Is the branch of the Restoration Movement called the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) experiencing decline? Are the congregations and regions of this body generally shrinking in numbers and participation?
These aren’t even questions, really. To the degree anyone outside of the Disciples of Christ (or “the Disciples” as I’ll shorthand us from here on) knows we exist, this situation is well known. There are fewer of us than there were formerly.
But this essay:
https://christianstandard.com/2024/03/understanding-the-disciples-decline/
It’s frustrating. Let me explain why. I do not know the author, but I know — or knew — the platform. As to the author, blessings on the vocation and ministry of Brother Hansee, and I wish him well. We share a state here in Ohio, and certain distinctives of Christian faith and practice we can both trace back to Barton Stone and the Campbells.
“Christian Standard” is a publication which began in 1866. In that year, as Alexander Campbell left his earthly pulpit, his "Millennial Harbinger” which had shaped a frontier effort for Christian unity since 1830 was starting to lose its central role in holding together something that was beginning to be called the “Restoration Movement.” One of the parties to putting the "Standard" together was a state legislator and lawyer and former preacher from Northeast Ohio named James A. Garfield. The early “Standard” was an institutionally centrist periodical, supporting shared missions on the state and regional level, and cooperative missions overseas.
However, from the early 1900s, it became a conservative voice, especially after the a capella Churches of Christ formally broke away in 1906 under the guidance of figures like David Lipscomb from the broader Disciples of Christ; the "Standard" became a major opposition voice around 1920 to the cooperative or “UCMS” supporting group of church leaders, and it was the chief platform for the core of the so-called independent Christian Churches, helping lead the Memphis walkout in 1926 and loudly condemning Restructure through 1968. Basically a Disciples-affiliated congregation since 1968 would tend to NOT have copies of the "Standard" in the vestibule, but it wasn't entirely unusual, especially in Ohio & Indiana & Kentucky (it has been based in Cincinnati for most of its history).
So the "Standard" is and has long been inimical to the Disciples of Christ as an Indianapolis based church body, as well as in opposition to the modern regions which in 1968 replaced the old “state societies.” The fact that this particular article is in my reading tendentious, cherry-picking, and asserting more than making any coherent arguments against the Disciples of Christ is, historically, par for the course (see the 1953 volume by Stephen J. Corey of the UCMS entitled "Fifty Years of Attack and Controversy” or the independents’ 1955 retort “Fifty Years of Digression and Disturbance”).
But the essay in question offers up a simplistic perspective that continues to bubble up around and within our Disciples congregations, and frankly the piece irritates me most because in the end it makes a few points worth some serious consideration, which I don’t think are supported by the author. At the very least it asks a few questions of the Disciples as a Christian tradition that I think warrant our asking, and should receive better answers than you'll get here.
This is also relevant because you are starting to hear the same sorts of over-simplistic rhetoric about the United Methodist Church, whose long-delayed General Conference is coming April 23 through May 3 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Add in the coming Southern Baptist Convention meeting in early June in Indianapolis, and you have some major debates going on around what it means to grow and thrive as a church body, especially around the labels conservative or orthodox versus liberal or progressive.
Students of my courses on Disciples history and polity over the last twenty-five years will tell you I rarely miss a chance to point out that, at least in the Midwest, when the Methodists catch cold, we Disciples can end up with pneumonia. Our congregations and membership do not live in a vacuum. This is why it’s incumbent upon church leaders, lay or clerical, to know a bit about what’s going on with neighboring church groups. All the more we should keep track of what our separated fellow “Restoration Movement” friends are saying about us, especially as it tangles up in those other debates erupting in some communities just across the street.
To begin at the beginning, in the very first paragraph, he says “in 1968, one stream of the movement, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), began functioning structurally as a denomination. Since that time, the Disciples have experienced significant decline. In addition to moving to a full denominational structure, several other factors have contributed to that decline…”
Implied here is the one-to-one correlation of “functioning… as a denomination” to decline. We don’t hear how or why, just the assertion — and trust me, I’ve heard it many times — that when the Disciples started to look like a denomination, we began to decline.
