatly aided by Disciples. When the doors first opened in 1959, J. Richard Dodson, who had previously served as an educational missionary of the Disciples Mission, was chosen dean. The school functioned as a seminary until 1963 when it was given university status by vote of the Congo Protestant Council, thus creating the Protestant University of Congo. Disciple Ben C. Hobgood served as vice president for business affairs and later as recteur (president). At the beginning of the twenty-first century the university has 4,400 students and is led by a Disciple, Dr. B. Ngoy, who became Recteur in 1993.

The story of Disciples missions in Africa also includes Liberia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, and other nations. The unsuccessful mission to Liberia in 1853-54 had not been forgotten. Jacob Kenoly (1876-1911), a graduate of Southern Christian Institute (SCI) in Edwards, Mississippi, went to Liberia in 1905, where he established a mission at Schiefflin. He appealed to Elizabeth Mother Ross (1852-1926) and the Christian Woman’s Board of Missions (CWBM) for help, and in 1907 the CWBM officially assumed responsibility for the missionary endeavor that was known as the Liberian Christian Institute. After Kenoly’s death in 1911, additional CWBM missionaries (including several SCI graduates) joined his wife, Ruth Walker Kenoly, to continue the work. By 1916, the CWBM decided to consolidate its Africa work with the FCMS-supported DCCM and transfer CWBM missionaries to Congo.

Affinity with the descendants of former American slaves influenced Jacob Kenoly to go to Liberia in 1905, where he established a mission at Schiefflin. At his request, the Christian Woman’s Board of Missions assumed responsibility for the Liberian Christian Institute. Kenoly’s school was the second attempt by Disciples to establish a mission in Liberia. Courtesy of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society

The departure of Emory Ross (1887-1973), Ernest Pearson, and other CWBM missionaries to Congo was not the end of the story of the Disciples of Christ connection with Liberia. During his life, Jacob Kenoly had sent three students from Liberia to the SCI in Edwards, Mississippi, one of whom eventually returned to Liberia. After attending SCI, Jerome E. Freeman went to Drake University, where he received his undergraduate degree and studied law. In 1930, the church he attended in Des Moines supported his return to Liberia, where he opened a school in Monrovia called The Jacob Kenoly Memorial Institute, which continued for at least twenty more years.

In addition to establishing missions in Congo and Liberia, Disciples of Christ worked in other parts of Africa. Missionaries from New Zealand to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), John Sherriff and F. L. Hadfield began work near Bulawayo in 1905. Another missionary, R. S. Garfield Todd (1908-2002), became a Member of Parliament and later Prime Minister of Rhodesia. Further south, after an American-trained African began a missionary effort in 1924 in Kimberley, South Africa, the independent Thomas Evangelistic Mission came in 1926 and helped establish several congregations. A Baptist, Basil Holt joined the Disciples and became a general evangelist for the Thomas Mission before moving to the United States in 1930. In the mid-1940s, the United Church Missionary Society (UCMS) sent Holt back to South Africa to help organize and extend the Disciples work there. Relationships with churches in Zimbabwe and South Africa continue to the present. In addition to these historic church relationships, Disciples in North America have developed partnerships and sent personnel to numerous other nations, especially in southern and eastern Africa. These nations include Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zambia, and others.

For most of the twentieth century, a succession of North American Disciples of Christ institutions oversaw the work in Africa. In the first two decades, the FCMS and CWBM were the principal agencies responsible for the work, combining their forces in Congo in 1916. With the formation of the UCMS in 1919, those societies bequeathed their responsibilities to the Division of Foreign Missions/World Missions of the UCMS. That structural arrangement continued through the next five decades. After the acceptance of the provisional design of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 1968, the work soon fell under the auspices of the Department of Africa of the Division of World Missions (later named the Division of Overseas Ministries [DOM]).

