Pacificism, the Civil War and the Instrumental Music Controversy

I. The Civil War and Pacificism

A. The plea that “brother should not go to war with brother” was often heard among Christians when the Civil War began. It was a spiritual strength which made up for geographic weakness.

1. Except for Walter Scott, all the early restoration leaders had been pacifists.
2. The general view of preachers prior to the Civil War is illustrated by the plea made by J.W. McGarvey that called upon Christians not to participate in the fighting warning that anyone who engaged in “fratricidal strife” would incur God’s displeasure and that the church should remain a united body.

B. Still, there were thousands of Christians on both sides who enlisted in the armies.

1. Alexander Campbell’s son, Barton W. Stone, Jr., T.B. Larimore, B.F. Hall, Addison and Randolph Clark, and Austin McGary all served in the confederate army.
2. James A. Garfield became a Colonel in the Union army even making recruiting speeches on the steps of church buildings.

C. Benjamin Franklin in the North and Tolbert Fanning in the South, the most popular preachers in the brotherhood in their respective sections of the country, illustrate the tension felt by many when the war came.

1. Each was a pacifist but each felt strong sectional loyalties.
2. Each, though, believed that the Christian had a higher obligation which demanded that he stand aloof from the Civil War.

D. The resolutions of the American Christian Missionary Society (ACMS).

1. The first wartime meeting of the ACMS was held in Cincinnati in October 1861. a. The South was not represented. b. Dr. John P. Robison of Bedford, Ohio introduced a resolution calling on “brethren everywhere to do all in their power to sustain the proper and constitutional authorities of the Union.” c. James A. Garfield, appearing in the uniform of a Union officer, made a short speech favoring the resolution and it was adopted with only one dissenting vote.
2. When news of the resolution of the ACMS reached Southern Christians, Tolbert Fanning, who had pleaded with Southern brethren to remain aloof from the hostilities, was heartbroken and angry. a. Just before the Gospel Advocate was forced to suspend publication for the duration of the war, he informed his readers that the ACMS had adopted resolutions approving “the wholesale murder” of the Southern people. b. He did not see how he could “ever regard preachers who enforce political opinions by the sword, in any other light than monsters in intention, if not in very deed” and he pleaded, “How can Christian men of the South do otherwise?”
3. Two years later in 1863, because of increasing pressure on it from a small but vocal group of militant abolitionists within the brotherhood, the ACMS adopted an even stronger resolution supporting the North. a. It had faced ugly rumors which had circulated through the North that it was disloyal to the Union. b. Thus, in 1863, it denounced these rumors as “false and slanderous” and declared its unqualified support of the North. c. This action alienated many former supporters of the society including J.W. McGarvey, Moses E. Lard, and Benjamin Franklin.

E. Sectional bitterness, emphasized by the society’s pro-Union resolutions, was evident when the war ended.

1. Early in 1866, Tolbert Fanning proposed a “general consultation meeting” of Southern Christians. a. He believed they needed to “counsel together” and assess the condition of the church. b. It was held at Murfreesboro, Tennessee in June 1866 and six Southern states were represented. c. Benjamin Franklin objected to the fact that Northern Christians were excluded saying, “There is no South or North in our gospel.” d. Fanning responded to Franklin by saying that he doubted “the propriety of a hasty religious reconstruction” with Northern brethren since they had been “employing the fist of wickedness” against their brethren in the South.
2. When the Gospel Advocate resumed publication in 1866, David Lipscomb quickly wrote about the wartime resolutions of the ACMS in plain and bitter language concluding, “We felt, we still feel, that the Society committed a great wrong against the Church and cause of God. We have felt, we still feel, that without evidence of a repentance of the wrong, it should not receive the confidence of the Christian brotherhood.”
3. The Civil War shattered the sense of brotherhood between Northern and Southern Christians. a. It alone was not responsible for the ultimate division. b. The South’s narrower understanding and application of the restoration principle was the primary factor for the division.

II. The Instrumental Music Controversy

A. Instrumental music was not used, or its use even discussed, in the early days of the Restoration Movement.

1. The first discussion of the question came in 1851 when a reader asked J.B. Henshall, editor of the Ecclesiastical Reformer, whether instrumental music might not add solemnity to the worship. a. Henshall’s reply was against instrumental music but he later carried articles by others favoring it. b. Seeing these articles, John Rogers wrote Alexander Campbell and asked his opinion about instrumental music. c. Campbell stated that if churches had “no real devotion or spirituality in them,” instrumental music might be “an essential prerequisite to devotion.” He added, “To all spiritually-minded Christians, such aids would be as a cowbell in a concert.”
2. After Campbell’s statement, the question was not even discussed again for another ten years.