This gets echoed in the second paragraph with how the Disciples "peaked in 1958 at just under 2 million [and] dropped below 1 million in 1993 and has been in steady decline since…”
Well, that’s not surprising, because as was quite accurately stated previously, in 1968 the Disciples chose to adopt the governance model often called “Restructure” or in the essay’s words began in that year “functioning structurally as a denomination.” To which the independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ responded by formally departing. I say formally because the divisions began to be visible in 1926, and after 1968 in a region like Ohio, the number of congregations dropped by nearly half . . . and the income from outreach offerings to support the region dropped not at all.
So Restructure may have precipitated departures, but the division was already there. The 2 million in 1958 was in many ways an inaccurate number, and the decline — which I don’t dispute, by the way — to 1993 isn’t as simple as described.
Does it matter? Sure, because if we’re going to get a grip on why we’re losing membership and participation and support, we need to be comparing apples to apples and not apples to rutabagas. We did divide into two groups, both of which had a sad tendency to say of the other that they were the ones who broke faith with our history and traditions. I want to come back to that.
What got me interested in this essay, which might well have been longer and more insightful in an earlier form (I have no way of knowing), was the next section where the author engages with Robert Cornwall, whom I will call Bob based on many years of friendly interaction. He notes how Bob has described our challenges as Disciples with structural rigidity in recent decades, and how in our polity the hazard today can be summed up with “Change is hard, stagnation is fatal.”
But the very next section of the essay starts by asserting “another factor contributing to the decline of the Disciples is their priority on unity.” The Good Lord knows I have heard that statement for my entire adult life, but it was an unanswered prayer here that I might hear some explanation of how it is so. Our priority on unity contributes to decline. It’s stated, this is asserted, but I’m still not seeing it explained.
I could jump in and try to make the connection for him, which the author may think is sufficiently self-evident as to not need saying: the Disciples have pursued unity by expanding the circle of inclusion, which drives out those who affirm a more narrow view of identity, or orthodoxy. If I were feeling more sarcastic, I could compare to a Yogi Berra quote about a restaurant: “No one goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”
Sarcastic is not what I’m going for here. It’s a puzzle, and I’ve grown up in the Disciples, with nearby independents chiding me and my branch of the movement all my life. Why is the impetus to Christian unity necessarily a factor contributing to decline? I don’t think it’s self-evident. Can I conceive of reasons why it might be? Sure, but that’s what I’m missing here. It’s just asserted as a given.
Again, this is my attempt at an explanation, not something the essay’s author is responsible for, but I assume the idea is that you can’t draw the inclusive circle wide enough and fast enough to add more people than you lose by voluntary departure over opposition to including people they don’t think belong. If so, that’s interesting, isn’t it? It needs some further reflection as to why people leave, and what those drawing the circles or expanding definitions of unity or inclusion are responsible for as departures outstrip additions. Or is it that the expanded definitions don’t actually include new adherents or participants as effective parts of the newly defined community? Is he saying we need to do a better job of expanding the circle and truly including new participation in a wider fellowship?
However, we don’t get that. We just get a few different takes on the old weary theme “pursuing Christian unity leads to decline.”
There’s another nested quote about “demographic problems faced by mainline Protestants” which points to some interesting questions, which are then waved aside in preference to further assertions around the cause of decline being a retreat from “orthodox scriptural interpretations.” I happen to think those demographic problems we and other similarly situated Protestant bodies have are worth some time and attention — there’s a very well founded demographic data point, for instance, that when you increase the education of women, you reduce fertility. More schooling, less children. That’s interesting. It’s still not fully understood. I’d hope no one would respond to it by saying “obviously we need to stop sending females to high school and college.” But if we don’t, it becomes an issue we have to factor into our projections and planning.
As to the “orthodox scriptural interpretations” whose loosening is, again, asserted to lead directly to decline, I have no interest in trying to argue that the post-1968 history of the Disciples isn’t one of (to use the author’s terms) “liberal interpretations of Scripture influenced by the Modernist movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.” Yup, that’s us.