Increasing cooperation between the United Church Board of World Mission of the United Church of Christ and the DOM of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) led to a common ministry in Africa. In 1991, the resignation of the UCBWM Africa executive led to the decision for the DOM Executive Secretary for Africa (Dr. Daniel Hoffman) to oversee the work of both boards in Africa. On January 1, 1996, the DOM, the UCBWM, and their respective denominational structures approved the formation of the Common Global Ministries Board (CGMB). This cooperative mission agency continues its work in Africa at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and for the first time the Executive Secretary for Africa, Rev. Dr. Bonganjalo Goba, is from Africa.

PAUL A. WILLIAMS

2.2. Churches of Christ

At the beginning of the twenty-first century Churches of Christ existed in thirty-three African nations with an estimated 14,000 churches and a membership nearing one million. The largest concentrations were in Nigeria, Malawi, Ghana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, and Kenya.

There are three distinct eras to this mission work, identifiable by the focus of the work. These are (1) the mission station; (2) the institutional era; and (3) the mission team eras. The first two eras are separated by World War II; the third era is distinguished by a shift in methodology.

The mission station era began in 1896 with the arrival of John Sherriff, who went first to Cape Town, South Africa, then moved to Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia, to practice his trade of stone masonry and to preach. Sherriff established a church and a night school to teach his converts to read, especially Scripture. He later built Forest Vale Mission to train national evangelists; the mission station and its educational approach became the hallmark of this era.

Sherriff’s evangelism prompted young African Christians such as Peter Masiya and Kambole Mpatamatenga to preach in village initiatives. Sherriff also called for missionaries from both New Zealand and American Churches of Christ. Will (W. N.) (1894-1980) and Delia (1896-1982) Short answered the call, establishing the Sinde Mission. Others followed rapidly: Ray and Zelma Lawyer, John Dow and Alice Merritt, the George M. Scotts, the A. B. Reeses, and the W. L. Browns. New mission stations and schools were opened in Kabanga and Namwianga, Zambia, and Nhowe mission in Zimbabwe. George S. Benson (1898-1991), former missionary to China and longtime President of Harding University, began a lifelong relationship with Namwianga, Zambia, mission in the 1930s through his relationship with Dow Merritt.

Sherriff’s work had resulted in congregations in Cape Town and Pretoria. The first preacher of the Churches of Christ in Malawi, Elaton Kundago, became a Christian in Cape Town in 1906. Kundago returned to preach near Blantyre, Nyasaland (Malawi), where he met Joseph Booth, an Australian pastor working with several denominations. Booth, seeking to encourage Kundago’s work, wrote Churches of Christ in Britain and Cape Town urging them to send missionaries. George Hills and George Hollis came from Cape Town to Blantyre in 1907 to establish a mission station at Namiwawa. The British church sent Mary Bannister and Henry Philpot to Namiwawa mission in 1912 and 1913. The British churches have maintained involvement in the Malawi mission, centering their work around Gowa Mission. American missionaries established missions at Namikango, Lilongwe, and Lubagha.

World War II marked a new era of expansion in resources and geography. Institutions such as schools and hospitals, rather than mission stations, characterized this era. During this second era Churches of Christ expanded into the majority of the African countries where they now exist.

Eldred Echols’s (1920-2003) arrival in Northern Rhodesia in 1944 opened the institutional era. Echols pioneered works in South Africa, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Botswana. In South Africa the Southern Africa Bible School was influential. Two converts from the South African work, Abe Malherbe and Ian Fair, have influenced the American Churches of Christ.

Echols traveled to Nigeria in 1950 and 1951 to investigate reports of a movement led by C. A. O. Essien. Echols found sixty-five churches planted by this man he described as the Alexander Campbell of Africa. The first American missionaries, Howard Horton (1917-2000) and Jimmy Johnson, arrived in 1952 to strengthen this growing body of believers. Horton began Ukpom Bible College in 1954, which through its post-secondary school, Nigerian Christian Bible College, became the first bachelor’s-degree-granting institution of the Churches of Christ in Africa. The board of this college evolved into African Christian Schools Foundation to reflect its broader work in Africa. Another charter institution, Nigerian Christian Hospital, opened in 1965 through the work of Dr. Henry Farrar (b. 1926). African Christian Hospitals was created to oversee this hospital, a task that expanded across Africa, as reflected in its current name: International Health Care Foundation.

