Published as "Baptism, Faith and Christian Experience: Baptists and Disciples Part Company," in Evangelicalism and the Stone-Campbell Movement, edited by William Baker (Downer’s Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 2002).

Faith, Christian Experience and Baptism: Baptists and Disciples Part Company

John Mark Hicks

HistoricalIntroduction

Brush Run church. On June 12, 1812, Alexander and Thomas Campbell, and five others were baptized in Buffalo Creek near the Brush Run church building near Bethany, VA. The next day thirteen others were immersed. More were immersed in subsequent days, but other members were uncomfortable with these events, and decided to remove themselves at this point from the reform movement taking place. When the Campbells, two of the principal founders of the Stone-Campbell Movement,and the BrushRunChurch became practitioners of believer’s immersion, it created a rift in the fledgling movement which had begun in 1809with the publication of the Declaration and Address.[1]

Immersion, however, was not the only indication that Alexander Campbell had experienced a sort of theological rebirth. Even though as late as April 7, 1811, Campbell had described “faith” as “effect of Almighty power and regenerating grace,”[2] in a letter to his father dated March 28, 1812, he rejects any idea that regeneration proceeds faith or that faith is the effect of regeneration. His definition of faith had shifted from an experientially based sense of assurance to a full and firm persuasion based on the testimony of Scripture that Jesus is the Christ.[3]

In 1812 Campbell came to reject the popular understanding of saving faith. It is no coincidence that Campbell was immersed that same year. Since he had already rejected the “conversion narrative” approach to church membership and baptism, Campbell asked Matthias Luce, a local Regular Baptistminister, to immerse him, and Luce accommodated him on June 12, 1812. Campbell, however, stipulated with Elder Luce

that the ceremony should be performed precisely according to the pattern given in the New Testament, and that, as there was no account of any of the first converts being called upon to give what is called a “religious experience,” this modern custom should be omitted, and that the candidates should be admitted on the simple confession that “Jesus is the Son of God”...There were not, therefore, on this occasion, any of the usual forms of receiving persons into the Church upon a detailed account of religious feelings and impressions...All were, therefore, admitted to immersion upon making the simple confession of Christ required of converts in the apostolic times. [4]

Campbell’s immersion reflected a significant theological shift. It was not simply that Campbell was now a baptist rather than a paedobaptist, but also that he had rejected the conversion narrative theology of his early training. He no longer sought a subjective religious experience to confirm his regeneration and assure him of the remission of his sins. On the contrary, he now regarded immersion as that objective moment which assured him of God’s forgiveness. Campbell’s theological shift from paedobaptist to Baptist was more than a conversation about whether to baptize infants, it was also a statement about the nature of faith and the role of Christian experience.

Redstone association. When the Campbells were immersed in 1812, they had no intention of joining the Baptists.[5] In 1848, as he reflected on his history, Campbell remembered that he had “no idea of uniting with the Baptists more than with the Moravians or the mere Independents.”[6]Campbell did not consider himself a Baptist simply because he was immersed. Nevertheless, the transformation of the Brush Run church from paedobaptism to believer’s immersion was a cause célèbre in that region of the frontier.

Matthew Luce was a member of the Redstone Baptist Association in western Pennsylvania. Apparently through his influence and in the light of the prominence of the Campbells, Alexander was invited as one of three to speak at the Association’s Sunday worship on September 6, 1812. His lesson, the minutes note, was “of very uncommon length.”[7]Campbell then began to speak for Baptist congregations “for sixty miles around” and “they all pressed [him] to join their Redstone Association.”[8]

While neither Campbell nor Brush Run are mentioned in the minutes of the Association in 1813 or 1814, in 1815 the BrushRunChurch presented itself for membership into the Redstone Baptist Association and was accepted. The Minutes of 1815 read succinctly: “Likewise a letter was received, making a similar request [for union to this Association], from a church at Brush Run; —which was also granted.”[9] The next year the Brush Run church is listed as a member of the Association having baptized four, dismissed ten and comprising a total membership of twenty-six. Alexander Campbell delivered his controversial“Sermon on the Law” at this 1816 meeting,[10] and Thomas Campbell penned the “circular letter” on the doctrine of the trinity that accompanied the minutes.[11] It appears, then, that despite Campbell’s original intention to remain aloof of Baptist associations,[12] he nevertheless joined one.

However, his relationship with the Redstone Association was immediately strained by his “Sermon on the Law.” In fact, some brought charges against Campbell and the Brush Run church in the 1817 Association meeting (e.g., their undestanding of the relationship of Old and New Testaments). Yet, he not only functioned as the clerk of the 1817 Association meeting, but also authored the circular letter of the Redstone minutes for 1817. Though Campbell was questioned at the association meeting, the attendees were “fully satisfied” with his explanations and appointed him to preach the introductory sermon at the 1818 meeting.[13] The names of Thomas and Alexander Campbell appear often in the minutes from 1819-1823.

