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 Brethren
today who espouse collective action of churches (through
sponsoring church or other arrangements) may not intentionally
promote national denominational organization. But such “co-operation”
was that which kept alive earlier attempts to so organize “the
church” (universal). Note the following from Disciples of
Western Reserve by digressive A.S. Hayden.
“All
our past history proclaims the necessity of a combination of
effort to advance the gospel. This cause originated in
conventional effort. After three years these associational plans
were laid aside, and we subsided, on this point, into a state of
apostasy. During the last twenty years we have been slowly
recovering and steadily returning to our first works.” (P.
461)
The
“three years” reference is to the period just prior to the
dissolving of the Mahoning Baptist Association, where churches
were combining funds and sending forth evangelists on a “co-operative”
basis. The 20 yrs. (from that dissolution, to the organization
of the American Christian Missionary Society, 1849) Hayden
regards as a time of “apostasy.” The “iconoclast was among
us” he says elsewhere. Then, what pulled the digressive desire
for organization of churches through this terrible (to them)
time?
From
page 462: “The twenty years succeeding is the period of our
anarchy. During this time we had no concert) regular or
irregular, stated or incidental, if we except some ineffectual
efforts to bring a better order into existence. The great
saving power
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was the yearly meeting system.
(Emphasis mine, rt) This, serving as a bond of union, was a
powerful support to the cause. These meetings were the
conservation of the churches. By diffusing a general, personal
acquaintance, they cultivated a strong tie of brotherhood. Yet
with all their benefits, which were neither few nor weak, they
were not organic. They sent out no missionaries; they called for
no reports; they performed no action for the churches, nor for
the systematic diffusion of the gospel During these years many
attempts were made to form co-operations. They were failures.
The cry of priest-craft, or sectarianism, was along sufficient
to blast the effort for order.” (“organization,” rft)
Hayden
regards a school as that which put the “brotherhood”
(of churches) concept into operation — not because it was an
educational institution, but because it was regarded as “our”
school, a “churchhood” project.
“The
first fact, or action, which gathered to it a general
confidence, was the establishment of the Eclectic Institute. It
opened its halls for students in November, 1850... The chief
glory of that institution has not been told: which was, that it
created a most desirable and useful general confidence among us.
We united. We joined hands around one good enterprise. The
purpose succeeded, and vindicated the most useful sentiment of
union in action... This confidence is transferring itself to our
missionary work. Around this society let it rally till it shall
become a permanent power in the land.”
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