Meanwhile, Echols and others moved into the east African nation of Tanganyika (Tanzania) in 1956, establishing Chimala mission. They opened Tanganyika Bible School, a two-year preacher training school. Andrew Connally (b. 1931) continued the Tanzanian work, building Chimala hospital and planting churches in Dar es Salaam, Arusha, and Moshi, Tanzania.

Two other notable expansions in this era were Cameroon and Ghana. In 1956 Wendell Broom (b. 1923) took Nigerian preaching students into Cameroon for an evangelistic campaign and established churches in the English-speaking part of Cameroon. Churches in French-speaking Cameroon began in 1964 when Don Hindsley (b. 1926) and Winfred Wright (b. 1935), American missionaries from France, visited to follow up on French correspondence course students. In 1958 Broom and Sewell Hall (b. 1930) traveled to Ghana to meet a correspondence course student, beginning a work that numbered over 1,400 congregations at the end of the twentieth century. Other West African countries with Churches of Christ include Sierra Leone, Liberia, Togo, Benin, and the Gambia.

Carl Thompson (b. 1933) and Bob Gowen (b. 1931) continued the expansion into Ethiopia in 1960. John Ed Clark, with Ethiopians Behailu Abebe and Demere Chernet, anchored the Ethiopian work that has almost 700 congregations. The sponsorship of a school for the deaf was an integral part of the Ethiopian work.

The shift into the third era of Churches of Christ missions in Africa occurred in the 1970s with the advent of mission teams focusing on specific ethnic groups and their tribal languages. Termed contextualizing missions, this approach was modeled by the Sotik, Kenya, mission team. The mission teams that followed sought to establish ethnic churches that would be as fully indigenous to their African heritage as possible. These teams are primarily responsible for mission work in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Benin, Togo, and Botswana.

Flags of African nations at Jabulani, a celebration of 100 years of work by Churches of Christ in Africa in August 2002 in North Richland Hills, Texas. Two years earlier the number of African congregations had reached 13,000, equaling numbers in the United States. By the time of the celebration African Churches of Christ outnumbered U.S. congregations. Courtesy of Center for Restoration Studies

A fourth era of Church of Christ African missions was anticipated at the 2002 Jabulani Africa — Celebrate Africa — international mission workshop. This event heralded a new partnering relationship between the African and American churches.

STANLEY E. GRANBERG

2.3. Christian Churches/Churches of Christ

The story of the missions of the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ in Africa is one of transition from the pioneering work of underfunded individuals primarily in evangelistic and educational initiatives to multidimensional ministries of increasing missiological and methodological sophistication. It is a story of adaptation amid the dramatic changes from the old colonial order to the political culture of the independent (and often fragile) African nation-states. It is also a story of increasing organization, albeit amid resistance to any form of missionary agency that would preempt the primary role of congregations in missionary support and accountability. Two enduring patterns remain dominant: the older direct-support model, and the model of the structurally minimalist missionary society (sending agency) directly accountable to its network of supporting congregations.

Independent mission work in Africa began in earnest in the 1920s, precisely at a time of emerging division between liberal and conservative elements in the Disciples of Christ. The Tabernacle Christian Church in Columbus, Indiana, supported, under the direction of W. H. Book, the mission of a South African native, Thomas Kalane, to his homeland in 1920, a work eventually supervised by O. E. Payne (d. 1925) and C. B. Titus until Titus’s return to the United States in 1930. Payne succeeded in rallying a group of antecedent churches into sympathetic affiliation with the Stone-Campbell Movement, while Titus, a vocal critic of the Foreign Christian Missionary Society and advocate of direct-support missions, streamlined the work in South Africa and encouraged the training of indigenous evangelists. Jesse Kellems, a well-educated preacher from the United States, led an evangelistic team to Johannesburg in 1926, conducting extended rallies, boosting the small Christian church already in place in the city, and drawing attention to his ministry in a sensationalized public debate with a local Zionist.

