By Victor Knowles
The Declaration and Address of this Christian Association was written by Thomas Campbell and approved for publication on September 7, 1809.
The document consisted of a brief “declaration” listing nine objectives of the Christian Association and a lengthy “address” that included 13 bold propositions for Christian unity. The “grand design” of Thomas Campbell and the Christian Association was to “reconcile and unite men to God and to each other, in truth and love, to the glory of God.” Religious division was seen as the great barrier to this grand design. Campbell described these “bitter jarrings and janglings” as “sad,” “accursed,” “woeful,” and “hapless.” Proposition 12 of the Declaration and Address calls division among Christians “a horrid evil, fraught with many evils.” Division, declared Campbell, is anti-Christian, anti-scriptural, and anti-natural.
Christian unity is the clarion call of the Declaration and Address. It called for “a permanent Scriptural unity among the Churches, upon the solid basis of universally acknowledged and self-evident truths”—a “visible unity in truth and holiness, in faith and love.” At the heart of the irenic document is Proposition 1: “That the Church of Christ upon earth is essentially, intentionally, and constitutionally one; consisting of all those in every place that profess their faith in Christ and obedience to Him in all things according to the scriptures, and that manifest the same by their tempers and conduct, and none else; as none else can be truly and properly called Christians.”
The Bible and the Bible alone would be the “Divine Standard.” The objective would be “the restoration of a Christian and brotherly intercourse with one another”—“an entire union of all the Churches in faith and practice, according to the word of God.” This effort at reform would be a Christ-centered, Bible-based movement. “Christ alone being the head, the center; his word the rule; an explicit belief of, and manifest conformity to it in all things, the terms.” Furthermore, “nothing ought to be inculcated upon Christians as articles of faith; nor required of them as terms of communion, but what is expressly taught and enjoined upon them in the word of God.”
Fervent prayer and earnest efforts were expected of all who sought to answer Jesus’ prayer for unity in John 17. “Are we not all praying for that happy event, when there shall be but one fold, as there is but one Chief Shepherd? What! Shall we pray for a thing and not strive to obtain it! not use the necessary means to have it accomplished!” “Duty then is ours; but events belong to God.” Perhaps the most poignant words of the Declaration and Address are Campbell’s plea to ministers and members alike. “O! that ministers and people would but consider that there are no divisions in the grave, nor in that world which lies beyond it! there our divisions must come to an end! we must all unite there! Would to God that we could find it in our hearts to put an end to our short-lived divisions here; that so we might leave a blessing behind us; even a happy and united Church!”
Those words still ring in our ears for 2009 marks the 200th anniversary of Thomas Campbell’s Declaration and Address. This new call for Christian reformation and unity on the occasion of this special anniversary should be welcomed by all in what is sometimes called the Stone-Campbell movement. It gives us an opportunity to revisit, reexamine, and restudy the deep longing that drove Thomas Campbell to write such a remarkable document. The simple principles leading to Christian unity espoused by Thomas Campbell in 1809 are still relevant, perhaps even more so, in 2009, to those who are “promoting a pure, evangelical reformation.”
(To read more about the Declaration and Address, see One Church, the special collection of bicentennial essays from Leafwood Press. Available for purchase from Disciples of Christ Historical Society.)