 HONESTY IN ASSESSING OUR SPIRITUAL ANCESTRY
Dear Bro. Waddey:
I find it dishonest to talk about Barton Stone and Alexander Campbell, and their movement. They were for the same thing many of your writings speak against. They were change agents. According to my reading of their works, they believed in unity in diversity. They believed there are Christians in all denominations. I have not found where these teachings changed to the one true church message, and I do not understand how it did. Though I do understand that Man has a need to tell everyone else how to believe, and that they are lost unless they believe like I do. When will we be honest about what the Bible says? Since we are Men, probably never. SH Dear Bro. S.H. Thanks for taking time to share your opinions. From time to time we must remind ourselves that if we truly are seeking to be Christians, as were the first disciples of our Lord, then we do not look to Alexander Campbell and Barton Stone to determine what we are to believe about anything. They were preachers of the church just as I am and I presume you are. They were weak, fallible men, such as we are. Further more, they were struggling to escape the toils and confusion of denominationalism where they had received their education and spent their early years. They did not in one giant leap free themselves from all the misconceptions and misunderstandings they had absorbed in that past environment. Little by little, step by step they made their way towards the true light of undenominational Christianity. Some of the errors of the past they never shook off, others took years. The next generation had the benefit of what that first generation had learned; their books and journals preserved the lessons they had learned. Here we are now a good six or seven generations down the line. Thousands of wise and good men have poured over God’s Word, wrestled with the various ideas that have clamored for man’s attention and gradually weeded out the false from the true. We do not have to struggle with the mysteries of Calvinism as did they....we have excellent resources that show the folly of that system. We do not have to spend months researching whether we should have our babies baptized as did Campbell. That has been thoroughly illuminated. We do not have to experience the excesses of the mourner's bench and the emotionalism of revivalism as did Stone and his early followers. We now understand that such is not part of the Christian Way. I don’t know how much time you have spent reading the biographies and literary work of our past preachers. I have read all of those early biographies and have most of their published materials in my library and have spent much time in them. Too many hear or read a statement from a preacher or professor who is set on revising our past history in order to justify his present beliefs and practices and conclude therefore that that is the way it was in the early days. One would do well to take heed how he hears if he really wants to know the truth of a matter. I do not try to justify the beliefs and practices of Bro. Campbell or Stone that I find contrary to my understanding of the New Testament. I do not feel obligated to believe and practice Christianity according to their templet. I look to Christ and his word. Just like you and me, they failed to perceive some points of the Way. We can only trust that God will extend his mercy to them....just as we desperately need it. I do see a vast difference in the mistakes that those godly men might have made as they struggled to escape the errors that enmeshed them....and the errors of men today who have a thousand-fold advantage over them and yet are walking away from the truth of the gospel, now clearly understood and rushing back to embrace the denominational teachings and practices of their neighbors. The first is an honest failure, the latter is a willful rejection of truths some folks find unpleasant and unacceptable.
John Waddey | 