After World War II, Max Ward Randall inaugurated the South African Church of Christ Mission in Cape Town in the early 1950s, leading to construction of a Ministerial Training School. Such schools for educating indigenous evangelists have continued to be a key element in independent missions in Africa. Randall would help pioneer the Central Africa Mission in Zambia beginning in 1962, a country where considerable missionary effort was focused in medical missions and in developing printed materials for locals (tracts, Bible lessons, and a Bible Correspondence Course).

During the 1950s and 60s, extensive independent missionary initiatives were undertaken in several other African countries as well: Congo, Ghana, Nigeria, and particularly Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). As noted earlier, New Zealand churches had already started mission work in Rhodesia as early as the late 1920s, and the first Americans from Christian Churches/Churches of Christ began arriving in the 1950s, including John Pemberton and physician Dennis Pruett. The Mashoko Bible College began operation in 1958, while Pruett helped spearhead medical missions, including a thriving hospital at Chidamoyo. Schools were also established, and the Zimbabwe Christian College remains a legacy of the work of earlier mission organizers. Archibald C. Watters, a Scotsman and former Disciples missionary in India and professor of missions at the Butler University School of Religion, came to a European congregation in Bulawayo in 1957 under the auspices of the United Christian Missionary Society (UCMS). The church soon cut its ties to the UCMS, enabling Watters and the congregation to work more closely with evangelism to Rhodesian blacks carried on by American and New Zealand missionaries.

From the 1960s on, newer organizations like the Christian Missionary Fellowship (CMF) were working more on a national scale in the United States to rally Christian Churches/Churches of Christ in international missions. CMF inserted a number of mission teams into Ethiopia in the 1960s, a work that was temporarily suspended in 1977 during the period of Marxist rule but revived in 1992 after the downfall of the Marxist government. Here the challenge has been, as in other African countries, to work both in rural and in urban settings to penetrate cultures, Ethiopia being a unique challenge because of the presence of the ancient Ethiopian Orthodox Church, itself resistant to Western missionaries. Medical missions and leadership training for indigenous evangelists have been, and continue to be, significant forms of outreach for CMF in Ethiopia, but also (as of 1978) in Kenya, into which the organization invested considerable resources and personnel in the last quarter of the twentieth century, particularly among the Maasai and Turkana peoples, but now also among the urban poor in Nairobi. CMF also operates missions in Tanzania and the Ivory Coast.

Education of indigenous leaders and preachers has played a significant role in Stone-Campbell missions in Africa. Pictured here are Ethiopian evangelists and church leaders in 1995, participating in a training institute in Kiramu (western Ethiopia) operated by Christian Missionary Fellowship, an organization of the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. Courtesy of Paul M. Blowers, Emmanuel School of Religion

Other significant missionary agencies of the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ working in Africa include the Fellowship of Associates of Medical Evangelism (FAME), which has developed significant medical-clinical work in Ghana and several other African nations, and Pioneer Bible Translators, a group dedicated to producing translations of biblical texts into strategically chosen languages (thus far in Guinea and Tanzania) among the vast array of languages spoken on the African continent. Though not statistically exhaustive, the 2002 Directory of the Ministry of the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ listed 167 different missionary initiatives in 17 African nations. Continuing challenges include the expansion of educational opportunities for indigenous leaders, enhancement of communicative media and inland travel, cooperative endeavor with external missionary and relief organizations, and — missiologically speaking — the contextualization of the Stone-Campbell Movement’s plea within the culture of emerging African churches.

While the three streams of the Stone-Campbell Movement have been largely independent and often critically unaware of each other, in 1985 the first Pan-Africa Conference of missionaries both from the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ and Churches of Christ met to foster mutual awareness and cooperation at Limuru, Kenya. Church of Christ and Christian Churches/Churches of Christ missionaries from Zambia, Zimbabwe, Congo, Nigeria, South Africa, and Malawi participated in this event. This conference has continued on a bi- or tri-annual basis since that time. One recent conference was in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2001. Another cooperative endeavor occurred in Kenya in 1984 when the Churches of Christ and the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ came under the same government registration.