This movement is contrasted with “the authoritative nature of the Word, held by their Restoration Movement brothers, the noninstrumental Churches and Christ and the Independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ.” Yes, fellow Disciples, I could have put (sic) a couple of places, including after the term “brothers,” but I’m interested in even wider questions than inclusive language. Would Alexander Campbell, our most articulate and prolix preacher of the Founders Era, agree with the “authoritative nature of the Word, [as] held by the . . . noninstrumental Churches [of] Christ and the Independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ”? He’d more likely ask what Pope of those so-labeled groups was given the authority to define the authoritative nature of God’s Word.
In practice, Alexander and his father Thomas were quite expansive in how they included fellow seekers after Christian unity, even when they themselves were directly in disagreement with their doctrinal stands — look up Aylette Raines sometime, of whom Thomas Campbell said about their personal theological divergence “notwithstanding . . . I would put my right hand into the fire and have it burnt off before I would hold up my hands against him” — as long as there was a local church which affirmed and maintained such beliefs and leaders in community. The whole point of the Restoration Movement was that a group of Christians in one place should not have an absolute veto over the beliefs and practices of a local church in another place. There are guardrails, and what the Campbells and Stone supported for such distinctions changed over their respective lifetimes, and we still are debating those . . . which brings us back to the debate around Christian unity, and the necessary results of expanding that definition.
There is a bit of what I would have to call . . . projection? I really am not trying to be snarky, I’m just not sure what he’s trying to say here: “The Disciples have worked to be diverse at the denominational level, even if that goal is elusive at the congregational level.” That goal is elusive, eh? Hmmm. Look, do our corporate demographics reflect the demographics of the United States and Canada? No, they do not. But I’m highly skeptical that the Disciples are statistically behind the, um, “noninstrumental Churches [of] Christ and the Independent Christian Churches and Churches of Christ.” Do our congregations tend to be monochromatic? Yes they do, and that’s going to continue to be a subject which Christians should take seriously. More awkwardly, we’re both of us, independents and cooperatives out of the Restoration Tradition, united in how far we are behind many charismatic Christian bodies in that aspiration . . . but that doesn’t mean he’s arguing we should be going Pentecostal, is he? It may just be a reflection in a glass house, I don’t know.
In this essay asking us about “Understanding Disciples’ Decline,” the author has an excellent paragraph I repeat here almost in full: “The quest for diversity while maintaining unity is a reflection of God’s heart for his church as we see pictured in Revelation 7:9-10. We would all acknowledge that diversity and unity are vital components of life in the kingdom. What may have been lacking in this process, however, is a focus on diversity and unity that runs deeper than the organizational structure and is rooted in other biblical principles as well.”
Yes, most Disciples leaders today would flag “his church” in reference to God, or even the use of “kingdom.” In fact, the author will go on to note disapprovingly the theme from our last General Assembly as being about “the ‘kin-dom of God’ rather than the Kingdom of God.” He goes on to say the “theme served to highlight their unity emphasis while diminishing the Kingdom of God focus that was so often a focal point in Jesus’ teaching.” Look, I winced a bit when I first saw the Louisville Assembly theme, too. “Kin-dom” is a locution I don’t generally use, and one I just finished fighting off auto-correct over just to type that sentence. I don’t love it. It feels a bit like virtue signaling about inclusive language to an extreme that, yes, is out ahead of where many of our remaining members are at. Kin-dom IS a rephrasing of a masculine word whose use does signal to some groups that they might well be included in our understanding of the Realm of God (a phrase I do find helpful, while sidestepping “Kingdom” which by the way ain’t a literal translation of the Greek).