Mahoning association. Over time, however, the tensions in the Redstone Association grew until it became necessary for Campbell to remove himself from the Brush Run church in order for him to save it and himself from embarrassment. In 1846, Campbell referred to his time with the Redstone Association as a “seven year’s war.”[14] At the same time the Mahoning Baptist Association of the Western Reserve, formed in 1820, invited Campbell to address their 1822 meeting.[15] He was well received and in the light of their evident theological harmony, Campbell decided to leave the Redstone Association and join the Mahoning.

The occasion of this decision was a move within the Redstone Association to oust Campbell and the Brush Run church at the September 1823 meeting. This would have been particularly embarrassing to Campbell because he intended to debate the Presbyterian MacCalla that fall. The debate assumed that both parties were representatives in good standing with their denominations.[16] As a consequence, Alexander Campbell along with about thirty other members received permission from the Brush Run church to plant a church in Wellsburg and Thomas Campbell was appointed an elder in the Brush Run church. The Wellsburg church then joined the Mahoning Baptist Association in 1824.

Campbell had “checkmated his opponents in the [Redstone] Association,” and while he was present at the Redstone meeting of 1823, he was not a messenger of the Brush Run church because he was no longer a member there. [17] The Brush Run church was received that year—and it was noted that they had dismissed thirty-two members during the past year. Alexander and Thomas Campbell, however, both preached that Sunday of the meeting, and Alexander Campbell was still chosen—among others—to conduct some “circular” meetings for the Redstone Association.[18]

During this time, while not in total agreement with all Baptist ideologies—not surprising since the Baptists themselves were not in total agreement with each other—Campbell saw himself as united with the Baptist denomination. As late as 1826 Campbell declared:

I and the church with which I am connected are in “full communion” with the Mahoning Baptist Association, Ohio; and, through them, with the whole Baptist society in the United States; and I do intend to continue in connexion with this people so long as they will permit me to say what I believe, to teach what I am assured of, and to censure what is amiss in their views and practices. I have no idea of adding to the catalogue of new sects.[19]

Nevertheless, in that same year (1826), the Redstone Baptist Association refused to receive the letter of the Brush Run church at their annual meeting.[20] In 1824 they had resolved “that this Association have no fellowship with the Brush Run church.” Since 1824 the Brush Run church was not a received member of the association,[21] and in 1825 the Brush Run church does not appear on the list of received churches in the association minutes. The 1826 minutes read that “a memorial from several persons at Brush Run, was presented for consideration which was postponed until next meeting of the Association.”[22] The Redstone Association was clear that it did not wish to have any fellowship with the Campbells and the Brush Run church.

Separation from the Baptists. As a result of the action of the Redstone Baptist Association, we may date the initial separation of the Baptists from the self-stylled Reformers of the Stone-Campbell Movementin 1826, perhaps even 1824. But this was an action against a particular church and did not reflect a widespread disassociation of the Baptists from the Reformers.

It was the BeaverBaptist Associationof Pennsylvania that initiated the first formal separation between Baptists and Reformers when they excluded both Campbell and the Mahoning Baptist Association from their fellowship because “the Mahoning Association disbelieve and deny many of the doctrines of Holy Scripture.”[23] Four churches left the Mahoning Association and joined the Beaver Association because it was filled with “damnable heresy.”[24] They listed eight errors:

  1. They, the Reformers, maintain that there is no promise of salvation without baptism.
  1. That baptism should be administered to all who say they believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, without examination on any other point.
  1. That there is no direct operation of the Holy Spirit on the mind prior to baptism.
  1. That baptism procures the remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
  1. That the Scriptures are the only evidence of interest in Christ.
  1. That obedience places it in God’s power to elect to salvation.
  1. That no creed is necessary for the church but the Scriptures as they stand.
  1. That all baptized persons have the right to administer the ordinance of baptism.

As Gates notes, “these resolutions against the Reformers were copied widely in Baptist papers with commendation.” [25] Tate’s Creek Baptist Association added four more charges:

  1. That there is no special call to the ministry.
  1. That the law given by God to Moses is abolished.
  1. That experimental religion is enthusiasm. And,
  1. That there is no mystery in the Scriptures. [26]

The publication of the Beaver anathemas encouraged otherBaptist Associations to imitate the Beaver Association. In 1830, the Kentucky Associations of Franklin, North District, Tate’s Creek, Boone’s Creek, Elkhorn, and Bracken reproduced the anathemas and excluded the Reformers from their fellowship. Between 1829-1831, Baptists in Kentucky lost 9,580 members to the Reformers[27] and half their churches.[28]