PAUL M. BLOWERS and EDGAR J. ELLISTON

See also American Christian Missionary Society; Benson, George Stuart; Christian Missionary Fellowship; Christian Woman’s Board of Missions; Direct Support Missions; Dye, Royal John, and Eva Nichols Dye; Foreign Christian Missionary Society, The; Kellems, Jesse Randolph; Missions, Missiology; Pioneer Bible Translators; Sherriff, John; Short, William Newton; Todd, Sir Garfield and Lady Grace; United Christian Missionary Society, The

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bonanga (Eliki Bonanga Lofos’ankoy), La penetration et l’oeuvre des missionnaires Disciples du Christ a l’Equateur 1897-1964 (M.A. thesis, Licencié en Théologie, Faculté de Théologie Protestante au Zaire, Kinshasa, 1979) • Louise Browning, They Went to Africa: Biographies of Missionaries of the Disciples of Christ (1952) • David Filbeck, The First Fifty Years: A Brief History of the Direct-Support Missionary Movement (1980) • Stanley E. Granberg, 100 Years of African Missions: Essays in Honor of Wendell Broom (2001) • Lora Banks Harrison, The Church Abroad (2nd ed. 1969) • Dan C. Hoffman, Still Caring about South Africa, The Disciple (June 1986): 8-12 • Gene E. Johnson, Congo Centennial: The Second Fifty Years (1999) • Robert G. Nelson, Congo Crisis and Christian Mission (1961) • Ziden Nutt, History of Missions among Christian Churches/Churches of Christ from 1800-1945. Good News Productions, International (2000) • Doug Priest, Doing Theology with the Maasai (1990) • Doug Priest, ed. Unto the Uttermost: Missions in the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ (1984) • Max Ward Randall, We Would Do It Again: A Saga of the Gospel in South Africa (1958) • Sam Shewmaker, A Great Light Dawning: Profiles of Christian Faith in Africa (2002) • Herbert Smith, Fifty Years in Congo: Disciples of Christ at the Equator (1949) • Survey of Service (1928) • Henry E. Webb, A History of the Independent Mission Movement of the Disciples of Christ (unpublished D.Theol. thesis, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1954) • Paul A. Williams, The Disciples of Christ Congo Mission (DCCM), 1897-1932: A Missionary Community in Colonial Central Africa (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 2000).

African Americans in the Movement

1. Nineteenth Century

1.1 Beginnings to 1861

1.2 1861-1876

1.3 1876-1899

2. Twentieth Century

2.1 Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

2.2 Churches of Christ

2.3. Christian Churches/Churches of Christ

1. Nineteenth Century

1.1. Beginnings to 1861

African Americans were present in the Stone-Campbell Movement soon after its inception. The records of 1820 list African Americans as members of the two earliest congregations at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, and Brush Run, Pennsylvania. In the early 1820s other congregations listing African American members were Pleasant Grove, in Jefferson County, Kentucky; Walnut Spring, near Strasburg, Virginia; and Old Union, in Fayette County, Kentucky.

The earliest African American congregations were the Colored Christian Church, Midway, Kentucky, constituted in 1834; Pickerelltown, in Logan County, Ohio (1838); Lexington, Kentucky (1851); Hancock-Hill Church, Louisville, Kentucky (early 1850s); Free Union Church of Christ, Disciples of Christ, Uniontown/Union Community, North Carolina (1854); Grapevine Christian Church, Nashville, Tennessee (1859); Little Rock Christian Church, in Bourbon County, Kentucky (1861); and other congregations in Washington, Johnson, and Wilkinson Counties in Georgia.

In mixed congregations, offices open to African Americans were those of exhorters (talented persons ordained to preach to African Americans), deacons who served African Americans, and custodians. In separate congregations there also were elders and board members. In free states congregations were usually autonomous; in slave states the mother church supervised the congregation and its officers.