But this is also my worry here. The essay IS talking about the quest for diversity while maintaining unity, and I think it’s not a head fake. He is trying to find some sort of balance here, and not just to impose a doctrinal fiat, because — and here’s where we have much in common — that’s not a Restoration Movement way to think. “We would all acknowledge that diversity and unity are vital components of life in the…” [insert Realm of God and you’re still nodding, aren’t you?] “…kingdom.” [sigh]
What I’d like us to get to is his next comment: “What may have been lacking in this process, however, is a focus on diversity and unity that runs deeper than the organizational structure.” Frankly, I feel like there’s a paragraph coming that’s not present. It’s a useful question, if I can rephrase it as such, to ask “Is a focus on diversity and unity lacking in our emphasis on concerns about organizational structures?” The question stands unanswered, but worth considering.
Instead, he jumps forward to offer some quotes suggesting that a focus on individual autonomy and theological flexibility leads to decline. “One could also surmise that the focal point [the assembly theme’s use of “Kin-dom”] was identity based on individual autonomy rather than identity based on the characteristics of the Kingdom of God.”
Is that true? He offers no evidence for the idea that talking more about “kin” than “kings” would naturally lead to individual autonomy as an emphasis versus “characteristics of the [sigh] Kingdom of God.” Kin, as I’ve always used the word, is pretty durn expansive and inclusive. When I talk about my kin, I’m not talking about me. And me has to take a back seat to thee when kin are involved. Is that just me? Kin is a way, a homey, homely way to say we.
More to the author’s point, I suspect, is a concern with the presence in any form at all of transgender affirming resolutions, and there was one presented and passed on the floor “To oppose anti-trans legislation and affirm the dignity of Transgender and Gender-diverse people.” To not affirm male descriptions of God such as in “Kingdom,” and to object to anti-trans legislation, is to affirm “identity based on individual autonomy rather than identity based on the characteristics of the Kingdom of God.”
I will say to my progressive fellow Disciples: there’s a question buried in there. One we could productively spend time discussing. Where is the demarcation between individual autonomy and the Kin-dom, the Fellowship, the Realm of God?
But you find here my reason for spending any time at all arguing with an essay in the “Christian Standard,” which basically has a century long pedigree on behalf of arguing anyone to their left is not only wrong, but dangerously wrong, instead of focusing on our own dialogues within and among Disciples. Call it bad faith arguments if you want, but that’s where the pedigree is so pernicious: our opponents are so used to skipping steps in arguing with us that we all fall into the same habits. I’d like us to have better resistance, a higher quality of opposition, some occasional “NAY” votes from the floor offered in love, with insight. If opposition to the mainstream of Disciples life and thought is seen as identical to these sorts of step-skipping assertions, then of course no one wants to say “if it please the chair” and ask for more time to consider aspects and elements of how our understanding of the Gospel of God’s Good News made known in Christ Jesus today is working out in the matter before us.
As the “Standard” essay moves to a conclusion, there’s another example of what frustrates me so. The author observes "Flexing theologically toward universalism would indeed diminish the evangelistic fervor of leaders and churches.”
Would INDEED? Would it now? Is it out of order for me to ask why? No, seriously. You can say that the Unitarian Universalist Association is not a vital and growing tradition, but whether you’re talking about the UUs or the DoC, why is universalism automatically kryptonite against evangelism? Or is it? Are there other factors in play?
I’m quite serious here. I speak as a participant in a long-term project to try to get at how mainline Protestant Christians in general and Disciples in particular could talk comfortably about “the E-word” as Martha Grace Reese put it. “Unbinding the Gospel” was a book and a research program she undertook that I’m still proud to have helped a little bit with, and any of us involved with “Unbinding” would tell you with a rueful laugh that, yes, the word “evangelism” is weirdly poisonous in certain circles. Rev. Reese found that we could do evangelism, that evangelism is happening among our fellow congregations out across the landscape, but the word itself was and is challenging, for reasons we still don’t entirely understand.
Would the “Standard” folk, though, want to argue that without Hell and damnation we can’t have evangelism? Is only thought of the “last things” and eternal punishment sufficient to empower evangelistic fervor? I don’t know, maybe they do. "Flexing theologically toward universalism would indeed diminish the evangelistic fervor of leaders and churches.” I see the correlation; what I want to challenge is the idea that we can then say we have the causation.
