An American Protestant group, also called the Christian Church, which, in the statistics of 1970, gives the following figures: 5,862 local churches for worship; 1,592,609 members; 7,428 ordained ministers; and 5,862 Sunday schools, with a total attendance of 798,054 pupils. Headquarters: Indianapolis. The data concerning the structures of this denomination are rather complicated. The original group gave itself the name of disciples and disciples of Christ. Its founder, Thomas Campbell, son of an Irish Catholic who had renounced his faith, first became an Anglican and then a Presbyterian.
On his arrival in the United States in 1807, he soon found himself involved in difficulties with his coreligionists when he declared that there is in the world only one Church, “to which belong all those who profess faith and obedience to Christ in everything that is in conformity with the Scriptures,” while neither ecclesiastical structures nor theological doctrines have anything to do with the essence of what is Christian. In 1810, together with his son Alexander, he founded in Pennsylvania a Christian Association which, by professing the necessity of Baptism by immersion (father and son were baptized in that way), broke its ties with Presbyterianism (see) and joined the Baptists. The latter, however, on noting the theological radicalism of the newcomers, decided to expel them from their midst (see BAPTISTS, 9).
Then, together with other groups, they resolved to call themselves simply Christians. The union of Christians and disciples never became total. Nevertheless, it seems that they understood one another well enough to get along, and in 1849 Alexander Campbell was elected first president of the new organization. At that same time they began sending missionaries overseas. By the end of the century their membership was approaching one million, when a series of doctrinal and administrative controversies (manner of baptizing, open or closed communion, organization of their missionary works, etc.) separated them again. The conservative elements, which were still the majority, formed their own Christian Church, leaving the disciples with only 200,000 followers. At present the wound does not seem completely healed. The Christians continue to belong to the conservative group; they profess a conservative biblicism; they oppose “human innovations”; they do not want musical instruments in their liturgy; they are abstinent and restrained in their personal conduct; and they display great missionary zeal, together with a fanatical anti-Romanism, as they have shown in Italy and in Colombia. By contrast, many of the disciples tend toward extreme liberalism (for example, their influential weekly organ, The Christian Century) and toward a rationalism that not infrequently borders on Unitarianism; they are pacifists and staunch defenders of the separation between Church and State. They have also worked actively in the Life and Work section of the World Council of Churches (see ECUMENISM II, 2).
There are authors who, because of this flexibility in theological matters, consider the disciples to be “the most successful native sect in the United States.” From the theological and ecclesial point of view, both groups, despite the opposite directions they maintain, preserve not a few points of agreement, precisely because they refuse to accept any confessional and structural bonds other than those of Sacred Scripture.
The Christians believe that revelation can come to us through the pages of the Bible, through events in the life of the Church, or through the appearance of providential men who prophetically communicate God’s will to us. By contrast, the disciples prefer not to be bound by any scriptural canon and to let men of science go on discovering the secrets of the Sacred Books.
The points of agreement and disagreement are also numerous in the sacramental field. They admit only two sacraments, interpreted in the spiritualist sense of radical Protestantism. Baptism neither forgives sins nor produces true effects independently of the active cooperation of the baptized person, but is “the effort to honor Christ with a pure life.” Likewise the Eucharist is reduced to “a simple and moving memorial.”
Other Protestants have also accused them of denying, or at least professing, very doubtful views in matters of original sin, Trinitarian dogma and soteriology, and of being little explicit regarding justification by faith alone. Administratively both groups are congregationalists (see), with independence of the local communities and without distinction between clergy and laity, although lately they confer on their ministers a kind of ordination by the laying on of hands of the elders. Juridically, disciples and Christians form distinct denominations, although The Christian Century has lately absorbed its old rival, Christian Evangelist.
BIBL.: K. ALGERMISSEN, Iglesia católica y confesiones cristianas, Madrid 1964, 1119 ff.; W. G. GARRISON, Religion Follows the Frontier. A History of the Disciples of Christ, New York 1931; B. A. ABBOTT, The Disciples. An Interpretation, St. Louis, 1926; J. HARDON, The Protestant Churches of America, Westminster 1956; F. MAYER, The Religious Bodies of America, St. Louis 1958.
Author: Prudencio Damboriena
Source: Gran Enciclopedia Rialp.