Records of early leaders are sketchy, but these are mentioned: Samuel Buckner and Alexander Campbell at Cane Ridge; Isaac Scott at Raleigh, North Carolina; Abram Williams at Somerset, Kentucky; Thomas Phillips at Lexington; J. D. Smith at Louisville; Henry Newson at Pickerelltown, Ohio; Peter Lowery at Nashville; and Hesiker Hinkel in Washington County, Tennessee.

Founders and early leaders of the Stone-Campbell Movement, notably Thomas and Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone, Walter Scott, and Benjamin Franklin, held classes in religious education for African Americans. The Bible was the textbook, and the head, or rational, approach to Christianity was fostered, in contrast to shouting or fervent approaches.

By 1861 the African American membership in mixed congregations numbered about 5,500, and in separate congregations about 1,500. The mixed congregations were in Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The separate congregations were in Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, and Tennessee.

1.2. 1861-1876

The freedom granted to African Americans as a result of the Civil War allowed them to initiate the founding of many congregations in this era. Some white-controlled mixed congregations encouraged and assisted African Americans to establish their own congregations rather than granting them fully participating membership in the mixed congregations.

As many as thirty congregations were started in Kentucky. Traveling evangelists such as Buckner, Campbell, George Williams, Leroy Reed, R. Elijah Hathaway, Alpheus Merchant, and Alexander Campbell II spread the tenets of the Stone-Campbell Movement. These men largely supported themselves from their own finances, sometimes receiving meals and lodging from hosts, but seldom more than a dollar or two in love offerings. The congregations known to have been started by these leaders grew to considerable strength: Second Christian Church, North Middletown; and churches in Mt. Sterling, Nicholasville, Danville, Millersburg, and Carlisle.

In North Carolina evangelistic work received considerable support from white district and state conventions. Generally, the Stone-Campbell Movement evangelized only east of the Wilmington-Weldon Railroad, due to a gentlemen’s agreement with the O’Kellyites of the Christian Connection. Known African American evangelists and leaders were Alfred (Offie) Pettiford, Joe F. Whitley, R. Esom Green, William Anthony (Bill Ant’ly), Alfred Lovick, Sr., Demus Hargett, Allen Chestnut, and Yancy Porter. Two others who kept detailed records were B. J. Gregory, who received over 3,000 members, and Charles Randolph Davis Whitfield, who baptized 1,857 and gave six sons to the ministry. By 1869 a state convention had been started.

In Georgia at least seven churches were started in this era: Mt. Pisgah and Hopewell at Thomasville; Mt. Olive and Pine Hill in Brooks County; one in Johnson County; one at Mitchell; and the Savannah church in Atlanta. Evangelists and organizers were Joe Corbett; E. L. Whaley, who was financially supported by Mrs. Emily H. Tubman; and George Linder, who was hired by the white Georgia Christian Missionary Convention.

In Tennessee Hesiker Hinkel evangelized in the eastern region. Rufus Conrad evangelized in the central region and perhaps in the western region. Churches begun in this era and named in the records were at Friendship, Trenton, Lynchburg, Pinewood, Fosterville, Little Rock, Capleville, Jamesburg, and Concord. Conrad convened the American Christian Evangelizing and Educational Association in Nashville in May 1867.

In Mississippi, Elder Eleven Woods (Levin Wood) led in the establishment of new churches. He was an effective evangelist and able to enlist significant white support. Woods had come from Warren County. Through his own study of the Bible and through the influence of a white Kentucky businessman, William T. Withers, Woods, who had left the Baptist Church because the Baptists required an experience prior to conversion, welcomed the Movement’s requirement of a straightforward confession of faith. When Woods evangelized in Grand Gulf, the only church, a Baptist church, accused him of heresy for preaching a new gospel. Woods was arrested and tried in court, but the judge ruled in his favor, noting that Woods’ gospel was scripturally genuine. Woods founded a church in Grand Gulf and several others from Vicksburg to Natchez. He used the legal services of Ovid Butler of Indianapolis in property matters. He enlisted and coached other leaders, among them W. A. Scott, Sr., John Turner, W. A. Parker, John Wormington, George Hall, Ned Patterson, Frank Slater, B. F. Trevillion, Miles Smothers, W. R. Sneed, King R. Brown, and John Lomax. The 1873 Mississippi report to the General Christian Missionary Convention listed twenty congregations, nine preachers, four meeting-houses, and 3,000 members.