Hear me well: we lack evangelistic fervor. We do. It’s a problem. I have a friend who believes . . . in walking barefoot. I mean everywhere. Like in businesses and government buildings. He’s challenged the law on many occasions. He’s usually barefoot, and I’ve been around him in a variety of settings. But I have never once heard him press his case on an unwilling listener. You have to ask: if you do ask him “why do you like going around barefoot all the time” be ready for as much answer as you can tolerate, but he is an evangelist for going barefoot. I honor him for it.
We Disciples lack evangelistic fervor. I am much less sure it’s because we have more progressive views than my grandmother or Alexander Campbell or some ministers in Cincinnati hold. I don’t think we stopped spreading our particular witness to the Gospel because we generally lean back from declarations about who is going to burn in Hell. I really don’t think that’s it.
We do need to talk about it, and not just chuckle nervously “well, we aren’t who that guy says we are.” Maybe we are in some ways. Maybe we are largely universalistic, even if that isn’t doctrinal either (because we’re Disciples!); maybe we are interested in individual autonomy because of our history, and that’s a tendency we need to be wary of (consider our equivocation on slavery in the 1850s). I want to challenge the casual assumptions about what doctrinal stances lead to which outcomes. Look at the Southern Baptists, as I mentioned earlier: they are likely to lose a number of churches this June, either way, as they make some binding decisions about women in pulpit ministry. Is the right decision the one that loses you the least? I doubt advocates on either side of the Southern Baptist debate would argue it’s that simple. Or the split with the Methodists: hey, the Global Methodist Church is going to report giant increases in membership, because they just started. Yes, the United Methodists, from whom they’re splitting, will show decline. But looking at which strategy gives you which numerical outcomes is not how anyone is looking at the debate. We shouldn’t fall into that trap, either. Sometimes the right thing is the course that loses you the most in the short term: see the interestingly numbered John 6:66. Yeah.
Where I’m encouraged, and interested in reading more carefully even an essay in a long-oppositional outlet, is how the author concludes. “The Disciples’ emphasis on unity, influenced by their theological flexibility along with their commitment to a denominational structure, has contributed to a decline in membership over the last 55 years.” Let me pause there. He says “contributed.” I think that’s fair. What it MEANS is different. Maybe a denominational structure led to certain short-term losses, but in the longer-term, might be a gift worth tending and nurturing? And in 2024, is a movement for unity going to garner automatic praise? Yeah, no. We live in a time of deep division, he cliched; that doesn’t mean we have to play the game. And theological flexibility is a strength or flaw depending on a variety of other variables. If our theology is not to be a window stuck open, versus an independent proud of their theology stuck shut, I think we need to reflect more deeply on the limits of theological coherence — both of us.
As to our Disciples decline, though, his last lines read: “This is a loss not just for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), but for the Kingdom of God. Let’s pray for one another, especially those within the heritage of the Restoration and Stone-Campbell Movement, and let’s seek to be united on the truth of God’s Word for the advance of the gospel of Jesus Christ in the world.”
We can debate kin and kings, and even the precise nature of truth as seen in the everlasting light of God, but I am pleased and not a little touched that Brother Hansee closes with a plea that we might be united. Within God’s great mercy, we might just get there.
I did find it interesting that a Christian Standard author would use my report from the GA for Word and Way as fodder for his article. I'm not sure he understood what I was trying to say. As for me, I believe our commitment to unity and to diversity are strengths. That there is flexibility is a strength, though at times it can be a weakness. You are also correct that our lean toward universalism is not the reason for our discomfort with evangelism. One can be a universalist and share the good news of Jesus. Now, I agree, when I get together with my good friend who is Hindu next week for coffee I probably won't try to convert her. But she knows that my interfaith engagement is deeply rooted in my faith in Jesus (as do my Muslim and Jewish friends).
I want to grow, start new churches, and see people encounter saving faith in Christ Jesus. Just wanted Cincinnati to know we exist.