In that same year, the Redstone Association was asked to supply some details concerning the exclusion of the Brush Run church from their fellowship. The minutes of 1830 date this exclusion as occurring in 1824 though those minutes note the “indefinite” character of that exclusion. Yet, it was unanimously resolved at the 1830 meeting:

we now farther state, that their exclusion was on account of being erroneous doctrine [sic], maintaining, namely, the essential derivation and inferiority of the true and proper Deity of Christ and the Spirit; that faith in Christ is only a belief of historical facts, recorded in the Scriptures, rejecting and deriding what is commonly called christianexperience; that there is no operation of the Spirit on hearts of men, since the days of Pentecost, &c.” [29]

While baptism was not an explicit issue in 1824, the nature of faith, Christian experience and the work of the Holy Spirit were intimately connected in Campbell’s theology, and his views were well publicized in the first editions of the Christian Baptist (begun in 1823). The theological reasons for the separation between Baptist Associations and the Reformers in 1830 may be reduced to a matrix of issues involving the nature of saving faith, the role of Christian experience and the function of baptism. This is the essence of the Redstone exclusion and the Beaver anathemas. Yet, the distinction between the Reformers and the Regular Baptistson this matrix was present from the time of Campbell’s immersion in 1812, and it led to their eventual separation in 1830. That same year the Mahoning Baptist Association dissolved itself despite Campbell’s objections so that Campbell now had no formal relationship with any Baptist society.

Campbell and the Virginia Baptists

The relationship between Alexander Campbell and the Virginia Baptists provides an illustration of the theological forces that produced their separation. In the fall of 1825, Campbell visited eastern Virginia and met two of Virginia’s most distinguished Baptist ministers: Robert B. Semple (1769-1831), the eminent historian of Virginia Baptists and President of Columbia College in Washington, D.C., and Andrew Broaddus (1770-1848), a prominent Virginia Baptist minister. While with them Campbell preached at several Baptist churches, gained a few subscriptions to the Christian Baptist and opened a “channel of communication between” himself and these prominent Baptist ministers. While skeptical, Semple and Broaddus—as older ministers—hoped that “by paternal treatment, and a free, full and candid interchange of views, Mr. Campbell might be brought to harmonize cordially with the Baptist denomination—a consummation which they fervently desired.”[30] Nevetheless, Semple and Broaddus both came to oppose him, and Broaddus moderated the Dover Association (Virginia) meeting which excluded the Reformers from their fellowship in 1832. What prompted this transition from openness and paternalistic forbearance to excommunication? I think the answer to this question may help us to understand the fundamental theological causes for the separation of Baptists from the Reformers.[31]

Campbell’s early essays on Christian experience. Besides his attacks on clericalism, nothing came under more severe criticism in the first volume of the Christian Baptist than the popular notion of “experimental religion” or “Christian experience.” In addition to initiating a nine essay series on the work of the Holy Spirit,[32]Campbell directly attacked “experimental religion.” In one of his first “addresses” to the readers of the Christian Baptist he responds to the charge that he denies “experimental religion.”[33] He came to discover, as he says later, “experimental religion” is “the very soul of the popular system.”[34] Campbell, through the mouth of a friend, defined the popular notion of “experimental religion” as denoting: “amongst most of the populars, a certain mental experience to becoming a christian, an exercise of mind, a process through which a person must pass before he can esteem himself a true christian, and until we know from his recital of it that he has been the subject of it, we cannot esteem him a christian.”[35]

Experimental religion, then, refers to that experience of the sinner which assures him that he is regenerate and produces faith in him, and it is the testimony of this experience which assures others of his regenerate status. Thus, regeneration produces faith, and the testimony of that regenerate experience is the basis for one’s acceptance into the Christian community. Campbell believed that this “popular belief of a regeneration previous to faith...is replete with mischief” because it entails that “a man must become a desponding, trembling infidel, before he can become a believer.”[36]

Popular preachers, Campbell observed, utilize a kind of “descriptive preaching” which models the kind of testimony that will assure others of their regeneration. It is the kind of preaching where the preacher “tells the people his own story; that is, the history of his own regeneration.” This often included stories about “visions and revelations,” or voices heard in the dark night of despair. In response, Campbell pled for a return to the “written word” alone, “to open your Bibles and to hearken to the voice of God, which is the voice of reason. God now speaks to us only by his word.” [37]

While Campbell was criticized, among other things, for denying the necessity of the spiritual birth, the critical issue regarding “experimental religion” was the source and basis of assurance. He was concerned that assurance should be rooted in the reading, examination and practice of the written word of God.[38] Assurance, or good feelings, must arise from the conviction that the grace of God has appeared to all, and when the gospel is believed, that grace is received. The gospel is “glad tidings” because it proclaims the grace of God that Jesus is the Christ and to all who believe and submit to his Lordship.[39] Consequently, the “apostles did not command men to be baptized into their own experience, but into the faith then delivered to the saints.”[40]