In Indianapolis, Indiana, two white members of Christian Chapel Church (now Central Christian), Ovid Butler and D. Orr, began a Sunday School for African Americans in the 1840s. In time they expanded it to include the usual church functions and named it the Christian Mission Chapel. In 1867 the Mission was constituted as a church. Rufus Conrad was called as pastor. In 1869 the church (now Light of the World Christian) changed its name to Second Christian (African). Its Sunday School was transformed in cooperation with the city into Public School #23.

In Texas there were several effective evangelists and leaders. Charles C. Haley organized Clark Street Christian Church in Greenville in 1865 and worked from there to found additional churches in Cason, Daingerfield, and Center Point. He rode his mule in all kinds of weather to preach and lead revivals, usually returning home with very little cash payment, but with offerings of vegetables and meat. After the death of his wife, he married Carie, who became the first president of the Texas Christian Missionary Society for African Americans. His work was continued and expanded by four of his sons who entered the ministry.

In Michigan, Thomas W. Cross emigrated to Wheatland in 1869. In 1870 he organized African Americans, whites, and Indians into the Wheatland Church of Christ. Other ordained Stone-Campbell ministers preached at Wheatland until 1876, when Cross was ordained and called to the pastorate.

By 1876 there were African American congregations in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The total membership had increased to approximately 20,000.

Probably no individual more effectively embodied the tenacious spirit of early African American Disciples of Christ than Preston Taylor (1849-1931), former slave turned preacher and organizer of the National Christian Missionary Convention (1917). Courtesy of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society

1.3. 1876-1899

African American churches in the quarter century after Reconstruction concentrated on evangelism, conventions, and education.

In the South evangelists carried the Stone-Campbell message into Maryland, Florida, and West Virginia. State conventions were organized, although the frequency of meetings varied among the states mainly due to economic factors. The conventions sought to work in harmony with the national structures of the Stone-Campbell Movement. At the state level, usually the main business item was education, held to be a key factor both for general education and for training of additional evangelists and pastors. Educational institutions were opened in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Virginia. The National Convention of the Churches of Christ was constituted in 1878, led by Kentuckians H. Malcolm Ayers and Preston Taylor. The Convention met several times throughout the rest of the century, although not always yearly. At the turn of the century the 307 churches in this region claimed 33,145 members, and valued their property at $100,000.

In the Midwest evangelism and conventions were the main concerns. Preston Taylor, hired as National Evangelist by the General Christian Missionary Convention in 1884, worked primarily in this region. Other leaders were A. B. Miller and E. F. Henderson. Illinois was added to the states with churches, and, totaled with Kansas, Ohio, and Missouri, this region counted about 55 churches, 3,000 members, and 35 preachers. The state convention of Missouri met yearly from 1874.

In Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana, evangelistic efforts brought in many new members. In Texas, strong churches were True Vine in Paris, led by G. W. Crawford; Clay Street in Waco, led by M. T. Brown; and Mt. Vernon, led by Warren Mitchell. In Arkansas, Mancil Bostick and Sarah Lue Bostick evangelized and organized women’s missionary societies — Sarah Lue also traveled in a dozen other states on behalf of women’s work. Both Texas and Arkansas consolidated their gains with district and state conventions. In Louisiana, various sources reported large numbers of converts, but no organization was developed, and by the end of the century there were no churches of record. Texas and Arkansas claimed approximately 66 churches with 4,000 members by 1899.

In Eastern North Carolina Disciple Churches or Churches of Christ were formed prolifically. In this region were a variety of Restoration movements, such as O’Kellyites, Free Will Baptists, and Union Baptists. The usual procedure for forming a church was for a preacher to gather adherents, then to apply to a recognized convention for acceptance as a church. The convention was wary of white assistance and so developed churches largely on its own. Some timely assistance was given by John James Harper, later a president of Atlantic Christian College (now Barton College), in matters of finance and ordination. Conventions were of signal importance. Quarterly Conferences, Union Meetings, District Assemblies, and the General Assembly were organized with precise rules of order and exercised disciplinary powers over local churches and preachers. In 1898 the General Assembly began collecting funds for a school for ministerial training. By the end of the century there were an estimated 100 churches with 8,000 members.