B. The first congregation to introduce instrumental music into the worship was the Midway, Kentucky church.

1. Dr. L.L. Pinkerton, one of the earliest “liberals” in the brotherhood, was the preacher at Midway and they began using a small melodeon around 1860.
2. Pinkerton wrote in 1860 that, as far as he knew, he was the only preacher in Kentucky who advocated using instrumental music in the churches and that Midway was the only church using it.
3. The reason for its use in Midway was that the singing was so bad, according to Pinkerton, that it would “scare even the rats from worship.”
4. There was opposition to the instrument at Midway. One of the elders, Adam Hibler, and a slave removed the melodeon through the window of the church building but later returned it.

C. The first extended discussion of the music question was in 1864-1865.

1. W.K. Pendleton, editor of the Millenial Harbinger after Campbell, conceded that instrumental music was not used during the early centuries of the Christian era but to him, though, it was a question of “mere expediency.”
2. The main participants in this discussion were A.S. Hayden and J.W. McGarvey. a. Hayden agreed with Pendleton that it was a matter of expediency. b. McGarvey believed otherwise. He wrote, “In the earlier years of the present Reformation, there was entire unanimity in the rejection of instrumental music from our public worship. It was declared unscriptural, inharmonious with the Christian institution, and a source of corruption.” c. McGarvey always believed the instrument was wrong and refused to be a member of a congregation using it.

D. Moses E. Lard also unyieldingly opposed the instrument.

1. In 1864 he called the organ “a defiant and impious innovation on the simplicity and purity of the ancient worship.”
2. Lard advised the brotherhood on how to deal with the problem. a. Every preacher should resolve never to enter a church containing an organ. b. No Christian who moved from a congregation should ever unite with one using an organ. c. Whenever a church introduced an organ, those who opposed it should abandon the church immediately.
3. Lard said if Christians would follow his advice that, “These organ-grinding churches will in the lapse of time be broken down, or wholly apostatize, and the sooner they are in fragments the better for the cause of Christ.”

E. Even though in 1868, according to Benjamin Franklin, there were only 50 churches out of 10,000 which used the instrument, in the 1870’s it began to be introduced into many more.

1. It was usually done in larger, urban churches indicating, perhaps, that social and economic influences played a part in its growing use.
2. Benjamin Franklin saw the instrument as indicative of bigger changes within the church. He wrote that the organ was “the accompaniment of lifeless, formal and fashionable churches, in cities, where pride, aristocracy and selfishness prevail; where the poor have no sympathy, comfort, or place.”

F. David Lipscomb had little to say about instrumental music in worship in the Gospel Advocate because though it was the focal point of bitter controversy in the North, churches in the South were already opposed to it so it was simply not an issue there, therefore, there was little need to discuss it.

III. Why Did the Restoration Movement Suffer Division? A. Two antagonistic interpretations of the restoration principle.

1. Alexander Campbell had formulated the strict view in the Christian Baptist when he insisted that the New Testament was a blueprint for the church and that any practice not specified in this pattern was forbidden.
2. As the first traces of a denominational mentality began to appear in the movement, many interpreted the restoration principle less rigidly by allowing many practices as “expedients.”
3. This was the basic issue whether the question was the society or the organ.
4. Moses E. Lard had warned in 1869 that expediency might be the rock on which the Restoration Movement went to pieces.

B. Sectionalism and Civil War bitterness was also a factor.

1. The churches in the South had turned against the ACMS in the 1850’s but their opposition, at that time, did not produce any real feeling of alienation between them and Northern Christians.
2. When sectional feelings were added to the doctrinal disagreements, the sense of oneness was shattered.

C. The growing social and economic differences among Christians, particularly in the North.

1. Frontier and rural conservatism was set against the urban demands of a more dignified and progressive religion.
2. A sociologist of religion would describe this as the evolution of a denominational spirit.
3. More liberal thinkers, like Isaac Errett, favored looser interpretation of the restoration principle and came to think of the movement as a denomination among denominations.
4. More conservative thinkers, such as David Lipscomb and Benjamin Franklin, were committed to the past and to a narrower view of the restoration plea having as their firm conviction that their brotherhood was not another denomination but was the one true church restored.