26 CAMPBELL, Thomas and Alexander, Sylvester Hassell The “Christian Connection” (or sect calling themselves “Christians”) is the resultant of three independent secession movements—the North Carolina J. O’Kelley “Republican Methodists” (1793), Vermont Baptists (1800), and Kentucky and Tennessee Presbyterians (1801). They profess to reject all creeds but the Bible; and they are Anti-Trinitarian and Arminian, and congregational in church polity , and practice immersion and open communion. Thomas Campbell (1763-1854), an ordained minister in the “Seceder Church of Scotland,” left Ireland in 1807, and came to Western Pennsylvania; his son, Alexander Campbell ( 1788-1866), a licentiate minister in the same church, followed his father in 1809. The theological views of the Campbell’s became “altered and liberalized, and were regarded by many as both novel and objectionable; hence they and the few who at first sided with them formed an isolated congregation, called The Christian Association, at Brush Run, Washington County PA, in 1811.”
Their special plea was the restoration of original apostolic Christianity, and the union of all Christians, with the Bible as the only rule of faith and practice. Becoming satisfied that immersion was the only scriptural baptism, both father and son, and the majority of their members, were immersed in 1812, by Elder Loos, a Baptist minister. Alexander was thenceforth the leader of the movement. In 1813, the Brush Run Church joined the Redstone Baptist Association, and in 1823 the Mahoning Baptist Association. In 1827, the Baptist Churches withdrew from the followers of Alexander Campbell, and the latter were then constituted into a separate body that have called themselves Disciples of Christ, but have been generally known as Campbellites, an appellation which they indignantly repudiate at the same time that they implicitly reverence Mr. Campbell’s authority.
They are extreme Arminians, and almost Pelagians, and many of them avowed Universalists; they minimize the work of the Holy Spirit in the conversion of the sinner to the very lowest degree, and maximize the printed and preached word to the very highest degree, making immersion the last and an essential part of regeneration or the new birth, without which ordinance there is no pardon or salvation, though admitting that baptism has no abstract efficacy without previous faith in Christ and repentance toward God, and yet declaring that a person may believe the gospel, be changed in heart, and quickened by the spirit, and still not be regenerate and saved without immersion.
I have been carefully reading the most approved writings of the Disciples for many years; and, while glad to discover some very rare indications of spiritual-mindedness, I have been heartily pained to see, in general, their thorough and pugnacious anti-spirituality, naturalism and rationalism. Many of their views are inconsistent with each other, with Christian experience, which they ridicule, and with the Bible, which they profess to revere. Says Mr .Campbell, in the Preface to his Christian System, pg. 6, “Judging others as we once judged ourselves, there are not a few who are advocating the Bible alone, and preaching their own opinions.” This seems to me to be an exact account of himself and his followers. They claim [in 1885] 600,000 communicants in the United States, mostly in the West and Southwest, and a few in other countries.