The establishment of viable schools and colleges was of great concern to African American churches in this era. Many of their efforts, however, came to naught, inasmuch as monies and personnel were lacking. Plans for schools often never went beyond the talking and hoping stages in the conventions. Several schools were begun, but they lasted for short periods. Some schools of note were Tennessee Manual Labor University (some classes were held as early as 1867) at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, led by Peter Lowery; Louisville Christian Bible School (1873); Southern Christian Institute, Hemingway, Mississippi (1881); Christian Bible College, New Castle, Kentucky (1886), led by J. M. Maimuring and J. August Reed; Louisville Bible School (1892); and Lum Graded School in Alabama (1894), led by H. J. Brayboy. At the end of the century, only Southern Christian Institute (relocated at Edwards, Mississippi), Lum Graded School, and Louisville Bible School were in operation, only the latter offering ministerial training.

Two periodicals are known to have been started: Assembly Standard by J. T. Pettiford in 1892, at Plymouth, North Carolina; and Gospel Plea by Joel Baer Lehman, the white administrator of Southern Christian Institute, in 1896.

Century-end membership in the United States was approximately 56,300, in 535 churches, in twenty-one states and the federal territory.

HAP C. S. LYDA

2. Twentieth Century

2.1. Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Twentieth-century African American Disciples continued the Movement’s interest in education. Many believed that education was a way to achieve the Movement’s evangelistic potential among African Americans. The Christian Woman’s Board of Missions, organized in 1874, shared this vision and sought to further the combined goals of education and evangelism of African Americans. To this end, beginning in 1900 the Board provided administrative oversight of fifteen schools founded mainly by black leaders, primarily to prepare African Americans to become teachers or ministers. Despite good intentions, most schools failed after less than a decade of existence.

Faculty and students of Southern Christian Institute, Edwards, Mississippi, 1897. Courtesy of the Disciples of Christ Historical Society

Southern Christian Institute, Edwards, Mississippi, a mission school headed successively by Joel Baer Lehman (1890-1922) and John Cornelius Long (1925-54), had the longest term of success. In a period when Mississippi spent less than a fifth as much per child on the education of blacks as on whites, SCI educated hundreds of African Americans at the elementary and secondary levels, as well as smaller numbers at the college level. In 1954, when a more adequate system of public education had become available to blacks in Mississippi, the school, which by then had become a junior college, was merged into Toogaloo College.

Jarvis Christian College, founded in 1913 at Hawkins, Texas, was the only black-led and cooperatively initiated mission school that continued into the twenty-first century. It maintained its commitment to provide a high quality Christian-oriented liberal arts college education primarily for African Americans. James Nelson Ervin (1873-1937) was the first president. Sebetha Jenkins, its first woman president, headed the college during the last decade of the twentieth century.

Predominantly African American Disciples of Christ congregations emphasized the primacy of the Bible, baptism by immersion, and the lordship of Jesus Christ. They stressed local autonomy, and sought to practice what they perceived to be the simplicity of the life and order of the New Testament church. They used evangelistic preaching to establish and grow congregations throughout the South. Clergy leadership taught a conservative to moderate theology. Where the Bible speaks, we speak and where the Bible is silent, we are silent was a Campbellite principle used extensively by black Disciples in support of baptism by immersion for the remission of sins and weekly to quarterly observance of Holy Communion.

Black Disciples in Eastern North Carolina maintained a distinctive style of Disciples church life. Elders and bishops were linked in an episcopal form of supervision over congregations in districts and assemblies. Also, the foot-washing rite was believed essential in the observance of Holy Communion. This segment of black Disciples of Christ continued to grow east and west of the Tar River, in the Goldsboro-Raleigh and Washington-Norfolk areas. Calling